• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.19-33
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• 2015

Open ground storey (OGS) buildings are characterized by the sudden reduction of stiffness in the ground storey with respect to the upper infilled storeys. During earthquakes, this vertical irregularity may result in accumulated damage in the ground storey members of OGS buildings without much damage in the upper storeys. Hence, the structural design of OGS buildings needs special attention. The present study suggests a modification of existing displacement-based design (DBD) procedure by proposing a new lateral load distribution. The increased demands of ground storey members of OGS buildings are estimated based on non-linear time history analysis results of four sets of bare and OGS frames having four to ten storey heights. The relationship between the increased demand and the relative stiffness of ground storey (with respect to upper storeys) is taken as the criterion for developing the expression for the design lateral load. It is also observed that under far-field earthquakes, there is a decrease in the ground storey drift of OGS frames as the height of the frame increases, whereas there is no such reduction when these frames are subjected to near-field earthquakes.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.831-849
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• 2015

Seismic-design procedures for walls require that the confinement in the critical (plastic hinge) regions should extend over a length in the compression zone of the cross section at the wall base where concrete strains in the Ultimate Limit State (ULS) exceed the limit of 0.0035. In a performance-based framework, confinement is linked to required curvature ductility so that the drift demand at the performance point of the structure for the design earthquake may be met. However, performance of flexural walls in the recent earthquakes in Chile (2010) and Christchurch (2011) indicates that the actual compression strains in the critical regions of many structural walls were higher than estimated, being responsible for several of the reported failures by toe crushing. In this study, the method of estimating the confined region and magnitude of compression strain demands in slender walls are revisited. The objective is to account for a newly identified kinematic interaction between the normal strains that arise in the compression zone, and the lumped rotations that occur at the other end of the wall base due to penetration of bar tension yielding into the supporting anchorage. Design charts estimating the amount of yield penetration in terms of the resulting lumped rotation at the wall base are used to quantify the increased demands for compression strain in the critical section. The estimated strain increase may exceed by more than 30% the base value estimated from the existing design expressions, which explains the frequently reported occurrence of toe crushing even in well confined slender walls under high drift demands. Example cases are included in the presentation to illustrate the behavioral parametric trends and implications in seismic design of walls.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.2
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• pp.229-244
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• 2022

This paper investigates the seismic performance of buildings designed using DDBD (Direct Displacement based Design) and FBD (Force based Design) approaches from the probabilistic viewpoint. It aims to estimate the collapse capacity of structures and assess the adequacy of seismic design codes. In this regard, (i) IDA (Incremental Dynamic Analysis) curves, (ii) interstory drift demand distribution curves, (iii) fragility curves, and (iv) the methodology provided by FEMA P-695 are applied to examine two groups of RC moment resistant frame buildings: 8-story structures with different plans, to study the effect of different span arrangements; and 3-, 7- and 12-story structures with a fixed plan, to study the dynamic behavior of the buildings. Structural modeling is performed in OpenSees software and validated using the results of an experimental model. It is concluded that increasing the building height would not significantly affect the response estimation of IDA and fragility curves of DDBD-designed structures, while the change in span arrangements is effective in estimating responses. In the investigation of the code adequacy, unlike the FBD approach, the DDBD can satisfy the performance criteria presented in FEMA P-695 and hence provide excellent performance.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.713-730
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• 2021

The seismic performance of rigid steel frames is widely investigated, but that of semi-rigid (SR) steel frames are not studied extensively, especially for near-field earthquakes. In this paper, the performances of five and ten-story steel SR frames having different degrees of semi-rigidity are evaluated at four performance points in the four different deformation states, namely, the elastic, elasto-plastic, plastic, and near collapse states. The performances of the SR frames are measured by the response parameters including the maximum values of the top floor displacement, base shear, inter-story drift ratio, number of plastic hinges, and SRSS of plastic hinge rotations. These response parameters are obtained by the capacity spectrum method (CSM) using pushover analysis. The validity of the response parameters determined by the CSM is evaluated by the results of the nonlinear time history analysis (NLTHA) for both near and far-field earthquakes at different PGA levels, which are consistent with the performance points. Results of the study show that the plastic hinges of SR frame significantly increase in the range of plastic to near-collapse states for both near and far-field earthquakes. The effect of the degree of semi-rigidity is pronounced only at higher degrees of semi-rigidity. The predictions of the CSM are fairly well in comparison to the NLTHA.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.88 no.3
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• pp.263-271
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• 2023

Base isolation is a widely used technique for the seismic control of structures as it reduces the structural seismic demand. However, displacement of the isolation layer is not economically feasible in congested urban areas. To resolve the issue, an innovative system is proposed here to isolate both horizontally at the base and vertically in the upper portion of the structure. A simplified linear three degree-of-freedom (3DOF) model of the system that considers the mass and stiffness ratios of the substructure has been introduced and analyzed in MATLAB by spectrum analysis. The 3DOF model results revealed that, when the period of the soft substructure reaches 2.5 times that of the stiff substructure, the isolation and the lower substructure responses decrease by 65% and 51%, respectively. Time-history analysis of a MDOF system at three frequency ratios under a wide range of ground motions indicated that, at the expense of accepting a certain large drift by the soft substructure in the upper portion of the structure, base isolation displacement can be decreased by 10%.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.163-173
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• 2019

For Special Concentrically Braced Frame (SCBF), it is common that the damage concentrates at a certain story instead of spreading over all stories. Once the damage occurs, the soft-story mechanism is likely to take place and possibly to result in the failure of the whole system with more damage accumulation. In this study, we use a strongback column which is an additional structural component extending along the height of the building, to redistribute the excessive deformation of SCBF and activate more structural members to dissipate energy and thus avoid damage concentration and improve the seismic performance of SCBF. We tested one-third-scaled, three-story, double-story X SCBF specimens with static cyclic loading procedure. Three specimens, namely S73, S42 and S0, which represent different combinations of stiffness and strength factors ${\alpha}$ and ${\beta}$ for the strongback columns, were designed based on results of numerical simulations. Specimens S73 and S42 were the specimens with the strongback columns, and S0 is the specimen without the strongback column. Test results show that the deformation distribution of Specimen S73 is more uniform and more brace members in three stories perform nonlinearly. Comparing Drift Concentration Factor (DCF), we can observe 29% and 11% improvement in Specimen S73 and S42, respectively. This improvement increases the nonlinear demand of the third-story braces and reduces that of the first-story braces where the demand used to be excessive, and, therefore, postpones the rupture of the first-story braces and enhances the ductility and energy dissipation capacity of the whole SCBF system.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.217-224
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• 1997

One way in which a comparison can be mode between various reinforced concrete structures is to compare the rate of energy absorption capacity. It is useful to use a well-known standard hysteretic rule as a benchmark for comparisons. The concept of energy absorption efficiency with respect to an elaste-perfectly plastic (EPP) system has been adopted. The normalized cumulative energy, cumulative plastic drift and energy response spectra are used for the method. The previous study using the energy spectra developed by Chang and Mander (1994) indicates the cumulative plastic demand for most earthquakes to be 0.1 rad., but a conservative upper bound of 0.2 rad. could be expected for a maximum credible earthquake. From the present study, the energy absorption efficiency in R.C. structures with respect to the EPP system may range in 30%-45% for most cases.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.69-82
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• 2019

As the residual displacement and/or drift demands are commonly used for seismic assessment of buildings, the estimation of these values play a very critical role through earthquake design philosophy. The residual displacement estimation of fixed base structures has been the topic of numerous researches up to now, but the effect of soil flexibility is almost always omitted. In this study, residual displacement demands are investigated for SDOF systems with period range of 0.1-3.0 s for near-field and far-field ground motions for both fixed and interacting cases. The elastoplastic model is used to represent non-degrading structures. Based on time history analyses, a new simple yet effective equation is proposed for residual displacement demand of any system whether fixed base or interacting as a function of structural period, lateral strength ratio and spectral displacement.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.23-31
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• 2011

To investigate the performance of apartment buildings which were built in the 1990s and which have RC bearing wall systems with coupling beams, construction drawings of 13 buildings were collected and analyzed. To evaluate the seismic performance, FEMA 356 and FEMA 440 were selected as guidelines. For the demand curve, the seismic design spectrum in KBC 2009 is used. For each building, the performance points for life safety and the collapse prevention state are calculated. It was found that 9 out of 13 buildings (about 70%) showed damage more severe than the collapse prevention level at the performance point and more damage could be seen at the coupling beams than the walls. However, the story drift limit of FEMA 356 was satisfied for all buildings. Through the analysis of performance points, it was shown that the spectral acceleration has an inverse relationship with the natural period.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.1155-1171
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• 2016

Post-tensioned (PT) steel moment resisting frames (MRFs) with semi-rigid connections (SRC) can be used to control the hysteretic energy demands and to reduce the maximum inter-story drift (${\gamma}$). In this study the seismic behavior of steel MRFs with PT connections is estimated by incremental nonlinear dynamic analysis in terms of dissipated hysteretic energy ($E_H$) demands. For this aim, five PT steel MRFs are subjected to 30 long duration earthquake ground motions recorded on soft soil sites. To assess the energy dissipated in the frames with PT connections, a new expression is proposed for the hysteretic behavior of semi-rigid connections validated by experimental tests. The performance was estimated not only for the global $E_H$ demands in the steel frames; but also for, the distribution and demands of hysteretic energy in beams, columns and connections considering several levels of deformation. The results show that $E_H$ varies with ${\gamma}$, and that most of $E_H$ is dissipated by the connections. It is observed in all the cases a log-normal distribution of $E_H$ through the building height. The largest demand of $E_H$ occurs between 0.25 and 0.5 of the height. Finally, an equation is proposed to calculate the distribution of $E_H$ in terms of the normalized height of the stories (h/H) and the inter-story drift.