• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.57-70
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• 2010

Recent earthquakes have demonstrated that the tunnels, which were once considered to be highly resistant to earthquakes, are susceptible to substantial damage under severe seismic loading. Among various modes of deformation under an earthquake loading, the response of the tunnel in the transverse direction is known to be the critical mode. This paper investigates the seismic response of the tunnel in the transverse direction using the method of seismic displacement, which is a type of pseudo-static analysis. Firstly, the methods of calculating the ground deformation are compared. It is shown that the single and double cosine may not provide an accurate estimation of the ground deformation, and that a one-dimensional site response analysis needs to be performed for a more reliable evaluation. Secondly, the tunnel responses are calculated using the simplified, analytical, and numerical solutions. It is demonstrated that the simplified method provides poor estimates of the tunnel response ground deformation. The analytical solution is shown to be effective in modeling circular tunnels in uniform ground, but has serious limitation in modeling tunnel response in non-uniform ground. Numerical analyses are shown to be applicable to all cases, and give the most accurate estimates of the tunnel response. It is also demonstrated that the linear solutions can be so conservative that the soil nonlinearity needs to be accounted for more accurate evaluation of the tunnel response.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.65 no.3
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• pp.251-261
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• 2018

Self-centering concentrically braced frames (SCCBFs) are emerging as high performance seismically resistant braced framing system, due to the capacity of withstanding strong earthquake attacks and promptly recovering after events. To get a further insight into the seismic performance of SCCBFs, systematical evaluations are currently conducted from the perspective of modal contributions. In this paper, the modal pushover analysis (MPA) approach is utilized to obtain the realistic seismic demands by summarizing the contribution of each single vibration mode. The MPA-based results are compared with the exact results from nonlinear response history analysis. The adopted SCCBFs originate from existing buckling-restrained braced frames (BRBF), which are also analyzed for purpose of comparison. In the analysis of these comparable framing systems, interested performance indices that closely relate to the structural damage degree include the interstory drift ratio, floor acceleration, and absorbed hysteretic energy. The study shows that the MPA approach produces acceptable predictions in comparison to the exact results for SCCBFs. In addition, the high-modes effect on the seismic behavior increases with the building height, and is more evident in the SCCBFs than the BRBFs.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.573-594
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• 2001

A two-level displacement-based design procedure is developed. To obtain the displacement demands, elastic spectra for occasional earthquakes and inelastic spectra for rare earthquakes are used. Minimum global stiffness and strength to be supplied to the structure are based on specified maximum permissible drift limits and on the condition that the structure responds within the elastic range for occasional earthquakes. The performance of the structure may be assessed by an inelastic push-over analysis to the required displacement and the evaluation of damage indices. The approach is applied to the design of a five-story reinforced concrete coupled wall structure located in the most hazardous seismic region of Argentina. The inelastic dynamic response of the structure subjected to real and artificially generated acceleration time histories is also analyzed. Finally, advantages and limitations of the proposed procedure from the conceptual point of view and practical application are discussed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.441-457
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• 2018

Characteristic parameter values of seismic isolators deviate from their nominal design values due to uncertainties and/or errors in their material properties and element dimensions, etc. Deviations may increase over service life due to environmental effects and service conditions. For accurate evaluation of the seismic safety level, all such effects, which would result in deviations in the structural response, need to be taken into account. In this study, the sensitivity of the probability of failure of the structures equipped with nonlinear base isolation systems to the uncertainties in various isolation system characteristic parameters is investigated in terms of various isolation system and superstructure response parameters in the context of a realistic three-dimensional base-isolated building model via Monte Carlo Simulations. The inherent record-to-record variability nature of the earthquake ground motions is also taken into account by carrying out analyses for a large number of ground motion records which are classified as those with and without forward-directivity effects. Two levels of nominal isolation periods each with three different levels of uncertainty are considered. Comparative plots of cumulative distribution functions and related statistical evaluation presented here portray the potential extent of the deviation of the structural response parameters resulting from the uncertainties and the uncertainty levels considered, which is expected to be useful for practicing engineers in evaluating isolator test results for their projects.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.968-980
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• 2023

The dynamic structural responses are sensitive to the time-frequency content of seismic waves, and seismic input motions in time-history analysis are usually required to be compatible with design response spectra according to nuclear codes. In order to generate spectra-compatible input motions while maintaining the intrinsic non-stationarity of seismic waves, an improved time-domain approach is proposed in this paper. To maintain the nonstationary characteristics of the given seismic waves, a new time-frequency envelope function is constructed using the Hilbert amplitude spectrum. Based on the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) obtained from given seismic waves through variational mode decomposition, a new corrective time history is constructed to locally modify the given seismic waves. The proposed corrective time history and time-frequency envelope function are unique for each earthquake records as they are extracted from the given seismic waves. In addition, a dimension reduction iterative technique is presented herein to simultaneously superimpose corrective time histories of all the damping ratios at a specific frequency in the time domain according to optimal weights, which are found by the genetic algorithm (GA). Examples are presented to show the capability of the proposed approach in generating spectra-compatible time histories, especially in maintaining the nonstationary characteristics of seismic records. And numerical results reveal that the modified time histories generated by the proposed method can obtain similar dynamic behaviors of AP1000 nuclear power plant with the natural seismic records. Thus, the proposed method can be efficiently used in the design practices.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.354-365
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• 2014

The horizontal response spectra using the observed ground motions from 15 Fukuoka earthquake series, including main earthquake (2005/03/20; Mw=6.5), were analysed and then were compared to both the seismic design response spectra (Regulatory Guide 1.60), applied to the domestic nuclear power plants, and the Korean Standard Design Response Spectrum for general structures and buildings (1997). 178 horizontal ground motions, without considering soil types, were used for normalization with respect to the peak acceleration value of each ground motion. The results showed that response spectrum have strong dependency on epicentral distance. The results also showed that the horizontal response spectra revealed higher values for frequency bands at two frequency bands (about 8 - 10 and 16- 20 Hz) than Regulatory Guide 1.60. The results were also compared to the Korean Standard Building Design Spectrum for the 3 different soil types and showed that thehorizontal response spectra revealed higher values for almost all period bands than the Korean Standard Response Spectrum (500 yrs; Return Period; Seismic province 1; SE soil conditions). Through the qualitative improvements and quantitative enhancement of the observed ground motions, the diversity of the observed ground motions should be considered more significantly to improve the certainty of response spectrum.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.353-379
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• 2012

The accuracy of the 30% and SRSS rules, commonly used to estimate the combined response of structures, and some related issues, are studied. For complex systems and earthquake loading, the principal components give the maximum seismic response. Both rules underestimate the axial load by about 10% and the COV of the underestimation is about 20%. Both rules overestimate the base shear by about 10%. The uncertainty in the estimation is much larger for axial load than for base shear, and, for axial load, it is much larger for inelastic than for elastic behavior. The effect of individual components may be highly correlated, not only for normal components, but also for totally uncorrelated components. The rules are not always inaccurate for large values of correlation coefficients of the individual effects, and small values of such coefficients are not always related to an accurate estimation of the response. Only for perfectly uncorrelated harmonic excitations and elastic analysis of SDOF systems, the individual effects of the components are uncorrelated and the rules accurately estimate the combined response. In the general case, the level of underestimation or overestimation depends on the degree of correlation of the components, the type of structural system, the response parameter, the location of the structural member and the level of structural deformation. The codes should be more specific regarding the application of these rules. If the percentage rule is used for MDOF systems and earthquake loading, at least a value of 45% should be used for the combination factor.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.51-57
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• 2010

The importance of seismic design is greatly emphasized recently in Korea, resulting in an increase in the number of dynamic analysis being performed. One of the most important input parameters for the dynamic seismic analysis is input ground motion. However, it is common practice to use recorded motions from U.S. or Japan without considering the seismic environment of Korea or synthetic motions generated in the frequency domain. The recorded motions are not suitable for the seismic environment of Korea since the variation in the duration and energy with the earthquake magnitude cannot be considered. The artificial motions generated in frequency domain used to generated design response spectrum compatible ground motion has the problem of generating motions that have different frequency characteristics compared to real recordings. In this study, an algorithm that generates target response spectrum compatible ground motions in time domain is used to generate a suite of input ground motions. The generated motions are shown to preserve the non-stationary characteristics of the real ground motion and at the same, almost perfectly match the design response spectrum.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.13-19
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• 2018

Following the 2016 Gyeongju earthquake, the Pohang Earthquake occurred in 2017, and the south-east region in Korea is under the threat of an earthquake. Especially, in the Pohang Earthquake, the liquefaction phenomenon occurred in the sedimentation area of the coast, and preparation of countermeasures is very important. The soil liquefaction can affect the underground facilities directly as well as various structures on the ground. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the liquefaction risk of facilities and the structures against the possible earthquakes and to prepare countermeasures to minimize them. In this study, we investigated the seismic liquefaction risk about the electric power utility tunnels in the southeast area where the earthquake occurred in Korea recently. In the analysis of seismic liquefaction risk, the earthquake with return period 1000 years and liquefaction potential index are used. The liquefaction risk analysis was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, the liquefaction risk was analyzed by calculating the liquefaction potential index using the ground survey data of the location of electric power utility tunnels in the southeast region. At that time, the seismic amplification in soil layer was considered by soil amplification factor according to the soil classification. In the second stage, the liquefaction risk analysis based on the site response analyses inputted 3 earthquake records were performed for the locations determined to be dangerous from the first step analysis, and the final liquefaction potential index was recalculated. In the analysis, the site investigation data were used from the National Geotechnical Information DB Center. Finally, it can be found that the proposed two stage assessments for liquefaction risk that the macro assessment of liquefaction risk for the underground facilities including the electric power utility tunnel in Korea is carried out at the first stage, and the second risk assessment is performed again with site response analysis for the dangerous regions of the first stage assessment is reasonable and effective.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.971-983
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• 2015

To promote greater acceptance and use of composite RCS systems, a two-bay two-story frame specimen with improved composite RCS joint details was tested in the laboratory under reversed cyclic loading. The test revealed superior seismic performance with stable load versus story drift response and excellent deformation capacity for an inter-story drift ratio up to 1/25. It was found that the failure process of the frame meets the strong-column weak-beam criterion. Furthermore, cracking inter-story drift ratio and ultimate inter-story drift ratio both satisfy the limitation prescribed by the design code. Additionally, inter-story drift ratios at yielding and peak load stage provide reference data for Performance-Based Seismic Design (PBSD) approaches for composite RCS frames. An advantage over conventional reinforced concrete and steel moment frame systems is that the displacement ductility coefficient of the RCS frame system is much larger. To conclude, the test results prove that composite RCS frame systems perform satisfactorily under simulated earthquake action, which further validates the reliability of this innovative system. Based on the test result, some suggestions are presented for the design of composite RCS frame systems.