• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.1345-1356
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• 2021

Damage to nuclear power plants causes human casualties and environmental disasters. There are electrical facilities that control safety-related devices in nuclear power plants, and seismic performance is required for them. The 2016 Gyeongju earthquake had many high-frequency components. Therefore, there is a high possibility that an earthquake involving many high frequency components will occur in South Korea. As such, it is necessary to examine the safety of nuclear power plants against an earthquake with many high-frequency components. In this study, the shaking table test of electrical facilities was conducted against the design earthquake for nuclear power plants with a large low-frequency components and an earthquake with a large high-frequency components. The response characteristics of the earthquake with a large high-frequency components were identified by deriving the amplification factors of the response through the shaking table test. In addition, safety of electrical facility against the two aforementioned types of earthquakes with different seismic characteristics was confirmed through limit-state seismic tests. The electrical facility that was performed to the shaking table test in this study was a motor control center (MCC).

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.107-121
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• 2022

Past studies have shown that the aspect ratio (width-to-height) of a steel plate shear wall (SPSW) can significantly affect its seismic response. SPSWs with lower aspect ratio (narrow SPSW) may experience low lateral stiffness and flexure dominated drift response. As the height of the frame increases, the narrow SPSWs prove to be uneconomical and demonstrate inferior seismic response than their wider counterparts. Moreover, the thicker web plates required for narrow SPSWs exerts high inward pull on the VBEs. The present study suggests the limiting values of the aspect ratio for an SPSW system by evaluating the seismic collapse performance of 3-, 6- and 9-story SPSW systems using FEMA P695 methodology. For this purpose, nonlinear models are developed. These models are validated with the past quasi-static experimental results. Non-linear static analyses and Incremental dynamic analyses are then carried. The results are then utilized to conservatively suggest the limiting values of aspect ratios for SPSW system. In addition to the conventional-SPSW (Conv-SPSW), the collapse performance of staggered-SPSW (S-SPSW) is also explored. Its performance is compared with the Conv-SPSW and the use of S-SPSW is suggested in the cases where SPSW with lower than recommended aspect ratio is desired.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.32-40
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• 2005

Recent earthquakes over magnitude 5 in the eastern coast of Korea have aroused interests in the earthquake analyses and seismic design of breakwater structures. Most of earthquake analysis methods such as equivalent static analysis, response spectrum analysis, nonlinear analysis, and capacity analysis methods are deterministic and have been used for seismic design and performance evaluation of breakwater structures. However, deterministic methods are difficult to reflect one of the most important characteristics of earthquakes, i.e. the uncertainty of earthquakes. This paper presents results of probabilistic seismic risk assessment(PSRA) of an actual caisson type breakwater structure considering uncertainties of earthquake occurrences and soil properties. First the seismic vulnerability of a structure and the seismic hazard of the site are evaluated using earthquake sets and seismic hazard map, and then seismic risk of the structure is assessed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.925-942
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• 2016

With ongoing development of earthquake engineering research and the lessons learnt from a series of strong earthquakes, the seismic design concept of "resilience" has received much attention. Resilience describes the capability of a structure or a city to recover rapidly after earthquakes or other disasters. As one of the main features of urban constructions, tall buildings have greater impact on the sustainability and resilience of major cities. Therefore, it is important and timely to quantify their seismic resilience. In this work, a quantitative comparison of the seismic resilience of two tall buildings designed according to the Chinese and US seismic design codes was conducted. The prototype building, originally designed according to the US code as part of the Tall Building Initiative (TBI) Project, was redesigned in this work according to the Chinese codes under the same design conditions. Two refined nonlinear finite element (FE) models were established for both cases and their seismic responses were evaluated at different earthquake intensities, including the service level earthquake (SLE), the design-based earthquake (DBE) and the maximum considered earthquake (MCE). In addition, the collapse fragility functions of these two building models were established through incremental dynamic analysis (IDA). Based on the numerical results, the seismic resilience of both models was quantified and compared using the new-generation seismic performance assessment method proposed by FEMA P-58. The outcomes of this study indicate that the seismic resilience of the building according to the Chinese design is slightly better than that according to the US design. The conclusions drawn from this research are expected to guide further in-depth studies on improving the seismic resilience of tall buildings.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.67-76
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• 2004

This study presents the evaluation of CSM(Capacity Spectrum Method, ATC-40) in developing fragility curves for a sample concrete bridge. The CSM is originally developed as one of the simplified procedures for building structures, while this study adopts the CSM to develop fragility curves of bridge structures. Four(4) different approaches are demonstrated and the fragility curves developed are compared those by the nonlinear time history analysis. Fragility curves in this study are represented by lognormal distribution functions with two parameters and developed as a function of PGA. The sixty(60) ground acceleration time histories for the Los Angeles area developed for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) SAC(SEAOC-ATC-CUREe) steel project are used for the bridge analysis. The comparison of fragility curves by the CSM with those by the time history analysis indicates that the agreement is excellent for one of the methods investigated in this study. In this respect. it is recommended that the demand spectrum might be improved according to the guidelines suggested in this study. However, this observation might not always apply, depending on the details of specific bridge characteristic

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.273-282
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• 2023

Probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been widely used to evaluate the seismic risk of nuclear power plants (NPPs). However, studies on seismic PSA for process plants, such as gas plants, oil refineries, and chemical plants, have been scarce. This is because the major disasters to which these process plants are vulnerable include explosions, fires, and release (or dispersion) of toxic chemicals. However, seismic PSA is essential for the plants located in regions with significant earthquake risks. Seismic PSA entails probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA), event tree analysis (ETA), fault tree analysis (FTA), and fragility analysis for the structures and essential equipment items. Among those analyses, ETA can depict the accident sequence for core damage, which is the worst disaster and top event concerning NPPs. However, there is no general top event with regard to process plants. Therefore, PSA cannot be directly applied to process plants. Moreover, there is a paucity of studies on developing fragility curves for various equipment. This paper introduces PSA for gas plants based on FTA, which is then transformed into Bayesian network, that is, a probabilistic graph model that can aid risk-informed decision-making. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a gas plant, and several decision-making cases are demonstrated.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.359-379
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• 2020

Due to susceptibility of bridges in the past earthquakes, vulnerability assessment and strengthening of bridges has gained a particular significance. The objective of the present study is to employ an analytical method for the development of fragility curves, as well as to investigate the effect of strengthening on the RC box-girder bridges. Since fragility curves are used for pre-and post-earthquake planning, this paper has attempted to adopt the most reliable modeling assumptions in order to increase the reliability. Furthermore, to acknowledge the interaction of soil, abutment and pile, the effect of different strengthening methods, such as using steel jacketing and FRP layers, the effect of increase in the bridge pier diameter, and the effect of vertical component of earthquake on the vulnerability of bridges in this study, a three-span RC box-girder bridge was modeled in 9 different cases. Nonlinear dynamic analyses were carried out on the studied bridges subjected to 100 ground motion records via OpenSEES platform. Therefore, the fragility curves were plotted and compared in the four damage states. The results revealed that once the interaction of soil and abutment and the vertical component of the earthquake are accounted for in the calculations, the median fragility is reduced, implying that the bridge becomes more vulnerable. It was also confirmed that steel jackets and FRP layers are suitable methods for pier strengthening which reduces the vulnerability of the bridge.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.487-498
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• 2018

Buckling-restrained braces are passive control devices with high level of energy dissipation ability. However, they suffer from low post-yield stiffness which makes them vulnerable to severe ground motions, especially near-field earthquakes. Among the several methods proposed to improve resistance of BRB frames, mega-brace configuration can be a solution to increase frame lateral strength and stiffness and improve distribution of forces to prevent large displacement in braces. Due to the limited number of research regarding the performance of such systems, the current paper aims to assess seismic performance of BRB frames with mega-bracing arrangement under near-field earthquakes via a detailed probabilistic framework. For this purpose, a group of multi-story mega-BRB frames were modelled by OpenSEES software platform. In the first part of the paper, simplified procedures including nonlinear pushover and Incremental Dynamic Analysis were conducted for performance evaluation. Two groups of near-fault seismic ground motions (Non-pulse and Pulse-like records) were considered for analyses to take into account the effects of record-to-record uncertainties, as well as forward directivity on the results. In the second part, seismic reliability analyses are conducted in the context of performance based earthquake engineering. Two widely-known EDP-based and IM-based probabilistic frameworks are employed to estimate collapse potential of the structures. Results show that all the structures can successfully tolerate near-field earthquakes with a high level of confidence level. Therefore, mega-bracing configuration can be an effective alternative to conventional BRB bracing to withstand near-field earthquakes.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.9-19
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• 2014

In this study the seismic performances of reinforced concrete apartment buildings with Y- and box-shaped plans having central core are investigated. Three types of model structures are designed for each shape depending on the amount of shear partition walls: structures with all shear walls, structures with all columns except the core walls, and structures with shear walls and columns combined. The required amount of concrete to satisfy the specified design loads is the largest in the all shear wall structures, and decreases as more and more shear walls are replaced with columns. The amount of re-bars increased significantly in the flat plate structures. According to nonlinear static and dynamic analysis results, the structures with all shear walls and all columns turn out to have the largest and the smallest strengths, respectively. However it is observed that even the all-column structures with shear core have proper load resisting capacity for design level seismic load.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2017

Seismic risk analysis was performed based on the total stress and effective stress of caisson type quay wall and pier type quay wall. In order to consider the effective stress effect, the pore pressure of the ground was distributed, using Byrne(1991) simple formula to estimate parameter and applied to the finn model. Through the results of seismic risk analysis according to the total stress and effective stress analysis method, the necessity of effective stress analysis in the seismic design of the quay wall installed on the soft ground was confirmed.