• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.177-189
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• 2024

Accurately predicting the failure modes of reinforced concrete (RC) columns is essential for structural design and assessment. In this study, the challenges of imbalanced datasets and complex feature selection in machine learning (ML) methods were addressed through an optimized ML approach. By combining feature selection and oversampling techniques, the prediction of seismic failure modes in rectangular RC columns was improved. Two feature selection methods were used to identify six input parameters. To tackle class imbalance, the Borderline-SMOTE1 algorithm was employed, enhancing the learning capabilities of the models for minority classes. Eight ML algorithms were trained and fine-tuned using k-fold shuffle split cross-validation and grid search. The results showed that the artificial neural network model achieved 96.77% accuracy, while k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, and random forest models each achieved 95.16% accuracy. The balanced dataset led to significant improvements, particularly in predicting the flexure-shear failure mode, with accuracy increasing by 6%, recall by 8%, and F1 scores by 7%. The use of the Borderline-SMOTE1 algorithm significantly improved the recognition of samples at failure mode boundaries, enhancing the classification performance of models like k-nearest neighbor and decision tree, which are highly sensitive to data distribution and decision boundaries. This method effectively addressed class imbalance and selected relevant features without requiring complex simulations like traditional methods, proving applicable for discerning failure modes in various concrete members under seismic action.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.1669-1680
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• 2019

Seismic safety is considered to be one of the key design objectives of AP1000 nuclear power plant (NPP) in strong earthquakes. Dynamic behavior, damage development and aggravation effect are studied in this study for the three main components of AP1000 NPP, namely reinforced concrete shield building (RCSB), steel vessel containment (SVC) and reinforced concrete auxiliary building (RCAB). Characteristics including nonlinear concrete tension and compressive constitutions with plastic damage are employed to establish the numerical model, which is further validated by existing studies. The author investigates three earthquakes and eight input levels with the maximum magnitude of 2.4 g and the results show that the concrete material of both RCSB and RCAB have suffered serious damage in intense earthquakes. Considering RCAB in the whole NPP, significant damage aggravation effect can be detected, which is mainly concentrated at the upper intersection between RCSB and RCAB. SVC and reinforcing bar demonstrate excellent seismic performance with no obvious damage.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.6 no.1 s.19
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• pp.101-109
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• 2006

An initial member sections of steel structures is selected by experience of expert building structural designers. And appropriate member section is designed by repeat calculation through structural analysis. Therefore an initial assumption of member section is necessary for saving the time for structural design and is important to acquire safety of building structures. Also brace damper are generally used to prevent or decrease stuctural damage by its hysteretic behavior in building structures subjected to strong earthquake. Based on plastic design, the initial section of members for architectural steel structures with hysteretic damper braces is presented and seismic effect of structural behavior by the ratio of damper stiffness to structural story stiffness is estimated in this paper.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.209-221
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• 2015

Results from an experimental study on the seismic response of six composite reinforced concrete column-to-steel beam interior joints are presented. The primary variable investigated is the details in the joint. For the basic specimen, the main subassemblies of the beam and column are both continuous, and the steel beam flanges extended to the joint are partly cut off. Transverse beam, steel band plates, cove plates, X shape reinforcement bars and end plates are used in the other five specimens, respectively. After the joint steel panel yielded, two failure modes were observed during the test: local failure in Specimens 1, 2 and 4, shear failure in Specimens 3, 5 and 6. Specimens 6, 3, 5 and 4 have a better strength and deformation capacity than the other two specimens for the effectiveness of their subassemblies. For Specimens 2 and 4, though the performance of strength degradation and stiffness degradation are not as good as the other four specimens, they all have excellent energy dissipation capacity comparing to the RC joint, or the Steel Reinforced Concrete (SRC) joint. Based on the test result, some suggestions are presented for the design of composite RCS joint.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.471-482
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• 2018

The composite reinforced concrete and steel (RCS) structural systems have larger structural lateral stiffness, higher inherent structural damping, and faster construction speed than either traditional reinforcement concrete or steel structures. In this paper, four RCS subassemblies with or without the RC slab designed following a strong column-weak beam philosophy were constructed and tested under reversed-cyclic loading. Parameters including the width of slab and composite effect of the RC slab and beam were explored. The test results showed that all specimens performed in a ductile manner with plastic hinges formed in the beam ends near the column faces. The seismic responses of composite connections are influenced significantly by different width of slabs. Compared with that of the steel beam without the RC slab, it was found that the load carrying capacity of composite connections with the RC slab increased by 30% on average, and strength degradation, energy dissipation also had better performance, while the ductility of that were almost the same. Furthermore, the contribution of connection deformation to the overall specimen displacement was analyzed and compared. It decreased approximately 10% due to the coupling effect in the columns and beams with the RC slab. Based on the test result, some suggestions are presented for the design of composite RCS joints.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.1067-1087
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• 2016

In this paper, a decoupled proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control approach for seismic control of smart structures is presented. First, the state space equation of a structure is transformed into modal coordinates and parameters of the modal PID control are separately designed in a reduced modal space. Then, the feedback gain matrix of the controller is obtained based on the contribution of modal responses to the structural responses. The performance of the controller is investigated to adjust control force of piezoelectric friction dampers (PFDs) in a benchmark base isolated building. In order to tune the modal feedback gain of the controller, a suitable trade-off among the conflicting objectives, i.e., the reduction of maximum modal base displacement and the maximum modal floor acceleration of the smart base isolated structure, as well as the maximum modal control force, is created using a multi-objective cuckoo search (MOCS) algorithm. In terms of reduction of maximum base displacement and story acceleration, numerical simulations show that the proposed method performs better than other reported controllers in the literature. Moreover, simulation results show that the PFDs are able to efficiently dissipate the input excitation energy and reduce the damage energy of the structure. Overall, the proposed control strategy provides a simple strategy to tune the control forces and reduces the number of sensors of the control system to the number of controlled stories.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.57-64
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• 2022

As earthquakes have increased in Korea recently, people are paying attention to the seismic performance of buildings built in the past. Many school buildings in Korea were built based on standard drawings before the seismic design was applied. However, since school buildings are often designated as emergency evacuation facilities in case of disasters such as earthquakes, seismic evaluation and retrofit must be done quickly. This study investigated the failure modes among structural components (beams, columns, and joints), focusing on 1980s standard drawings for school buildings. The effects of column axial force, partial masonry infills, and different material strengths for concrete and rebar were considered for detailed evaluation. As a result, most of the joints were found to be the weakest among structural components. Column axial forces tended to make the joints more vulnerable, and partial masonry infills increased the possibility of joint failure and shear failure in columns.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.17-34
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• 2018

Tall buildings are categorized as important structures because of the large number of occupants and high construction costs. The choice of competent lateral load resisting systems in tall buildings is of crucial importance. Bracing systems have long been an economic and effective method for resisting lateral loads in steel structures. However, there are some potential adverse aspects to bracing systems such as the limitations they inflict on architectural plans, uplift forces and poor performances in compression. in order to eliminate the mentioned problems and for cost optimization, in this paper, six 20-story steel buildings and frames with different types of bracing, i.e., conventional, mega-scale and buckling-restrained bracing (BRB) were analyzed. Linear and modal push-over analyses were carried out. The results pointed out that Mega-Scale Bracing (MSB) system has significant superiority over the conventional bracing type. The MSB system is 25% more economic. Some other advantages of MSB include: up to 63% less drift ratio, up to 38% better performance in lateral displacement, up to 100% stiffer stories, and about 50% smaller uplift forces. Moreover, MSB equipped with BRB attests even a better seismic behavior in the aforementioned parameters.

• 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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.691-704
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• 2019

This study simulates the responses of large-scale bridge piers under pseudo-dynamic tests to investigate the performance of four types of numerical models that consider the nonlinear behavior of the pier and the rocking behavior of the footing. In the models, beam-column elements with plastic hinges are used for the pier, two types of foundation models (rotational spring and distributed spring models) are adopted for the footing behavior, and two types of viscous damping models (Rayleigh and dashpot models) are applied for energy dissipation. Results show that the nonlinear pier model combined with the distributed spring-dashpot foundation model can reasonably capture the behavior of the piers in the tests. Although the commonly used rotational spring foundation model adopts a nonlinear moment-rotation property that reflects the effect of footing uplift, it cannot suitably simulate the hysteretic moment-rotation response of the footing in the dynamic analysis once the footing uplifts. In addition, the piers are susceptible to cracking damage under strong seismic loading and the induced plastic response can provide contribution to earthquake energy dissipation.