• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.195-215
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• 2016

Rehabilitation of historical unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings is a priority in many parts of the world, since those buildings are a living part of history and a testament of human achievement of the era of their construction. Many of these buildings are still operational; comprising brittle materials with no reinforcements, with spatially distributed mass and stiffness, they are not encompassed by current seismic assessment procedures that have been developed for other structural types. To facilitate the difficult task of selecting a proper rehabilitation strategy - often restricted by international treaties for non-invasiveness and reversibility of the intervention - and given the practical requirements for the buildings' intended reuse, this paper presents a practical procedure for assessment of seismic demands of URM buildings - mainly historical constructions that lack a well-defined diaphragm action. A key ingredient of the method is approximation of the spatial shape of lateral translation, ${\Phi}$, that the building assumes when subjected to a uniform field of lateral acceleration. Using ${\Phi}$ as a 3-D shape function, the dynamic response of the system is evaluated, using the concepts of SDOF approximation of continuous systems. This enables determination of the envelope of the developed deformations and the tendency for deformation and damage localization throughout the examined building for a given design earthquake scenario. Deformation demands are specified in terms of relative drift ratios referring to the in-plane and the out-of-plane seismic response of the building's structural elements. Drift ratio demands are compared with drift capacities associated with predefined performance limits. The accuracy of the introduced procedure is evaluated through (a) comparison of the response profiles with those obtained from detailed time-history dynamic analysis using a suite of ten strong ground motion records, five of which with near-field characteristics, and (b) evaluation of the performance assessment results with observations reported in reconnaissance reports of the field performance of two neoclassical torsionally-sensitive historical buildings, located in Thessaloniki, Greece, which survived a major earthquake in the past.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.131-138
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• 2013

The high damping rubber bearings contributed to reduce a seismic force transmitted to upper structures, the material properties of rubber changes with time and the rubber with age-related degradation can affect the seismic response of structures and equipments. Therefore the seismic response of structure considering age-related degradation of isolators should be evaluated. In this paper, the stiffness and damping for isolators were defined using the aging data proposed by other researchers. The reactor containment building and the auxiliary building were selected to conduct the nonlinear analysis and the natural frequency, maximum responses, floor response spectrum(FRS) were evaluated with time using the four earthquakes with different frequency contents. According to the analysis results, the seismic responses are increased by the age-related degradation of isolators and the detail inspections should be conducted up to 20 years because it was presented that the change of FRS was high during this period.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.283-292
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• 2021

In this study, a structural health monitoring system for cable-stayed bridges is developed. In the system, condition assessment of the structure is performed based on measured records from seismic accelerometers. Response indices are defined to monitor structural safety and serviceability and derived from the measured acceleration data. The derivation process of the indices is structured to follow the transformation from the raw data to the outcome. The process includes noise filtering, baseline correction, numerical integration, and calculation of relative differences. The system is packed as a condition assessment program, which consists of four major processes of the structural health evaluation: (i) format conversion of the raw data, (ii) noise filtering, (iii) generation of response indices, and (iv) condition evaluation. An example set of limit states is presented to evaluate the structural condition of the test-bed and cable-stayed bridge.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.09a
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• pp.1258-1270
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• 2009

Recently, the earthquakes activities are more of frequency occurred in the country. In case of nomal or large magnitude earthquakes, which cause a rising number of life loss or widespread loss of property. It must be considered how to cope with the situperty of dpmage in the country ty account of ay earthquake. Consequently, the public works have currently ensured against a lot of risk about seismism not only on large scale structures but also relatively small structures. Therefore, in this study, in order to make the seismic stability safe, it has been evaluated by the seismic performance for caisson-type breakwater. The seismic response analyses have conducted on the caisson-type breaker under long-period, short-period and artificial seismic wave. The liquefaction potential of the foundation, which is caisson-type, is also estimated by using the simplified assessment method. Finally, the result of the numerical analysis by PENTAGON 2D finite element method(FEM) program are presented for 3 cases with time-history seismic analysis under the seismic load.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.515-537
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• 2014

Current seismic codes (e.g. the NTC08 Italian code and the EC8 European code) adopt a performance-based approach for both the design of new buildings and the assessment of existing ones. Different limit states are considered by verifying structural members as well as non structural elements and facilities which have generally been neglected in practice. The key role of non structural elements on building performance has been shown by recent earthquakes (e.g. L'Aquila 2009) where, due to the extensive damage suffered by infills, partitions and ceilings, a lot of private and public buildings became unusable with consequent significant socio-economic effects. Furthermore, the collapse of infill panels, particularly in the case of out-of-plane failure, represented a serious source of risk to life safety. This paper puts forward an infill model capable of accounting for the effects arising from prior in-plane damage on the out-of-plane capacity of infill panels. It permits an assessment of the seismic performance of existing RC buildings with reference to both structural and non structural elements, as well as of their mutual interaction. The model is applied to a building type with RC framed structure designed only to vertical loads and representative of typical Italian buildings. The influence of infill on building performance and the role of the out-of-plane response on structural response are also discussed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.389-403
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• 2021

Skewed bridges, being irregular structures with complicated dynamic behavior, are more susceptible to earthquake damage. Reliable seismic-resistant design of skewed bridges can be achieved by accurate determination of nonlinear seismic demands. However, the effect of geometric characteristics on the response modification factor (R-factor) is not accounted for in bridge design practices. This study attempts to investigate the effects of changes in the number of spans, skew angle and bearing stiffness on R-factor values and to assess the seismic fragility of skewed bridges. Results indicated that changes in the skew angle had no significant effect on R-factor values which were in consonance with code-prescribed R values. Also, unlike the increase in the number of spans that resulted in a decrease in the R-factor, the increase in bearing stiffness led to higher R-factor values. Findings of the fragility analysis implied that although the increase in the number of spans, as well as the increase in the skew angle, led to a higher failure probability, greater values of bearing stiffness reduced the collapse probability. For practicing design engineers, it is recommended that maximum demands on substructure elements to be calculated when the excitation angle is applied along the principal axes of skewed bridges.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.601-619
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• 2017

Cantilever retaining wall movements generally depend on the intensity and duration of ground motion, the response of the soil underlying the wall, the response of the backfill, the structural rigidity, and soil-structure interaction (SSI). This paper investigates the effect of material properties on seismic response of backfill-cantilever retaining wall-soil/foundation interaction system considering SSI. The material properties varied include the modulus of elasticity, Poisson's ratio, and mass density of the wall material. A series of nonlinear time history analyses with variation of material properties of the cantilever retaining wall are carried out by using the suggested finite element model (FEM). The backfill and foundation soil are modelled as an elastoplastic medium obeying the Drucker-Prager yield criterion, and the backfill-wall interface behavior is taken into consideration by using interface elements between the wall and soil to allow for de-bonding. The viscous boundary model is used in three dimensions to consider radiational effect of the seismic waves through the soil medium. In the seismic analyses, North-South component of the ground motion recorded during August 17, 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake in Yarimca station is used. Dynamic equations of motions are solved by using Newmark's direct step-by-step integration method. The response quantities incorporate the lateral displacements of the wall relative to the moving base and the stresses in the wall in all directions. The results show that while the modulus of elasticity has a considerable effect on seismic behavior of cantilever retaining wall, the Poisson's ratio and mass density of the wall material have negligible effects on seismic response.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.391-399
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• 2017

This study investigates the effects of soft story, short columns, heavy overhangs, pounding, and construction and workmanship quality parameters on seismic response of reinforced concrete buildings through nonlinear static and dynamic procedures. The accounted parameters are selected for their common use in rapid screening of RC buildings. The 4- and 7-story buildings designed according to pre-modern codes are used to reflect majority of the existing building stock. The relative penalty scores are employed in this study to evaluate relative importance of certain irregularities in the existing rapid seismic assessment procedures. Comparison of relative scores for the irregularities considered in this study show that the overall trend is similar. The relatively small differences may be accounted for regional construction practices. It is concluded that initial-phase seismic assessment procedures based on architectural features yield in somewhat similar results independent of their bases. However, the differences in the scores emphasize the proper selection of the method based on the regional structure characteristics.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.35-51
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• 2020

In this study, the seismic response analysis of embankment dams was investigated through numerical modeling. The seismic behavior of dams under main earthquake records and wavelet-based records were studied. Earthquake records were decomposed using de-noising method (DNM) and down-sampling method (DSM) up to five levels. In decomposition process, low and high frequencies of the main earthquake record were separated into two signals. Acceleration response, spectral acceleration, and Fourier amplitude spectrum at the crest of embankment dams under different decomposition levels were evaluated. The seismic behavior under main and decomposed earthquake records was compared. The results indicate an acceptable agreement between the seismic responses of embankment dams under wavelet-based decomposed records and main earthquake motions. Dynamic analyses show that the DNM-based decomposed earthquake records have a better performance compared to DSM-based records. DNM-based records up to level 4 and DSM-based records up to level 2 have a high accuracy in assessment of seismic behavior of embankment dams. The periods corresponding to the maximum values of acceleration spectra and the frequencies corresponding to the maximum values of Fourier amplitude spectra of embankment dam crest under main and decomposed records are in good agreement. The results demonstrate that the main earthquake records can be replaced by wavelet-based decomposed records in seismic analysis of embankment dams.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.74 no.4
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• pp.481-494
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• 2020

In this paper, a probability-based procedure to evaluate the performance of existing RC structures exposed to seismic and fire actions is presented. The procedure is demonstrated with reference to an existing old school building, located in Italy. The vulnerability assessment of the building highlights deficiencies under both static and seismic loads. Retrofit operations are designed to achieve the seismic safety. The idea of the work consists in assessing the performance of the existing and retrofitted building in terms of both the seismic and fire resistance. The seismic retrofit and fire resistance upgrading follow different paths, depending on the specific configuration of the building. A good seismic retrofit does not entail an improving of the fire resistance and vice versa. The goal of the current work is to study the variation of response due to the uncertainties considered in records/fire curves selection and to carry out the assessment of the studied RC structure by obtaining fragility curves under the effect of different records/temperature. The results show the fragility curves before and after retrofit operations and both in terms of seismic performance and fire resistance performance, measuring the percent improving for the different limit states.