• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.455-467
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• 2023

Impact damper is a passive damping system that controls undesirable vibration with mass block impacting with stops fixed to the excited structure, introducing momentum exchange and energy dissipation. However, harmful momentum exchange may occur in the random excitation increasing structural response. Based on the mechanism of impact damping system, a semi-active impact damper (SAID) with controllable impact timing as well as a semi-active control strategy is proposed to enhance the seismic performance of engineering structures in this paper. Comparative experimental studies were conducted to investigate the damping performances of the passive impact damper and SAID. The extreme working conditions for SAID were also discussed and approaches to enhance the damping effect under high-intensity excitations were proposed. A numerical simulation model of SAID attached to a frame structure was established to further explore the damping mechanism. The experimental and numerical results show that the SAID has better control effect than the traditional passive impact damper and can effectively broaden the damping frequency band. The parametric studies illustrate the mass ratio and impact damping ratio of SAID can significantly influence the vibration control effect by affecting the impact force.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.457-472
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• 2021

Reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Taiwan have suffered failure from strong earthquakes, which was magnified by the non-ductile detailing frames. Inadequate reinforcement as a consequence of the design philosophy prior to the introduction of current standards resulted in severe damage in the column and beam-column joint (BCJ). This study establishes a finite element analysis (FEA) of the non-ductile detailing RC column, BCJ, and three-story building that was previously tested through a tri-axial shaking table test. The results were then validated to laboratory specimens having the exact same dimensions and properties. FEA simulation integrates the concrete damage plasticity model and the elastic-perfectly plastic model for steel. The load-displacement responses of the column and BCJ specimens obtained from FEA were in a reasonable agreement with the experimental curves. The resulting initial stiffness and maximum base shear were found to be a close approximation to the experimental results. Also, the findings of a dynamic analysis of the three-story building showed that the time-history data of acceleration and displacement correlated well with the shaking table test results. This indicates the FEA implementation can be effectively used to predict the RC frame performance and failure mode under seismic loads.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.90 no.6
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• pp.577-590
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• 2024

Considering the Column-Supported Group Silos (CSGSs) often arranged by rows in practical applications, earthquake responses will be affected by group effect. Since group effect presenting uncertainties, establishing the analytic model and evaluating characteristics of CSGSs seems necessary. This study aimed at providing a simplified method to evaluate seismic performances of the CSGSs. Firstly, the CSGSs with different storage granule heights are used as numerical examples to derive the base shear formula for three-particle dynamic analytical model. Then, the base shear distribution coefficient is defined as the group effect index. The simplified calculation method of the group silos based on the distribution coefficients is proposed. Finally, based on the empty, half, and full granular storage conditions, the empirical design parameters for the group silos system are given by combining finite element simulation with shaking table test. The group effect of storage granule heights of group silos on its frequency and base shear are studied by comparative analysis between group silos and independent single silo. The results show that the frequency of CSGSs decreases with the increasing weight of the stored granule. The connection between the column top and silo bottom plate is vulnerable, and structural measures should be strengthened to improve its damage resistance. In case of different storage granule heights, distribution coefficients are effective to reconstruction the group effect. The complex calculations of seismic response for CSGSs can be avoided by adopting the empirical distribution coefficients obtained in this study. The proposed method provides a theoretical reference for evaluation on the seismic performances of the CSGSs.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.85-92
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• 2011

The dynamic behavior of piles becomes very complex due to soil-pile dynamic interaction, soil non-linearity, resonance phenomena of soil-pile system and so on. Therefore, the proper numerical simulation of the pile behavior needs much effort and calculation time. In this research, a new modeling method, which can be applied to the conventional finite difference analysis program FLAC 3D, was developed to reduce the calculation time. The soil domain in this method is divided into a near-field region and a far-field region, which is not influenced by the soil-pile dynamic interaction. Then, the ground motion of the far-field is applied to the boundaries of the near-field instead of modeling the far-field region as finite meshes. In addition, the soil non-linearity behavior is modeled by using the hysteretic damping model, which determines the soil tangent modulus as a function of shear strain and the interface element was applied to simulate the separation and slip between the soil and pile. The proposed method reduced the calculation time by as much as one third compared with a usual modeling method and maintained the accuracy of the calculated results. The calculated results by the proposed method showed a good agreement with the prototype pile behavior, which was obtained by applying a similitude law to the 1-g shaking table test results.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.87-93
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• 2017

Many studies are conducted in several fields for fragility analysis of structures or elements which is a probabilistic seismic safety analysis in consideration with uncertainty of seismic loading. It is hard to directly conduct fragility analysis for an infrastructure with social importance due to its size. Therefore, a fragility analysis for an infrastructure mainly conducted in element level or conducted with scaled model built in accordance with similarity law. In this article, fragility analysis for prototype and scaled model of reinforced concrete column was conducted with numerical models which had been updated by the results of shaking table test and pseudo dynamic test. As a result, response stress from the numerical analysis result of prototype model was higher than that from scaled model due to different stiffness ratios between steel and concrete. However, the probability of failure for scaled model was higher than that for prototype model because failure criteria for scaled model was down due to similarity law. Also it was evaluated that probability of failure by using log normal standard deviation of response stresses by spectrum matched accelerograms was more reliable than probability of failure by using existing coefficient of variation normally used.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.201-204
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• 2010

Earthquake load to design a structure has been calculated from a fixed base SDOF model using amplified surface accelerations along soft soil layers. But the method dose not consider a soil-structure interaction. Centrifugal experiments that were consisted of soil, a shallow foundation and a structure were performed to find the effects of soil-structure interaction. The experiments showed that mass and stiffness of the foundation affected a response of the structure and nonlinear behavior of soil near the foundation. And a rocking displacement caused by overturning moment affected the response and increases a damping effect. In this study, the centrifugal experiment was simulated as a two dimensional finite element model. The finite element model was used for nonlinear time domain analysis of the OpenSees program. The numerical model accurately evaluated the behaviors of soil and the foundation, but the rocking effect and the behavior of structure were not described.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.413-421
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the structural dynamic behavior under hybrid control system. The hybrid test is to consider the interaction between the numerical and physical models. In this paper, single degree of freedom hybrid test was performed with one-bay, two-story steel frame structure. One column at the first floor was selected as a physical substructure and one actuator was used for applying the displacement load in horizontal direction. El Centro as earthquake waves was inputted and OpenSees was employed as the numerical analysis program for the hybrid real-time simulation. As a result, the total time of the hybrid test was about 9.6% of actual measured seismic period. The experimental results agreed well with the numerical one in terms of the maximum displacement. In nonlinear analysis, however, material nonlinearity made a difference of residual strain. Therefore, this hybrid dynamic test can be used to predict the structural dynamic performance more effectively than shaking table test, because of the spatial and economic limitations.