• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.3_4
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• pp.611-628
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• 2012

The inelastic earthquake response of existing, reinforced concrete buildings with an open ground story, designed according to the old Greek codes, is investigated before and after their seismic strengthening with steel braces restricted to the open ground stories. The seismic performance evaluation is based on Part 3 of Eurocode 8 for assessment and retrofitting of buildings. Three and five-story, symmetric and non-symmetric buildings are subjected to a set of seven pairs of synthetic accelerograms, compatible with the design spectrum, and conclusions are drawn regarding the effectiveness of the strengthening solutions. Seismic behavior of the selected models confirms results of previous work regarding the insufficient capacity of the open ground stories for design level earthquakes. It is also shown that strengthening only the weak ground story, a choice having the substantial advantage of low cost and continued usage of the building during its seismic retrofitting, can remove the inherent weakness without shifting the problem to the stories above and thus making such buildings at least as strong as those without a weak first story. This partial strengthening is possible for symmetric as well as eccentric buildings, in which torsion plays a further detrimental role.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.721-734
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• 2024

In this research, the efficiency of a metallic energy dissipation device for seismic retrofit of an existing structure is evaluated by cyclic loading test. The proposed device, which is called multi-slit damper, is made of weak and strong slit dampers connected in series. Its energy dissipation mechanism consists of two stages: (i) yielding of the weak-slit damper under minor earthquakes; (ii) restraint of further deformations of the weak slit damper and activation of the strong slit damper under major earthquakes using a gap mechanism. A reinforced concrete (RC) frame with characteristics similar to soft-first-story structures is tested under cyclic loading before and after retrofit using the proposed device. The details of the experimental study are described and the test is simulated in an available commercial software to validate the analytical model of the damper. To further verify the applicability of the damper, it is applied to an analysis model of a 4-story structure with soft first story and its seismic performance is evaluated before and after retrofit. The experimental and analysis results show that the multi-slit damper is effective in controlling seismic response of structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.161-180
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• 2023

In the previous research, the axial compressive capacity models for the glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP)-reinforced circular concrete compression elements restrained with GFRP helix were put forward based on small and noisy datasets by considering a limited number of parameters portraying less accuracy. Consequently, it is important to recommend an accurate model based on a refined and large testing dataset that considers various parameters of such components. The core objective and novelty of the current research is to suggest a deep learning model for the axial compressive capacity of GFRP-reinforced circular concrete columns restrained with a GFRP helix utilizing various parameters of a large experimental dataset to give the maximum precision of the estimates. To achieve this aim, a test dataset of 61 GFRP-reinforced circular concrete columns restrained with a GFRP helix has been created from prior studies. An assessment of 15 diverse theoretical models is carried out utilizing different statistical coefficients over the created dataset. A novel model utilizing the group method of data handling (GMDH) has been put forward. The recommended model depicted good effectiveness over the created dataset by assuming the axial involvement of GFRP main bars and the confining effectiveness of transverse GFRP helix and depicted the maximum precision with MAE = 195.67, RMSE = 255.41, and R2 = 0.94 as associated with the previously recommended equations. The GMDH model also depicted good effectiveness for the normal distribution of estimates with only a 2.5% discrepancy from unity. The recommended model can accurately calculate the axial compressive capacity of FRP-reinforced concrete compression elements that can be considered for further analysis and design of such components in the field of structural engineering.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.581-598
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• 2020

This paper aims to investigate the seismic behavior and influence parameters of the large-scaled thin-walled reinforced concrete (RC) tubular columns in air-cooled supporting structures of thermal power plants (TPPs). Cyclic loading tests and finite element analysis were performed on 1/8-scaled specimens considering the influence of wall diameter ratio, axial compression ratio, longitudinal reinforcement ratio, stirrup reinforcement ratio and adding steel diagonal braces (SDBs). The research results showed that the cracks mainly occurred on the lower half part of RC tubular columns during the cyclic loading test; the specimen with the minimum wall diameter ratio presented the earlier cracking and had the most cracks; the failure mode of RC tubular columns was large bias compression failure; increasing the axial compression ratio could increase the lateral bearing capacity and energy dissipation capacity, but also weaken the ductility and aggravate the lateral stiffness deterioration; increasing the longitudinal reinforcement ratio could efficiently enhance the seismic behavior; increasing the stirrup reinforcement ratio was favorable to the ductility; RC tubular columns with SDBs had a much higher bearing capacity and lateral stiffness than those without SDBs, and with the decrease of the angle between columns and SDBs, both bearing capacity and lateral stiffness increased significantly.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.228-236
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• 2001

When RC beams are strengthened for flexure with steel plate, reinforced member has initial strain due to the dead load and is subject to partial damage. Strain of steel strengthening is zero at initial state. The effect of strengthening flexural member might be influenced by the quantity of initial strain. In this study, when He beams are strengthened for flexure with steel plate, its behavior is experimentally compared for the reinforcement efficiency of members due to the existence of different levels of initial strain. It is confirmed that reinforcement efficiency varies depending on the difference of initial strain.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.121-128
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• 2000

When RC beams are strengthening in flexure with steel plate, they have initial strain due to dead load. Strain of steel used in strengthening member is zero. The effect of strengthening in flexure at member changes in accordance with the quantity of initial strain. But in most cases, Quantity of reinforcement is determined without regard to the difference of initial strain when there are calculated the strengthening in flexure at beams. Such method is possible to suggest inadequate quantity of reinforcement. Thus, the object of the study is to suggest practical design equation and reinforcement proposal using comparison and analysis reinforcement efficiency about fexural strength in case with regard and without regard to the initial strain when Re beams are strengthening in flexure with steel plate.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.353-367
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• 2003

This paper describes the extension of the numerical model, which was developed to simulate the nonlinear behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) structures subjected to monotonic in plane shear and introduced in the companion paper, to simulate effectively the behavior of RE structures under cyclic loadings. While maintaining all the basic assumptions adopted in defining the constitutive relations of concrete under monotonic loadings, a hysteretic stress strain relation of concrete, which across the tension compression region, is defined. In addition, unlike previous simplified stress strain relations, curved unloading and reloading branches inferred from the stress strain relation of steel considering the Bauschinger effect we used. The modifications of the stress strain relation of steel are also introduced to reflect pinching effect depending on the shear span ratio and an average stress distribution in a cracked RC element. Finally, correlation studies between analytical results and experimental studies are conducted to establish the validity of the proposed model.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.267-273
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• 2012

This study is performed to evaluate the flexural performance of reinforced concrete columns with electric arc furnace oxidizing slag aggregates. Electric arc furnace slag is a by-product obtained from the process of refining scrap steel. The electric arc furnace slag can be used as a concrete aggregate, because it mainly consists of CaO and $SiO_2$, similar to natural rocks and minerals. Three rectangular columns with various types of aggregate were cast to test in flexure. All of the test specimens had a cross-section of $250{\times}250$mm and a height of 1,500 mm in test region. The specimens were designed to apply reversed cyclic antisymmetric moment and constant axial force. The experimental results showed that the specimens with electronic arc furnace oxidizing slag aggregates had superior flexural performance than the specimen with natural aggregates.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.32-39
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• 2021

Recently, necessities of steel form for reinforced concrete beam and girder have been emphasized in building structures for the reduction of the construction period and the labor cost. SY Beam was developed for the these purposes and is roll-formed using thin steel plate. On this research, we tried to evaluate and verify the performance and behavior of SY Beam under construction loading stage as like pouring in situ concrete. For the standard shape of SY beam, structural modelling with various steel thicknesses has carried out using MIDAS GEN program. From results of modelling, the width and height of SY Beam were determined 600mm and 400mm respectively. For 3 SY Beams, the loading experiment was performed to measure vertical and horizontal displacement under stacking sand, concrete block, and bundle of rebar. As a result, the vertical deflection showed a tendency to decrease as the thickness increased. In the horizontal displacement, the trend according to the thickness was not clearly observed. From the evaluation on the loading experiment, it is considered that the SY Beam can secure both workability and structural safety. In particular, the SY Beam(1.2mm) hardly generates horizontal displacement, so it has excellent load-bearing capacity. So, we judged that the SY Beam with 1.2mm steel plate has excellent performance and consider to be immediately commercially available.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.249-259
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• 2018

This paper presents Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models for evaluating bond strength of deformed, plain and cold formed bars in low strength concrete. The ANN models were implemented using the experimental database developed by conducting experiments in three different universities on total of 138 pullout and 108 splitting specimens under monotonic loading. The key parameters examined in the experiments are low strength concrete, bar development length, concrete cover, rebar type (deformed, cold-formed, plain) and diameter. These deficient parameters are typically found in non-engineered reinforced concrete structures of developing countries. To develop ANN bond model for each bar type, four inputs (the low strength concrete, development length, concrete cover and bar diameter) are used for training the neurons in the network. Multi-Layer-Perceptron was trained according to a back-propagation algorithm. The ANN bond model for deformed bar consists of a single hidden layer and the 9 neurons. For Tor bar and plain bars the ANN models consist of 5 and 6 neurons and a single hidden layer, respectively. The developed ANN models are capable of predicting bond strength for both pull and splitting bond failure modes. The developed ANN models have higher coefficient of determination in training, validation and testing with good prediction and generalization capacity. The comparison of experimental bond strength values with the outcomes of ANN models showed good agreement. Moreover, the ANN model predictions by varying different parameters are also presented for all bar types.