• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.431-445
• /
• 2016

Seismic behavior of new composite structural system with a fabricated floor was studied. A two-bay and three-story structural model with the scale ratio of 1/4 was consequently designed. Based on the proposed model, multiple factors including energy dissipation capacity, stiffness degradation and deformation performance were analyzed through equivalent single degree of freedom pseudo-dynamic test with different earthquake levels. The results show that, structural integrity as well as the effective transmission of the horizontal force can be ensured by additional X bracing at the bottom of the rigidity of the floor without concrete topping. It is proved that the cast-in-place floor in areas with high seismic intensity can be replaced by the prefabricated floor without pouring surface layer. The results provide a reliable theoretical basis for the seismic design of the similar structural systems in engineering application.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.65 no.3
• /
• pp.303-314
• /
• 2018

Shear walls are a typical member under a complex stress state and have complicated mechanical properties and failure modes. The separated-elements model Genetic Evolutionary Structural Optimization (GESO), which is a combination of an elastic-plastic stress method and an optimization method, has been introduced in the literature for designing such members. Although the separated-elements model GESO method is well recognized due to its stability, feasibility, and economy, its adequacy has not been experimentally verified. This paper seeks to validate the adequacy of the separated-elements model GESO method against experimental data and demonstrate its feasibility and advantages over the traditional elastic stress method. Two types of reinforced concrete shear wall specimens, which had the location of an opening in the middle bottom and the center region, respectively, were utilized for this study. For each type, two specimens were designed using the separated-elements model GESO method and elastic stress method, respectively. All specimens were subjected to a constant vertical load and an incremental lateral load until failure. Test results indicated that the ultimate bearing capacity, failure modes, and main crack types of the shear walls designed using the two methods were similar, but the ductility indexes including the stiffness degradation, deformability, reinforcement yielding, and crack development of the specimens designed using the separated-elements model GESO method were superior to those using the elastic stress method. Additionally, the shear walls designed using the separated-elements model GESO method, had a reinforcement layout which could closely resist the actual critical stress, and thus a reduced amount of steel bars were required for such shear walls.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.24 no.6
• /
• pp.617-627
• /
• 2011

This paper presents the results of analytical simulation of shake-table responses of a 1:5 scale 10-story reinforcement concrete(RC) residential building model by using the PERFORM-3D program. The following conclusion are drawn based on the observation of correlation between experiment and analysis; (1) The analytical model simulated fairly well the global elastic behavior under the excitations representative of the earthquake with the return period of 50 years. Under the design earthquake(DE) and maximum considered earthquake(MCE), this model shows the nonlinear behavior, but does not properly simulate the maximum responses, and stiffness and strength degradation in experiment. The main reason is considered to be the assumption of elastic slab. (2) Although the analytical model in the elastic behavior closely simulated the global behavior, there were considerable differences in the distribution of resistance from the wall portions. (3) Under the MCE, the shear deformation of wall was relatively well simulated with the flexural deformation being overestimated by 10 times that of experiment. This overestimation is presumed to be partially due to the neglection of coupling beams in modeling.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
• /
• v.24 no.5
• /
• pp.559-566
• /
• 2012

In this study, fiber elements and a spring are used to build a reinforced concrete shear wall model. The fiber elements and the spring reflect flexural and shear behaviors of the shear wall, respectively. The fiber elements are built by inputting section data and material properties. The spring parameters representing strength and stiffness degradation, pinching, and slip were determined by comparing behaviors of fiber element and VecTor2 results. 'Pinching4' model in OpenSees is used for shear spring. The parameter selecting process for shear spring is a complicated and time consuming process. To study the applicability of the fiber element, reinforced concrete buildings containing a shear wall are evaluated using nonlinear dynamic analysis with various wall aspect ratio (H/L), various beam heights, and stiffness and flexural strength of beam and wall ratios. The aspect ratio of the wall showed distinct difference in IDR (interstory drift ratio) of the models with and without spring. On the other hand, the height of beam and ratio of stiffness and flexural strength of beam and wall did not show clear relation.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.39-49
• /
• 2001

In this paper, inelastic analysis procedures are presented for the seismic performance evaluation of RC bridge piers with premature termination of main reinforcement. The mechanical characteristic of cracked concrete and reinforcing bar in concrete has been modeled, considering the bond effect between reinforcing bars and concrete, the effect of aggregate interlocking at crack surface and the stiffness degradation after the crack. The smeared crack approach is incorporated. In boundary plane at which each member with different thickness is connected, local discontinuous deformation due to the abrupt change in their stiffness can be taken into account by introducing interface element. The increase of concrete strength due to the lateral confining reinforcement has been also taken into account to model the confined concrete. The proposed numerical method for seismic performance evaluation of RC bridge piers with premature termination of main reinforcement will be verified by comparison with reliable experimental results.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.175-191
• /
• 2020

In this article, for the first time, the seismic behavior of elliptic-braced moment resisting frame (ELBRF) is assessed through a laboratory program and numerical analyses of FEM specifically focused on the development of global- and local-type failure mechanisms. The ELBRF as a new lateral braced system, when installed in the middle bay of the frames in the facade of a building, not only causes no problem to the opening space of the facade, but also improves the structural behavior. Quantitative and qualitative investigations were pursued to find out how elliptic braces would affect the failure mechanism of ELBRF structures exposed to seismic action as a nonlinear process. To this aim, an experimental test of a ½ scale single-story single-bay ELBRF specimen under cyclic quasi-static loading was run and the results were compared with those for X-bracing, knee-bracing, K-bracing, and diamond-bracing systems in a story base model. Nonlinear FEM analyses were carried out to evaluate failure mechanism, yield order of components, distribution of plasticity, degradation of structural nonlinear stiffness, distribution of internal forces, and energy dissipation capacity. The test results indicated that the yield of elliptic braces would delay the failure mode of adjacent elliptic columns and thus, help tolerate a significant nonlinear deformation to the point of ultimate failure. Symmetrical behavior, high energy absorption, appropriate stiffness, and high ductility in comparison with the conventional systems are some of the advantages of the proposed system.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.41 no.5
• /
• pp.681-695
• /
• 2021

Many existing transmission or communication towers designed several decades ago have undergone nonreversible performance degradation, making it hardly meet the additional requirements from upgrades in wind load design codes and extra services of electricity and communication. Therefore, a new-type non-destructive reinforcement method was proposed to reduce the on-site operation of drilling and welding for improving the quality and efficiency of reinforcement. Six built-up steel angle members were tested under compression to examine the reinforcement performance. Subsequently, the cyclic loading test was conducted on a pair of steel angle tower sub-structures to investigate the reinforcement effect, and a simplified prediction method was finally established for calculating the buckling bearing capacity of those new-type retrofitted built-up steel angles. The results indicates that: no apparent difference exists in the initial stiffness for the built-up specimens compared to the unreinforced steel angles; retrofitting the steel angles by single-bolt clamps can guarantee a relatively reasonable reinforcement effect and is suggested for the reduced additional weight and higher construction efficiency; for the substructure test, the latticed substructure retrofitted by the proposed reinforcement method significantly improves the lateral stiffness, the non-deformability and energy dissipation capacity; moreover, an apparent pinching behavior exists in the hysteretic loops, and there is no obvious yield plateau in the skeleton curves; finally, the accuracy validation result indicates that the proposed theoretical model achieves a reasonable agreement with the test results. Accordingly, this study can provide valuable references for the design and application of the non-destructive upgrading project of steel angle towers.

• Advances in concrete construction
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.49-59
• /
• 2020

Precast concrete elements in accelerated bridge construction (ABC) extends from superstructure to substructure, precast pile foundation has proven a benefit for regions with fragile ecological environment and adverse geological condition. There is still a lack of knowledge of the seismic behavior and performance of the precast pile foundation. In this study, a 1/8 scaled model of precast pile foundation with elevated cap is fabricated for quasi-static test. The failure mechanism and responses of the precast pile-soil interaction system are analyzed. It is shown that damage occurs primarily in precast pile-soil interaction system and the bridge pier keeps elastic state because of its relatively large cross-section designed for railways. The vulnerable part of the precast pile with elevated cap is located at the embedded section, but no plastic hinge forms along the pile depth under cyclic loading. Hysteretic curves show no significant strength degradation but obvious stiffness degradation throughout the loading process. The energy dissipation capacity of the precast pile-soil interaction system is discussed by using index of the equivalent viscous damping ratio. It can be found that the energy dissipation capacity decreases with the increase of loading displacement due to the unyielding pile reinforcements and potential pile uplift. It is expected to promote the use of precast pile foundation in accelerated bridge construction (ABC) of railways designed in seismic regions.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.113-130
• /
• 2023

Hybrid simulation (HS) has attracted community attention in recent years as an efficient and effective experimental technique for structural performance evaluation in size-limited laboratories. Traditional hybrid simulations usually take deterministic properties for their numerical substructures therefore could not account for inherent uncertainties within the engineering structures to provide probabilistic performance assessment. Reliable structural performance evaluation, therefore, calls for stochastic hybrid simulation (SHS) to explicitly account for substructure uncertainties. The experimental design of SHS is explored in this study to account for uncertainties within analytical substructures. Both computational simulation and laboratory experiments are conducted to evaluate the pseudo-random Sobol sequence for the experimental design of SHS. Meta-modeling through polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) is established from a computational simulation of a nonlinear single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) structure to evaluate the influence of nonlinear behavior and ground motions uncertainties. A series of hybrid simulations are further conducted in the laboratory to validate the findings from computational analysis. It is shown that the Sobol sequence provides a good starting point for the experimental design of stochastic hybrid simulation. However, nonlinear structural behavior involving stiffness and strength degradation could significantly increase the number of hybrid simulations to acquire accurate statistical estimation for the structural response of interests. Compared with the statistical moments calculated directly from hybrid simulations in the laboratory, the meta-model through PCE gives more accurate estimation, therefore, providing a more effective way for uncertainty quantification.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.22 no.1
• /
• pp.35-44
• /
• 2006

In general typically granular soils contain a certain amount of fines. It is also widely recognized that foundation soils under working loads show highly non-linear behavior from very early stages of loading. In the present study, a series of laboratory tests with sands of different silt contents are conducted and methods to assess strength and stiffiness characteristics are proposed. Modified hyperbolic stress-strain model is used to analyze non-linearity of silty sands in terms of non-linear Degradation parameters f and g as a function of silt contents and Relative density Dr. Stress-strain curves were obtained from a series of triaxial tests on sands containing different amounts of silt. Initial shear modulus, which is used to normalize Degradation modulus of silty sands, was determined from resonant column test results. From the laboratory test results, it was observed that, as the Relative density increases, values of f decrease and those of g increase. In addition, it was found that values of f and g increase and decrease respectively as a Skeleton void ratio $(e_{sk})$ increases.