• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.557-585
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• 2013

The recent huge earthquake ground motion records in Japan result in the reconsideration of seismic design forces for nuclear power stations from the view point of seismological research. In addition, the seismic design force should be defined also from the view point of structural engineering. In this paper it is shown that one of the occurrence mechanisms of such large acceleration in recent seismic records (recorded in or near massive structures and not free-field ground motions) is due to the interaction between a massive building and its surrounding soil which induces amplification of local mode in the surface soil. Furthermore on-site investigation after earthquakes in the nuclear power stations reveals some damages of soil around the building (cracks, settlement and sand boiling). The influence of plastic behavior of soil is investigated in the context of interaction between the structure and the surrounding soil. Moreover the amplification property of the surface soil is investigated from the seismic records of the Suruga-gulf earthquake in 2009 and the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake in 2011. Two methods are introduced for the analysis of the non-stationary process of ground motions. It is shown that the non-stationary Fourier spectra can detect the temporal change of frequency contents of ground motions and the displacement profile integrated from its acceleration profile is useful to evaluate the seismic behavior of the building and the surrounding soil.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.65 no.3
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• pp.349-357
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• 2018

An extensive research was undertaken to study the vibration serviceability of a long-span and light-weight floor subjected to human loading experimentally and numerically. Specifically, heel-drop test was first conducted to capture the floor's natural frequencies and damping ratios, followed by jumping and running tests to obtain the acceleration responses. In addition, numerical simulations considering walking excitation were performed to further evaluate the vibration performance of a multi-panel floor under different loading cases and walking rates. The floor is found to have a high frequency (11.67 Hz) and a low damping ratio (2.32%). The comparison of the test results with the published data from the 1997 AISC Design Guide 11 indicates that the floor exhibits satisfactory vibration perceptibility overall. The study results show that the peak acceleration is affected by the walking path, walking rate, and adjacent structure. A simpler loading case may be considered in design in place of a more complex one.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.121-129
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• 2012

All contemporary seismic Codes have adopted smooth design acceleration response spectra, which have derived by statistical analysis of many elastic response spectra of natural accelerograms. The above smooth design spectra are characterized by two main branches, an horizontal branch that is 2.5 times higher than the peak ground acceleration, and a declining parabolic branch. According to Eurocode EN/1998, the period range of the horizontal, flat branch is extended from 0.1 s, for rock soils, up to 0.8 s for softer ones. However, from many natural recorded accelerograms of important earthquakes, the real spectral amplification factor appears to be much higher than 2.5 and this means that the spectrum leads to an unsafe seismic design of the structures. This point is an issue open to question and it is the object of the present study. In the present paper, the spectral amplification factor of the smooth design acceleration spectra is re-calculated on the grounds of a known "reliability index" for a desired probability of exceedance. As a pilot scheme, the seismic area of Greece is chosen, as it is the most seismically hazardous area in Europe. The accelerograms of the 82 most important earthquakes, which have occurred in Greece during the last 38 years, are used. The soil categories are taken into account according to EN/1998. The results that have been concluded from these data are compared with the results obtained from other strong earthquakes reported in the World literature.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.481-497
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• 2010

The shaking table tests were conducted on two small-scale models (Model 1 and Model 2) to examine the earthquake-induced damage of a concrete gravity dam, which has been planned for the construction with the recommendation of the peak ground acceleration of the maximum credible earthquake of 0.42 g. This study deals with the numerical simulation of shaking table tests for two smallscale dam models. The plastic damage constitutive model is used to simulate the crack/damage behavior of the bentonite-concrete mixture material. The numerical results of the maximum failure acceleration and the crack/damage propagation are compared with experimental results. Numerical results of Model 1 showed similar crack/damage propagation pattern with experimental results, while for Model 2 the similar pattern was obtained by considering the modulus of elasticity of the first and second natural frequencies. The crack/damage initiated at the changing point in the downstream side and then propagated toward the upstream side. Crack/damage accumulation occurred in the neck area at acceleration amplitudes of around 0.55 g~0.60 g and 0.65 g~0.675 g for Model 1 and Model 2, respectively.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.21-38
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• 2002

A control algorithm combining viscous and non-linear Reid damping mechanisms has been recently proposed by the authors to command active friction dampers. In this paper, friction dampers and the proposed algorithm are applied to control the seismic responses of a nonlinear 20-story building. Piezoelectric stack actuators are used to implement the control algorithm. The capacity of each damper is determined by the practical size of piezoelectric actuators and the availability of power supply. The saturation effect of the actuators on the building responses is investigated. To minimize the peak story drift ratio or floor acceleration of the building structure, a practical sequential procedure is developed to sub-optimally place the dampers on various floors. The effectiveness of active friction dampers and the efficiency of the proposed sequential procedure are verified by subjecting the building structure to four earthquakes of various intensities. The performance of 80 dampers and 137 dampers installed on the structure is evaluated according to 5 criteria. Numerical simulations indicated that the proposed control algorithm effectively reduces the seismic responses of the uncontrolled 20-story building, such as inelastic deformation. The sub-optimal placement of dampers based on peak acceleration outperforms that based on peak drift ratio for structures subjected to near-fault ground motions. Saturation of piezoelectric actuators has adverse effect on floor acceleration.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.211-229
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• 2011

In this paper, we present a new explicit procedure using periodic cubic B-spline interpolation polynomials to solve linear and nonlinear dynamic equation of motion governing single degree of freedom (SDOF) systems. In the proposed approach, a straightforward formulation was derived from the approximation of displacement with B-spline basis in a fluent manner. In this way, there is no need to use a special pre-starting procedure to commence solving the problem. Actually, this method lies in the case of conditionally stable methods. A simple step-by-step algorithm is implemented and presented to calculate dynamic response of SDOF systems. The validity and effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated with four examples. The results were compared with those from the numerical methods such as Duhamel integration, Linear Acceleration and also Exact method. The comparison shows that the proposed method is a fast and simple procedure with trivial computational effort and acceptable accuracy exactly like the Linear Acceleration method. But its power point is that its time consumption is notably less than the Linear Acceleration method especially in the nonlinear analysis.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.114-120
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• 2012

This paper describes the design, fabrication and testing of a micromachined resonant accelerometer consisting of a symmetrical pair of proof masses and double-ended tuning fork(DETF) oscillators. Under the external acceleration along the input axis, the proof mass applies forces to the oscillators, which causes a change in their resonant frequency. This frequency change is measured to indicate the applied acceleration. Pivot anchor and leverage mechanisms are adopted in the accelerometer to generate larger force from a proof mass under certain acceleration, which enables increasing its scale factor. Finite element method analyses have been conducted to design the accelerometer and a silicon on insulator(SOI) wafer with a substrate glass wafer was used for fabricating it. The fabricated accelerometer has a scale factor of 188 Hz/g, which is shown to be in agreement with analysis results.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.205-210
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• 2020

The aim of this study is to develop a vertical vibration compensator that attenuates the vertical vibration of ships. The vibration compensator was designed according to the principle of generating vertical excitation forces by rotating two eccentric bodies of the same mass in opposite directions at the same rotational speed. In addition, the structural stability was analyzed using the finite element method. The maximum stress in the drive shaft was 95.6 MPa, which was approximately 35% of the allowable stress of the shaft material (SM45C, 270 MPa). The acceleration signals of the vibrator compensator body and the testbed were determined to evaluate the efficiency of the vibration compensator and the designed excitation forces. Subsequently, the excitation forces were estimated based on the relationship between force and acceleration. The estimated results were very close to the theoretical values with an error of less than 3%.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.6
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• pp.823-837
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• 2020

In this research, the idea of improving the seismic response of an existing steel structure with use of friction dampers between external walls and the structure is discussed. The main difference of this method with other methods of seismic rehabilitation is that interior spaces of the existing structure remain untouched and new parts including external walls and dampers are added outside of the structure. Three frames having 3, 6 and 9 stories are modeled in SAP2000 software before and after seismic retrofit and responses of the system are investigated under the effect of seven earthquake records. Initially, different ratios of seismic weight of stories are presumed for slip forces of the dampers with a distribution based on given equations. The optimized capacity of dampers is obtained by investigating the average of maximum displacement, acceleration and base shear of the structure caused by earthquakes. For this optimized values, maximum inter-story drifts and acceleration are obtained through numerical models. Results show that in 3, 6 and 9-story frames peak roof displacement decreased up to 80%. Maximum roof acceleration and base shear of the frames also decreased 46, 40 and 32% and 84, 67 and 65%, respectively for three building structures.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.6
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• pp.735-745
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• 2022

The suspension thyristor valve can generate tremendous vertical acceleration responses in layers and large tension forces in hangers. A shaking table test of a scaled-down model of thyristor valves suspended on a hall building is performed to qualify the risk of vertical uplift of two representative types of valves, the chain valve and the rigid valve. Besides, an analytical model is established to investigate the source of the slackening of hangers. The test results show that the valves frequently experience a large vertical acceleration response. The soft spring joint can significantly reduce acceleration, but is still unable to prevent vertical uplift of the chain valve. The analytical model shows a stiffer roof and inter-story connection both contribute to a higher risk of vertical uplift for a rigid valve. In addition, the planar eccentricity and short hangers, which result in torsional motion of the valve, increase the possibility of vertical uplift for a chain valve. Therefore, spring joints with additional viscous dampers and symmetric layout in each layer are recommended for the rigid and chain valve, respectively, to prevent the uplift of valves.