• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.108-115
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• 2018

Elderly welfare facilities are extremely susceptible to mass casualties in disastrous situations, such as fire, due to the limited physical and mental abilities of their residents. This study examined the status of fire safety management, including the structural problems of elderly welfare facilities, problems of the installation and management of firefighting systems, and problems regarding of fire safety managers. After the Sejong Medical Welfare Facility fire, these problems have been complemented by retrofitting firefighting systems in accordance with the revision of the relevant laws and regulations. On the other hand, the overall status of fire safety management is still insufficient. Therefore, it is important to improve the stability of buildings and firefighting systems as well as fire safety management through additional revision of the relevant laws and regulations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.71 no.3
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• pp.233-244
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• 2019

Steel jacketing technique is a retrofitting method often employed for static and seismic strengthening of existing reinforced concrete columns. When no continuity is given to angle chords as they cross the floor, the jacket is considered "indirectly loaded", which means that the load acting on the column is transferred partially to the external jacket through interface shear stresses. The evaluation of load transfer mechanism between core and jacket is not straightforward to be modeled, due to the absence of knowledge of a proper constitutive law of the concrete-to-steel interface and to the difficulties in taking into account the mechanical nonlinearities of materials. This paper presents an incremental analytical/numerical approach for evaluating the compressive response of RC columns strengthened with indirectly loaded jackets. The approach allows calculating shear stresses at the interface between core and jacket and predicting the axial capacity of retrofitted columns. A proper constitutive law is proposed for modelling the interaction between the steel and the concrete. Based on plasticity rules and the non-linear behaviour of materials, the column is divided into portions. After a detailed parametric analysis, comparisons are finally made by theoretical predictions and experimental results available in the literature, showing a good agreement.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.47-66
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• 2019

One method of retrofitting concrete structures is to use fiber reinforced polymers (FRP). In this research, the shear, torsional and flexural strengthening of self-compacting reinforced concrete (RC) girders are fulfilled with glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) materials. At first, for verification, the experimental results were compared with numerical modeling results obtained from ABAQUS software version 6.10. Then the reinforcing sheets were attached to concrete girders in one and two layers. Studying numerical results obtained from ABAQUS software showed that the girders stiffness decreased with the propagations of cracks in them, and then the extra stresses were tolerated by adhesive layers and GFRP and CFRP sheets, which resulted in increasing the bearing capacity of the studied girders. In fact, shear, torsion and bending strengths of the girders increased by reinforcing girders with adding GFRP and CFRP sheets. The samples including two layers of CFRP had the maximum efficiencies that were 90, 76 and 60 percent of improvement in shear, torsion and bending strengths, respectively. It is worth noting that the bearing capacity of concrete girders with adding one layer of CFRP was slightly higher than the ones having two layers of GFRP in all circumstances; therefore, despite the lower initial cost of GFRP, using CFRP can be more economical in some conditions.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.319-344
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• 2020

Inverse analysis of non-linear reinforced concrete bridge pier using recursive Gaussian filtering for in-situ condition assessment is the main theme of this work. For this purpose, minimum variance unbiased estimation using unscented sigma points is adopted here. The uniqueness of this inverse analysis lies in its approach for strain based updating of engineering demand parameters, where appropriate bound and constrained conditions are introduced to ensure numerical stability and convergence. In this analysis, seismic input is also identified, which is an added advantage for the structures having no dedicated sensors for earthquake measurement. First, the proposed strategy is tested with a simulated example whose hysteretic properties are obtained from the slow-cyclic test of a frame to investigate its efficiency and accuracy. Finally, the experimental test data of a full-scale bridge pier is used to study its in-situ condition in terms of Park & Ang damage index. Overall the study shows the ability of the augmented minimum variance unbiased estimation based recursive time-marching algorithm for non-linear system identification with the aim to estimate the engineering damage parameters that are the fundamental information necessary for any future decision making for retrofitting/rehabilitation.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.5
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• pp.651-665
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• 2022

While the lateral confinement provided by an FRP jacket to a concrete column is passive in nature, confinement is activated when the concrete expands due to additional compression stresses or significant shear deformations. This characteristic of FRP jacketing theoretically leads to similar initial stiffness properties of FRP retrofitted buildings as the buildings without retrofit. In the current study, to validate this theoretical assumption, the initial stiffness characteristics, and thus, the potential seismic demands were investigated through forced vibration tests on two identical full-scale substandard reinforced concrete buildings with or without FRP retrofit. Power spectral density functions obtained using the acceleration response data captured through forced vibration tests were used to estimate the modal characteristics of these buildings. The test results clearly showed that the natural frequencies and the mode shapes of the buildings are quite similar. Since the seismic demand is controlled by the fundamental vibration modes, it is confirmed using vibration-based full-scale tests that the seismic demands of RC buildings remain unchanged after CFRP jacketing of columns. Furthermore, the damping characteristics were also found similar for both structures.

• Advances in materials Research
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.91-109
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• 2022

This paper presents a closed-form higher-order analysis of interfacial shear stresses in RC continuous beams strengthened with bonded prestressed laminates. For retrofitting reinforced concrete continuous beams is to bond fiber reinforced prestressed composite plates to their tensile faces. An important failure mode of such plated beams is the debonding of the composite plates from the concrete due to high level of stress concentration in the adhesive at the ends of the composite plate. The model is based on equilibrium and deformations compatibility requirements in and all parts of the strengthened beam, where both the shear and normal stresses are assumed to be invariant across the adhesive layer thickness. In the present theoretical analysis, the adherend shear deformations are taken into account by assuming a parabolic shear stress through the thickness of both the RC continuous beams strengthened with bonded prestressed laminates. The theoretical predictions are compared with other existing solutions. A parametric study has been conducted to investigate the sensitivity of interface behavior to parameters such as laminate stiffness and the thickness of the laminate where all were found to have a marked effect on the magnitude of maximum shear and normal stress in the composite member.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.87 no.4
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• pp.375-389
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• 2023

In many fiber concrete beams with Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP), debonding occurs between the carbon sheets and the concrete due to the low strength of the bonding resin. A total of 42 fiber concrete beams with a cross-section of 10×10 cm with a span length of 50 cm are fabricated and retrofitted with CFRP and subjected to a 4-point bending test. Graphene Oxide (GO) at 1, 2, and 3 wt% of the resin is used to improve the mechanical properties of the bonding resins, and the effect of length, width, and the number of layers of CFRP and resin material are investigated. The crack pattern, failure mode, and stress-strain curve are analyzed and compared in each case. The results showed that adding GO to polyamine resin could improve the bonding between the resin and the fiber concrete beam. Furthermore, the optimum amount of nanomaterials is equal to 2% by the weight of the resin. Using 2% nanomaterials showed that by increasing the length, width, and number of layers, the bearing and stiffness of fiber concrete beams increased significantly.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.117-132
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• 2023

The most prevalent and oldest type of structure is unreinforced masonry (URM) structures; URM walls are still a widely used construction material in India and many other developing countries due to their simplicity, ease of construction, economic sustainability, and ability to be built with locally available materials. URM walls are significantly weak while carrying lateral loads. The poor performance of URM walls during earthquakes has necessitated investigating an effective method for strengthening a newly built masonry building or retrofitting an old structure. Wire mesh, being cost-effective and easily available, satisfies the requirements to strengthen new and old URM buildings. The use of wire mesh to strengthen and retrofit the URM structure is simple to use, quick to construct, and inexpensive, especially in developing nations where heavy machinery and highly qualified labour are lacking. The current paper reviews the effectiveness of steel wire mesh as a reinforcing material for enhancing masonry strength. The finding gave encouraging results for the field application of wire mesh.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.90 no.1
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• pp.51-70
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• 2024

Poorly designed reinforced concrete (RC) columns of actual moment-resisting frame (MRF) buildings can undergo Axial Compression Ratios (ACR) so high as their demand exceeds their capacity, even for serviceability gravity load combinations, this lack commonly leads to insufficient seismic strength. Nonetheless, many seismic design codes do not specify limits for ACR. The main contribution of this research is to investigate the need to limit the ACR in seismic design. For this purpose, three prototype 6 and 11-story RC MRF buildings are analyzed in this paper, these buildings have columns undergoing excessive ACR, according to the limits prescribed by standards. To better that situation, three types of alterations are performed: retrofitting the abovementioned overloaded columns by steel jacketing, increasing the concrete strength, and reducing the number of stories. Several finite element analyses are conducted using the well-known software SAP2000 and the results are used for further calculations. Code-type and pushover analyses are performed on the original and retrofitted buildings, the suitability of the other modified buildings is checked by code-type analyses only. The obtained results suggest that ACR is a rather reliable indicator of the final building strength, hence, apparently, limiting the ACR in the standards (for early stages of design) might avoid unnecessary verifications.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.689-703
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• 2024

Construction of high-rise structures, formwork systems that can be installed quickly, resistant to external loads, can be used more than once, have become a necessity. Timber and composite timber materials are preferred in the formation of such formwork systems due to their durability, ease of assembly, light weight and easy to use more than one time. Formwork beams are the most commonly used structural component in the formation of such formwork systems, and these beams can be damaged for different reasons during their lifetime. In this study, H20 top P type timber formwork beams with 1800 and 2450 mm length which is among the products of DOKA(c) company is damaged under the effect of static loading up to a high load level of 85% of the maximum ultimate capacity and after being retrofitted using anchored CFRP strips, performance and behavior of the beams under the influence of various loading types such as static, fatigue and impact are investigated experimentally. Two different lengths of retrofitted timber formwork beams were tested by applying monotonic static, fatigue and impact loading and comments were made about the effects of the retrofit method on performance under different loading types.