• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.5 no.3
• /
• pp.343-357
• /
• 2013

On May 19, 2011 an earthquake struck Simav district of K$\ddot{u}$tahya which located west of Turkey. According to Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (DEMA), magnitude of this earthquake was $M_L$ = 5.7. In this earthquake 2 people lost their lives and considerably damages occurred in the city center and surrounding villages. Damaged structures in the earthquake area did not have adequate earthquake resistance since low quality materials, poor workmanship and improper selection of the structural system. In this study, reasons of damages and failure mechanism of reinforced concrete and masonry buildings were evaluated.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.10 no.6
• /
• pp.561-575
• /
• 2000

Microvibration of high technology facilities, such as semiconductor plants and facilities with high precision equipments, due to nearby road and rail traffic has attracted considerable attention recently. In this paper, a preliminary study is conducted for the possible use of various protective systems and their performance for the reduction of microvibration. Simulation results indicate that passive base isolation systems, hybrid base isolation systems, passive floor isolation systems, and hybrid floor isolation systems are quite effective and practical. In particular, the performances of hybrid floor isolation systems are remarkable. Further, passive energy dissipation systems are not effective for the reduction of microvibration. Finally, the protections against both microvibration and earthquake are also investigated and presented.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.3 no.3_4
• /
• pp.315-340
• /
• 2012

There are many types of seismic isolation devices that are being used today for structural control of earthquake response in buildings. The most commonly used are sliding bearings and elastomeric bearings, the latter with or without lead core. An alternative solution is the use of steel springs combined with viscoelastic fluid dampers, which is the case discussed in this paper. An analytical study of a three-story building supported on helical steel springs and viscoelastic fluid dampers, GERB Control System (GCS), subjected to near-fault earthquakes is presented. Several earthquakes records have been obtained by the acceleration network installed in the isolated building and in its non-isolated twin since they were finished. These experimental results are analysed and discussed. The aim is to show that the spring-based system can be an alternative for base isolation of small building located near active faults.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.2 no.4
• /
• pp.377-396
• /
• 2011

In seismic design and structural assessment using the displacement-based approach, real structures are simplified into equivalent single-degree-of-freedom systems with equivalent properties, namely period and damping. In this work, equations for the optimal pair of equivalent properties are derived using statistical procedures on equivalent linearization and defined in terms of the ductility ratio and initial period of vibration. The modified Clough hysteretic model and 30 artificial accelerograms, compatible with the acceleration spectra for firm and soft soils, defined by the Japanese Design Specifications for Highway Bridges are used in the analysis. The results obtained with the proposed equations are verified and their limitations are discussed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.70 no.2
• /
• pp.133-141
• /
• 2019

The aim of the present paper is to present the cyclic behavior of strengthened reinforced concrete shear wall test specimen, which was reinforced with cold drawn welded wire mesh fabric. Two reinforced concrete shear wall specimens have been tested in the present study. The walls were tested under reversed cyclic loading with loading applied near the tip of the walls. The control wall is tested in its original state to serve as a baseline for the evaluation of the repair and strengthening techniques. The two test specimens include a control wall and a repaired wall. The control wall test specimen was designed and detailed to simulate non-ductile reinforced concrete shear walls that do not meet the modern seismic provisions. The response of the original wall was associated with the brittle failure. The control shear wall was repaired by addition of the reinforcements and the concrete and then it was reloaded. The effectiveness of the repair technique was investigated. Test results indicate that there can be a near full restoration of the walls' strength. The data from this test, augmenting other data available in the literature, will be useful in calibrating improved analytical methods as they are developed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.22 no.3
• /
• pp.305-318
• /
• 2022

This paper presents a comparative study of the damage potentials for the 2016 Gyeongju and 2017 Pohang earthquakes in Korea. Plausible technical explanations are provided for the more severe damage observed in the 2017 Pohang earthquake in spite of its relatively weaker magnitude and intensity measures based on the response analysis of elastic and inelastic single-degree-of-freedom systems for the recorded ground motions. In addition, a detailed case study was conducted for a fatally damaged piloti building with an eccentric shear wall core based on nonlinear dynamic analysis using the input ground motions modified for the building site.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.16 no.6
• /
• pp.675-693
• /
• 2003

In order to consider the modified seismic response of framed structures in the presence of masonry infills, proper models have to be formulated. Because of the complexity of the problem, a careful definition of a diagonal pin-jointed strut, able to represent the horizontal force-interstorey displacement cyclic law of the actual infill, may be a solution. In this connection the present paper shows a generalized criterion for the determination of the ideal cross-section of the strut mentioned before. The procedure is based on the equivalence between the lateral stiffness of the actual infilled frame scheme during the conventional elastic stage of the response and the lateral stiffness of the same frame stiffened by a strut at the same stage. Unlike the usual empirical approaches available in the literature, the proposed technique involves the axial stiffness of the columns of the frame more than their flexural stiffness. Further, the influence of the bidimensional behaviour of the infill is stressed and, consequently, the dependence of the dimensions of the equivalent pin-jointed strut on the Poisson ratio of the material constituting the infill is also shown. The proposed approach is extended to the case of infills with openings, which is very common in practical applications.

• Computers and Concrete
• /
• v.21 no.3
• /
• pp.299-310
• /
• 2018

When reinforced concrete structures are subjected to strong seismic forces, their beam-column connections are very susceptible to be damaged during the earthquake event. Consequently, structural designers try to fit an important quantity of steel reinforcement inside the connection, complicating its construction without a clear justification for this. The aim of this work is to evaluate -and demonstrate- numerically how the quantity and the array of the internal steel reinforcement influences on the nonlinear response of the RC beam-column connection. For this, two specimens (extracted from an experimental test of 12 RC beam-column connections reported in literature) were modeled in the Finite Element code FEAP considering different stirrup's arrays. The nonlinear response of the RC beam-column connection is evaluated taking into account the nonlinear thermodynamic behavior of each component: a damage model is used for concrete; a classical plasticity model is adopted for steel reinforcement; the steel-concrete bonding is considered perfect without degradation. At the end, the experimental responses obtained in the tests are compared to the numerical results, as well as the distribution of shear stresses and damage inside the concrete core of the beam-column connection, which are analyzed for a low and high state of confinement.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.443-462
• /
• 2015

Some model building codes stipulate that the design displacement of a building can be computed using the elastic static analysis results multiplied by the deflection amplification factor, $C_d$. This approach for estimating the design displacement is essential and appealing in structural engineering practice when nonlinear response history analysis (NRHA) is not required. Furthermore, building codes stipulate the consideration of accidental torsion effects using accidental eccentricity, whether the buildings are symmetric-plan, or asymmetric-plan. In some model building codes, the accidental eccentricity is further amplified by the torsional amplification factor $A_x$ in order to minimize the discrepancy between statically and dynamically estimated responses. Therefore, this warrants exploration of the reliability of statically estimated design displacements in accordance with the building code requirements. This study uses the discrepancy curves as a way of assessing the reliability of the design displacement estimates resulting from the factors $C_d$ and $A_x$. The discrepancy curves show the exceedance probabilities of the differences between the statically estimated design displacements and NRHA results. The discrepancy curves of 3-story, 9-story, and 20-story example buildings are investigated in this study. The example buildings are steel special moment frames with frequency ratios equal to 0.7, 1.0, 1.3, and 1.6, as well as existing eccentricity ratios ranging from 0% to 30%.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.65-73
• /
• 2015

Detailed finite element (FE) analyses of a full-scale four-story steel frame structure, subjected to consecutive 60% and 100% excitations from the JR Takatori records during the 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu earthquake, are conducted using E-Simulator. The four-story frame was tested at the largest shake-table facility in the world, E-Defense, in 2007. E-Simulator is a parallel FE analysis software package developed to accurately simulate structural behavior up to collapse by using a fine mesh of solid elements. To reduce computational time in consecutive dynamic time history analyses, static analysis with gravity force is introduced to terminate the vibration of the structure during the analysis of 60% excitation. An overall sway mechanism when subjected to 60% excitation and a story mechanism resulting from local buckling of the first-story columns when subjected to 100% excitation are simulated by using E-Simulator. The story drift response to the consecutive 60% and 100% excitations is slightly smaller than that for the single 100% excitation.