• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.1127-1146
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• 2015

The excitation angle or angle of incidence is the angle in which the horizontal seismic components are applied with respect to the principal structural axes during a time history analysis. In this study, numerical simulations and parametric studies are performed for the investigation of the effect of the angle of seismic incidence on the response of adjacent buildings, which may experience structural pounding during strong earthquakes due to insufficient or no separation distance between them. A specially developed software application has been used that implements a simple and efficient methodology, according to which buildings are modelled in three dimensions and potential impacts are simulated using a novel impact model that takes into account the arbitrary location of impacts and the geometry at the point of impact. Two typical multi-storey buildings and a set of earthquake records have been used in the performed analyses. The results of the conducted parametric studies reveal that it is very important to consider the arbitrary direction of the ground motion with respect to the structural axes of the simulated buildings, especially during pounding, since, in many cases, the detrimental effects of pounding become more pronounced for an excitation angle different from the commonly examined 0 or 90 degrees.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.1847-1861
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• 2020

A design study was performed to improve the limit aseismic performance (LSP) of a primary heat transport system (PHTS) pump. This pump is part of the primary equipment of a prototype generation IV sodium-cooled fast reactor (PGSFR). The LSP is the maximum allowable seismic load that still ensures structural integrity. To calculate the LSP of the PHTS pump, a structural analysis model of the pump was developed and its dynamic characteristics were obtained by modal analysis. The floor response spectrum (FRS) initiated from a safety shutdown earthquake (SSE), 0.3 g, was applied to the support points of the PHTS pump, and then the seismic induced stresses were calculated. The structural integrity was evaluated according to the ASME code, and the LSP of the PHTS pump was calculated from the evaluation results. Based on the results of the modal analysis and LSP of the PHTS pump, design parameters affecting the LSP were selected. Then, ways to improve the LSP were proposed from sensitivity analysis of the selected design variables.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.179-191
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• 2018

This study is aimed at investigating the dynamic performance of a composite building structure under seismic ground motions. The building structure is an official fire department building located in southern Taiwan. It is composed of a seven-story reinforced concrete (RC) and an eight-story steel reinforced concrete (SRC) frame. Both frames share a common basement and are separated by expansion joints from the first to the seventh floor. Recorded floor accelerations of the building structure under eight earthquakes occurring during the period from 2011 to 2013 were examined in this paper. It is found that both frames had similar floor acceleration amplifications in the longitudinal direction, while the SRC frame revealed larger response than the RC frame in the transverse direction. Almost invariant and similar fundamental periods under the eight earthquakes in both directions were obtained from their transfer functions. Furthermore, numerical time-history simulations were carried out for the building structure under the most intensive earthquake. It is realized that the seismic response of the composite building was dominated by the first translational mode in each horizontal direction. Higher modes did not significantly contribute to the structural response. The conventional Rayleigh damping model could be appropriately applied to the time-history simulations under bi-directional excitations. Approximate floor acceleration envelopes were obtained with a compound RC and SRC structural model by using the average damping ratios determined from the different structural arrays.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.99-105
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• 2011

When a certain magnitude earthquake occurs, serious damage for human and properties is a major concern for most of the subway stations which were not applied for earthquake resistant design. Consideration and experimental verification for ground and structural behavior based on soil-structure interaction relation are required to evaluate seismic performance of the subway station as embedded structures. For 1/60 scaled subway station model, centrifuge modeling shaking table test is performed using Kobe and Northridge earthquakes. Compare to displacements and moments of the underground and structure obtained by soil response analysis and response displacement method based on experimental results, this paper shows how to evaluate seismic performance of subway station.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.173-190
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• 2011

As a practical and effective seismic resisting technology, the base isolation system has seen extensive applications in buildings and bridges. However, a few problems associated with conventional lead-rubber bearings have been identified after historical strong earthquakes, e.g., excessive permanent deformations of bearings and potential unseating of bridge decks. Recently the applications of shape memory alloys (SMA) have received growing interest in the area of seismic response mitigation. As a result, a variety of SMA-based base isolators have been developed. These novel isolators often lead to minimal permanent deformations due to the self-centering feature of SMA materials. However, a rational design approach is still missing because of the fact that conventional design method cannot be directly applied to these novel devices. In light of this limitation, a displacement-based design approach for highway bridges with SMA isolators is proposed in this paper. Nonlinear response spectra, derived from typical hysteretic models for SMA, are employed in the design procedure. SMA isolators and bridge piers are designed according to the prescribed performance objectives. A prototype reinforced concrete (RC) highway bridge is designed using the proposed design approach. Nonlinear dynamic analyses for different seismic intensity levels are carried out using a computer program called "OpenSees". The efficacy of the displacement-based design approach is validated by numerical simulations. Results indicate that a properly designed RC highway bridge with novel SMA isolators may achieve minor damage and minimal residual deformations under frequent and rare earthquakes. Nonlinear static analysis is also carried out to investigate the failure mechanism and the self-centering ability of the designed highway bridge.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.80-87
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• 1993

This paper summarizes an experimental and analytical study on the application of viscoelastic dampers as energy dissipation devices in structural applications. Shaking table tests are carried out on the viscoelastically damped structure and the obtained structural responses are compared to those of the inelastic analysis results for the same test structure with no dampers added. It can be concluded the viscoelastic dampers are effective in reducing excessive vibrations of structures under strong earthquake ground motions. It is also observed that the increase in structure's stiffness by the addition of dampers can not contribute to improving the seismic response of a structure. In general. the reduction of the seismic response by adding the dampers to the structure is mostly resulted from the increased damping effect. It is found that the modal strain energy method can be used to reliably predict the equivalent structural damping. and the seismic response of a viscoelastically damped structure can be accurately estimated by conventional modal analysis techniques.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.409-416
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• 2004

An active modal-fuzzy control method using hydraulic actuators is presented for seismic response reduction. In the proposed control system, a new fuzzy controller designed in the modal space produces the desired active control force. This type controller has all advantages of the fuzzy control algorithm and modal approach. Since it is very difficult to select input variables used in fuzzy controller among an amount of state variables in the active fuzzy control system the presented algorithm adopts the modal control algorithm which is able to consider more easily information of all state variables in civil structures that are usually dominated by first few modes. In other words, all information of the whole structure can be considered in the control algorithm evaluated to reduce seismic responses and it can be efficient for especially civil structures. In addition, the presented algorithm is expected to magnify utility and performance caused by efficiency that the fuzzy algorithm can handle complex model more easily. An active modal-fuzzy control scheme is applied together with a Kalman filter and a low-pass filter to be applicable to real civil structures. A Kalman filter is considered to estimate modal states and a low-pass filter was used to eliminate spillover problem. The results of the numerical simulations far a wide amplitude range o f loading conditions and for historic earthquakes having various frequency components show that the proposed active modal-fuzzy control system can be beneficial in reducing seismic responses of civil structures.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.59-66
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• 2008

Seismic safety is more important for large spatial structure such as theaters, stadiums, gymnasiums since these structure are public goods. It is, however, difficult to understand behavior taking place when large spatial structure which has variety of structural system and shape receives seismic load. On this study, the natural vibration mode of arch structure which is main structural element of the large spatial structure, is checked. And then, when the artificial earthquake ground motion is applied to arch structure, it is more affective by long period component than magnitude of design acceleration spectrum.

• Architectural research
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.99-108
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• 2012

An innovative multi-story Semi-Active Tuned Mass Damper (SATMD) building system is proposed to control seismic response of existing structures. The application of adding new stories as large tuned mass and semi-active (SA) resettable actuators as central features of the control scheme is derived. For the effective control of the structures, the optimal tuning parameters are considered for the large mass ratio, for which a previously proposed equation is used and the practical optimal stiffness is allocated to the actuator stiffness and rubber bearing stiffness. A two-degree-of freedom (2-DOF) model is adopted to verify the principal efficiency of the suggested structural control concept. The simulations for this study utilizes the three ground motions, from SAC project, having probability of exceedance of 50% in 50 years, 10% in 50 years, and 2% in 50 years for the Los Angeles region. 12-story moment resisting frames, which are modified as '12+2' and '12+4' story structures, are investigated to assess the viability and effectiveness of the system that aims to reduce the response of the buildings to earthquakes. The control ability of the SATMD scheme is compared to that of an uncontrolled and an ideal Passive Tuned Mass Damper (PTMD) building system. From the performance results of suggested '12+2' and '12+4' story retrofitting case studies, SATMD systems shows significant promise for application of structural control where extra stories might be added.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.83-90
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• 1994

This study presents the nonlinear dynamic analysis method of the bridge with the seismic isolation bearing. Also the numerical analyses are performed for investigating the response characteristics of the bridge isolated with the lead-rubber bearing under the ground motions compatible to Korea bridge design response spectra. It is found that the pier design force can be considerably smaller than the one for the bridge with the fixed bearing. It is observed that the lead-rubber bearing has the great effectiveness for reducing the longitudinal seismic force in case of the bridges with low and medium periods. Therefore the seismic isolation bearing can be used instead of the fixed bearing for the economic and safe design of the bridge.