• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.169-188
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• 2015

There are two types of nonlinear analysis methods for building frameworks depending on the method of modeling the plastification of members including lumped plasticity and distributed plasticity. The lumped plasticity method assumes that plasticity is concentrated at a zero-length plastic hinge section at the ends of the elements. The distributed plasticity method discretizes the structural members into many line segments, and further subdivides the cross-section of each segment into a number of finite elements. When a reinforced concrete member experiences inelastic deformations, cracks tend to spread form the joint interface resulting in a curvature distribution. The program IDARC includes a spread plasticity formulation to capture the variation of the section flexibility, and combine them to determine the element stiffness matrix. In this formulation, the flexibility distribution in the structural elements is assumed to be the linear. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of linear flexibility distribution assumed in the spread inelasticity model. For this purpose, nonlinear analysis of two reinforced concrete frames is carried out and the linear flexibility models used in the elements are compared with the real ones. It is shown that the linear flexibility distribution is incorrect assumption in cases of significant gravity load effects and can be lead to incorrect nonlinear responses in some situations.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.193-203
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• 2021

The time-history finite element analysis is usually used to evaluate the seismic response of shallow foundations. However, the literature lacks studies on the influence of the soil constitutive model complexity on the seismic response of shallow foundations. This study, thus, aims to fill this gap by investigating the seismic response of shallow foundation resting on dry silica sand using the linear elastic (LE) model, elastic-perfectly-plastic (EPP) model, and hardening soil with small strain stiffness (HS small) model. These models have been used because it is intended to compare the results of a soil constitutive model that accurately captures the seismic response of the soil-structure interaction problems (which is the HS small model) with simpler models (the LE and EPP models) that are routinely used by practitioners in geotechnical designs. The results showed that the LE model produces a very small seismic settlement value which is approximately equal to zero. The EPP model predicts a seismic settlement higher than that produced using the HS small model for earthquakes with a peak ground acceleration (PGA) lower than 0.25 g for a relative density of 45% and 0.40 g for a relative density of 70%. However, the HS small model predicts a seismic settlement higher than the EPP model beyond the aforementioned PGA values with the difference between both models increases as the PGA rises. The results also showed that the LE and EPP models predict similar trend and magnitude of the acceleration-time relationship directly below the foundation, which was different than that predicted using the HS small model. The results reported in this paper provide a useful benchmark for future numerical studies on the response of shallow foundations subjected to seismic shake.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.343-349
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• 2022

This paper proposes a new topology optimization scheme to determine optimized joints for multi-component models. The joints are modeled as zero-length high-stiffness spring elements. The spring joints are considered as mesh-independent springs based on a joint-element interpolation scheme. This enables the changing of the location of the joints regardless of the connected nodes during optimization. Because the joints are movable, the locations of the optimized joints should be aggregated at several points. In this paper, the novel joint dispersal (JD) constraint to prevent joint clustering is proposed. With the joint dispersal constraint, it is possible to determine the optimized joint location as well as optimized topologies while maintaining the minimum distance between each joint. The mechanical compliance value is considered as the objective function. Several topology optimization examples are solved to demonstrate the effect of the joint dispersal constraint.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.33-40
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• 2012

To reduce the vulnerability of torsional irregular buildings caused by seismic loads, the torsional amplification factor was introduced by the seismic code. This factor has been applied differently in a variety of seismic codes. In this study, the final static eccentricity, and the lateral and torsional stiffness ratios of buildings designed with different design eccentricities were compared. The increment of the torsional amplification factor resulted in a decrement of the final static eccentricity of the building. However, after reaching the maximum value of this factor, the final static eccentricity of the building increased again. The final static eccentricity of the building designed by multiplying the sum of the inherent and accidental eccentricity by the torsional amplification factor was zero or had a minus value, depending to the position of the vertical element.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.195-202
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• 2004

The shell due to the effect of initial normal pressures on the shell surface was based on the assumption that the directions of the pressures are always normal to the undeformed shell surface, and that the change in the surface area of the shell is negligible. But the fact that the pressure are always normal to the deforming surface leads "follower force". The follower effect in the analysis can significantly alter the solution for natural frequency and buckling load as compared to the case when the direction of the pressures are assumed to be normal to the uniform shell surface. The expression for the part of strain energy contribution from normal pressure due to the effect of follower force was derived and added to the element stiffness matrix of axisymmetric shell. In the case of increasing external pressure, the natural frequencies decrease until one of them reaches zero. Theoretically the smallest applied load that reduces the frequency of any mode to zero, will have same magnitude as that of the buckling load. In order to determine the bucking load of the shell a few sets of frequencies are computed and the results considering the follower effects are well with the exact solution while the case without that are quite different. But in case of hemispherical dome, there are little difference in buckling pressure between with and without the effect of follower force.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.9-20
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• 1999

A method is proposed to estimate the joint damages of a steel structure from modal data using the neural networks technique. The beam-to-column connection in a steel frame structure is represented by a zero-length rotational spring of the end of the beam element, and the connection fixity factor is defined based on the rotational stiffness so that the factor may be in the range 0~1.0. Then, the severity of joint damage is defined as the reduction ratio of the connection fixity factor. Several advanced techniques are employed to develop the robust damage identification technique using neural networks. The concept of the substructural indentification is used for the localized damage assessment in the large structure. The noise-injection learning algorithm is used to reduce the effects of the noise in the modal data. The data perturbation scheme is also employed to assess the confidence in the estimated damages based on a few sets of actual measurement data. The feasibility of the proposed method is examined through a numerical simulation study on a 2-bay 10-story structure and an experimental study on a 2-story structure. It has been found that the joint damages can be reasonably estimated even for the case where the measured modal vectors are limited to a localized substructure and the data are severely corrupted with noise.