This study examines earthquake-induced sloshing effects on liquid storage tanks using computation fluid dynamics. To achieve this goal, this study selects an existing square steel tank tested by Seismic Simulation Test Center at Pusan National University as a case study. The model validation was firstly performed through the comparison of shaking table test data and simulated results for the water tank subjected to a harmonic excitation. For a realistic estimation of the wall pressure response of the water tank, three recorded earthquakes with similar peak ground acceleration are applied:1940 El Centro earthquake, 2016 Gyeongju earthquake, and 2017 Pohang earthquake. Wall pressures monitored during the dynamic analyses are examined and compared for different earthquake motions and monitoring points, using power spectrum density. Finally, the maximum dynamic pressure for three earthquakes is compared with the design pressure calculated from a seismic design code. Results indicated that the maximum pressure from the El Centro earthquake exceeds the design pressure although its peak ground acceleration is less than 0.4 g, which is the design acceleration. On the other hand, the maximum pressure due to two Korean earthquakes does not reach the design pressure. Thus, engineers should not consider only the peak ground acceleration when determining the design pressure of water tanks.
This paper presents a framework for developing aftershock fragility curves for reinforced concrete bridges initially damaged by mainshocks. The presented aftershock fragility is a damage-dependent fragility function, which is conditioned on an initial damage state resulting from mainshocks. The presented framework can capture the cumulative damage of as-built bridges due to mainshock-aftershock sequences as well as the reduced vulnerability of bridges repaired with CFRP pier jackets. To achieve this goal, the numerical model of column jackets is firstly presented and then validated using existing experimental data available in literature. A four-span concrete boxgirder bridge is selected as a case study to examine the application of the presented framework. The aftershock fragility curves are derived using response data from back-to-back nonlinear dynamic analyses under mainshock-aftershock sequences. The aftershock fragility curves for as-built bridge columns are firstly compared with different levels of initial damage state, and then the post-repair effect of FRP pier jacket is examined through the comparison of aftershock fragility curves for as-built and repaired piers.
Existing reinforced concrete building structures have seismic vulnerabilities due to their seismically-deficient details resulting in non-ductile behavior. The seismic vulnerabilities can be mitigated by retrofitting the buildings using a fiber-reinforced polymer column jacketing system, which can provide additional confining pressures to existing columns to improve their lateral resisting capacities. This study presents dynamic responses of a full-scale non-ductile reinforced concrete frame retrofitted using a fiber-reinforced polymer column jacketing system. A series of forced-vibration testing was performed to measure the dynamic responses (e.g. natural frequencies, story drifts and column/beam rotations). Additionally, the dynamic responses of the retrofitted frame were compared to those of the non-retrofitted frame to investigate effectiveness of the retrofit system. The experimental results demonstrate that the retrofit system installed on the first story columns contributed to reducing story drifts and column rotations. Additionally, the retrofit scheme helped mitigate damage concentration on the first story columns as compared to the non-retrofitted frame.
Existing reinforced concrete building structures have seismic vulnerabilities under successive earthquakes (or mainshock-aftershock sequences) due to their inadequate column detailing, which leads to shear failure in the columns. To improve the shear capacity and ductility of the shear-critical columns, a fiber-reinforced polymer jacketing system has been widely used for seismic retrofit and repair. This study proposed a numerical modeling technique for damaged reinforced concrete columns repaired using the fiber-reinforced polymer jacketing system and validated the numerical responses with past experimental results. The column model well captured the experimental results in terms of lateral forces, stiffness, energy dissipation and failure modes. The proposed column modeling method enables to predict post-repair effects on structures initially damaged by mainshock.
Now that problems with force-based seismic design have been clearly identified, design is inclined toward displacement-based methods. One such widely used method is Direct-Displacement-Based Design (DDBD). Yet, one of the shortcomings of DDBD is considering higher-mode amplification of story shear, moments, and displacements using equations obtained from limited parametric studies of regular planar frames. In this paper, a different approach to account for higher-mode effects is proposed. This approach determines the lateral secant stiffness of the building frames that fulfill the allowable inter-story drift without exceeding the desired story displacements. Using the stiffness, an elastic response spectrum analysis is carried out to determine elastic higher-mode force effects. These force effects are then combined with DDBD-obtained first-mode force effects using the appropriate modal superposition method so that design can be performed. The proposed design procedure is verified using Nonlinear Time History Analysis (NTHA) of twelve planar frames in four categories accounting for mass and stiffness irregularity along the height. In general, the NTHA response outputs compared well with the allowable limits of the performance objective. Thus, it fulfills the aim of minimizing the use of NTHA for planar frame buildings, thereby saving computational resources and effort.