Cracking of slabs will be caused by applied load and volume changes during the life of a structure and thus it reduces flexural stiffness of slabs. The effect of slab cracking must be considered for appropriate modeling of the flexural stiffness for frame members used in structural analysis. Analytical and experimental study was undertaken to estimate the stiffness reduction of slabs In the analytical approach, the trend of slab stiffness reduction related to gravity and lateral loads is found and the stiffness reduction factor ranged from a half to a quarter in ACI building code is reasonable when defining range. Analyzing results of the test by Hwang and Moehle for 0.5% drift show that the differences of rotational stiffness on the connection types is found and good results of lateral stiffness using the value of one-third is obtained. To evaluate the stiffness reduction factor of one-third for residential building in domestic regions, the test is performed

In equivalent static nonlinear analysis and in energy-based design, the structures are generally transforrned into an equivalent SDOF system. In this study the seismic energy demands in multi story structures, such as three-, eight-, and twenty-story steel moment-resisting frames (MRF), buckling restrained braced frames (BRBF) and a damage tolerant buckIing restrained braced frame (DTBRBF), are compared with those of equivalent single degree of freedom (ESDOF) systems. Sixty earthquake ground motions recorded in different soil conditions, which are soft rock, soft soil, and near fault, were used to compute the input and hysteretic energy demands in model structures. In case the modal mass coefficient is less than 0.8, the effects of higher modes are considered in the process of converting into ESDOF. According to the analysis results, the hysteretic and input energies obtained from three story and eight story MRF and DTBF agreed well with the results from analysis of equivalent SDOF systems. However in the twenty' story BRBF the results from ESDOF underestimated those obtained from the original structures

Pinching is an important property of reinforced concrete member which characterizes its cyclic behavior. In the present study, numerical studies were performed to investigate the characteristics and mechanisms of pinching behavior and the energy dissipation capacity of flexure-dominated reinforced concrete members. By analyzing existing experimental studies and numerical results, it was found that energy dissipation capacity of a member is directly related to the energy dissipated by re-bars that are plastic material rather than concrete that is brittle, and that it is not related to magnitude ofaxial compressive force applied to the member. Therefore, for a member with specific 없Tangement and amount of re-bars, the energy dissipation capacity remains uniformly regardless of the flexural strength increased by axial force. Pinching that is not related to shear appears due to this phenomenon. The flexural pinching appears conspicuous as the flexural strength increases compared to the uniform energy dissipation capacity. Based on the findings, a practical method for estimating the energy dissipation capacity was developed and verified with existing experiments.

Frequency shift, due to quartz crystal resonator aging, has been identified as one of the most important quality control problems of quartz crystal products. The problem becomes more significant due to the device miniaturization and high precision standards for telecommunication applications. Since aging induced frequency shift occurs during a long time frame, it is necessary to predict the long-term behavior of the devices based on the short-term data obtained under an accelerated environment. One the other hand, frequency shift is associated with quite large random variation, and thus, a proper probabilistic theory should be used for analyzing test data and for developing a reliable prediction model. Accelerated testing was performed for various types of crystal resonators under elevated temperatures. The frequency shifts of the devices were measured at different testing periods. Markov chain model was used to characterize the frequency shift of the devices. The obtained short-term test results were used for calibrating the probabilistic transition matrix of Markov chain model. The model can then be used for predicting the long-term frequency shift. The time-temperature superposition principle in viscoelasticity was adopted to address the shift in time under different temperatures.

In a recent construction industry, cable supported sσuctures such as a cable-stayed bridge or space stadium have been increasingly constructed according to rapidly upgrade their related technologies. Generally stay cables as a critical member need to be rearranged for being satisfied with design tension forces. In this purpose, a vibration method has been applied to estimate the tension forces exerted on existing stay cables. In this study, cable vibration tests were carried out to evaluate the cable tension forces comp와ing with theoretical and practical formulas. Using the measured frequencies ob않ined from free vibration and impulsive tests, an accuracy of the estimated tension forces is confirmed according to use the first single mode only or higher multiple modes.

As primary members of cable-stayed bridge, stay cables are the most important elements of the entire structure. Wind-induced or Rain-Wind vibration is a cause of the safety in the bridge, the deep anxiety for the observing public. One of effective ways to solve this problem is to install the damper. To design the damper, it is necess따y to estimate the cable dynamic characteristics. In this study, for the cable dynamic characteristics we deγeloped the cable exciting mechanical system(exciter). And to evaluate the performance of the cable exciter, we derived the solution of frequency equation from the differential equation of the mathematical model, 뻐d performed the solution of frequency equation, the eigenvalue analysis by FEM model, the resonance dwelling test and swept sine test

Sliding mode control(SMC) keeps responses of a structure in sliding surface when the structure is stable. Recently, this method has been investigated for application to seismically excited civil engineering structures because it can design both linear controller and non-linear controller such as bang-bang controller. This paper presents vibration control of the SDOF system using saturated sliding mode controller, of which maximum conrtol force is limited. It is assumed that the response of a structure is stationary random process and control dampers do not affect the modal shapes, and the structure has proportional damping. SMC method can be used to get the equivalent damping ratios of a SDOF system with non-linear control dampers such as friction dampers as well as linear control dampers. The determinated equivalent damping ratios and numerical simulation results indicate that the performance of saturated SMC method is verified.