The number of aged bridges is increasing so that bridges over 30 years old account for about 11% of all bridges. Consequently, the development of a seismic performance evaluation method that considers the effects of ageing is essential for a seismic retrofitting process for improvement of the seismic safety of existing old bridges. Assessment of the damage situation of bridges after the recent earthquakes in Korea has been limited to the bearings, anchor, and concrete mortar on piers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the seismic responses of PSC box girder bridges by considering the ageing effect of rubber bearings (RBs) and lead-rubber bearings (LRBs). The modification factor proposed by AASHTO is used to take into account the ageing effect in the bearings. PSC box girder bridges with RBs and LRBs were 3D modeled and analyzed with the OpenSEES program. In order to evaluate the ageing effect of RBs and LRBs, 40 near fault and 40 far field records were used as the input earthquakes. When considering the effect of ageing, the displacement responses and shear forces of bridge bearings (RBs and LRBs) were found to increase mostly under the analytical conditions. It was shown that the effect of ageing is greater in the case of RBs than in the case of LRBs.

In order to modeling seismic isolation system such as lead-rubber bearing (LRB), bilinear model is widely used by many researchers. In general, an actual force-displacement relationship for LRB has a smooth hysteretic shape. So, Bouc-Wen model with smooth hysteretic shape represents more accurately actual hysteretic shape than bilinear model. In this study, seismic responses for seismically isolated nuclear power plant (NPP) with LRB modelled by Bouc-Wen and bilinear models are compared with those of NPP without seismic isolation system. To evaluate effect of earthquake characteristics for seismic responses of NPP isolated by LRB, 5 different site class earthquakes distinguished by Geomatrix 3rd Letter Site Classification and artificially generated earthquakes corresponding to standard design spectrum by Reg. Guide 1.60 are used as input earthquakes. From the seismic response results of seismically isolated NPP, it can be observed that maximum displacements of seismic isolation modelled by Bouc-Wen model are larger than those by bilinear model. Seismic responses of NPP with LRB is significantly reduced than those without LRB. This reduction effect for seismic responses of NPP subjected to Site A (rock) earthquakes is larger than that to Site E (soft soil) earthquakes.

The lead-rubber bearing (LRB) dissipates seismic energy through plastic deformation of lead core. Under large-displacement cyclic motion, the temperature increases in the lead core. The shear strength of a lead–rubber bearing is reduced due to the heating effect of the lead core. In this study, the seismic responses such as displacement increasing, shear strength and vertical stiffness degradations of LRB due to the heating effect are evaluated for design basis earthquake (DBE) and beyond design basis earthquake (150% DBE, 167% DBE, 200% DBE).

In order to increase seismic performance of nuclear power plant (NPP) in strong seismic zone, lead-rubber bearing (LRB) can be applied to seismic isolation system of NPP structures. Simple equivalent linear model as structural analysis model of LRB is more widely used in initial design process of LRB than a bilinear model. Seismic responses for seismically isolated NPP containment structures subjected to earthquakes categorized into 5 different soil-site classes are calculated by both of the equivalent linear- and bilinear- LRB models and compared each others. It can be observed that the maximum displacements of LRB and shear forces of containment in the case of the equivalent linear LRB model are larger than those in the case of bilinear LRB model. From the seismic fragility curves of NPP containment structures isolated by LRB, it can be observed that seismic fragility in the case of equivalent linear LRB model are about 5~30 % larger than those in the case of bilinear LRB model.

It is very important to assure the seismic performance of equipment as well as building structures in seismic design of nuclear power plant(NPP). Seismically isolated structures may be reviewed mainly on the horizontal seismic responses. Considering the equipment installed in the NPP, the vertical earthquake responses of the structure also should be reviewed. This study has investigated the vertical seismic demand of seismically isolated structure by lead rubber bearings(LRBs). For the numerical evaluation of seismic demand of the base isolated NPP, the Korean standard nuclear power plant (APR1400) is modeled as 4 different models, which are supported by LRBs to have 4 different horizontal target periods. Two real earthquake records and artificially generated input motions have been used as inputs for earthquake analyses. For the study, the vertical floor response spectra(FRS) were generated at the major points of the structure. As a results, the vertical seismic responses of horizontally isolated structure have largely increased due to flexibility of elastomeric isolator. The vertical stiffness of the bearings are more carefully considered in the seismic design of the base-isolated NPPs which have the various equipment inside.

In order to perform a soil-isolation-structure interaction analysis of seismically isolated nuclear power plant (NPP) structures, the nonlinear behavior of a seismic isolation system may be converted to an equivalent linear model used in frequency domain analysis. Seismic responses for seismically isolated NPP containment structures subjected to a simple artificial acceleration history and different site class earthquakes are evaluated for the equivalent-linear and nonlinear models that have been applied to lead-rubber bearing (LRB) modeling. It can be observed that the maximum displacements of the equivalent linear model are larger than that of the nonlinear model. From the floor response spectrum analysis for the top of NPP containment structures, it can be observed that the spectral acceleration of an equivalent linear model at about 0.5 Hz frequency is about 2~3 times larger than that of a nonlinear model.

In order to increase the seismic safety of nuclear power plant (NPP) structures in high seismicity regions, seismic isolation techniques can be adapted to NPP structures. In this paper, the applicability of multi-step analysis of seismically isolated NPP containment structures with lead-rubber bearings (LRB) is evaluated. The floor response spectrum of NPP containment structures with equivalent linear LRB and nonlinear LRB are compared. In addition, the force-displacement relationships for equivalent linear LRB and nonlinear LRB are compared.

In this study, vertical extension type TMD(VE-TMD) whose vertically extended stories behave like a tuned mass damper, with Lead-Rubber Bearing(LRB) between the top of existing structures and the bottom of the extended stories was proposed. A shaking table tests for a 5-story reinforced concrete model, which is of 2.2 Hz natural frequency. A vertical extended model consisted of a steel frame, with two base isolators between the top of the RC model and the bottom of the extended stories. Those base isolators' lateral stiffness was equal to 31.392 kN/m which was calculated with the fundamental period plus 0.2 tonf, weight of a single story of the model. The test for the specimen was shaking table test excited by a harmonic loads for the fundamental period of the structure. The test results indicated that the VE-TMD improved seismic performance by 40 % in displacement responses for all of frequency-domain.

본 논문에서는 지진하중을 받는 사장교의 진동제어 기법 개발을 위해 제공된 벤치마크 사장교에 복합제어 기법을 적용하였다. 이 벤치마크 문제는 2003년 완공 예정으로 미국 Missouri 주에 건설중인 Cape Girardeau 교를 대상 구조물로 고려하였다. Cape Girardeau 교는 New Madrid 지진구역에 위치하고 Mississippi 강을 횡단하는 주요 교량이라는 점 때문에 설계 단계에서부터 내진 문제를 중요하게 고려하였다. 벤치마크 문제에는 사장교의 상세한 설계도면에 기초해 교량의 복잡한 거동을 나타낼 수 있는 3자원 선형모델과 각 제어기법의 성능을 평가하기 위한 18개의 평가기준이 제시되어 있다. 본 연구에서 적용한 복합제어 기법은 지진하중으로 인해 구조물에 발생되는 하중을 줄이기 위한 수동제어 기법과 상판변위와 같은 구조물의 응답을 추가적으로 제어하기 위한 능동제어 기법이 결합된 제어 방법이다. 수동제어 장지로는 납고무받침을 사용하였고 Bouc-Wen 모델을 사용하여 비선형 거동을 고려 할 수 있도륵 모델링 하였다. 능동제어 장치로는 이상적인 hydraulic actuators 가 사용되었으며 제어 알고리듬은 H_2/LQG 를 적용하였다. 수치해석 결과 제안방법의 성능은 수동제어 방법에 비해 매우 효과적이며, 능동제어 방법에 비해서는 약간 좋은 제어성능을 나타내었다. 복합제어 방법은 수동제어 부분 때문에 능동제어 방법에 비해 보다 신뢰할 수 있는 제어 방법이다. 따라서 제안된 제어방법은 지진하중을 받는 사장교의 제어를 위해 효과적으로 사용될 수 있다.