Abstract
Algeria is a country with a high seismic activity. During the last decade, many destructive earthquakes occurred, particularly in the northern part, causing enormous losses in human lives, buildings and equipments. In order to reduce this risk in the capital and avoid serious damages to the strategic existing buildings, the government decided to invest into seismic upgrade, strengthening and retrofitting of these buildings. In doing so, seismic vulnerability study of this category of buildings has been considered. Structural analysis is performed on the basis of site investigation (inspection of the building, collecting data, materials, general conditions of the building, etc), and existing drawings (architectural plans, structural design, etc). The aim of these seismic vulnerability studies is to develop guidelines and a methodology for rehabilitation of existing buildings. This paper will provide insight to the vulnerability assessment and strengthening of the telecommunication centre, according to the new code RPA 99/version 2003. Both, static equivalent method and non linear dynamic analysis are performed in this study.
Key Words
vulnerability; structural capacity; non linear dynamic analysis; strengthening.
Address
Youcef Mehani and Abderrahmane Kibboua: National Earthquake Engineering Centre, C.G.S Kaddour RAHIM Road, BP 252 Hussein Dey, Algiers, Algeria
Abstract
In this paper, the equivalent exciting force caused by electric excitation is derived. By dividing load and displacement vectors into mean values and time-varying ones, the dynamic equations of the system are transformed into linear ones for time-varying portion of the displacements. The analytical equations of the forced time responses of the drive system to electric excitations are obtained. Using the Laplace transformation, the transfer function of the drive system is obtained. These equations are used to analyze the time and frequency responses of the drive system to the electric excitation. It is known that electric excitation can cause forced responses of the drive system, the total dynamic responses are decided by three phase exciting voltages, exciting frequency and natural frequencies of the drive system, and the drive parameters have obvious influence on the time and frequency responses.
Key Words
toroidal drive; electromechanical integrated; dynamic response; electric excitation.
Address
Lizhong Xu and Xiuhong Hao: Mechanical Engineering Institute, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China
Abstract
This study presents an improved method that uses the elastic and inelastic system buckling analyses for determining the K-factors of steel column members. The inelastic system buckling analysis is based on the tangent modulus theory for a single column and the application is extended to the frame structural system. The tangent modulus of an inelastic column is first derived as a function of nominal compressive stress from the column strength curve given in the design codes. The tangential stiffness matrix of a beam-column element is then formulated by using the so-called stability function or Hermitian interpolation functions. Two inelastic system buckling analysis procedures are newly proposed by utilizing nonlinear eigenvalue analysis algorithms. Finally, a practical method for determining the K-factors of individual members in a steel frame structure is proposed based on the inelastic and/or elastic system buckling analyses. The K-factors according to the proposed procedure are calculated for numerical examples and compared with other results in available references.
Key Words
inelastic system buckling; effective buckling length; column; plane frame; tangent modulus theory.
Address
Yong-Soo Kyung: Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Cheoncheon-dong, Jangan-gu, Suwon, Kyongki, 440-746, Korea Nam-Il Kim: Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Myongji University, Nam-dong, Cheoin-gu, Yongin, Kyongki, 449-728, Korea Ho-Kyung Kim: Dept. of Civil Engineering, Mokpo National University, 61 Dorim-ri, Cheonggye-myeon, Muan-gun, Jeonnam 534-729, Korea Moon-Young Kim: Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Cheoncheon-dong, Jangan-gu, Suwon, Kyongki, 440-746, Korea
Abstract
Reinforced concrete beams can be strengthened in a structural retrofit process by attaching steel plates to their sides by bolting. Whilst bolting produces a confident degree of shear connection under conditions of either static or seismic overload, the plates are susceptible to local buckling. The aim of this paper is to investigate the local buckling of unilaterally-restrained plates with point supports in a generic fashion, but with particular emphasis on the provision of the restraints by bolts, and on the geometric configuration of these bolts on the buckling loads. A numerical procedure, which is based on the Rayleigh-Ritz method in conjunction with the technique of Lagrange multipliers, is developed to study the unilateral local buckling of rectangular plates bolted to the concrete with various arrangements of the pattern of bolting. A sufficient number of separable polynomials are used to define the flexural buckling displacements, while the restraint condition is modelled as a tensionless foundation using a penalty function approach to this form of mathematical contact problem. The additional constraint provided by the bolts is also modelled using Lagrange multipliers, providing an efficacious method of numerical analysis. Local buckling coefficients are determined for a range of bolting configurations, and these are compared with those developed elsewhere with simplifying assumptions. The interaction of the actions in bolted plates during buckling is also considered.
Key Words
bolting; contact problem; lagrange multipliers; local buckling; side-plates; unilateral.
Address
P. Hedayati, M. Azhari and A. R. Shahidi: Dept. of Civil Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran M. A. Bradford: Centre for Infrastructure Engineering and Safety, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of New South Wales, UNSW, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Abstract
High-tech facilities engaged in the production of semiconductors and optical microscopes are extremely expensive, which may require time-domain analysis for seismic resistant design in consideration of the most critical directions of seismic ground motions. This paper presents a framework for generating three-dimensional critical seismic ground acceleration time histories compatible with the response spectra specified in seismic design codes. The most critical directions of seismic ground motions associated with the maximum response of a high-tech facility are first identified. A new numerical method is then proposed to derive the power spectrum density functions of ground accelerations which are compatible with the response spectra specified in seismic design codes in critical directions. The ground acceleration time histories for the high-tech facility along the structural axes are generated by applying the spectral representation method to the power spectrum density function matrix and then multiplied by envelope functions to consider nonstationarity of ground motions. The proposed framework is finally applied to a typical three-story high-tech facility, and the numerical results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.
Key Words
high-tech facility; critical seismic directions; acceleration time history generation; response spectrum compatibility.
Address
X. J. Hong and Y. L. Xu: Dept. of Civil and Structural Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Abstract
Considering the vast usage of time-history dynamic analyses to calculate structural responses and lack of sufficient and suitable earthquake records, generation of artificial accelerograms is very necessary. The main target of this paper is to present a novel method based on nonstationary Kanai-Tajimi model and wavelet transform to generate more artificial earthquake records, which are compatible with target spectrum. In this regard, the generalized nonstationary Kanai-Tajimi model to include the nonstationary evaluation of amplitude and dominant frequency of ground motion and properties of wavelet transform is used to generate ground acceleration time history. Application of the method for El Centro 1940 earthquake and two Iranian earthquakes (Tabas 1978 and Manjil 1990) is presented. It is shown that the model and identification algorithms are able to accurately capture the nonstationary features of these earthquake accelerograms. The statistical characteristics of the spectral response of the generated accelerograms are compared with those for the actual records to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Also, for comparison of the presented method with other methods, the response spectra of the synthetic accelerograms compared with the models of Fan and Ahmadi (1990) and Rofooei et al. (2001) and it is shown that the response spectra of the synthetic accelerograms with the method of this paper are close to those of actual earthquakes.
Address
G. Ghodrati Amiri, A. Bagheri and M. Fadavi: Center of Excellence for Fundamental Studies in Structural Engineering, College of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science & Technology, PO Box 16765-163, Narmak, Tehran 16846, Iran
Abstract
In recent years there are many plate bending elements that emerged for solving both thin and thick plates. The main features of these elements are that they are based on mix formulation interpolation with discrete collocation constraints. These elements passed the patch test for mix formulation and performed well for linear analysis of thin and thick plates. In this paper a member of this family of elements, namely, the Discrete Reissner-Mindlin (DRM) is further extended and developed to analyze both thin and thick plates with geometric nonlinearity. The Von Karman?s large displacement plate theory based on Lagrangian coordinate system is used. The Hu-Washizu variational principle is employed to formulate the stiffness matrix of the geometrically Nonlinear Discrete Reissner-Mindlin (NDRM). An iterativeincremental procedure is implemented to solve the nonlinear equations. The element is then tested for plates with simply supported and clamped edges under uniformly distributed transverse loads. The results obtained using the geometrically NDRM element is then compared with the results of available analytical solutions. It has been observed that the NDRM results agreed well with the analytical solutions results. Therefore, it is concluded that the NDRM element is both reliable and efficient in analyzing thin and thick plates with geometric non-linearity.
Key Words
geometric nonlinear thick plate; Discrete Reissner-Mindlin; mixed formulation.
Address
J. A. Abdalla: Dept. of Civil Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE A. K. Ibrahim: Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of Sudan for Science and Technology, Khartoum, Sudan
