Sharif Digital Repository

This article presents an investigation of multi-mode effect of tall buildings subjected to near-field pulse-like ground motions. Multi-story buildings are modeled as an equivalent continuum structure consisting of a combination of a flexural cantilever beam and a shear cantilever beam. The simplified model is subjected to near-field ground motions and the representative simplified pulses. The maximum interstory drift spectra and its location along the height are calculated on the basis of modal summation approach. So, the method is largely based upon the assumption of linearity of the system. The effects of shear to flexural deformation ratio, structural to input pulse period ratio, and the... 

In this paper, the dynamic response of the anchored and unanchored flexible on-grade storage tanks under near-fault input ground motions has been investigated. For numerical analysis, an oil storage tank with its content has been modeled with the displacement-based elements using a general-purpose finite elements program. The fluid-structure interaction has been taken into account using the constraint equations. Non-linear behavior caused by the base uplift in unanchored tanks has been considered by implementing the gap elements between the tank base and the ground level. The results indicate that the non-linear behavior caused by the base uplift, leads to remarkable changes in most of the... 

Maintaining of concrete gravity dams in good conditions as one of the important infrastructures is significant concern for dam owners. These dams should able to continue their function after a disaster such as earthquake. But most of them are aged dams with some located near faults. Indeed, there are some concerns regarding the performance of these dams under the effect of seismic loads. In recent years some criteria about linear performance of these dams have been developed. But the same cannot be said about nonlinear behavior of these dams, which seem to lack well-developed criteria. In this paper we shall try to illustrate seismic fragility curves for concrete gravity dams by using... 

Theoretical and experimental verification of the pipe damper was investigated in Part I of the two companion papers. In this paper, the application of the pipe damper to structures is examined. In particular, single span slab-girder bridges are considered for analytical investigations. A practical detail for the installation of the pipe damper is introduced. Nonlinear dynamic time history analyses are conducted on bridges equipped with the pipe damper and the results are compared with ordinary bridges. Bridge span, ground motion and the pipe length are varied in the analyses. Results show that the pipe damper is a reliable and economical metallic-yielding device that can easily be installed... 

This paper presents the probabilistic generation of collapse fragility curves for evaluating the performance of 3D, reinforced concrete (RC) moment-resisting building models, considering soil-structure interaction (SSI) by concentration on seismic uncertainties. It considers collapse as the loss of lateral load-resisting capacity of the building structures due to severe ground shaking and consequent large interstory drifts intensified by P-Δ effects as well as the strength and stiffness deterioration of their lateral load carrying systems. The estimation of the collapse performance of structures requires the relation between the intensity measure (IM) and the probability of collapse... 

In the special zones of frame elements, which are used for seismic energy dissipation, inelastic interaction among the internal forces needs to be considered more precisely. This paper describes a special element called a VM link element for modeling the shear-flexural interaction in the inelastic zones of beam elements. The element may be used in the any inelastic location of frames subjected to the monotonic or cyclic loadings. The inelastic shear and flexural deformations are considered by using the multi-surfaces plasticity concept with dissimilar yield surfaces. A new kinematic hardening and new non-associated flow rules are introduced for definition of the plastic deformations and... 

In this article, two base-line correction methods for correcting the near-source strong motions were studied on the near-source recording of the 2003, Bam earthquake. To obtain permanent ground displacements at Bam station, two methods were applied with some modifications and without using any kind of filtering. Even though it is difficult to calculate true permanent displacements from data attained by present accelerograms, the results of this study show that the rational limit of permanent ground displacements can be successfully achieved by rational choosing of effective parameters. In addition, it is observed that some pre-processing steps suggested in literature have no considerable... 

In steel tub girder bridges, end diaphragms transmit vertical and lateral loads to the substructure. Vulnerable response of steel diaphragms in recent strong ground motions has encouraged the researchers to work on their application as seismic force reducing devices for design and retrofitting of bridges. This study is an attempt to achieve a ductile diaphragm behavior under seismic actions by using existing internal end plate diaphragm of steel tub girder bridges. Considerable elastic stiffness and dominant shear behavior of the end diaphragm has made it a suitable choice for such behavior under seismic actions. Nonlinear quasi-static analyses using nineteen different finite element models... 

The end diaphragm of bridges are normally designed to resist lateral seismic forces imposed on the superstructure in earthquake prone regions. Using ductile diaphragms with high deformation capacity could reduce the seismic demands on the substructure and prevent costly damage under strong ground motions. The end diaphragms of steel tub girder bridges with high lateral stiffness and dominant shear behavior have a potential to be used as ductile fuse elements. In this study, a steel plate shear diaphragm (SPSD) is introduced as an external end diaphragm of tub girder steel bridges to reduce the seismic demands imposed on the substructure. Quasi static nonlinear analyses were conducted to... 

The effect of Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) on Park and Ang Damage Index in a Bilinear-SDOF model is investigated under seismic loading. This is done through an extensive parametric study. Two non-dimensional parameters are used as the key parameters which control the severity of SSI: (1) a non-dimensional frequency as the structure-to-soil stiffness ratio index and (2) the aspect ratio of the structure. The soil beneath the structure is considered as a homogeneous elastic half space and is modeled using the concept of Cone Models. The system is then subjected to three different earthquake ground motions as the representative motions recorded on different soil conditions. The analysis is... 

A new method for seismic analysis of containers in three-dimensional space is introduced in which the effects of both impulsive and convective components and their corresponding damping are accounted for in time domain. A case study is performed to investigate the behaviour of a concrete rectangular container under the effects of horizontal and vertical ground motions using the scaled earthquake components of the 1940 El-Centro earthquake record. Two-dimensional behaviour of the tank is assumed. The results of the study are compared with those obtained using the current practice and those determined from finite element (FE) analysis based on a lumped mass model. The results of the FE... 

In this paper, the application of Endurance Time (ET) method to the seismic analysis of bridges is elaborated. ET method is a novel seismic analysis method based on time history analysis in which a structure is subjected to a predefined intensifying acceleration function. First, six concrete bridges were modeled in this study. Three Endurance Time Acceleration Functions (ETAFs) were applied to the models, and the average of responses was calculated. Next, the time history analysis was conducted using seven real accelerograms that are scaled using the method recommended by Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to be compatible with the design spectrum of American Association of State Highway... 

Steel silos are one of the main structures for bulk solids handling and storage in many industries and agricultural sectors. A growing body of research suggests the importance of including the vertical component of earthquake ground motion in seismic analysis and design of certain structures. In the case of steel silos, this may induce additional meridional compression to exacerbate buckling failures in such thin shells. Accordingly, this paper investigates the buckling behavior of three cylindrical steel silos (i.e., a squat, an intermediate slender and a slender silo) with stepped walls subjected to horizontal only (H) and horizontal and vertical (HV) ground accelerations to address this... 

This study aims to show the efficiency of a proposed spectral matching technique for the reduction of required ground motions in the dynamic time history analysis. In this non-stationary spectral matching approach, unconstrained optimization is employed to adjust the signal to match a target spectrum. Adjustment factors of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) coefficients associated with the signals are then considered as decision variables and the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is employed to find the optimum values of DWT coefficients. This matching algorithm turns out to be quite effective in the spectral matching objective, where matching at multiple damping ratios can be readily achieved.... 

This paper presents a simplified Multi-Degree-Of-Freedom (MDOF) model through modification of fish-bone model (or generic frame). Modified Fish-Bone (MFB) model is developed through three enhancements: (i) the moment of inertia for half-beams is reduced slightly to modify the assumption of equal rotation at each story joints, (ii) a number of truss elements are inserted to the fish-bone model to simulate flexural deformation of moment frames due to axial elongation and contraction of columns, and (iii) moment-rotation relationship of representative rotational springs is supposed to be bilinear instead of trilinear in order to consider simultaneous yielding at both ends of the beam in moment... 

The exact and two approximate conditional spectra are compared in this manuscript as a target spectrum for the purpose of ground motion selection. The considered site is a real offshore site located at South Pars Gas Field in the Persian Gulf region. This case study site is influenced by four major seismic area sources in which the deaggregation results confirm that many comparable seismic scenarios can be taken into account. Therefore, an alternative to the conventional approximate conditional spectrum is proposed that has a small deviation from the exact solution. In addition, the use of different conditioning status of the probabilistic seismic hazard deaggregation (i.e., occurrence... 

This paper proposes a methodology for generating surrogate single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) models that can be utilized to estimate the probability distribution of the roof drift ratio of multistory buildings at various ground motion intensity measures. The use of an SDOF model as a surrogate for multistory buildings can significantly alleviate the high computational cost for probabilistic seismic demand assessment considering both model uncertainty and record-to-record variability. The surrogate SDOF model generated herein explicitly accounts for model uncertainties and can be used as an alternative to the nonlinear dynamic analysis of detailed building structures. Applications for such... 

The Endurance Time (ET) method is a new dynamic pushover procedure in which structures are subjected to gradually intensifying acceleration functions and their performance is assessed based on the length of the time interval that they can satisfy required performance objectives. In this paper, the accuracy of the Endurance Time method in estimating average deformation demands of low and medium rise steel frames using ETASOf series of ET acceleration functions has been investigated. The precision of the ET method in predicting the response of steel frames in nonlinear analysis is investigated by considering a simple set of moment-resisting frames. An elastic-perfectly-plastic material model...