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CONTENTS
Volume 11, Number 6, December 2016
 


Abstract
With ongoing development of earthquake engineering research and the lessons learnt from a series of strong earthquakes, the seismic design concept of "resilience" has received much attention. Resilience describes the capability of a structure or a city to recover rapidly after earthquakes or other disasters. As one of the main features of urban constructions, tall buildings have greater impact on the sustainability and resilience of major cities. Therefore, it is important and timely to quantify their seismic resilience. In this work, a quantitative comparison of the seismic resilience of two tall buildings designed according to the Chinese and US seismic design codes was conducted. The prototype building, originally designed according to the US code as part of the Tall Building Initiative (TBI) Project, was redesigned in this work according to the Chinese codes under the same design conditions. Two refined nonlinear finite element (FE) models were established for both cases and their seismic responses were evaluated at different earthquake intensities, including the service level earthquake (SLE), the design-based earthquake (DBE) and the maximum considered earthquake (MCE). In addition, the collapse fragility functions of these two building models were established through incremental dynamic analysis (IDA). Based on the numerical results, the seismic resilience of both models was quantified and compared using the new-generation seismic performance assessment method proposed by FEMA P-58. The outcomes of this study indicate that the seismic resilience of the building according to the Chinese design is slightly better than that according to the US design. The conclusions drawn from this research are expected to guide further in-depth studies on improving the seismic resilience of tall buildings.

Key Words
performance-based design method; seismic loss; resilience; tall building; design codes

Address
Yuan Tian, Mengke Li: Beijing Engineering Research Center of Steel and Concrete Composite Structures, Tsinghua University, Beijing P. R. China

Xiao Lu: Department of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, P.R. China

Xinzheng Lu: Key Laboratory of Civil Engineering Safety and Durability of China Education Ministry, Department of Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. China

Hong Guan: Griffith School of Engineering, Griffith University Gold Coast Campus, Queensland 4222, Australia

Abstract
Recently, magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) material and its devices have been developed and attracted a good deal of attention for their potentials in vibration control. Among them, a highly adaptive base isolator based on MRE was designed, fabricated and tested for real-time adaptive control of base isolated structures against a suite of earthquakes. To perfectly take advantage of this new device, an accurate and robust model should be built to characterize its nonlinearity and hysteresis for its application in structural control. This paper first proposes a novel hysteresis model, in which a nonlinear hyperbolic sine function spring is used to portray the strain stiffening phenomenon and a Voigt component is incorporated in parallel to describe the solid-material behaviours. Then the fruit fly optimization algorithm (FFOA) is employed for model parameter identification using testing data of shear force, displacement and velocity obtained from different loading conditions. The relationships between model parameters and applied current are also explored to obtain a current-dependent generalized model for the control application. Based on the proposed model of MRE base isolator, a second-order sliding mode controller is designed and applied to the device to provide a real-time feedback control of smart structures. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated in simulation through utilizing a three-storey benchmark building model under four benchmark earthquake excitations. The results verify the effectiveness of the proposed current-dependent model and corresponding controller for semi-active control of MRE base isolator incorporated smart structures.

Key Words
magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) base isolator; earthquake mitigation; sliding mode control

Address
Yang Yu, Jianchun Li, Yancheng Li: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia

Sayed Royel, Quang Ha: School of Electrical Mechanical and Mechatronic Systems, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia

Abstract
Current codes design the buildings based on life safety criteria. In a performance-based design (PBD) approach, decisions are made based on demands, such as target displacement and performance of structure in use. This type of design prevents loss of life but does not limit damages or maintain functionality. As a newly developed method, resilience-based design (RBD) aims to maintain functionality of buildings and provide liveable conditions after strong ground movement. In this paper, the seismic performance of plain and strengthened RC frames (an eight-story and two low-rise) is evaluated. In order to evaluate earthquake performance of the frames, the performance points of the frames are calculated by the capacity spectrum method (CSM) of ATC-40. This method estimates earthquake-induced deformation of an inelastic system using a reduced response spectrum. Finally, the seismic performances of the frames are evaluated and the results are compared with a resilience-based design criterion.

Key Words
buildings; rehabilitation; resilience; performance; earthquake

Address
S. Ali Hadigheh: School of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW, Australia

S. Saeed Mahini: Discipline of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New England, NSW, Australia

Sujeeva Setunge: Department of Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, RMIT University, VIC, Australia

Stephen A. Mahin: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Abstract
To date the engineering community has seen facade systems as non-structural elements with high aesthetic value and a barrier between the outdoor and indoor environments. The role of facades in energy use in a building has also been recognized and the industry is also witnessing the emergence of many energy efficient facade systems. This paper will focus on using exterior skin of the double skin facade system as a dissipative movable element during earthquake excitation. The main aim of this study is to investigate the potential of the facade system to act as a damper system to reduce earthquake-induced vibration of the primary structure. Unlike traditional mass dampers, which are usually placed at the top level of structures, the movable/smart double skin facade systems are distributed throughout the entire height of building structures. The outer skin is moveable and can act as a multi tuned mass dampers (MTMDs) that move and dissipate energy during strong earthquake motions. In this paper, using a three dimensional 10-storey building structure as the example, it is shown that with optimal choice of materials for stiffness and damping of brackets connecting the two skins, a substantial portion of earthquake induced vibration energy can be dissipated which leads to avoiding expensive ductile seismic designs. It is shown that the engineering demand parameters (EDPs) for a low-rise building structures subjected to moderate to severe earthquakes can be substantially reduced by introduction of a smart designed double skin system.

Key Words
facade; structural control; vibration; damper; earthquake

Address
Institute for Infrastructure Engineering, Western Sydney University, Building Z, Second Avenue, Kingwood Campus, Sydney 2747, Australia

Abstract
Building structures generally have inherent low damping capability and hence are vulnerable to seismic excitations. Control devices therefore play a useful role in providing safety to building structures subject to seismic events. In recent years semi-active dampers have gained considerable attention as structural control devices in the building construction industry. Magneto-rheological (MR) damper, a type of semi-active damper has proven to be effective in seismic mitigation of building structures. MR dampers contain a controllable MR fluid whose rheological properties vary rapidly with the applied magnetic field. Although some research has been carried out on the use of MR dampers in building structures, optimal design of MR damper and combined use of MR and passive dampers for real scale buildings has hardly been investigated. This paper investigates the use of MR dampers and incorporating MR-passive damper combinations in building structures in order to achieve acceptable levels of seismic performance. In order to do so, it first develops the MR damper model by integrating control algorithms commonly used in MR damper modelling. The developed MR damper is then integrated in to the seismically excited structure as a time domain function. Linear and nonlinear structure models are evaluated in real time scenarios. Analyses are conducted to investigate the influence of location and number of devices on the seismic performance of the building structure. The findings of this paper provide information towards the design and construction of earthquake safe buildings with optimally employed MR dampers and MR-passive damper combinations.

Key Words
seismic engineering; energy dissipation; magneto-rheology; visco-elastic; friction; dampers

Address
School of Civil Engineering and Built Environment, Science & Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia

Abstract
Different incident angles of ground motions have been considered to evaluate the relationship between floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient. The issues specifically addressed are (1) variability in torsional irregularity coefficient and floor rotations with varying incident angles of ground motion (2) contradictory relationship between floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient. To explore the stated issues, an evaluation based on relative variation in seismic response quantities of linear asymmetric structure under the influence of horizontal bi-directional excitation with varying seismic orientations has been carried out using response history analysis. Several typical earthquake records are applied to the structure to demonstrate the relative variations of floor rotation and torsional irregularity coefficient for different seismic orientations. It is demonstrated that (1) Torsional irregularity coefficient (TIC) increases as the story number decreases when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of the structure. For incident angles other than structure´s reference axes, TIC either decreases as the story number decreases or there is no specific trend for TIC. Floor rotation increases in proportion to the story number when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of structure. For incident angles other than structure´s reference axes, floor rotation either decreases as the story number increases or there is no specific trend for floor rotation and (2) TIC and floor rotation seems to be approximately inversely proportional to each other when the ground motion is considered along reference axes of the structure. For incident angles other than structure

Key Words
torsional irregularity coefficient; floor rotation; asymmetric structure; time history analysis

Address
Chunwei Zhang, Zeshan Alam and Bijan Samali: Centre for Infrastructure Engineering, Western Sydney University, Penrith NSW 2751, Australia

Chunwei Zhang: School of Civil Engineering, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao, China

Abstract
The engineering background of this article is an ancient wooden building with extremely high historic and cultural values in Tibet. A full understanding of the dynamic behaviour of this historic building under in-service environments is the basis to assess the condition of the structure, especially its responses to earthquake, environmental and operational loading. A dynamic monitoring system has been installed in the building for over one year and the large amounts of high quality data have been obtained. The paper aims at studying the dynamic behaviour of the wooden building in seismic and operational conditions using the field monitoring data. Specifically the effects of earthquake and crowd loading on the structure´s dynamic response are investigated. The monitoring data are decomposed into principal components using the Singular Spectrum Analysis (SSA) technique. The relationship between the average acceleration amplitude and frequencies of the principle components and operational conditions has been discussed. One main contribution is to understand the health condition of complex ancient building based on large databases collected on the field.

Key Words
dynamic monitoring system; historic building; seismic and operational environments; data analysis

Address
Mengning Lyu, Qingshan Yang: Beijing´s Key Laboratory of Structural Wind Engineering and Urban Wind Environment, School of Civil Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China

Mengning Lyu, Xinqun Zhu: Institute for Infrastructure Engineering, Western Sydney University, Penrith, Sydney, NSW 2751, Australia

Abstract
Prefabricated Modular Buildings are increasingly becoming popular in the construction industry as a method to achieve financially economical buildings in a very short construction time. This increasing demand for modular construction has expanded into multi-storey applications where the effect of lateral loads such as seismic loads becomes critical. However, there is a lack of detailed scientific research that has explored the behaviour of modular buildings and their connection systems against seismic loads. This paper will therefore present the nonlinear time history analysis of a multi-storey modular building against several ground motion records. The critical elements that need special attention in designing a modular building in similar seismic conditions is discussed with a deeper explanation of the behaviour of the overall system.

Key Words
Multi-Storey Prefabricated Modular Buildings; nonlinear time history analysis; ductility of columns

Address
Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia

Abstract
One of the main shortcomings in the current passive base isolation system is lack of adaptability. The recent research and development of a novel adaptive seismic isolator based on magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) material has created an opportunity to add adaptability to base isolation systems for civil structures. The new MRE based base isolator is able to significantly alter its shear modulus or lateral stiffness with the applied magnetic field or electric current, which makes it a competitive candidate to develop an adaptive base isolation system. This paper aims at exploring suitable control algorithms for such adaptive base isolation system by developing a close-loop semi-active control system for a building structure equipped with MRE base isolators. The MRE base isolator is simulated by a numerical model derived from experimental characterization based on the Bouc-Wen Model, which is able to describe the forcedisplacement response of the device accurately. The parameters of Bouc-Wen Model such as the stiffness and the damping coefficients are described as functions of the applied current. The state-space model is built by analyzing the dynamic property of the structure embedded with MRE base isolators. A Lyapunov-based controller is designed to adaptively vary the current applied to MRE base isolator to suppress the quakeinduced vibrations. The proposed control method is applied to a widely used benchmark base-isolated structure by numerical simulation. The performance of the adaptive base isolation system was evaluated through comparison with optimal passive base isolation system and a passive base isolation system with optimized base shear. It is concluded that the adaptive base isolation system with proposed Lyapunov-based semi-active control surpasses the performance of other two passive systems in protecting the civil structures under seismic events.

Key Words
Magnetorheological Elastomer; Adaptive Base Isolation; Semi-active control; Lyapunovbased control; Bouc-Wen model; stability

Address
Xi Chen: School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Tianjin University, Tianjin City, 300072, China

Jianchun Li, Yancheng Li and Xiaoyu Gu: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia

Abstract
Base isolation, one of the popular seismic protection approaches proven to be effective in practical applications, has been widely applied worldwide during the past few decades. As the techniques mature, it has been recognised that, the biggest issue faced in base isolation technique is the challenge of great base displacement demand, which leads to the potential of overturning of the structure, instability and permanent damage of the isolators. Meanwhile, drain, ventilation and regular maintenance at the base isolation level are quite difficult and rather time- and fund- consuming, especially in the highly populated areas. To address these challenges, a number of efforts have been dedicated to propose new isolation systems, including segmental building, additional storey isolation (ASI) and mid-storey isolation system, etc. However, such techniques have their own flaws, among which whipping effect is the most obvious one. Moreover, due to their inherent passive nature, all these techniques, including traditional base isolation system, show incapability to cope with the unpredictable and diverse nature of earthquakes. The solution for the aforementioned challenge is to develop an innovative vibration isolation system to realise variable structural stiffness to maximise the adaptability and controllability of the system. Recently, advances on the development of an adaptive magneto-rheological elastomer (MRE) vibration isolator has enlightened the development of adaptive base isolation systems due to its ability to alter stiffness by changing applied electrical current. In this study, an innovative semi-active storey isolation system inserting such novel MRE isolators between each floor is proposed. The stiffness of each level in the proposed isolation system can thus be changed according to characteristics of the MRE isolators. Nondominated sorting genetic algorithm type II (NSGA-II) with dynamic crowding distance (DCD) is utilised for the optimisation of the parameters at isolation level in the system. Extensive comparative simulation studies have been conducted using 5-storey benchmark model to evaluate the performance of the proposed isolation system under different earthquake excitations. Simulation results compare the seismic responses of bare building, building with passive controlled MRE base isolation system, building with passive-controlled MRE storey isolation system and building with optimised storey isolation system.

Key Words
storey isolation system; magneto-rheological elastomer; five-storey building model; genetic algorithm; optimisation

Address
Centre for Built Infrastructure Research, Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

Abstract
To explore the application of traditional tuned mass dampers (TMDs) to the earthquake induced vibration control problem, a pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) is proposed by adding a viscoelastic limitation to the traditional TMD. In the proposed PTMD, the vibration energy can be further dissipated through the impact between the attached mass and the viscoelastic layer. More energy dissipation modes can guarantee better control effectiveness under a suite of excitations. To further reduce mass ratio and enhance the implementation of the PTMD control, multiple PTMDs (MPTMD) control is then presented. After the experimental validation of the proposed improved Hertz based pounding model, the basic equations of the MPTMD controlled system are obtained. Numerical simulation is conducted on the benchmark model of the Canton Tower. The control effectiveness of the PTMD and the MPTMD is analyzed and compared under different earthquake inputs. The sensitivity and the optimization of the design parameters are also investigated. It is demonstrated that PTMDs have better control efficiency over the traditional TMDs, especially under more severe excitation. The control performance can be further improved with MPTMD control. The robustness can be enhanced while the attached mass for each PTMD can be greatly reduced. It is also demonstrated through the simulation that a non-uniformly distributed MPTMD has better control performance than the uniformly distributed one. Parameter study is carried out for both the PTMD and the MPTMD systems. Finally, the optimization of the design parameters, including mass ratio, initial gap value, and number of PTMD in the MPTMD system, is performed for control improvement.

Key Words
pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD); pounding force model; vibration control; benchmark tower; earthquake excitation

Address
Wei Lin, Yinglu Lin: School of Civil Engineering, Fuzhou University, China

Gangbing Song: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston, USA

Jun Li: Centre for Infrastructural Monitoring and Protection, School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley, WA 6102, Australia

Abstract
Time Delay of Arrival (TDOA) estimation methods based on correlation function analysis play an important role in the micro-seismic event monitoring. It makes full use of the similarity in the recorded signals that are from the same source. However, those methods are subjected to the noise effect, particularly when the global similarity of the signals is low. This paper proposes a new approach for micro-seismic monitoring based on cross wavelet transform. The cross wavelet transform is utilized to analyse the measured signals under micro-seismic events, and the cross wavelet power spectrum is used to measure the similarity of two signals in a multi-scale dimension and subsequently identify TDOA. The offset time instant associated with the maximum cross wavelet transform spectrum power is identified as TDOA, and then the location of micro-seismic event can be identified. Individual and statistical identification tests are performed with measurement data from an in-field mine. Experimental studies demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly improves the robustness and accuracy of micro-seismic source locating in mines compared to several existing methods, such as the cross-correlation, multi-correlation, STA/LTA and Kurtosis methods.

Key Words
micro-seismic monitoring; source location; TDOA; cross wavelet transform

Address
Linqi Huang, Xibing Li: School of Resources and Safety Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410083, China

Hong Hao, Jun Li: Centre for Infrastructural Monitoring and Protection, School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, Curtin University, Bentley, WA6102, Australia


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