When earthquakes occur, energy released by the earthquake gets induced into the structure as ground motion and this energy has to be dissipated for safety reasons. To release seismic energy, the structure should damage in such a way that on one hand, collapse of structure should not occur and on the other hand, after the earthquake, damage should be economically feasible to repair. To avoid the...

An innovative concept for normalizing the multiple seismic performance objectives of retrofitted structures was recently introduced by the authors. Referred to as a damping-enhanced strengthening, this integrated damping and strengthening strategy included the bonding component between FRP sheets and viscoelastic layers as well as the anchoring component of FRP sheets into concrete. Although an...

Concerns about potential liquefaction and resulting flowslide type failures at Wickiup Dam in Central Oregon prompted geophysical studies of the left wing dike, studies which included a high resolution seismic reflection survey. High resolution seismic reflection data effectively delineated structures and correlated lithologies to shallow borehole data above the surface of the dipping, basalt b...

Conventional concentrically-braced frame (CBF) systems have limited drift capacity before brace buckling and related damage leads to deterioration in strength and stiffness. Self-centering concentrically-braced frame (SC-CBF) systems have been developed to increase drift capacity prior to initiation of damage and minimize residual drift. SC-CBFs differ from conventional CBFs in that the SC-CBF ...

Abstract—Nowadays, energy dissipation devices are commonly used in structures. High rate of energy absorption during earthquakes is the benefit of using such devices, which results in damage reduction of structural elements, specifically columns. The hysteretic damping capacity of energy dissipation devices is the key point that it may adversely make analysis and design process complicated. Thi...

A critical step in performance-based seismic design is the prediction and definition of earthquake performance using terms that are meaningful to building owners. Recently, economic impact, defined as the cost of repairing earthquake damage and the building downtime required to complete the repair work, has been adopted as a meaningful measure of building performance. To enable earthquake engin...

Water storage tanks not designed explicitly for seismic loading could require retrofit. One of the common ways of retrofit include some structural change in the lateral load resisting system that could be expensive and requires the tank to be out of service for relatively long time. This paper introduces a novel method to reduce seismic demand on tank’s wall without structural intervention. Thi...

The present article seek to investigate the function of elliptical steel damper function in steel frames seismic resisting. The elliptical damper is a kind of earthquake energy dissipater in structure which acts based on the steel yielding feature. Thus, this damper in frame lateral displacement mechanism is expected to have a satisfying hysteretic behavior in terms of energy absorption is on a...

The use of flexible roof diaphragms is very common in the United States, both for residential buildings and large-scale commercial buildings. Due to its simplicity, the traditional diaphragm design method is commonly used in diaphragm design, in particular for the design of diaphragms with relatively small dimensions. The traditional diaphragm design method assumes the axial chord forces develo...