This study summarizes the results of a research project aimed at investigating the inelastic rotation capacity of beam-column connections of reinforced concrete moment frames. A total of 91 test specimens for beam-column joint connections were examined in detail, and 28 specimens were classified as special moment frame connections based on the design and detailing requirements in the ACI 318-02 Provisions. Then the acceptance criteria, originally defined for steel moment frame connections in the AISC-02 Seismic Provisions, were used to evaluate the joint connections of concrete moment frames. Twenty-seven out of 28 test specimens that satisfy the design requirements for special moment frame structures provide sufficient strength and are ductile up to a plastic rotation of 0.03 rad. without any major degradation in strength. Joint shear stress, column-to-beam flexural strength ratio, and transverse reinforcement ratio in a joint all play a key role in good performance of the connections.

Currently in the country, the necessity of seismic analyses is increasing due to the increase of demand and interest in seismic design. Especially, shear wall apartments are constructed mostly for a residental building so seismic analyses for the apartment are actively executed. For the seismic analysis of the shear wall apartment, it may be not efficient in time and effort to model the entire structure by a finite element mesh. Therefore, an equivalent model is needed to simulate the dynamic behavior of the structure by decreasing the number of degrees of freedom. In this study, a method to form an equivalent model that is simple and easy to use was proposed utilizing effective mass coefficient that is highly correlated to mode shape of the structure. This equivalent model was obtained by replacing a shear wall structure with an equivalent frame structure having beams and columns. This model can be used very effectively when excessive seismic analyses are necessary in a short period because it can be operated in any commercial program and reduce the analysis time. Also, it can model floor slabs so it can represent the actual behavior of shear wall apartments. Furthermore, it is very excellent since it can represent the asymmetry of the structure.

The goal of this study is to perform several bending tests on a shape memory alloy bar and to analyze the characteristics of the bending behavior. The other goal is to verify the seismic performance of an SMA bar bending application. Single and double bending tests were conducted with varying loading speeds and maximum displacement. The loading and the unloading stiffness were estimated from the force-displacement curves and the equivalent damping ratio of each test was also assessed. In single bending, the SMA bar showed the stiffness hardening after the displacement of 32 mm. It is assumed that this phenomenon is due to the stress-induced-martensite hardening. The increasing loading speed did not influence on the stiffness of the single bending SMA bar. The stiffness of the double bending bar is about 5 times of that of the single bending. This study introduced a seismic application of SMA bending bars as seismic restrainers for bridges and showed its practicality. SMA bars in bending are used for seismic restrainers in a three-span-simply-supported bridge. They showed the effectiveness to reduce the responses of the bridge and the applicability for a seismic restrainer. The significance of this study is to provide basic knowledge of SMA bending and its seismic applications.

In a practical engineering, the equivalent static analysis (E.S.A) and the response spectrum analysis (R.S.A) are generally used for the seismic analysis. The base shears obtained from the E.S.A are invariable no matter how the principal axes of building structures are specified on an analysis program while those from the R.S.A are variable. Accordingly, the designed member size may be changed by how an engineer specify the principal axes of a structure when the R.S.A is used. Moreover, the base shears in the normal direction to the excitation axis are sometimes produced even when an engineer performs a response spectrum analysis in only one direction. This tendency makes the base shear, which is used to calculate the scale-up factor, relatively small. Therefore the scale-up factor becomes larger and it results in uneconomical member sizes. To overcome these disadvantages of the R.S.A, an alternative has been proposed in this study. Three types of example structures were adapted in this study, i.e. bi-direction symmetric structure, one-direction antisymmetric structure and bi-direction antisymmetric structure. The seismic analyses were performed by rotating the principal axes of the example structures with respect to the global coordinate system. The design member forces calculated with the scale-up factor used in the practice were compared with those obtained by using the scale-up factor proposed in this study. It can be seen from this study that the proposed method for the scale-up factor can provide reliable and economical results regardless of the orientation of the principal axes of the structures.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete bridge columns using shaking table tests. A computer program, named RCAHEST (Reinforced Concrete Analysis in Higher Evaluation System Technology), for the analysis of reinforced concrete structures was used. Material nonlinearity is taken into account by comprising tensile, compressive and shear models of cracked concrete and a model of reinforcing steel. Solution of the equations of motion is obtained by numerical integration using Hither-Hughes-Taylor (HMT) algorithm. The proposed numerical method for the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete bridge columns using shaking table tests is verified by comparison with reliable experimental results.

The main purpose of this study is to provide a basic information for the seismic capacity evaluation and the seismic design of low-rise reinforced concrete (RC) shear wall buildings, which are comprised of a pilotis in the first story. In this study, relationships between strengths and ductilities of each story of RC buildings with pilotis are investigated based on the nonlinear seismic response analysis. The characteristics of low-rise RC buildings with pilotis are assumed as the double degree of freedom structural systems. In order to simulate these systems, the pilotis is idealized as a degrading trilinear hysteretic model that fails in flexure and the upper story of shear wall system is idealized as a origin-oriented hysteretic model that fails in shear, respectively. Stiffness properties of both models are varied in terms of story shear coefficients and structures are subjected to various ground motion components. By analyzing these systems, interaction curves of required strengths for various levels of ductility factors are finally derived for practical purposes. The result indicates that the required strength levels derived can be used as a basic information for seismic evaluation and design criteria of low-rise reinforced concrete shear wall buildings having pilotis structure.

For the design of composite bridge piers, detail requirements for the reinforcements is not clear to satisfy the required seismic performance. Composite bridge piers were suggested to reduce the sectional dimensions and to enhance the ductility of the columns under earthquake loadings. In this paper, five specimens of concrete encased composite columns of 400mm diameter with single core steel were fabricated to investigate the seismic performance of the composite columns. Shaking table tests and a Pseudo-Dynamic test were carried out and structural behavior of small-scaled models considering near-fault motions was evaluated. Test parameters were the pace of the transverse reinforcement, lap splice of longitudinal reinforcement and encased steel member sections. The displacement ductility from shaking table tests was lower than that from the pseudo-dynamic test. Limited ductile design and 50% lap splice of longitudinal reinforcement reduced the displacement ductility. Steel ratio showed significant effect on the ultimate strength. Lap splice and low transverse reinforcements reduced the displacement capacity. The energy dissipation capacity of composite columns did not show significant difference according to details.