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Heavy economic losses and human casualties caused by destructive earthquakes around the world clearly show the need for a systematic approach for large scale damage detection of various types of existing structures. That could provide the proper means for the decision makers for any rehabilitation plans. The aim of this study is to present an innovative method for investigating the seismic vulnerability of the existing concrete structures with moment resisting frames (MRF). For this purpose, a number of 2-D structural models with varying number of bays and stories are designed based on the previous Iranian seismic design code, Standard 2800 (First Edition). The seismically–induced damages to these structural models are determined by performing extensive nonlinear dynamic analyses under a number of earthquake records. Using the IDARC program for dynamic analyses, the Park and Ang damage index is considered for damage evaluation of the structural models. A database is generated using the level of induced damages versus different parameters such as PGA, the ratio of number of stories to number of bays, the dynamic properties of the structures models such as natural frequencies and earthquakes. Finally, in order to estimate the vulnerability of any typical reinforced MRF concrete structures, a number of artificial neural networks are trained for estimation of the probable seismic damage index.

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The utilization of passive energy dissipation systems has been created a revolution in the structural engineering industry due to their advantages. Fluid Viscous Damper (FVD) is one of these control systems. It has been used in many different industries, such as the army, aerospace, bridge, and building structures. One of the essential questions about this system is how it can combine with the bracing system to enhance its abilities. In this paper, a comparison between the responses of a twelve-story steel building retrofitted by four layouts of bracings systems (i.e., chevron, diagonal, toggle, and X-brace) is studied. These bracing systems are equipped by FVD to find the optimum layout for these systems. Buildings are modeled nonlinearity and excited by an earthquake (Manjil earthquake). For this purpose, the Fast Nonlinear Analysis (FNA) is performed using the SAP2000 software. The results show that FVD alters some of the structural behaviors such as inter-story drift when combining with a chevron-bracing system. As a result, it can decrease the motion induced by the earthquake significantly. Besides, the results show that the chevron model has the best performance for the high-rise building in comparison with the other studied systems. As a result, for toggle, chevron, and diagonal bracing systems, the formation of link damper could absorb 66%, 72%, and 79% of input energy instead of modal damping energy, respectively.

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In present study, the effects of optimization on seismic energy spectra including input energy, damping energy and yielding hysteretic energy are parametrically discussed. To this end, 12 generic steel moment-resisting frames having fundamental periods ranging from 0.3 to 3s are optimized by using uniform damage and deformation approaches subjected to a series of 40 non-pule strong ground motions. In order to obtain the optimum distribution of structural properties, an iterative optimization procedure has been adopted. In this approach, the structural properties are modified so that inefficient material is gradually shifted from strong to weak areas of a structure. This process is continued until a state of uniform damage is achieved. Then, the maximum energy demand parameters are computed for different structures designed by optimum load pattern as well as code-based pattern, and the mean energy spectra, energy-based reduction factor and the dispersion of the results are compared and discussed. Results indicate that optimum seismic load pattern can significantly affect the energy demands spectra especially in inelastic range of response. In addition, using energy-based reduction factors of optimum structures in short-period and long-period regions will result in respectively overestimation and underestimation of the required input energy demands for code-based structures, reflecting the difference dose exists in reality between the conventional forced-based methodology and energy-based seismic design approach that can more realistically incorporate the frequency content and duration of earthquake ground motions.
 

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Explosions are inevitable in today’s world; therefore, building structures may be dynamically loaded by an intense loading during the explosion. This is why regulatory bodies have provided instructions for determining the response of structures under the explosion load. Previous research has shown that when the explosion happens close to a structure, the ground explosion load can be modeled as tensile and compressive loads. This research investigates the response of an elastic-plastic single-degree-of-freedom system subjected to different explosive loads with different positive durations. The maximum intensity of blast load and blast duration remains constant, and the positive phase duration is the only variable that changes. The nonlinear dynamic responses of a single-degree-of-freedom system (i.e., displacement, velocity, acceleration, and ductility) are calculated using the linear acceleration method. The results show that increasing the positive phase duration and the amount of positive impact can increase the maximum displacement and ductility of the system. Also, it can be concluded that the maximum acceleration of the studied systems remains constant when the values for the blast impact and positive phase durations change.