The Engineer's Role in Reducing Curtainwall Failures
For a variety of reasons, engineers have abdicated responsibility for curtainwall design. Failures of curtainwall components are very common, leading to expensive repairs and even complete...
Things That Fall?Lessons from Some Construction Accidents and Structural Failures
The causes and results of several construction accidents are reviewed. The lessons to be learned from such a summary are that all too often the simplest oversight leads to catastrophic...
Tuned Mass Damper in Tall Building Design
Viscoelastic dN and tuned mass dampers are often used by tall building designers to control wind-induced building vibrations resulting from such phenomena as vortex shedding, galloping,...
Tuned Mass Dampers for Towers and Buildings
Tuned mass dampers (TMD's) are used to reduce the response of tall slender structures to resonant wind-induced oscillations. This paper reviews the authors' experience with the design...
Passive Energy Dissipation Systems for Earthquake-Resistant Design
Passive energy dissipation devices, also known as supplemental damping devices, have been proposed as a means by which the earthquake resistance of a building can be substantially enhanced,...
Evaluation of Seismic Isolation Schemes for a Historic Building
The U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth District building originally completed in 1905 with an expansion in 1933, suffered damage during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The building is currently...
Wind Hazards Reduction Program
The 1990's mark the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. In this context, the Wind Effects Committee of the Structural Division strongly endorses the establishment of a...
Diagnosing Lateral Strength of Existing Concrete or Masonry Buildings
A research prospectus is presented for improving present methods of structural evaluation for concrete and masonry buildings. Specifically, the proposed research plan is limited to strength...
Correction Factor Method for Building Analysis Under Sequential Dead Loads
The effect of the sequential application of dead load due to the sequential nature of construction is an important factor to be considered in the multistory frame analysis. One of the...
Wind-Induced Vibrations of Tall Buildings Using Tuned Mass Damper
A Lagrange formulation is applied to tall buildings using tuned mass damper. The resulting equations of motion are analyzed using a frequency window method. The method reduces the computational...
Dynamic Inelastic Analysis of Tall Buildings
Members with undesirably early formed plastic hinges as well as excessive conservatism introduced in the preliminary design of tall buildings can be identified by the behavior state study...
Optimal Design of Building Structures Using the Predetermined Sections
A practical optimization algorithm for the member design of building structure is presented in this paper. The emphasis is particularly concentrated on the practical applicability of the...
A Reduced Order Model for the Seismic Analysis of Building-Soil Systems
A finite element based, reduced order, numerical model has been developed for the nonlinear analysis of building-soil systems. The reduced order system model employs an equivalent continuum...
Development of an Improved Rapid Seismic Analysis Procedure
New developments in computer capabilities and lessons learned from recent earthquakes have facilitated improvement of the Rapid Seismic Analysis Procedure (RSAP) currently specified in...
New Views for Modeling Dynamic Response of URM Buildings
Various computational models are used to depict seismic response of an unreinforced masonry building that was subjected to the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. The worthiness of various analytical...
An Innovative Connection Detail for High-Rise Buildings
Composite columns consisting of hollow steel tubes filled with high strength concrete have been used in high rise building construction in the USA and Far East Asian countries. The focus...
Design Property Values of Wood-Based Materials in LRFD Format
The development of a U.S. Load & Resistance Factored Design (LRFD) specification and supporting documents for engineered wood construction is nearing completion. The two key components...
Design of Connections in Wood Structures: LRFD vs. ASD
This paper provides a comparison of connection design capacities using load and resistance factor design (LRFD) procedures and allowable stress design (ASD) procedures....
Wood Diaphragm Design Capacities in LRFD Format
Wood diaphragms (horizontal and vertical) have performed well in resisting and transferring lateral forces imposed by major wind and seismic events. Resilient (ductile) behavior of wood...
System Factors in LRFD Format: A Multidimensional Judgment Call
A Load & Resistant Factor Design Specification for wood buildings is being completed. The Specification contains several revisions from the traditional 'repetitive member' factor...
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