Structural Eng. > Earthquake Engineering

Steel-frame buildings can provide excellent seismic performance when properly designed and detailed. However, earthquakes subject steel members and connections to repeated cycles of tension, compression, bending, and shear. Inadequate design, detailing, fabrication, or construction can lead to several steel-specific failure modes. General Steel-Frame Failures 1. Beam-Column Connection FailureBeam-column connections in moment-resisting frames experience large cyclic bending moments and shear forces. Modern seismic connections are specifically […] Read More

Introduction In structural engineering and real estate development, base isolation is often presented as the ultimate solution for earthquake-resistant buildings. It is true that by decoupling a structure from the ground, it significantly reduces the seismic forces transmitted into the building during an earthquake. However, the belief that base isolation is always the superior choice is a common misconception. While it is an exceptional solution […] Read More

Why Modeling Stairs Can Trigger Soft-Story and Torsional Irregularity Warnings — and How Structural Software Can Improve Structural engineers occasionally report that a building model behaves normally until reinforced concrete stairs are added, at which point soft-story or torsional irregularity warnings suddenly appear. Stairs are commonly included in analytical models because they contribute gravity loads, seismic mass, and sometimes structural stiffness. As a result, software […] Read More

This is one of the posts in a series of our posts that we discuss failures. Also check out the other posts in constructmagazine.com, where we discuss failures in different contexts of civil engineering. A Brief Introduction of Earthquakes vs. Structures: Earthquakes are very important aspect of most design in civil engineering, and for any type of structure. The fundamental earthquake principles as it applies […] Read More

In seismic analysis of structures, Equivalent Static Analysis and Response Spectrum Analysis are two methods that analyze the elastic behavior of a structure, in other words, the behavior of the structure without considering any yields (plastic hinges). But how do they differ? Equivalent Static Analysis is the simplest most straightforward analysis, which will either suffice for simpler structures or you need to do anyway to […] Read More

In this post we will discuss various aspects when designing and analyzing Reinforced Concrete (RC) moment frames and behavior of structural members. Read More

In this post we will look at seismic strengthening methods of concrete buildings. Read More