Experimental Study of Hysteretic Steel Damper for Energy Dissipation Capacity

This study aims to evaluate energy absorption capacity of hysteretic steel damper for earthquake protection of structures.These types of steel dampers are fabricated from mild steel plate with different geometrical shapes on the side part, namely, straight, concave, and convex shapes. The performance of the proposed device was verified experimentally by a series of tests under increasing inplane cyclic load. The overall test results indicated that the proposed steel dampers have similar hysteretic curves, but the specimen with convex-shaped side not only showed stable hysteretic behavior but also showed excellent energy dissipation capabilities and ductility factor. Furthermore, the load-deformation relation of these steel dampers can be decomposed into three parts, namely, skeleton curve, Bauschinger part, and elastic unloading part. The skeleton curve is commonly used to obtain the main parameters, which describe the behavior of steel damper, namely, yield strength, elastic stiffness, and postyield stiffness ratio. Moreover, the effective stiffness, effective damping ratio, cumulative plastic strain energy, and cumulative ductility factor were also derived from the results. Finally, an approximation trilinear hysteretic model was developed based on skeleton curve obtained from experimental results

Technical and Non-Technical Factors of Risk Identification for Sustainable Coastal Development in Malaysia

¾ In recent years, human casualties and economic losses caused by natural disasters in Malaysia have been increasing, with infrastructure development is becoming concentrated in disaster-prone areas. Urbanized coastal cities are also growing in number and size with high-rise buildings widely built along the shorelines. Every community is at risk from natural hazards, which creates an urgent need for public policies and strategic plans to manage the inevitable risks. Thus, this study aims to explore the technical and non-technical factors of disaster risks pertaining infrastructure development for sustainability along the coastal areas of Malaysia. It is also intended to find the common aspects of these technical and non-technical factors that can be built as an integral part of disaster risk management. Specifically, this study presents evidence using a quantitative analysis for classifying and ranking technical and non-technical factors of disaster risks from an open-ended feedback on a given hypothetical case study pertaining infrastructure development along coastal areas. The results reflect that the technical factors of disaster risks include engineering measures and construction of hazard-resistant and protective infrastructures, while the non-technical-factors include policies, awareness and the provision of information. Determining the risk factors that enable communities and policy makers make well-informed decisions for long-term sustainable development represents national and local priorities with a strong institutional basis for implementation

Establishment an empirical relationship equation of magnitude conversion specific for Malaysia

This paper presents the results of the establishment an empirical relationship equation of magnitude conversion specific for Malaysia. The data for this study is taken from the earthquake catalogue and that is from Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS), National Earthquake Information Centre (NEIC)-U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) and Malaysian Meteorological Service (MMS) within the latitude of 9 North and-3 South, and longitude of 122 East and 95 West from 1 January 1900 until 31 December 2006. There are two empirical relationship equation will be developed for Malaysia through regression method and there are empirical relationship equation of surface wave magnitude, M s constructed with records that have both surface wave magnitude, M s and body wave magnitude, m b and empirical relationship equation of moment magnitude, M w constructed with records that have both moment magnitude, M w and surface wave magnitude, M

THE EFFECT OF BEHAVIOUR FACTOR ON THE SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF LOW-RISE AND HIGH-RISE RC BUILDINGS

This study investigates the performance of RC buildings designed according to Eurocode 8. Two families of RC buildings (i.e., 3 storey and 18 storey) are investigated using nonlinear static or push over analysis (POA). Each family of the buildings consists of five generic RC models with different behaviour factor namely 1, 1.5, 2, 4 and 6. The effect of behaviour factor to the buildings response characteristic parameters, i.e., elastic and inelastic stiffness, base shear strength at yield and maximum strength level and top displacement ductility are discussed thoroughly in this study. It is found that, the behaviour factor has a significant effect on the performance of RC buildings. Furthermore, this study also propose the relationship between displacement ductility and behaviour factor for high-rise and low-rise RC buildings and this equation which has high correlation factor can be used by designer or engineer to estimate the ductility capacity of low rise and high rise RC buildings based on their designed behaviour factor

Study on earthquake characteristics and method of assembling repeated earthquakes on the 2D seismic design RC frames

Current paper presents two-dimensional reinforced concrete frames subjected to real repeated earthquakes. The frames are designed with seismic loading according to European codes. In this study, 14 sets of real repeated earthquakes with two different earthquake characteristics, namely source to site and near-field earth-quakes with forward directivity are employed to study the frames response. Nonlinear static and nonlinear dynamic analyses are considered in order to measure engineering demand parameters (EDPs). The outcome of this study discovered that the method of assembling repeated earthquakes apparently influenced the outcomes of EDPs. The dissimilar characteristics of earthquakes, mainly source to site repeated earthquakes induced higher outcome for repeated earthquakes. On the other hand, near-field earth-quakes with forward directivity indicate scattered pattern behavior where single and repeated earthquake events provide the same outcomes. Thus, earthquake characteristics and assembling repeated earthquakes influence the structure responses and should be carefully addressed in the analysis for accurate understanding of structures behaviors

Evaluation Of Wind Turbine Potentiality At Windy Sites In Malaysia.

Wind speed data in Malaysia has been Used, which was recorded hourly from years 1995 t 2002 at three meteorological stations, Mersing, Cameron Highland (Peninsular Malaysia) and Pulau Labuan ( Sabah state). The wind speed distribution and wind power were evaluated to provide spatial mean information of wind energy potential

Application of TOPSIS method in prioritization of highway bridges for seismic retrofitting

The process of bridges seismic retrofitting in the highway network is extremely costly and time consuming. In addition, the constraint on resources prevents the retrofitting of all the bridges at the same time. Besides, the bridges must be prioritized with simultaneous consideration of multiple criteria, including technical and socioeconomic aspect. This study intends to identify the major criteria and consider them simultaneously for prioritization of highway bridges additionally provides an effective technique for weighing these criteria. In this research, TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution) method as a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) model is applied. TOPSIS method enables decision makers to deal with problems involving a large number of alternatives (bridges) and criteria. This methodology reduces multiple alternative (bridge) performances into a single value (ranking score) to facilitate the decision-making process for determination of the most suitable bridges for retrofitting. Suggested criteria include structural vulnerability, seismic hazard, anticipated service life, average daily traffic, interface with other lifelines, alternative routes and bridge importance. Moreover, relative importance (weight) of the criteria is assigned using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. The proposed method is applied to a real case of the Isfahan highway network

Exploring the Issues of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Application in Disaster Risk Management: A Case Study of 2014 Major Flood Event in Kelantan

Recent study has estimated that 60% of the Malaysian population reside near or along the coastline for their socio-economic. As the threats of natural disaster have grown in terms of intensity and frequency over the years due to climate change, the coastal population of Malaysia are at a higher risk of being affected in so many ways. To successfully mitigate inevitable disaster risks, information and communication systems play significant roles in increasing community preparedness, assisting response and recovery processes and building up capacity for prevention efforts. Athough there has been an established information and communication system designed before to tackle the issues along with standard operating procedures, unfortunately the issues still persist. This paper aims to explore the underlying issues of information and communication technology (ICT) application in disaster risk management based on a real life scenario from the major flood event which hit Kelantan, Malaysia in 2014. Specifically, this study presents evidences using a qualitative analysis for indentifying and classifying ICT application issues related to disaster risk management, prior, during and post disasterhit via a focus group discussion consisting of key stakeholders from the construction industry. The findings show that communication system failure, loss of data and weak coordination inter- and intraagencies are amongst the dominant issues identified by the focus group. It is expected that the insights from this study would constitute formation of a more holistic and effective policies and guidelines to foster ICT applications in disaster risk reduction

Post Windstorm Evaluation of Critical Aspects Causing Damage to Rural Houses in the Northern Region of Peninsular Malaysia

Rural houses are susceptible to roof blown off and severe damage during a windstorm event due to the lack of engineering considerations. The aim of this paper is to conduct a post windstorm evaluation on the damaged rural houses located in the northern region of Peninsula Malaysia. Several activities were involved during the post windstorm survey including site visualization, site measurement and interview. Critical aspects including types of damages, types of houses, gap height, overhang length, roof geometry, roof pitch, roof cladding and terrain category were analysed using a simple bar chart. It is anticipated that the presence of kitchen house influences the overall stability of the rural houses due to the formation of gap height