Abstract

Crack segmentation plays a crucial role in ensuring the structural integrity and seismic safety of civil structures. However, existing crack segmentation algorithms encounter challenges in maintaining accuracy with domain shifts across datasets. To address this issue, we propose a novel deep network that employs incremental training with unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) using adversarial learning, without a significant drop in accuracy in the source domain. Our approach leverages an encoder-decoder architecture, consisting of both domain-invariant and domain-specific parameters. The encoder learns shared crack features across all domains, ensuring robustness to domain variations. Simultaneously, the decoder's domain-specific parameters capture domain-specific features unique to each domain. By combining these components, our model achieves improved crack segmentation performance. Furthermore, we introduce BuildCrack, a new crack dataset comparable to sub-datasets of the well-established CrackSeg9K dataset in terms of image count and crack percentage. We evaluate our proposed approach against state-of-the-art UDA methods using different sub-datasets of CrackSeg9K and our custom dataset. Our experimental results demonstrate a significant improvement in crack segmentation accuracy and generalization across target domains compared to other UDA methods - specifically, an improvement of 0.65 and 2.7 mIoU on source and target domains respectively. Code, models, and dataset will be made available.

Abstract

Damage caused by an earthquake depends on not just the intensity of an earthquake but also the region-specific construction practices. Past earthquakes in Asian countries have highlighted inadequate construction practices, which caused huge life and property losses, indicating the severe need to strengthen existing structures. Strengthening activities shall be proposed as per the proposed weighting factors, first at the higher weighted members to increase the capacity of the building immediately and thereafter, the other members. Through this study on gravity load-designed (GLD) buildings, relative weights are assigned to each storey and exterior and interior columns within a storey based on their contribution to the energy dissipation capacity of the building. The numerical study is conducted on mid-rise archetype GLD buildings, i.e., 4, 6, 8, and 10 stories with variable storey heights, in the high seismic zones. Non-linear static analysis is performed to compute weights based on energy dissipation capacities. The results obtained are verified with the non-linear time history analysis of 4 GLD buildings. It was observed that exterior columns have higher weightage in the energy dissipation capacity of the building than interior columns up to a certain building height. The damage in stories is distributed in a convex to concave parabolic shape from bottom to top as building height increases, and the maxima location of the parabola shifts from bottom to middle stories. Relative weighting factors are assigned as per the damage contribution. And the sequence for strengthening activities is proposed as per the computed weighting factors in descending order for regular RCC buildings. Therefore, proposals made in the study would increase the efficacy of strengthening activities.

Abstract

The collapse of buildings due to an earthquake is the leading cause of higher life loss and economic loss. it is not possible to prevent earthquake from occurring,but it disastrous effects can be minimized considerably through measure of scientific methods and understanding

Abstract

In the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) framework, model updating procedure is an iterative or cyclical process which gives numerical model of structure having modal behaviour close to the dynamic behaviour of real structure. Normally for structures with or without any expansion joints typical model updating procedure is used. But the typical procedure may not be applicable for long uniform buildings having expansion joints since the individual blocks in structure connected with expansion joints tend to vibrate in coherence. This behaviour is confirmed by observing the identicalness of modal frequencies of individual blocks in long uniform buildings. This phenomenon was observed in three selected long uniform buildings. When structures connected with expansion joints vibrate in coherence or when the modal frequency of the connected structures are identical, the numerical models of these structures cannot be updated using typical procedure for the following reasons: (1) Modal parameters from Modal identification of structure doesn’t represent the actual parameters of the individual block since the ambient vibration is not independent and is influenced by interaction between blocks. (2) Modal analysis of analytical model of individual structural blocks gives dynamic parameters which are true to the model. And these two sets of parameters can’t be compared for convergence in model updating procedure. Therefore, to update a numerical model of long uniform buildings with expansion joints having the coherence phenomenon among its individual blocks, a different is needed. Hence, a new approach is proposed where instead of using modal parameters from analytical analysis, the parameters obtained for the structure from modelled floor responses to weak earthquake using Frequency Domain Decomposition (FDD) algorithm are used for checking convergence in model updating procedure. To demonstrate the proposed procedure, two long uniform buildings in which the coherence phenomenon was observed were updated by applying the proposed procedure and results are discussed. Here for the selected buildings, only modal frequencies were used for checking convergence, since mode shapes obtained were not reliable as floor vibration data of intermediate floors were not available.

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based remote sensing system incorporated with computer vision has demonstrated potential for assisting building construction and in disaster management like damage assessment during earthquakes. The vulnerability of a building to earthquake can be assessed through inspection that takes into account the expected damage progression of the associated component and the component’s contribution to structural system performance. Most of these inspections are done manually, leading to high utilization of manpower, time, and cost. This paper proposes a methodology to automate these inspections through UAV-based image data collection and a software library for post-processing that helps in estimating the seismic structural parameters. The key parameters considered here are the distances between adjacent buildings, building plan-shape, building

Abstract

Afghanistan is situated close to the area where the Indian, Arabian, and Eurasian tectonic plates converge. The consequent seismic hazard causes the region to be repeatedly struck by major earthquakes. However, there is a lack of seismic instrumentation in the region, and only limited historical ground motions are available thus presenting a challenge for structural designers. Due to the absence of information and a database of ground motions, buildings in the region are often built without guidance from seismic codes. Consequently, the earthquakes in the region continue to cause enormous destruction to the built environment of the region. On 22 June 2022, the southeastern region of the country was struck by a major Mw 6.2 earthquake having a maximum modified Mercalli intensity of IX. In this study, synthetic

Abstract

A numerical study is done to determine the seismic performance of G+1 industrial RC building after retrofitting beams and columns. Deterioration of building has occurred due to excess chemical spillage over structural elements. Distressed beams and columns were retrofitted using jacketing techniques. The building is located in Indian Seismic Zone IV, so there is a need to understand the global seismic behaviour of the building after retrofitting. Nonlinear static pushover analysis is carried out to and the results indicate a decrease in the storey shear values. Keywords: Compressive Strength, Seismic Retrofitting, Push-over Analysis, Base Shear, Displacement, Jacketing

Abstract

The present study describes the interdependency between earthquake ground motion parameters and seismic damage to various buildings. A novel ranking procedure between energy, damage and seismic risk has been proposed for buildings subjected to ground motions. Correlation analysis was done between damage to buildings, energy and total energy to confirm the trend of parameters and their influence on total energy ranking. It was found that high peak ground acceleration (PGA) or high energy alone may not lead to extensive damage to the buildings. However, they were affected by the predominant frequency, duration of ground motion and amplitude. A correlation study was performed using over 300 ground motions datasets. It was found that the seismic damage of low-rise buildings had a moderate correlation with root mean square acceleration, characteristic intensity, sustained maximum acceleration and effective design acceleration. Also, a weak correlation was observed between seismic damage of high-rise, tall buildings and (V/H)PGA, Arms. The damage and seismic risk rankings may help change Government policies for retrofitting buildings.

Abstract

Many tall buildings are being constructed in different Indian cities to cater to the demand generated by the large number of people migrating from rural areas to urban centres. The safety of such tall buildings is ensured by designing them for dynamic loads, viz. wind and earthquake. To withstand these loads, computation of the natural period becomes essential. The current Indian seismic code IS 1893 (2016) has outlined a few empirical expressions based on different structural systems to compute the natural period. These expressions have been developed using data obtained from experiments performed on low to midrise buildings. Thus, verifying their applicability for tall structures before using them is important. To achieve this, in the present study ambient vibration testing was done on 28 reinforced concrete (RC) tall buildings in the Indian cities of Hyderabad and Mumbai, whose heights ranged from 50 to 150 m. These tests’ natural periods were compared with existing Indian and international codes. Based on the comparison, a novel empirical expression of RC tall buildings is proposed here.

Abstract

In the present study, a refined procedure for the seismic evaluation and retrofitting of reinforced concrete (RC) buildings based on the ‘quadrants assessment method’ and ‘material strain limit approach’ is proposed and numerically analysed. The quadrants assessment method involves the performance point, design base shear and threshold damage limit state. Herein, four existing RC buildings (models 1–4) are considered from the Koyna– Warna region, Maharashtra (zone-IV, India). These four buildings were studied using nonlinear static adaptive pushover analysis employing the SeismoStruct software. Based on the quadrants assessment method, the three-storey RC building (model-1) was retrofitted with RC jacketing, while the other three RC buildings did not need to be retrofitted. Also, significant seismic design parameters like ductility, over strength factor, response reduction factor, etc. were evaluated before and after retrofitting. The results depict that the combination of the ‘quadrants assessment method’ and ‘material strain limit approach’ is a rapid, reliable and refined procedure for seismic evaluation and retrofitting of RC buildings.