TransFrameNet: A transformer-based approach for generalized seismic performance prediction of building structures

Many engineers in the world have tried to conduct research to overcome building structures that have been destroyed by sudden powerful earthquakes. One popular method is the base isolation system. This system has proven effective and is an alternative to overcome strong earthquake forces. This method is very suitable to be applied in Indonesia, because Indonesia is classified as an earthquake-prone country. This study analyzes building structures that use base isolators to reduce earthquake forces and compares them with conventional building structures. The earthquake force that enters the building structure can cause multidimensional movements that contribute to horizontal displacement in the x-direction, y-direction and rotational directions, which cause damage to the building structure. The results of the analysis prove that structures that use base isolators can reduce displacement responses (drift stories), it can be seen that the relative displacement between levels after using base isolators becomes smaller compared to fixed base structures. The story shear force can also be reduced, thereby preventing structural damage and casualties

Sharing of Temporary Structures: Formalization and Planning Application

This article is devoted to the study of the legal nature and essence of such an object of civil rights as a temporary structure for entrepreneurial activity (hereinafter referred to as the Temporary Structure). The issue of the legal nature of the temporary structure and its legal regime is relevant in today’s conditions, since the current legislation does not clearly define its legal status, including as an object of civil rights, which in turn creates legal uncertainty in the field of regulation of legal relations on the use of temporary structures. Therefore, special attention is paid to the clarification of the essence of the concept of Temporary Construction as an object of real legal relations through the prism of the current legislation on the basis of practical activity and scientific validity. The article analyzes the norms of the Civil Code of Ukraine, the Law of Ukraine «On Regulation of Urban Planning Activities», the Procedure for the Placement of Temporary Structures for Entrepreneurial Activity, which determine the concept and features of Temporary Structures, the procedure for their placement in cases determined by the current legislation of Ukraine, as well as the features and limits of the exercise of property rights in relation to the latter. Special attention was paid to the characteristic features of the Temporary Structure and the attribution of the latter to the relevant category of things in civil law. The author focuses on the importance of establishing the legal status of the Temporary Structure as an object of property rights. During the study, it was found that the Temporary Structure belongs to the category of things in civil law and acts as a specific object of law of both private and joint ownership. Based on the analysis of the norms of the current legislation, sources of scientific legal literature, and judicial practice, conclusions were made that allow us to consider that the Temporary Structure is a movable thing and a specific object of property rights. The specificity of this object lies in the fact that it has the characteristics of an object of ownership, but the latter does not have a clearly defined title owner. It was also concluded that the legal regime of the Temporary Structure today requires careful attention from the legislator, and therefore the only tool for improving the latter is a clear consolidation at the legislative level of the legal status of the Temporary Structure and the determination of its title owner, which will make it possible to unconditionally consider the Temporary Structure as an object of property rights and provide an effective mechanism for protecting the rights of their owners, as participants in civil legal relations.

Optimal control of high-rise building structures against earthquake excitations using independent stories as TMD

Cellular operators often design their cellular infra- structures for outdoor coverage not paying much attention to in-building coverage as part of the necessary grade of service, they must meet. One of the reasons is that operators tend to act when customer complaints rise, leading to customer migration to other operators, with a consequence of threatening annual profit returns. Another reason is the lack of quality research in signal degradation through different building structures and their utilization in modeling. We propose a new comprehensive standard for in-building penetration loss for most building structure classes in Palestine and vast areas in the Middle East. The model incorporates penetration loss of twelve types of different external wall classes and two types of internal walls that represent over 90 % of building structures in the country. The twelve types are different and widespread stone and concrete building structures.

Corrosion is one of the most important causes of failures of reinforced concrete building structures, reduces their service lifetime, reliability and increases the economic complexity of subsequent reconstructions and renovations of buildings. This paper is devoted to the investigation of aggressive environmental influences on building structures. The research is closely linked to long-term measured data of the Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute (SHMI), which are used to calculate corrosion losses per year and therefore the impact of corrosion on carbon steel in building structures. The calculation of the corrosion rate is carried out using the Dorse-response function, which takes into account aggressive environmental influences such as: SO2, the effects of temperature changes, humidity changes and other undesirable effects of the environment on the building structure. From the calculated values of the function, corrosion maps were created using the GPS coordinate system, where the corrosion rate of carbon steel per year for a given location is clearly indicated. Finally, the paper is addicted to verifying the reliability of building structures for various parts of the Slovak Republic using corrosion maps for the years 2017-2022. This highlights the importance of the research and its practical application.

The integration of photovoltaic modules into the building structure is a challenging task with respect to power generation of PV module and the effect of incident solar radiation. The performance of building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) modules varies depending upon the orientation and azimuth angle of the building. In this work, the year-round performance and economic feasibility analysis of grid-connected building-integrated photovoltaic (GBIPV) modules is reported for the hot and humid climatic regional condition at Kovilpatti (9°10′0′′N, 77°52′0′′E), Tamil Nadu, India. The appropriate mounting structures are provided, to experimentally simulate the performance of GBIPV modules at various orientations and inclination angles (0° to 90°). The result indicated that the optimum orientation for installation of BIPV modules in the façade and walls is found to be east while that for a pitched roof south orientation is recommended. The overall average annual performance ratio, capacity utilisation factor, array capture loss and system losses are found to be 0.83, 23%, 0.07 (h/day), and 0.17 (h/day), respectively. In addition, the economic feasibility of grid connected PV system for residential buildings in Tamil Nadu, India is analysed using HOMER by incorporating both a net metering process and electricity tariff. Practical application: Grid-connected building-integrated photovoltaic system has many benefits and barriers by being installed and integrated into the building structure. The application of GBIPV in building structures and its orientation of installation needs to be optimised before installing into buildings. This study will assist architects and wider community to design buildings facades and roofs with GBIPV system which are more aesthetic and account for noise protection and thermal insulation in the region of equatorial climate zones. By adding as shading devices, they can reduce the need for artificial lighting, and moderate heating or cooling load of the buildings.

The ever-increasing requirements in the field of energy efficiency of buildings imply the necessity of using an ever-increasing amount of insulation in building structures. However, together with the requirements of the new EPBD directive EU/2024/1275, it is also necessary to monitor the carbon footprint of individual materials incorporated into the building structure. The aim of the research work is to substitute primary raw materials used for the production of vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) with secondary cellulose fibers produced by recycling newsprint. Five recipes were proposed to verify the substitution effect for individual key raw materials of core insulation for VIPs. Key (primarily thermal insulation) properties were determined on laboratory-produced samples, and it was found that the proposed hybrid core insulations with secondary cellulose fibers from recycled newsprint exhibit very favorable properties and could be used for the production of VIPs used in building structures.

Vibrational process excited in foundation soils by the operation of industrial equipment and transport traffic causes dynamic vibrations of building structures located in proximity to industrial enterprises and transport communications, which leads to additional dynamic force in building structures and violations of sanitary and hygienic norms when operating premises designed, inter alia, for working personnel and passenger services. This causes the reduction of operational characteristics of structures such as cracking and local destructions. A computational model «the source of dynamic load (equipment of industrial buildings, moving automotive and railroad transport) — medium of load transfer (soil) — building structure (receiver of impacts)» to assess such impacts has been proposed. When formating computational schemes, a simplifying assumption on the discretization of the computational scheme based on the Dalembert principle has been taken into account. Solution of the motion equations must be sought in the decomposition by appropriate vibration forms. Some simplifications of the computational model to obtain numeric engineering observable results have been substantiated. The simplified methodology to solve the problem of vibrations of bearing and enclosing structures of buildings and facilities impacted by vibrations spread in foundation soils under operating industrial equipment wheeled and railroad transport has been theoretically substantiated. The suggested methodology is based on the division of the structural scheme into separate core structures, dynamic support deviation calculation of which is to be performed sequentially. The calculation of building structures for vibrations caused by dynamic impacts of transport traffic and equipment operation can be used as a theoretical basis for the design and construction of buildings and facilities in order to ensure their safe operation.

When modelling the railway induced vibration in a building, three main aspects of the problem have to be considered: the vibration generation at the moving vehicle-track interaction points, the vibration propagation in the underlying infinite soil, and the vibration reception inside the building. This study proposes a computational modelling approach for predicting the full vibration propagation path from the train vehicles up to the building structure. The method includes a moving train model that is directly coupled to a stationary building structure, with interaction between them through the underlying soil using a single step solution procedure. A semi-analytical model is utilized to model the soil to which rigid objects and structures modelled by finite elements (FE) are coupled. The system is excited by a multi-body vehicle model passing over an irregular track. The proposed modelling approach uses the frequency-domain solution with some parts, such as the railway track, formulated in the moving frame of reference (FOR) and other parts, such as building structures, formulated in a fixed FOR. The coupling terms between the two FORs are found by utilizing an analytical formulation of receptance between the two FORs. It is shown that due to the coupling between the fixed and moving FORs, the previously uncoupled discrete frequencies become coupled through the other FOR as a result of the Doppler effect and wave scattering. Two solution procedures of the full system are pro-posed: partial coupling, where some secondary effects from reflected waves propagating through soil are disregarded, and full coupling, where the vehicle, track, soil and structure are modelled as a fully coupled system. Both proposed solution procedures offer a single-step approach for solving the whole system in the frequency-spatial domain. The application of the model is demonstrated and validated in two example cases: one analyzing a simple building structure near a railway track, using the partial coupling solution procedure, and another analyzing the behaviour of a vehicle model passing over a rigid block embedded inside the soil, using the full coupling solution procedure.

Structural robustness is vital to prevent disproportionate damage in a progressive collapse of a structure. Current assessment methods in building structures, such as the notional removal of structural members, are unable to capture cascading effects from debris impact loading and chained hazard scenarios. Vehicular impact with penetration into the building volume is an example of a plausible chained hazard scenario. In this study, the adequacy of notional damage methods was assessed for vehicular impact loading on building structures and a comprehensive framework was developed to address key limitations in conventional design methods against vehicular impact. The conventional approaches have relied on prescriptive forces and simplified models and have over-looked important phenomena, such as variable vehicle stiffness and energy dissipation mechanisms. The use of the vehicular impact framework has been exemplified using a model for progressive collapse to assess the consequences of successive time-delayed column loss on the structural response from the penetration of a lorry. The time-delay of successive column loss from vehicular impact was determined by considering the kinetic energy and energy dissipation mechanisms. Higher initial velocities lead to higher post-impact velocities after the initial impact on a column and to a reduction in time between successive failures, thus heightening the likelihood of cascading failures in structural columns and progressive collapse. Progressive collapse simulations revealed that a building structure may have sufficient robustness to prevent progressive collapse when subjected to the loss of single columns. However, successive column losses triggered an extensive progressive collapse.

The exact information of seismic excitation and structural state is a prerequisite for structural seismic safety assessment and vibration control. When the seismic excitation to a structure is not measured, the seismic excitation can be identified as an inversed problem from measured structural responses. Although some relevant approaches have been developed, there are certain limitations or drawbacks in the existing approaches. To circumvent these problems, two generalized algorithms are proposed for the identification of seismic ground excitation to multi-story and tall buildings, respectively. When the seismic ground excitation to a structure is not measured, the data measured by a structural health monitoring system are structural absolute responses. So the structural motion equation in the absolute coordinate system is derived, in which the unknown seismic ground excitation is treated as unknown external force acting on the structure. First, the identification of unknown seismic excitations to multi-story building structures is studied. A generalized Kalman filtering under unknown input is proposed for the identification of structural state and unknown seismic excitation without the observation of structural absolute acceleration responses at the location of unknown external force. The derivation of the proposed generalized Kalman filtering under unknown input is based on the classical Kalman filter, but is more general than the existing identification approaches based on Kalman filter with unknown input in the deployments of accelerometers in the building structure. Then, it is extended to explore the identification of unknown seismic excitations to tall building structures. To avoid substructural identification from the top to bottom in a sequential manner, the motion equation in absolute coordinate system is reduced by modal expansion. Moreover, instead of the identification of unknown modal forces in previous approaches, the seismic excitation is directly identified without increasing the number of unknown forces. To demonstrate the proposed algorithms, numerical examples of identifying seismic excitations to a 6-story shear building and an 18-story tall building are investigated.

The scientific study of the harmful effects of indoor fires on building structures and on the environment is a top issue today. Indoor fires frequently occur all over the world. The goal of our research is to examine the effects of an average room fire on the survival possibility of a trapped person and on the building structure, taking into account features of the Eastern European architecture. First, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was performed to examine the change of temperature, oxygen, and carbon monoxide concentration in a selected room in a vacant building used for military training. Based on the results, a 1:1 scale fire experiment was carried out with the parameters used in the simulation. The experiment was repeated once with the same settings. It was observed that without the intervention of firefighters, the temperature in the experiment could have rapidly reached 400 °C, as suggested by the simulation, which could have caused structural damage to the building. Furthermore, after 3 min the carbon monoxide concentration reached 400 ppm in both experiments and the simulation, which is a harmful level to people trapped inside the room. Also, in the experiment there was sufficient oxygen at the ground level with what people can survive 3 min.

Introduction . The present article considers a research into the spatial structures of buildings with load-bearing precast reinforced concrete elements manufactured using the technology of flexible mould processing (FMP). Aim . To develop the fundamentals of the regulatory framework for the design of buildings with FMP elements. Materials and methods . Computational and theoretical studies of design concepts for domed and vaulted buildings using precast FMP elements are carried out. Data on the stress-strain state of various-size building structures under various loading conditions are obtained. Results . The results of computational and theoretical studies are analyzed to develop recommendations for the design and reinforcement of elements and units. Proposals for standardizing the parameters of building structural elements are developed for inclusion in regulatory documentation. Proposals are made to introduce a new section on the spatial building structures made of precast FMP elements into SP 387.1325800.2018. Conclusions . The developed recommendations are aimed at increasing the efficiency of spatial design concepts for building structures.

The simplification of three‐dimensional (3D) building models to improve rendering efficiency has gained widespread attention. To maintain the model's overall appearance features while increasing the simplification rate, we propose a novel 3D building simplification method that considers both the model mesh and building structure. The method divides a 3D building into a primary structure and subsidiary structures. It then organizes these structures using StructureTree, a multi‐way tree. The structures are organized according to the dependency relationships between building structures. When simplifying a building, the decision whether to simplify the mesh or remove the subsidiary structure in the leaf node of the StructureTree depends on the volume change caused by the edge collapse and the visual saliency of the removed structure. The experimental results show that our method exhibits a better simplification effect than the traditional simplification method, and the proposed method can achieve a high simplification rate while maintaining the simplification quality. Furthermore, the results of some spatial analyses based on the highly simplified building model are consistent with those of the original model.