Vibration-based structural damage detection through optimization algorithms and minimization of objective function has recently become an interesting research topic. Application of various objective functions as well as optimization algorithms may affect damage diagnosis quality. This paper proposes a new damage identification method using Moth-Flame Optimization (MFO). MFO is a nature-inspired algorithm based on moth's ability to navigate in dark. Objective function consists of a term with modal assurance criterion flexibility and natural frequency. To show the performance of the said method, two numerical examples including truss and shear frame have been studied. Furthermore, Los Alamos National Laboratory test structure was used for validation purposes. Finite element model for both experimental and numerical examples was created by MATLAB software to extract modal properties of the structure. Mode shapes and natural frequencies were contaminated with noise in above mentioned numerical examples. In the meantime, one of the classical optimization algorithms called particle swarm optimization was compared with MFO. In short, results obtained from numerical and experimental examples showed that the presented method is efficient in damage identification.

Buckling analysis of shape memory alloy (SMA) rectangular plates subjected to uniform and linearly distributed inplane loads is the main objective in the present paper. Brinson's model is developed to express the constitutive characteristics of SMA plate. Using the classical plate theory and variational approach, stability equations are derived. In addition to external inplane mechanical loads, the plate is subjected to the pre-stresses caused by the recovery stresses that are generated during martensitic phase transformation. Ritz method is used for solving the governing stability equations. Finally, the effects of conditions on the edges, thickness, aspect ratio, temperature and pre-strains on the critical buckling loads of SMA plate are investigated in details.

This paper examines the applicability of artificial neural network (ANN) and multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) to predict the compressive strength of bacteria incorporated geopolymer concrete (GPC). The mix is composed of new bacterial strain, manufactured sand, ground granulated blast furnace slag, silica fume, metakaolin and fly ash. The concentration of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) is maintained at 8 Molar, sodium silicate ($Na_2SiO_3$) to NaOH weight ratio is 2.33 and the alkaline liquid to binder ratio of 0.35 and ambient curing temperature ($28^{\circ}C$) is maintained for all the mixtures. In ANN, back-propagation training technique was employed for updating the weights of each layer based on the error in the network output. Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm was used for feed-forward back-propagation. MARS model was developed by establishing a relationship between a set of predictors and dependent variables. MARS is based on a divide and conquers strategy partitioning the training data sets into separate regions; each gets its own regression line. Six models based on ANN and MARS were developed to predict the compressive strength of bacteria incorporated GPC for 1, 3, 7, 28, 56 and 90 days. About 70% of the total 84 data sets obtained from experiments were used for development of the models and remaining 30% data was utilized for testing. From the study, it is observed that the predicted values from the models are found to be in good agreement with the corresponding experimental values and the developed models are robust and reliable.

The present study aims to analyze the magneto-electro-elastic (MEE) vibration of a functionally graded carbon nanotubes reinforced composites (FG-CNTRC) cylindrical shell. Electro-magnetic loads are applied to the structure and it is located on an elastic foundation which is simulated by visco-Pasternak type. The properties of the nano-composite shell are assumed to be varied by temperature changes. The third-order shear deformation shells theory is used to describe the displacement components and Hamilton's principle is employed to derive the motion differential equations. To obtain the results, Navier's method is used as an analytical solution for simply supported boundary condition and the effect of different parameters such as temperature variations, orientation angle, volume fraction of CNTs, different types of elastic foundation and other prominent parameters on the natural frequencies of the structure are considered and discussed in details. Design more functional structures subjected to multi-physical fields is of applications of this study results.

While fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) materials have been largely used in the retrofitting of concrete buildings, its application has been limited because of some problems such as de-bonding of FRP layers from the concrete surface. This paper is the part of a wide experimental and analytical investigation about flexural retrofitting of reinforced concrete (RC) columns using FRP and mechanical fasteners (MF). A new generation of MF is proposed, which is applicable for retrofitting of RC columns. Furthermore, generally, to evaluate a retrofitted structure the nonlinear static and dynamic analyses are the most accurate methods to estimate the performance of a structure. In the nonlinear analysis of a structure, accurate modeling of structural elements is necessary for estimation the reasonable results. So for nonlinear analysis of a structure, modeling parameters for beams, columns, and beam-column joints are essential. According to the concentrated hinge method, which is one of the most popular nonlinear modeling methods, structural members shall be modeled using concentrated or distributed plastic hinge models using modeling parameters. The nonlinear models of members should be capable of representing the inelastic response of the component. On the other hand, in performance based design to make a decision about a structure or design a new one, numerical acceptance should be determined. Modeling parameters and numerical acceptance criteria are different for buildings of different types and for different performance levels. In this paper, a new method was proposed for FRP retrofitted columns to avoid FRP debonding. For this purpose, mechanical fasteners were used to achieve the composite behavior of FRP and concrete columns. The experimental results showed that the use of the new method proposed in this paper increased the flexural strength and lateral load capacity of the columns significantly, and a good composition of FRP and RC column was achieved. Moreover, the modeling parameters and acceptance criteria were presented, which were derived from the experimental study in order to use in nonlinear analysis and performance-based design approach.

Considering stress singularities at point support locations, buckling solutions for plates with arbitrary number of point supports are hard to obtain. Thus, new Hp-Cloud shape functions with Kronecker delta property (HPCK) were developed in the present paper to examine elastic buckling of point-supported thin plates in various shapes. Having the Kronecker delta property, this specific Hp-Cloud shape functions were constructed through selecting particular quantities for influence radii of nodal points as well as proposing appropriate enrichment functions. Since the given quantities for influence radii of nodal points could bring about poor quality of interpolation for plates with sharp corners, the radii were increased and the method of Lagrange multiplier was used for the purpose of applying boundary conditions. To demonstrate the capability of the new Hp-Cloud shape functions in the domain of analyzing plates in different geometry shapes, various test cases were correspondingly investigated and the obtained findings were compared with those available in the related literature. Such results concerning these new Hp-Cloud shape functions revealed a significant consistency with those reported by other researchers.

Track-bridge interaction (TBI) problem often arises from the adoption of modern continuously welded rails. Rail expansion devices (REDs) are generally required to release the intensive interaction between long-span bridges and tracks. In their necessity evaluations, the key techniques are the numerical models and methods for obtaining TBI responses. This paper thus aims to propose a preferable model and the associated procedure for TBI analysis to facilitate the designs of long-span bridges as well as the track structures. A novel friction-spring model was first developed to represent the longitudinal resistance features of fasteners with or without vertical wheel loadings, based on resistance experiments for three types of rail fasteners. This model was then utilized in the loading-history-based TBI analysis for an urban rail transit dwarf tower cable-stayed bridge installed with a RED at the middle. The finite element model of the long-span bridge for TBI analysis was established and updated by the bridge's measured natural frequencies. The additional rail stresses calculated from the TBI model under train loadings were compared with the measured ones. Overall agreements were observed between the measured and the computed results, showing that the proposed TBI model and analysis procedure can be used in further study.

This paper investigates the static and dynamic behaviors of imperfect single walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) modeled as a beam structure by using energy-equivalent model (EEM), for the first time. Based on EEM Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio for zigzag (n, 0), and armchair (n, n) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are presented as functions of orientation and force constants. Nonlinear Euler-Bernoulli assumptions are proposed considering mid-plane stretching to exhibit a large deformation and a small strain. To simulate the interaction of CNTs with the surrounding elastic medium, nonlinear elastic foundation with cubic nonlinearity and shearing layer are employed. The equation governed the motion of curved CNTs is a nonlinear integropartial-differential equation. It is derived in terms of only the lateral displacement. The nonlinear integro-differential equation that governs the buckling of CNT is numerically solved using the differential integral quadrature method (DIQM) and Newton's method. The linear vibration problem around the static configurations is discretized using DIQM and then is solved as a linear eigenvalue problem. Numerical results are depicted to illustrate the influence of chirality angle and imperfection amplitude on static response, buckling load and dynamic behaviors of armchair and zigzag CNTs. Both, clamped-clamped (C-C) and simply supported (SS-SS) boundary conditions are examined. This model is helpful especially in mechanical design of NEMS manufactured from CNTs.

Steel-concrete composition is widely used in the construction due to efficient utilization of materials. The service load behavior of composite structures is significantly affected by cracking, creep and shrinkage effects in concrete. In order to control these effects in concrete slab, an efficient and novel strategy has been proposed by use of fiber reinforced concrete near interior supports of a continuous beam. Numerical study is carried out for the control of cracking, creep and shrinkage effects in composite beams subjected to service load. A five span continuous composite beam has been analyzed for different lengths of fiber reinforced concrete near the interior supports. For this purpose, the hybrid analytical-numerical procedure, developed by the authors, for service load analysis of composite structures has been further improved and generalized to make it applicable for composite beams having spans with different material properties along the length. It is shown that by providing fiber reinforced concrete even in small length near the supports; there can be a significant reduction in cracking as well as in deflections. It is also observed that the benefits achieved by providing fiber reinforced concrete over entire span are not significantly more as compared to the use of fiber reinforced concrete in certain length of beam near the interior supports in continuous composite beams.

Most of the existing evaluation criteria of vibration serviceability rely on the peak acceleration of the structure rather than that of the people keeping their own body unmoved on the structure who is the real receiver of structural vibrations. In order to accurately assess the vibration serviceability, therefore, a full path assessment approach of vibration serviceability based on vibration source, path and receiver is not only tentatively proposed in this paper, taking the peak acceleration of receiver into account, but also introduce a probability procedure to provide more instructive information instead of a single value. In fact, semi-rigid supported on both sides of the structure is more consistent with the actual situation than simply supported or clamped due to the application of the prefabricated footbridge structures. So, the footbridge is regarded as a beam with semi-rigid supported on both sides in this paper. The differential quadrature-integral quadrature coupled method is not only to handle different type of boundary conditions, but also after being further modified via the introduction of an approximation procedure in this work, the time-varying system problem caused by human-structure interaction can be solved well. The analytical results of numerical simulations demonstrate that the modified differential quadrature-integral quadrature coupled method has higher reliability and accuracy compared with the mode superposition method. What's more, both of the two different passive control measures, the tuned mass damper and semi-rigid supported, have good performance for reducing vibrations. Most importantly, semi-rigid supported is easier to achieve the objective of reducing vibration compared with tuned mass damper in design stage of structure.

Earthquakes most often induce damage to structures, resulting in the degradation or deterioration of integrity. In this paper, based on the experimental study on 5 RC frames with different span length and different layout of buckling-restrained braces, the seismic damage evaluation law of RC frame with buckling-restrained braces was analyzed, and then the seismic damage for different specimens was calculated using different damage models to study the damage evolution. By analyzing and comparing the observation in test and the calculated results, it could be found that, damage evolution models including Gosain model, Hwang model as well as Ou model could better simulate the development of damage during cyclic loading. Therefore, these 3 models were utilized to analyze the development of damage to better demonstrate the evolution law for structures with different layout of braces and under different axial compression ratios. The results showed that from all layouts of braces studied, the eccentrically braced frame behaved better under larger deformation with the damage growing slowly. It could be deduced that the link beam benefited the seismic performance of structure and alleviated the damage by absorbing high values of energy.