In this manuscript, the small scale and thermal effects on vibration behavior of preloaded nanobeams with non-ideal boundary conditions are investigated. The boundary conditions are assumed to allow small deflections and moments and the concept of non-ideal boundary conditions is applied to the nonlocal beam problem. Governing equations are derived through Hamilton's principle and then are solved applying Lindstedt-Poincare technique to derive fundamental natural frequencies. The good agreement between the results of this research and those available in literature validated the presented approach. The influence of various parameters including nonlocal parameter, thermal effect, perturbation parameter, aspect ratio and pre-stress load on free vibration behavior of the nanobeams are discussed in details.

The present study aims at proposing an analytical method for semi-active structural control by using block pulse functions. The performance of the resulting controlled system and the requirements of the control devices are highly dependent on the control algorithm employed. In control problems, it is important to devise an accurate analytical method with less computational expenses. Block pulse functions (BPFs) set proved to be the most fundamental and it enjoyed immense popularity in different applications in the area of numerical analysis in systems science and control. This work focused on the application of BPFs in the control algorithm concerning decrease the computational expenses. Variable orifice dampers (VODs) are one of the common semi-active devices that can be used to control the response of civil Structures during seismic loads. To prove the efficiency of the proposed method, numerical simulations for a 10-story shear building frame equipped with VODs are presented. The controlled response of the frame was compared with results obtained by controlling the frame by the classical clipped-optimal control method based on linear quadratic regulator theory. The simulation results of this investigation indicated the proposed method had an acceptable accuracy with minor computational expenses and it can be advantageous in reducing seismic responses.

Forced vibration analysis of a simple supported viscoelastic nanobeam is studied based on modified couple stress theory (MCST). The nanobeam is excited by a transverse triangular force impulse modulated by a harmonic motion. The elastic medium is considered as Winkler-Pasternak elastic foundation.The damping effect is considered by using the Kelvin-Voigt viscoelastic model. The inclusion of an additional material parameter enables the new beam model to capture the size effect. The new non-classical beam model reduces to the classical beam model when the length scale parameter is set to zero. The considered problem is investigated within the Timoshenko beam theory by using finite element method. The effects of the transverse shear deformation and rotary inertia are included according to the Timoshenko beam theory. The obtained system of differential equations is reduced to a linear algebraic equation system and solved in the time domain by using Newmark average acceleration method. Numerical results are presented to investigate the influences the material length scale parameter, the parameter of the elastic medium and aspect ratio on the dynamic response of the nanobeam. Also, the difference between the classical beam theory (CBT) and modified couple stress theory is investigated for forced vibration responses of nanobeams.

This study presents a new method to computes analytical fragility curves of a structure subject to tsunami waves. The method uses dynamic analysis at each stage of the computation. First, the smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model simulates the propagation of the tsunami waves from shallow water to their impact on the target structure. The advantage of SPH over mesh based methods is its capability to model wave surface interaction when large deformations are involved, such as the impact of water on a structure. Although SPH is computationally more expensive than mesh based method, nowadays the advent of parallel computing on general purpose graphic processing unit overcome this limitation. Then, the impact force is applied to a finite element model of the structure and its dynamic non-linear response is computed. When a data-set of tsunami waves is used analytical fragility curves can be computed. This study proves it is possible to obtain the response of a structure to a tsunami wave using state of the art dynamic models in every stage of the computation at an affordable cost.

Real-time substructuring techniques are currently an advanced experimental method for testing large size specimens in the laboratory. In dynamic substructuring, the whole tested system is split into two linked parts, the part of particular interest or nonlinearity, which is tested physically, and the remanding part which is tested numerically. To achieve near-perfect synchronization of the interface response between the physical specimen and the numerical model, a good controller is needed to compensate for transfer system dynamics, nonlinearities, uncertainties and time-varying parameters within the physical substructures. This paper presents the substructuring approach and control performance of the linear and the adaptive controllers for testing the dynamic characteristics of soil-structure-interaction system (SSI). This is difficult to emulate as an entire system in the laboratory because of the size and power supply limitations of the experimental facilities. A modified linear substructuring controller (MLSC) is proposed to replace the linear substructuring controller (LSC).The MLSC doesn't require the accurate mathematical model of the physical structure that is required by the LSC. The effects of parameter identification errors of physical structure and the shaking table on the control performance of the MLSC are analysed. An adaptive controller was designed to compensate for the errors from the simplification of the physical model in the MLSC, and from parameter identification errors. Comparative simulation and experimental tests were then performed to evaluate the performance of the MLSC and the adaptive controller.

This paper describes an application of wavelet analysis for damage detection of a steel frame structure with bolted connections. The wavelet coefficients of the acceleration response for the healthy and loosened connection structure were calculated at each measurement point. The difference of the wavelet coefficients of the response of the healthy and loosened connection structure is selected as an indicator of the damage. At each node of structure the norm of the difference of the wavelet coefficients matrix is then calculated. The point for which the norm has the higher value is a candidate for location of the damage. The above procedure was experimentally verified on a laboratory-scale 2-meter-long steel frame. The structure consists of 11 steel beams forming a four-bay frame, which is subjected to impact loads using a modal hammer. The accelerations are measured at 20 different locations on the frame, including joints and beam elements. Two states of the structure are considered: healthy and damaged one. The damage is introduced by means of loosening two out of three bolts at one of the frame connections. Calculating the norm of the difference of the wavelet coefficients matrix at each node the higher value was found to be at the same location where the bolts were loosened. The presented experiment showed the effectiveness of the wavelet approach to damage detection of frame structures assembled using bolted connections.

When strain sensing cables are under long-term stress and cyclic loading, creep may occur in the jacket material and each layer of the cable structure may slide relative to other layers, causing fatigue in the cables. This study proposes a device for testing the fatigue characteristics of three types of cables operating under different conditions to establish a decay model for observing the patterns of strain decay. The fatigue characteristics of cables encased in polyurethane (PU), GFRP-reinforced, and wire rope-reinforced jackets were compared. The findings are outlined as follows. The cable strain decayed exponentially, and the decay process involved quick decay, slow decay, and stabilization stages. Moreover, the strain decay increased with the initial strain and tensile frequency. The shorter the unstrained period was, the more similar the initial strain levels of the strain decay curves were to the stabilized strain levels of the first cyclic elongation. As the unstrained period increased, the initial strain levels of the strain decay curves approached those of the first cyclic elongation. The tested sensing cables differed in the amount and rate of strain decay. The wire rope-reinforced cable exhibited the smallest amount and rate of decay, whereas the GFRP-reinforced cable demonstrated the largest.

In this research, a slotted patch antenna sensor is designed for wireless strain and crack sensing. An off-the-shelf RFID (radiofrequency identification) chip is adopted in the antenna sensor design for signal modulation. The operation power of the RFID chip is captured from wireless reader interrogation signal, so the sensor operation is completely battery-free (passive) and wireless. For strain and crack sensing of a structure, the antenna sensor is bonded on the structure surface like a regular strain gage. Since the antenna resonance frequency is directly related with antenna dimension, which deforms when strain occurs on the structural surface, the deformation/strain can be correlated with antenna resonance frequency shift measured by an RFID reader. The slotted patch antenna sensor performance is first evaluated through mechanics-electromagnetics coupled simulation. Extensive experiments are then conducted to validate the antenna sensor performance, including tensile and compressive strain sensing, wireless interrogation range, and fatigue crack sensing.

Cracks in plate-like structures are some of the main reasons for destruction of the entire structure. In this study, a novel two-stage methodology is proposed for damage detection of flexural plates using an optimized artificial neural network. In the first stage, location of damages in plates is investigated using curvature-moment and curvature-moment derivative concepts. After detecting the damaged areas, the equations for damage severity detection are solved via Bat Algorithm (BA). In the second stage, in order to efficiently reduce the computational cost of model updating during the optimization process of damage severity detection, multiple damage location assurance criterion index based on the frequency change vector of structures are evaluated using properly trained cascade feed-forward neural network (CFNN) as a surrogate model. In order to achieve the most generalized neural network as a surrogate model, its structure is optimized using binary version of BA. To validate this proposed solution method, two examples are presented. The results indicate that after determining the damage location based on curvature-moment derivative concept, the proposed solution method for damage severity detection leads to significant reduction of computational time compared with direct finite element method. Furthermore, integrating BA with the efficient approximation mechanism of finite element model, maintains the acceptable accuracy of damage severity detection.

In this paper, Simple Adaptive Control (SAC) is used to enhance the seismic response of nonlinear tall buildings based on acceleration feedback. Semi-active MR dampers are employed as control actuator due to their reliability and well-known dynamic models. Acceleration feedback is used because of availability, cost-efficiency and reliable measurements of acceleration sensors. However, using acceleration feedback in the control loop causes the structure not to apparently meet some requirements of the SAC algorithm. In addition to defining an appropriate SAC reference model and using inherently stable MR dampers, a modification in the original structure of the SAC is proposed in order to improve its adaptability to the situation in which the plant does not satisfy the algorithm's stability requirements. To investigate the performance of the developed control system, a numerical study is conducted on the benchmark 20-story nonlinear building and the responses of the SAC-controlled structure are compared to an $H_2/LQG$ clipped-optimal controller under the effect of different seismic excitations. As indicated by the results, SAC controller effectively reduces the story drifts and hence the seismically-induced damage throughout the structural members despite its simplicity, independence of structural parameters and while using fewer number of dampers in contrast with the $H_2/LQG$ clipped-optimal controller.