Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) is an electroactive polymer (EAP) and a promising candidate actuator for various potential applications mainly due to its flexible, low voltage/power requirements, small and compact design, and lack of moving parts. Although widely used in industry, this material requires accurate numerical models and knowledge of optimal control methods. This paper presents State-Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE) approach as one of rapidly emerging methodologies for designing nonlinear controllers. Additionally, the present paper describes a novel method of Multi HGO Observer design. In the proposed design, the calculated position of the IPMC strip accurately tracks the target position, which is illustrated by the experiments. Numerical results and comparison with experimental data are presented and the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy is verified in experiments.

The long-term effect of ambient temperature on bridge strain is an important and challenging problem. To investigate this issue, one year data of strain and ambient temperature of a long-span cable-stayed bridge is studied in this paper. The measured strain-time history is decomposed into two parts to obtain the strains due to vehicle load and temperature alone. A linear regression model between the temperature and the strain due to temperature is established. It is shown that for every $1^{\circ}C$ increase in temperature, the stress is increased by 0.148 MPa. Furthmore, the extreme value distributions of the strains due to vehicle load, temperature and the combination effect of them during the remaining service period are estimated by the average conditional exceedance rate approach. This approach avoids the problem of declustering of data to ensure independence. The estimated results demonstrate that the 95% quantile of the extreme strain distribution due to temperature is up to $1.488{\times}10^{-4}$ which is 2.38 times larger than that due to vehicle load. The study also indicates that the estimated extreme strain can reflect the long-term effect of temperature on bridge strain state, which has reference significance for the reliability estimation and safety assessment.

Variable Curvature Friction Pendulum (VCFP) bearing is one of the alternatives to control excessive induced responses of isolated structures subjected to near-fault ground motions. The curvature of sliding surface in this isolator is varying with displacement and its function is non-spherical. Selecting the most appropriate function for the sliding surface depends on the design objectives and ground motion characteristics. To date, few polynomial functions have been experimentally tested for VCFP however it needs comprehensive parametric study to find out which one provides the most effective behavior. Herein, seismic performance of the isolated structure mounted on VCFP is investigated with two different polynomial functions of the sliding surface (Order 4 and 6). By variation of the constants in these functions through changing design parameters, 120 cases of isolators are evaluated and the most proper function is explored to minimize floor acceleration and/or isolator displacement under different hazard levels. Beside representing the desire sliding surface with adaptive behavior, it was shown that the polynomial function with order 6 has least possible floor acceleration under seven near-field ground motions in different levels.

Recently, compressive sensing based data loss recovery techniques have become popular for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications. These techniques involve an encoding process which is onerous to sensor node because of random sensing matrices used in compressive sensing. In this paper, we are presenting a model where the sampled raw acceleration data is directly transmitted to base station/receiver without performing any type of encoding at transmitter. The received incomplete acceleration data after data losses can be reconstructed faithfully using compressive sensing based reconstruction techniques. An in-depth simulated analysis is presented on how random losses and continuous losses affects the reconstruction of acceleration signals (obtained from a real bridge). Along with performance analysis for different simulated data losses (from 10 to 50%), advantages of performing interleaving before transmission are also presented.

Structural health monitoring has drawn great attention in the field of civil engineering in past two decades. These structural health monitoring methods evaluate structural integrity through high-quality sensor measurements of structures. Due to electronic deterioration or aging problems, sensors may yield biased signals. Therefore, the objective of this study is to develop a fault detection method that identifies malfunctioning sensors in a sensor network. This method exploits the autoregressive modeling technique to generate a bank of Kalman estimators, and the faulty sensors are then recognized by comparing the measurements with these estimated signals. Three types of faults are considered in this study including the additive, multiplicative, and slowly drifting faults. To assess the effectiveness of detecting faulty sensors, a numerical example is provided, while an experimental investigation with faults added artificially is studied. As a result, the proposed method is capable of determining the faulty occurrences and types.

Reinforced concrete shear wall is one of the most common structural forms for high-rise buildings, and seismic energy dissipation techniques, which are effective means to control structural vibration response, are being increasingly used in engineering. Reinforced concrete-mild steel damper stiffness-tandem energy dissipation coupling beams are a new technology being gradually adopted by more construction projects since being proposed. Research on this technology is somewhat deficient, and this paper investigates design principles and methods for two types of mild steel dampers commonly used for energy dissipation coupling beams. Based on the conception design of R.C. shear wall structure and mechanics principle, the basic design theories and analytic expressions for the related optimization parameters of dampers at elastic stage, yield stage, and limit state are derived. The outcomes provide technical support and reference for application and promotion of reinforced concrete-mild steel damper stiffness-tandem energy dissipation coupling beam in engineering practice.

One of the most reliable and simplest tools for structural vibration control in civil engineering is Tuned Mass Damper, TMD. Provided that the frequency and damping parameters of these dampers are tuned appropriately, they can reduce the vibrations of the structure through their generated inertia forces, as they vibrate continuously. To achieve the optimal parameters of TMD, many different methods have been provided so far. In old approaches, some formulas have been offered based on simplifying models and their applied loadings while novel procedures need to model structures completely in order to obtain TMD parameters. In this paper, with regard to the nonlinear decision-making of fuzzy systems and their enough ability to cope with different unreliability, a method is proposed. Furthermore, by taking advantage of both old and new methods a fuzzy system is designed to be operational and reduce uncertainties related to models and applied loads. To design fuzzy system, it is required to gain data on structures and optimum parameters of TMDs corresponding to these structures. This information is obtained through modeling MDOF systems with various numbers of stories subjected to far and near field earthquakes. The design of the fuzzy systems is performed by three methods: look-up table, the data space grid-partitioning, and clustering. After that, rule weights of Mamdani fuzzy system using the look-up table are optimized through genetic algorithm and rule weights of Sugeno fuzzy system designed based on grid-partitioning methods and clustering data are optimized through ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System). By comparing these methods, it is observed that the fuzzy system technique based on data clustering has an efficient function to predict the optimal parameters of TMDs. In this method, average of errors in estimating frequency and damping ratio is close to zero. Also, standard deviation of frequency errors and damping ratio errors decrease by 78% and 4.1% respectively in comparison with the look-up table method. While, this reductions compared to the grid partitioning method are 2.2% and 1.8% respectively. In this research, TMD parameters are estimated for a 15-degree of freedom structure based on designed fuzzy system and are compared to parameters obtained from the genetic algorithm and empirical relations. The progress up to 1.9% and 2% under far-field earthquakes and 0.4% and 2.2% under near-field earthquakes is obtained in decreasing respectively roof maximum displacement and its RMS ratio through fuzzy system method compared to those obtained by empirical relations.

Effectively monitoring the concrete cracks is an urgent question to be solved in the structural safety monitoring while cracks in hydraulic concrete structures are ubiquitous. In this paper, two experiments are designed based on the measuring principle of Pulse-Pre pump Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis (PPP-BOTDA) utilizing Brillouin optical fiber sensor to monitor concrete cracks. More specifically, "V" shaped optical fiber sensor is proposed to determine the position of the initial crack and the experiment illustrates that the concrete crack position can be located by the mutation position of optical fiber strain. Further, Brillouin distributed optical fiber sensor and preinstall cracks are set at different angles and loads until the optical fiber is fractured. Through the monitoring data, it can be concluded that the variation law of optical fiber strain can basically reflect the propagation trend of the cracks in hydraulic concrete structures.

The aim of this research is to develop a new method to use magnetorheological (MR) damper for vibration control. It is a new way to achieve the MR damper response without the need to have detailed constant parameters estimations. The methodology adopted in designing the control structure in this work is based on the experimental results. In order to investigate and understand the behaviour of an MR damper, an experiment is first conducted. Force-displacement and force-velocity responses with varying current have been established to model the MR damper. The force for upward and downward motions of the damper piston is found to be increasing with current and velocity. In cyclic motion, which is the combination of upward and downward motions of the piston, the force with hysteresis behaviour is seen to be increasing with current. In addition, the energy dissipated is also found to be linear with current. A proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller, based on the established characteristics for a quarter car suspension model, has been adapted in this study. A fuzzy rule based PID controller (F-PID) is opted to achieve better response for a varying frequency input. The outcome of this study can be used in the modelling of MR damper and applied to control engineering. Moreover, the identified behaviour can help in further development of the MR damper technology.

In cognitive science, it is illustrated how the collective opinions of a group of individuals answers to questions involving quantity estimation. One example of this approach is introduced in this article as Star Graph (SG) algorithm. This graph describes the details of communication among individuals to share their information and make a new decision. A new labyrinthine network of neighbors is defined in the decision-making process of the algorithm. In order to prevent getting trapped in local optima, the neighboring networks are regenerated in each iteration of the algorithm. In this algorithm, the normal distribution is utilized for a group of agents with the best results (guidance group) to replace the existing infeasible solutions. Here, some new functions are introduced to provide a high convergence for the method. These functions not only increase the local and global search capabilities but also require less computational effort. Various benchmark functions and engineering problems are examined and the results are compared with those of some other algorithms to show the capability and performance of the presented method.