This paper presents the time response of a mixed vibration system with the viscous damping and the hysteretic damping. There are two ways to derive the time response of such a vibration system. One is an analytical method, using the contour integral of complex functions to compute the inverse Fourier transforms. The other is an approximate method in which the analytic functions derived by Hilbert transform are expressed in the state space representation, and only the effective eigenvalues are used to efficiently compute the transient response. The unit impulse responses of the two methods are compared and the change in the damping properties which depend on the viscous and hysteretic damping values is investigated. The results showed that the damping properties of a mixed damping vibration system do not present themselves as a linear combination of damping properties.

This paper presents and compares three feedback control strategies for active control of noise inside a 3-D vibro-acoustic cavity. These are a) control strategy based on direct output feedback (DOFB) b) control strategy based on linear quadratic regulator (LQR) to reduce structural vibrations and c) LQR control strategy with a weighting scheme based on structural-acoustic coupling coefficients. The first two strategies are indirect control strategies in which noise reduction is achieved through active vibration control (AVC), termed as AVC-DOFB and AVC-LQR respectively. The third direct strategy is based on active structural-acoustic control (ASAC). This strategy is an LQR based optimal control strategy in which the coupling between the various structural and the acoustic modes is used to design the controller. The strategy is termed as ASAC-LQR. A numerical model of a 3-D rectangular box cavity with a flexible plate (glued with piezoelectric patches) and with other five surfaces treated rigid is developed using finite element (FE) method. A single pair of collocated piezoelectric patches is used for sensing the vibrations and applying control forces on the structure. A comparison of frequency response function (FRF) of structural nodal acceleration, acoustic nodal pressure, and piezoelectric actuation voltage is carried out. It is found that the AVC-DOFB control strategy gives equal importance to all the modes. The AVC-LQR control strategy tries to consume the control effort to damp all the structural modes. It is seen that the ASAC-LQR control strategy utilizes the control effort more intelligently by adding higher damping to those structural modes that matter more for reducing the interior noise.

This paper presents the design and the application of a new self-powered hybrid electromagnetic damper that can harvest energy while mitigating the vibration of a structure. The damper is able to switch between an energy harvesting passive mode and a semi-active mode depending on the amount of energy harvested and stored in the battery. The energy harvested in the passive mode resulting from the suppression of vibration is employed to power up the monitoring and electronic components necessary for the semi-active control. This provides a hybrid control capability that is autonomous in terms of its power requirement. The proposed hybrid circuit design provides two possible options for the semi-active control: without energy harvesting and with energy harvesting. The device mechanism and the circuitry that can drive this self-powered electromagnetic damper are described in this paper. The parameters that determine the device feasible force-velocity region are identified and discussed. The effectiveness of this hybrid damper is evaluated through a numerical simulation study on vibration mitigation of a bridge stay cable under wind excitation. It is demonstrated that the proposed hybrid design outperforms the passive case without external power supply. It is also shown that a broader force range, facilitated by decoupled passive and semi-active modes, can improve the vibration performance of the cable.

Structural control through seismic isolation using elastomeric rubber bearing, which is also known as High Damping Rubber Bearing (HDRB), has seen an increase in use to provide protective from earthquake, especially for new buildings in earthquake zones. Besides, HDRB has also been used in structural rehabilitation of older yet significant buildings, such as museums and palaces. However, the present design approach applied in normal practice has often resulted in dissimilar HDRB dimension requirement between structural designers and bearing manufacturers mainly due to ineffective communication. Therefore, in order to ease the design process, most HDRB manufacturers have come up with catalogs that list all necessary and relevant product lines specifically for structural engineers to choose from. In fact, these catalogs contain physical dimension, compression property, shear characteristic, and most importantly, the total rubber thickness. Nonetheless, other complicated issues, such as the relationship between target isolation period and displacement demand (which determines the total rubber thickness), are omitted due to cul-de-sac fixing of these values in the catalogs. As such, this paper presents a formula, which is derived and extended from the present design approach, in order to offer a simple guideline for engineers to estimate the required HDRB size. This improved design formula successfully minimizes the discrepancies stumbled upon among structural designers, builders, and rubber bearing manufacturers in terms of variation order issue at the designing stage because manufacturer of isolator is always the last to be appointed in most projects.

The characteristics of boundary layers have significant effects on the aerodynamic forces and vibration of the wind turbine blade. The incorporation of active trailing edge flaps (ATEF) into wind turbine blades has been proven as an effective control approach for alleviation of load and vibration. This paper is aimed at investigating the effects of external trailing edge flaps on the flow pattern and velocity distribution within a boundary layer of a NREL 5MW reference wind turbine, as well as designing a new type of velocity sensors for future validation measurements. An aeroelastic-aerodynamic simulation with FAST-AeroDyn code was conducted on the entire wind turbine structure and the modifications were made on turbine blade sections with ATEF. The results of aeroelastic-aerodynamic simulations were combined with the results of two-dimensional computational fluid dynamic simulations. From these, the velocity profile of the boundary layer as well as the thickness variation with time under the influence of a simplified load case was calculated for four different blade-flap combinations (without flap, with $-5^{\circ}$, $0^{\circ}$, and $+5^{\circ}$ flap). In conjunction with the computational modeling of the characteristics of boundary layers, a bio-inspired hair flow sensor was designed for sensing the boundary flow field surrounding the turbine blades, which ultimately aims to provide real time data to design the control scheme of the flap structure. The sensor element design and performance were analyzed using both theoretical model and finite element method. A prototype sensor element with desired bio-mimicry responses was fabricated and validated, which will be further refined for integration with the turbine blade structures.

In this paper, the dispersion characteristics of elastic waves propagation in sandwich nano-beams with functionally graded (FG) face-sheets reinforced with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is investigated based on various high order shear deformation beam theories (HOSDBTs) as well as nonlocal strain gradient theory (NSGT). In order to align CNTs as symmetric and asymmetric in top and bottom face-sheets with respect to neutral geometric axis of the sandwich nano-beam, various patterns are employed in this analysis. The sandwich nano-beam resting on Pasternak foundation is subjected to thermal, magnetic and electrical fields. In order to involve small scale parameter in governing equations, the NSGT is employed for this analysis. The governing equations of motion are derived using Hamilton's principle based on various HSDBTs. Then the governing equations are solved using analytical method. A detailed parametric study is conducted to study the effects of length scale parameter, different HSDBTs, the nonlocal parameter, various aligning of CNTs in thickness direction of face-sheets, different volume fraction of CNTs, foundation stiffness, applied voltage, magnetic intensity field and temperature change on the wave propagation characteristics of sandwich nano-beam. Also cut-off frequency and phase velocity are investigated in detail. According to results obtained, UU and VA patterns have the same cut-off frequency value but AV pattern has the lower value with respect to them.

An experimental study is presented of the application of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) interrogation method based on optical time-domain reflectometery (OTDR) to monitoring strain in bent reinforced concrete beams. The results obtained with the OTDR-based method are shown to agree well with the direct spectral measurements. Strain sensitivity, resolution and measurement range amounted to $0.0028dB/{\mu}strain$; $30{\mu}strain$; $4000{\mu}strain$, correspondingly. Significant differences are observed in surface and inner deformations of the test beams which can be attributed to different mechanical properties of concrete and steel reinforcement. The prospects of using OTDR-based FBG interrogation technique in real-life applications are discussed.

To peruse the free vibration of curved functionally graded piezoelectric (FGP) nanosize beam in thermal environment, nonlocal elasticity theory is applied for modeling the nano scale effect. The governing equations are obtained via the energy method. Analytically Navier solution is employed to solve the governing equations for simply supported boundary conditions. Solving these equations enables us to estimate the natural frequency for curved FGP nanobeam under the effect of a uniform temperature change and external electric voltage. The results determined are verified by comparing the results by available ones in literature. The effects of various parameters such as nonlocality, uniform temperature changes, external electric voltage, gradient index, opening angle and aspect ratio of curved FGP nanobeam on the natural frequency are successfully discussed. The results revealed that the natural frequency of curved FGP nanobeam is significantly influenced by these effects.

In this work, the effects of moisture and temperature on free vibration characteristics of functionally graded (FG) nanobeams resting on elastic foundation is studied by proposing a novel simple trigonometric shear deformation theory. The main advantage of this theory is that, in addition to including the shear deformation influence, the displacement field is modeled with only 2 unknowns as the case of the classical beam theory (CBT) and which is even less than the Timoshenko beam theory (TBT). Three types of environmental condition namely uniform, linear, and sinusoidal hygrothermal loading are studied. Material properties of FG beams are assumed to vary according to a power law distribution of the volume fraction of the constituents. Equations of motion are derived from Hamilton's principle. Numerical examples are presented to show the validity and accuracy of present shear deformation theories. The effects of hygro-thermal environments, power law index, nonlocality and elastic foundation on the free vibration responses of FG beams under hygro-thermal effect are investigated.

The recent advancements in sensing technologies allow us to record measurements from target structures at multiple locations and with relatively high spatial resolution. Such measurements can be used to develop data-driven methodologies for condition assessment, control, and health monitoring of target structures. One of the state-of-the-art technologies, Fiber Optic Strain Sensors (FOSS), is developed at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, and is based on Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors. These strain sensors are accurate, lightweight, and can provide almost continuous strain-field measurements along the length of the fiber. The strain measurements can then be used for real-time shape-sensing and operational load-estimation of complex structural systems. While several works have demonstrated the successful implementation of FOSS on large-scale real-life aerospace structures (i.e., airplane wings), there is paucity of studies in the literature that have investigated the potential of extending the application of FOSS into civil structures (e.g., tall buildings, bridges, etc.). This work assesses the feasibility of using FOSS to predict operational loads (e.g., wind loads) on chain-like structures. A thorough investigation is performed using analytical, computational, and experimental models of a 4-story steel building test specimen, developed at the University of Southern California. This study provides guidelines on the implementation of the FOSS technology on building-like structures, addresses the associated technical challenges, and suggests potential modifications to a load-estimation algorithm, to achieve a robust methodology for predicting operational loads using strain-field measurements.