• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.385-401
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• 2022

Uncertainty quantification is the most important challenge in seismic fragility assessment of structures. The precision increment of the quantification method leads to reliable results but at the same time increases the computational costs and the latter will be so undesirable in cases such as reliability-based design optimization which includes numerous probabilistic seismic analyses. Accordingly, the authors' effort has been put on the development and validation of an approach that has reduced computational cost in seismic fragility assessment. In this regard, it is necessary to apply the appropriate methods for consideration of two categories of uncertainties consisting of uncertainties related to the ground motions and structural characteristics, separately. Also, cable-stayed bridges have been specifically selected because as a result of their complexity and the according time-consuming seismic analyses, reducing the computations corresponding to their fragility analyses is worthy of studying. To achieve this, the fragility assessment of three case studies is performed based on existing and proposed approaches, and a comparative study on the efficiency in the estimation of seismic responses. For this purpose, statistical validation is conducted on the seismic demand and fragility resulting from the mentioned approaches, and through a comprehensive interpretation, sufficient arguments for the acceptable errors of the proposed approach are presented. Finally, this study concludes that the combination of the Capacity Spectrum Method (CSM) and Uniform Design Sampling (UDS) in advanced proposed forms can provide adequate accuracy in seismic fragility estimation at a significantly reduced computational cost.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.6 s.52
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• pp.1-8
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• 2006

This paper describes the procedures developing the algorithm for analyzing signals acquired from the Bridge Weigh-in-Motion (BWIM) system installed in Seohae Bridge as a part of the bridge monitoring system. Through the analysis procedure, information about heavy traffics such as weight, speed, and number of axles are attempted to be extracted from time domain strain data of the BWIM system. One of numerous pattern recognition techniques, artificial neural network (ANN) is employed since it can effectively include dynamic effects, bridge-vehicle interaction, etc. A number of vehicle running experiments with sufficient load cases are executed to acquire training and/or test set of ANN. Extracted traffic information can be utilized for developing quantitative database of loading effect. Also, it can contribute to estimate fatigue lift or current health condition, and design truck can be revised based on the database reflecting recent trend of traffic.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.527-544
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• 2018

The paper presents the study on a change in modal parameters and structural stiffness of cable-stayed Fiberline Bridge made entirely of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) composite used for 20 years in the fjord area of Kolding, Denmark. Due to this specific location the bridge structure was subjected to natural aging in harsh environmental conditions. The flexural properties of the pultruded GFRP profiles acquired from the analyzed footbridge in 1997 and 2012 were determined through three-point bending tests. It was found that the Young's modulus increased by approximately 9%. Moreover, the influence of the temperature on the storage and loss modulus of GFRP material acquired from the Fiberline Bridge was studied by the dynamic mechanical analysis. The good thermal stability in potential real temperatures was found. The natural vibration frequencies and mode shapes of the bridge for its original state were evaluated through the application of the Finite Element (FE) method. The initial FE model was created using the real geometrical and material data obtained from both the design data and flexural test results performed in 1997 for the intact composite GFRP material. Full scale experimental investigations of the free-decay response under human jumping for the experimental state were carried out applying accelerometers. Seven natural frequencies, corresponding mode shapes and damping ratios were identified. The numerical and experimental results were compared. Based on the difference in the fundamental natural frequency it was again confirmed that the structural stiffness of the bridge increased by about 9% after 20 years of service life. Data collected from this study were used to validate the assumed FE model. It can be concluded that the updated FE model accurately reproduces the dynamic behavior of the bridge and can be used as a proper baseline model for the long-term monitoring to evaluate the overall structural response under service loads. The obtained results provided a relevant data for the structural health monitoring of all-GFRP bridge.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.58-66
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• 2023

In this study, cable tension was measured using the vibration method, and a vision-based system was applied as a sensor to measure the displacement response of a cable in a non-contact method. In the vision-based system, the camera is installed in a location that considers the target structure and the field of view of the camera. However, it can be difficult to recognize the control points required to measure the displacement response of a structure as the target structure and other structures such as vehicles may be included in the image at the intended installation location. In this study, a distorted image including a vehicle shows inaccurate results in image analysis due to the installation position of the vision-based system. Accordingly, the image including the vehicle was eliminated by calculating the similarity between the two images. To verify the validity of the method of estimating the cable tension of cable-stayed bridges using the proposed method, the vibration method was applied to cable-stayed bridges in service to measure the tension.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.643-651
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• 2014

In this paper the reliability analyses of the cable-supported bridge design code which is recently issued in Korea are performed and the results are presented. Governing load combinations for the member design and the statistical properties of the main members are introduced and the analysis is performed using an example cable-stayed bridge for which the design is performed following the load and resistance factors defined in the design code. The reliability analysis shows the target reliability index can be achieved by applying load and resistance factors and the application of the resistance modification factor can enhance the reliability level if the importance of the bridge needs to be increased. The sensitivity analysis reveals that decreasing uncertainty of the cable strength is critical for obtaining the target reliability index. The study results show that the design using the load and resistance factors of the code can achieve the target reliability indexes for the design of cable supported bridge.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.70 no.2
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• pp.169-178
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• 2019

The replacement of damaged components is an important task for long-span bridges. Conventional strategy for component replacement is to close the bridge to traffic, so that the influence of the surrounding environment is reduced to a minimum extent. However, complete traffic interruption would bring substantial economic losses and negative social influence nowadays. This paper investigates traffic control technologies without interruption for component replacement of long-span bridges. A numerical procedure of traffic control technologies is proposed incorporating traffic microsimulation and site-specific data, which is then implemented through a case study of cable replacement of a long-span cable-stayed bridge. Results indicate traffic load effects on the bridge are lower than the design values under current low daily traffic volume, and therefore cable replacement could be conducted without traffic control. However, considering a possible medium or high level of daily traffic volume, traffic load effects of girder bending moment and cable force nearest to the replaced cable become larger than the design level. This indicates a potential risk of failure, and traffic control should be implemented. Parametric studies show that speed control does not decrease but increase the load effects, and flow control using lane closure is not effectual. However, weight control and gap control are very effective to mitigate traffic load effects, and it is recommended to employ a weight control with gross vehicle weight no more than 65 t or/and a gap control with minimum vehicle gap no less than 40 m for the cable replacement of the case bridge.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.583-605
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• 2012

This paper presents a spatial catenary cable element for the nonlinear analysis of cable-supported structures. An incremental-iterative solution based on the Newton-Raphson method is adopted for solving the equilibrium equation. As a result, the element stiffness matrix and nodal forces are determined, wherein the effect of self-weight and pretension are taken into account. In the case of the initial cable tension is given, an algorithm for form-finding of cable-supported structures is proposed to determine precisely the unstressed length of the cables. Several classical numerical examples are solved and compared with the other available numerical methods or experiment tests showing the accuracy and efficiency of the present elements.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.6 s.46
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• pp.75-90
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• 2005

This paper proposes semi-active fuzzy control technique of magneto-rheological dampers for seismic response control of cable-stayed bridges. Through the fuzzy inference process, the proposed technique performs the semi-active control with the responses of MR dampers only. Moreover, differently from the conventional semi-active control technique, this technique does not require additional active controller for the primary controller, which provides a simple design process. in order to validate the control performance of the proposed technique, the semi-active fuzzy control technique is applied to the benchmark control problem of cable-stayed bridge and its control performance is compared with those of conventional semi-active control techniques. The comparative results show that the proposed fuzzy control technique can be an effective control strategy by efficiently and simultaneously reducing the mutual conflicting responses such as the shear forces and moments at the base of the lowers, longitudinal displacement of the deck, and tensions in the stay cables.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.947-954
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• 2016

A simplified analysis method is first proposed in order to determine an optimized initial shape of cable-stayed bridges including all unstrained element lengths without using complicated nonlinear FE analysis. The unstrained-length based FE method is then presented using the unstrained lengths by the simplified analysis. To demonstrate validity and accuracy of the proposed method, Incheon bridge model having the fabrication camber is constructed and initial shaping analysis is performed using the presented method and commercial finite element analysis program, MIDAS. Resultantly it is shown that the initial solutions by the proposed algorithm are well optimized and in good agreement with those by MIDAS except for axial displacements of the main member.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.177-184
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• 2011

In this paper the nonlinear analysis that include time-dependent characteristics of materials and geometric nonlinearity of elements for the cable-stayed PSC bridges is presented. Analysis models for finite element method were developed based on the flexibility based fiber beam-column model originally proposed by Spacone et al.(1996). The developed analysis model implemented in general purpose object-oriented finite element analysis program named HFC(Cho 2009). The performance of proposed analysis models is evaluated by comparing with the former results of the design data. The deflection of time dependent analysis is larger than time ignored analysis on construction sequences, and the bridge is destructed at a smaller deflection than the time ignored analysis on failure behavior.