• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제75권6호
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• pp.747-769
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• 2020

This paper provides a semi-analytical approach to investigate the variations of 3D displacement components, electric potential, stresses, electric displacements and transverse vibration frequencies in laminated piezoelectric composite plates based on the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) and the precise integration algorithm (PIA). The proposed approach can analyze the static and dynamic responses of multilayered piezoelectric plates with any number of laminae, various geometrical shapes, boundary conditions, thickness-to-length ratios and stacking sequences. Only a longitudinal surface of the plate is discretized into 2D elements, which helps to improve the computational efficiency. Comparing with plate theories and other numerical methods, only three displacement components and the electric potential are set as the basic unknown variables and can be represented analytically through the transverse direction. The whole derivation is built upon the three dimensional key equations of elasticity for the piezoelectric materials and no assumptions on the plate kinematics have been taken. By virtue of the equilibrium equations, the constitutive relations and the introduced set of scaled boundary coordinates, three-dimensional governing partial differential equations are converted into the second order ordinary differential matrix equation. Furthermore, aided by the introduced internal nodal force, a first order ordinary differential equation is obtained with its general solution in the form of a matrix exponent. To further improve the accuracy of the matrix exponent in the SBFEM, the PIA is employed to make sure any desired accuracy of the mechanical and electric variables. By virtue of the kinetic energy technique, the global mass matrix of the composite plates constituted by piezoelectric laminae is constructed for the first time based on the SBFEM. Finally, comparisons with the exact solutions and available results are made to confirm the accuracy and effectiveness of the developed methodology. What's more, the effect of boundary conditions, thickness-to-length ratios and stacking sequences of laminae on the distributions of natural frequencies, mechanical and electric fields in laminated piezoelectric composite plates is evaluated.

• Advances in biomechanics and applications
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.41-55
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• 2014

Acellular intra-myocardial biomaterial injections have been shown to be therapeutically beneficial in inhibiting ventricular remodelling of myocardial infarction (MI). Based on a biventricular canine cardiac geometry, various finite element models were developed that comprised an ischemic (II) or scarred infarct (SDI) in left ventricular (LV) antero-apical region, without and with intra-myocardial biomaterial injectate in layered (L) and bulk (B) distribution. Changes in myocardial properties and LV geometry were implemented corresponding to infarct stage (tissue softening vs. stiffening, infarct thinning, and cavity dilation) and injectate (infarct thickening). The layered and bulk injectate increased ejection fraction of the infarcted LV by 77% (II+L) and 25% (II+B) at the ischemic stage and by 61% (SDI+L) and 63% (SDI+B) at the remodelling stage. The injectates decreased the mean end-systolic myofibre stress in the infarct by 99% (II+L), 97% (II+B), 70% (SDI+L) and 36% (SDI+B). The bulk injectate was slightly more effective in improving LV function at the remodelling stage whereas the layered injectate was superior in functional improvement at ischemic stage and in reduction of wall stress at ischemic and remodelling stage. These findings may stimulate and guide further research towards tailoring acellular biomaterial injectate therapies for MI.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제51권4호
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• pp.547-564
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• 2014

This study focuses on the application of an active tuned mass damper (ATMD) for controlling the seismic response of an 11-story building. The control action is achieved by combination of a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method. FLC is used to handle the uncertain and nonlinear phenomena while PSO is used for optimization of FLC parameters. The FLC system optimized by PSO is called PSFLC. The optimization process of the FLC system has been performed for an 11-story building under the earthquake excitations recommended by International Association of Structural Control (IASC) committee. Minimization of the top floor displacement has been used as the optimization criteria. The results obtained by the PSFLC method are compared with those obtained from ATMD with GFLC system which is proposed by Pourzeynali et al. and non-optimum FLC system. Based on the parameters obtained from PSFLC system, a global controller as PSFLCG is introduced. Performance of the designed PSFLCG has been checked for different disturbances of far-field and near-field ground motions. It is found that the ATMD system, driven by FLC with the help of PSO significantly reduces the peak displacement of the example building. The results show that the PSFLCG decreases the peak displacement of the top floor by about 10%-30% more than that of the FLC system. To show the efficiency and superiority of the adopted optimization method (PSO), a comparison is also made between PSO and GA algorithms in terms of success rate and computational processing time. GA is used by Pourzeynali et al for optimization of the similar system.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제68권5호
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• pp.575-589
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• 2018

It is well known that the incidence angle of seismic excitation has an influence on the structural response of buildings, and this effect can be more significant in the case of near-fault signals. However, current seismic codes do not include detailed requirements regarding the direction of application of the seismic action and they have only recently introduced specific provisions about near-fault earthquakes. Thus, engineers have the task of evaluating all the relevant directions or the most critical conditions case by case, in order to avoid underestimating structural demand. To facilitate the identification of the most critical incidence angle, this paper presents a procedure which makes use of a two-degree of freedom model for representing a building. The proposed procedure makes it possible to avoid the extensive computational effort of multiple dynamic analyses with varying angles of incidence of ground motion excitation, which is required if a spatial multi-degree of freedom model is used for representing a building. The procedure is validated through the analysis of two case studies consisting of an eight- and a six-storey reinforced concrete frame building, selected as representative of existing structures located in Italy. A set of 124 near-fault ground motion records oriented along 8 incidence angles, varying from 0 to 180 degrees, with increments of 22.5 degrees, is used to excite the structures. Comparisons between the results obtained with detailed models of the two structures and the proposed procedure are used to show the accuracy of the latter in the prediction of the most critical angle of seismic incidence.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제68권5호
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• pp.603-619
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• 2018

In this research, an effective computational technique is carried out for nonlinear and post-buckling analyses of cracked imperfect composite plates. The laminated plates are assumed to be moderately thick so that the analysis can be carried out based on the first-order shear deformation theory. Geometric non-linearity is introduced in the way of von-Karman assumptions for the strain-displacement equations. The Ritz technique is applied using Legendre polynomials for the primary variable approximations. The crack is modeled by partitioning the entire domain of the plates into several sub-plates and therefore the plate decomposition technique is implemented in this research. The penalty technique is used for imposing the interface continuity between the sub-plates. Different out-of-plane essential boundary conditions such as clamp, simply support or free conditions will be assumed in this research by defining the relevant displacement functions. For in-plane boundary conditions, lateral expansions of the unloaded edges are completely free while the loaded edges are assumed to move straight but restricted to move laterally. With the formulation presented here, the plates can be subjected to biaxial compressive loads, therefore a sensitivity analysis is performed with respect to the applied load direction, along the parallel or perpendicular to the crack axis. The integrals of potential energy are numerically computed using Gauss-Lobatto quadrature formulas to get adequate accuracy. Then, the obtained non-linear system of equations is solved by the Newton-Raphson method. Finally, the results are presented to show the influence of crack length, various locations of crack, load direction, boundary conditions and different values of initial imperfection on nonlinear and post-buckling behavior of laminates.

• 한국해양공학회지
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• 제32권6호
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• pp.411-418
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• 2018

This paper introduces a new method of ice load generation in the time domain for the station-keeping performance evaluation of Arctic offshore structures. This method is based on the ice load spectrum and mean ice load. Recently, there has been increasing interest in Arctic offshore technology for the exploration and exploitation of the Arctic region because of the better accessibility to the Arctic ocean provided by the global warming effect. It is essential to consider the ice load during the development of an Arctic offshore structure. In particular, when designing a station-keeping system for an Arctic offshore structure, a consideration of the ice load acting on the vessel in the time domain is essential to ensure its safety and security. Several methods have been developed to consider the ice load in the time domain. However, most of the developed methods are computationally heavy because they consider every ice floe in the sea ice field to calculate the ice load acting on the vessel. In this study, a new approach to generate the ice load in the time domain with computational efficiency was suggested, and its feasibility was examined. The ice load spectrum and mean ice load were acquired from a numerical analysis with GPU-event mechanics (GEM) software, and the ice load with the varying heading of a vessel was reconstructed to show the feasibility of the proposed method.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제71권4호
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• pp.433-444
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• 2019

Shear studs are often used to connect steel girders and concrete deck to form a composite bridge system. The application of precast concrete deck to steel-concrete composite bridges can improve the strength of decks and reduce the shrinkage and creep effect on the long-term behavior of structures. How to ensure the connection between steel girders and concrete deck directly influences the composite behavior between steel girder and precast concrete deck as well as the behavior of the structure system. Compared with traditional multi-I girder systems, a twin-I girder composite bridge system is more simplified but may lead to additional requirements on the shear studs connecting steel girders and decks due to the larger girder spacing. Up to date, only very limited quantity of researches has been conducted regarding the behavior of shear studs on twin-I girder bridge systems. One convenient way for steel composite bridge system is to cast concrete deck in place with shear studs uniformly-distributed along the span direction. For steel composite bridge system using precast concrete deck, voids are included in the precast concrete deck segments, and they are casted with cast-in-place concrete after the concrete segments are erected. In this paper, several sets of push-out tests are conducted, which are used to investigate the heavier of shear studs within the voids in the precast concrete deck. The test data are analyzed and compared with those from finite element models. A simplified shear stud model is proposed using a beam element instead of solid elements. It is used in the finite element model analyses of the twin-I girder composite bridge system to relieve the computational efforts of the shear studs. Additionally, a parametric study is developed to find the effects of void size, void spacing, and shear stud diameter and spacing. Finally, the recommendations are given for the design of precast deck using void for twin I-girder bridge systems.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제72권3호
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• pp.355-366
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• 2019

Self-centering wall (SCW) is a resilient and sustainable structural system which incorporates unbonded posttensioning (PT) tendons to provide self-centering (SC) capacity along with supplementary dissipators to dissipate seismic energy. Hysteretic energy dissipators are usually placed at two sides of SCWs to facilitate ease of postearthquake examination and convenient replacement. To achieve a good prediction for the skeleton curve of the wall, this paper firstly developed an analytical investigation on lateral load responses of self-centering walls with distributed vertical dampers (VD-SCWs) using the concept of elastic theory. A simplified method for the calculation of limit state points is developed and validated by experimental results and can be used in the design of the system. Based on the analytical results, parametric analysis is conducted to investigate the influence of damper and tendon parameters on the performance of VD-SCWs. The results show that the proposed approach has a better prediction accuracy with less computational effects than the Perez method. As compared with previous experimental results, the proposed method achieves up to 60.1% additional accuracy at the effective linear limit (DLL) of SCWs. The base shear at point DLL is increased by 62.5% when the damper force is increased from 0kN to 80kN. The wall stiffness after point ELL is reduced by 69.5% when the tendon stiffness is reduced by 75.0%. The roof deformation at point LLP is reduced by 74.1% when the initial tendon stress is increased from $0.45f_{pu}$ to $0.65f_{pu}$.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제70권1호
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• pp.13-31
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• 2019

A nonlinear finite element model (FEM) using ATENA-3D software to simulate the axially compressive behavior of circular steel tube confined concrete (CSTCC) columns infilled with ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) was presented in this paper. Some modifications to the material type "CC3DNonlinCementitious2User" of UHPC without and with the incorporation of steel fibers (UHPFRC) in compression and tension were adopted in FEM. The predictions of utimate strength and axial load versus axial strain curves obtained from FEM were in a good agreement with the test results of eighteen tested columns. Based on the results of FEM, the load distribution on the steel tube and the concrete core was derived for each modeled column. Furthermore, the effect of bonding between the steel tube and the concrete core was clarified by the change of friction coefficient in the material type "CC3DInterface" in FEM. The numerical results revealed that the increase in the friction coefficient leads to a greater contribution from the steel tube, a decrease in the ultimate load and an increase in the magnitude of the loss of load capacity. By comparing the results of FEM with experimental results, the appropriate friction coefficient between the steel tube and the concrete core was defined as 0.3 to 0.6. In addition to the numerical evaluation, eighteen analytical models for confined concrete in the literature were used to predict the peak confined strength to assess their suitability. To cope with CSTCC stub and intermediate columns, the equations for estimating the lateral confining stress and the equations for considering the slenderness in the selected models were proposed. It was found that all selected models except for EC2 (2004) gave a very good prediction. Among them, the model of Bing et al. (2001) was the best predictor.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제70권4호
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• pp.479-497
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• 2019

In the current code design, the use of a uniform internal pressure coefficient of cooling towers as internal suction cannot reflect the 3D characteristics of flow field inside the tower body with different ventilation rate of shutters. Moreover, extreme weather such as heavy rain also has a direct impact on aerodynamic force on the internal surface and changes the turbulence effect of pulsating wind. In this study, the world's tallest cooling tower under construction, which stands 210m, is taken as the research object. The algorithm for two-way coupling between wind and rain is adopted. Simulation of wind field and raindrops is performed iteratively using continuous phase and discrete phase models, respectively, under the general principles of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Firstly, the rule of influence of 9 combinations of wind speed and rainfall intensity on the volume of wind-driven rain, additional action force of raindrops and equivalent internal pressure coefficient of the tower body is analyzed. The combination of wind velocity and rainfall intensity that is most unfavorable to the cooling tower in terms of distribution of internal pressure coefficient is identified. On this basis, the wind/rain loads, distribution of aerodynamic force and working mechanism of internal pressures of the cooling tower under the most unfavorable working condition are compared between the four ventilation rates of shutters (0%, 15%, 30% and 100%). The results show that the amount of raindrops captured by the internal surface of the tower decreases as the wind velocity increases, and increases along with the rainfall intensity and ventilation rate of the shutters. The maximum value of rain-induced pressure coefficient is 0.013. The research findings lay the basis for determining the precise values of internal surface loads of cooling tower under extreme weather conditions.