• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.331-349
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• 2016

Stiff and light fibre reinforced composites as used in air- and space-craft applications tend to high sound emission. Therefore, the damping properties are essential for the entire structural and acoustic engineering. Viscous damping is an established and reasonably linear model of the dissipation behaviour. Commonly, it is assumed to be isotropic and constant over all modes. For anisotropic materials it depends on the fibre orientation as well as the elastic and thermal material properties. To portray the orthogonal anisotropic behaviour, a model for unidirectional fibre reinforced plastics (frp) has been developed based on the classical laminate theory by ADAMS and BACON starting in 1973. Their approach includes three damping coefficients - for longitudinal damping in fibre direction, damping transversal to the fibres and shear based dissipation. The damping of a laminate is then accumulated layer wise including the anisotropic stiffness. So far, the model has been applied mainly to thermoset matrix materials. In this study, an experimental parameter estimation for different thermoplastic frp with angle ply and cross ply layups was carried out by measuring free vibrations of cantilever beams. The results show potential and limits of the ADAMS/BACON damping criterion. In addition, a possibility of modelling the anisotropic damping is shown. The implementation in standard FEA software is used to study the influence of boundary conditions on the damping properties and numerically estimate the radiated sound power of thin-walled frp parts.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.715-726
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• 2010

In this paper, a comparative study of metallic and non-metallic stiffened plates under a lateral pressure load is performed using conventional statistically determinate and SQP(Sequential Quadratic Programming) optimisation approaches. Initially, a metallic flat-bar stiffened plate is exemplified from the superstructure of a marine vessel and, subsequently, its structural topology is varied as hat-section stiffened FRP(Fibre Reinforced Plastics) single skin plates and monocoque FRP sandwich plates having a PVC foam core. These proposed structural alternatives are analysed using elastic closed-form solutions and SQP optimisation method under stress and deflection limits obtained from practice to calculate and optimise geometry dimensions and weights. Results obtained from the comparative study provide useful information for marine designers especially at the preliminary design stage where various building materials and structural configurations are dealt with.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.539-554
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• 2010

Light weight superstructure is beneficial for bridges in remote areas and in emergency erection. In such weight sensitive applications, combination of fibre reinforced plastics (FRP) as material and box-girders as a structural system have great scope. This combination offers various options to tailor structure and its elements but this flexibility poses greater challenge in optimum design. In this paper a procedure is derived for a generalised optimum design of FRP box-girder bridges, using genetic algorithms (GA). The formulation of the optimum design problem in the form of objective function and constraints is presented. Size, configuration and topology optimization are done simultaneously. A few optimum design studies are carried out to check the performance of the developed procedure and to get trends in the optimum design which will be helpful to the new designers.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.591-620
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• 2005

A general analytical model for thin-walled composite beams with an arbitrary open/(or/and) closed cross section and arbitrary laminate stacking sequence i.e., symmetric, anti-symmetric as well as un-symmetric with respect to the mid plane of the laminate, is developed in the first paper. All the mechanical properties, mechanical centre of gravity and mechanical shear centre of the cross section are defined in the function of the geometry and the material properties of the section. A program "fungen" and "clprop" are developed in Fortran to compute all the mechanical properties and tested for various isotropic sections first and compared with the available results. The locations of mechanical centre of gravity and mechanical shear centre are given with respect to the fibre angle variation in composite beams. Variations of bending and torsional stiffness are shown to vary with respect to the fibre angle orientations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.27-37
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• 2011

This paper presents the results of a study on the capability of nonlinear quasi-static finite element modelling in simulating the hysteretic behaviour of CFRP and GFRP-retrofitted RC exterior beam-column joints under cyclic loads. Four specimens including two plain and two CFRP/GFRP-strengthened beam-column joints tested by Mahini and Ronagh (2004) and other researchers are modelled using ANSYS. Concrete in compression is defined by the modified Hognestad model and anisotropic multi-linear model is employed for modelling the stress-strain relations in reinforcing bars while anisotropic plasticity is considered for the FRP composite. Both concrete and FRP are modelled using solid elements whereas space link elements are used for steel bars considering a perfect bond between materials. A step by step load increment procedure to simulate the cyclic loading regime employed in the testing. An automatically reforming stiffness matrix strategy is used in order to simulate the actual seismic performance of the RC concrete after cracking, steel yielding and concrete crushing during the push and pull loading cycles. The results show that the hysteretic simulation for all specimens is satisfactory and therefore suggest that the numerical model can be used as an inexpensive tool to design of FRP-strengthened RC beam-column joints under cyclic loads.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.649-665
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• 2009

This paper reports part of a comprehensive research study conducted at the University of Queensland on the ability of CFRP web-bonded systems in strengthening an exterior beam-column joint subjected to monotonic loads. One 1/2.2 scaled plain and four CFRP repaired/retrofitted joints subjected to monotonic loads were analysed using the nonlinear finite-element program ANSYS and the results were calibrated against experiments. The ANSYS model was employed in order to account for tension stiffening in concrete after cracking and a modified version of the Hognestad's model was used to model the concrete compressive strength. The stress-strain properties of main steel bars were modelled using multilinear isotropic hardening model and the FRPs were modelled as anisotropic materials. A perfect bond was assumed as nodes were shared between adjacent elements irrespective of their type. Good agreement between the numerical predictions and the experimental observation of the failure mechanisms for all specimens were observed. Closeness of these results proved that the numerical analysis can be used by design engineers for the analysis of web-bonded FRP strengthened beam-column joints with confidence.