• Computers and Concrete
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• 제26권3호
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• pp.213-226
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• 2020

The present study covenants with the static and free vibration behavior of nanocomposite sandwich plates reinforced by carbon nanotubes resting on Pasternak elastic foundation. Uniformly distributed (UD-CNT) and functionally graded (FG-CNT) distributions of aligned carbon nanotube are considered for two types of sandwich plates such as, the face sheet reinforced and homogeneous core and the homogeneous face sheet and reinforced core. Based on the first shear deformation theory (FSDT), the Hamilton's principle is employed to derive the mathematical models. The obtained solutions are numerically validated by comparison with some available cases in the literature. The elastic foundation model is assumed as one parameter Winkler - Pasternak foundation. A parametric study is conducted to study the effects of aspect ratios, foundation parameters, carbon nanotube volume fraction, types of reinforcement, core-to-face sheet thickness ratio and types of loads acting on the bending and free vibration analyses. It is explicitly shown that the (FG-CNT) face sheet reinforced sandwich plate has a high resistance against deflections compared to other types of reinforcement. It is also revealed that the reduction in the dimensionless natural frequency is most pronounced in core reinforced sandwich plate.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제15권4호
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• pp.997-1018
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• 2015

Structural health monitoring along with damage detection and assessment of its severity level in non-accessible reinforced concrete members using piezoelectric materials becomes essential since engineers often face the problem of detecting hidden damage. In this study, the potential of the detection of flexural damage state in the lower part of the mid-span area of a simply supported reinforced concrete beam using piezoelectric sensors is analytically investigated. Two common severity levels of flexural damage are examined: (i) cracking of concrete that extends from the external lower fiber of concrete up to the steel reinforcement and (ii) yielding of reinforcing bars that occurs for higher levels of bending moment and after the flexural cracking. The purpose of this investigation is to apply finite element modeling using admittance based signature data to analyze its accuracy and to check the potential use of this technique to monitor structural damage in real-time. It has been indicated that damage detection capability greatly depends on the frequency selection rather than on the level of the harmonic excitation loading. This way, the excitation loading sequence can have a level low enough that the technique may be considered as applicable and effective for real structures. Further, it is concluded that the closest applied piezoelectric sensor to the flexural damage demonstrates higher overall sensitivity to structural damage in the entire frequency band for both damage states with respect to the other used sensors. However, the observed sensitivity of the other sensors becomes comparatively high in the peak values of the root mean square deviation index.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제3권1호
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• pp.1-16
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• 2011

Piles passing through sloping liquefiable deposits are prone to lateral loading if these deposits liquefy and flow during earthquakes. These lateral loads caused by the relative soil-pile movement will induce bending in the piles and may result in failure of the piles or excessive pile-head displacement. Whilst the weak nature of the flowing liquefied soil would suggest that only small loads would be exerted on the piles, it is known from case histories that piles do fail owing to the influence of laterally spreading soils. It will be shown, based on dynamic centrifuge test data, that dilatant behaviour of soil close to the pile is the major cause of these considerable transient lateral loads which are transferred to the pile. This paper reports the results of geotechnical centrifuge tests in which models of gently sloping liquefiable sand with pile foundations passing through them were subjected to earthquake excitation. The soil close to the pile was instrumented with pore-pressure transducers and contact stress cells in order to monitor the interaction between soil and pile and to track the soil stress state both upslope and downslope of the pile. The presence of instrumentation measuring pore-pressure and lateral stress close to the pile in the research described in this paper gives the opportunity to better study the soil stress state close to the pile and to compare the loads measured as being applied to the piles by the laterally spreading soils with those suggested by the JRA design code. This test data shows that lateral stresses much greater than one might expect from calculations based on the residual strength of liquefied soil may be applied to piles in flowing liquefied slopes owing to the dilative behaviour of the liquefied soil. It is shown at least for the particular geometry studied that the current JRA design code can be un-conservative by a factor of three for these dilation-affected transient lateral loads.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제17권4호
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• pp.405-429
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• 2014

In this paper, it is aimed to determine the structural behavior of suspension bridges considering construction stages and different soil conditions. Bosporus Suspension Bridge connecting the Europe and Asia in Istanbul is selected as an example. Finite element model of the bridge is constituted using SAP2000 program considering existing drawings. Geometric nonlinearities are taken into consideration in the analysis using P-Delta large displacement criterion. The time dependent material strength of steel and concrete and geometric variations is included in the analysis. Time dependent material properties are considered as compressive strength, aging, shrinkage and creep for concrete, and relaxation for steel. To emphases the soil condition effect on the structural behavior of suspension bridges, each of hard, medium and soft soils are considered in the analysis. The structural behavior of the bridge at different construction stages and different soil conditions has been examined. Two different finite element analyses with and without construction stages are carried out and results are compared with each other. At the end of the analyses, variation of the displacement and internal forces such as bending moment, axial forces and shear forces for bridge deck and towers are given in detail. Also, displacement and stresses for bridge foundation are given with detail. It can be seen from the analyses that there are some differences between both analyses (with and without construction stages) and the results obtained from the construction stages are bigger. It can be stated that the analysis without construction stages cannot give the reliable solutions. In addition, soil condition have effect on the structural behavior of the bridge. So, it is thought that construction stage analysis using time dependent material properties, geometric nonlinearity and soil conditions effects should be considered in order to obtain more realistic structural behavior of suspension bridges.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• 제14권5호
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• pp.467-476
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• 2018

The seismic vulnerability of skewed bridges had been observed in many past earthquakes. Researchers have found that the in-plane rotation of the girders was one of the main reasons for the vulnerability of these types of bridges. To date, not many experimental works have been done on this topic, especially those including pounding between adjacent structures. In this study, shake table tests were performed on a bridge-abutment system consisting of a straight, $30^{\circ}$, and $45^{\circ}$ bridge with and without considering pounding. Skewed bridges with the same fundamental frequency and those having the same girder mass as the straight bridge were studied. Under the loadings considered, skewed bridges with the same frequency as the straight tend to have smaller responses than those with the same mass. The average maximum bending moment developed in the piers of the $30^{\circ}$ bridge with the same mass as that of the straight when pounding was not considered was 1.6 times larger than when the frequencies were the same. It was also found that the NZTA recommendations for the seat lengths of skewed bridges could severely underestimate the relative displacements of these types of bridges in the transverse direction, especially when pounding occurs. In the worst case, the average transverse displacement of the $45^{\circ}$ bridge was about 2.6 times the longitudinal displacement of the straight, which was greatly over the limit suggested by the NZTA of 1.25 times.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제22권1호
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• pp.1-9
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• 2020

This paper presents an investigation of the ground response of a gob-side gateroad suffering mining stress induced by a 21 m-thick coal seam extraction. A field observation, including entry convergence and stress changes monitoring, was first conducted in the tailgate 8209. The observation results of entry convergence showed that, during the adjacent panel 8210 retreating period, the deformation of the gob-side gateroad experienced a continuous increase stage, subsequently, an accelerating increase stage, and finally, a slow increase stage. However, strong ground response, including roof bending deflection, rib extrusion and floor heave, occurred during the current panel 8209 retreating period, and the maximum floor heave reached 1530 mm. The stress changes within coal mass of the two ribs demonstrated that the gateroad was always located in the stress concentrated area, which responsible for the strong response of the tailgate 8209. Subsequently, a hydraulic fracture technique was proposed to pre-fracture the two hard roofs above the tailgate 8209, thus decreasing the induced disturbance on the tailgate. The validity of the above roof treatment was verified via field application. The finding of this study could be a reference for understanding the stability control of the gob-side gateroad in extra thick coal seams mining.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제5권5호
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• pp.507-521
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• 1997

The ultimate behavior of a reinforced concrete hyperbolic paraboloid saddle shell under uniformly distributed vertical load is investigated using an inelastic, large displacement finite-element program originally developed at North Carolina State University. Unlike with the author's previous study which shows that the saddle shell possesses a tremendous capacity to redistribute the stresses, introducing tension stiffening in the model the cracks developed are no longer through cracks and formed as primarily bending cracks. Even though with small tension stiffening effect, the behavior of the shell is changed markedly from the one without tension stiffening effect. The load-deflection curves are straight and the slope of the curves is quite steep and remains unchanged with varying the tension stiffening parameters. The failure of the shell took place quite suddenly in a cantilever mode initiated by a formation of yield lines in a direction parallel to the support-to-support diagonal. The higher the tension stiffening parameters the higher is the ultimate load. The present study shows that the ultimate behavior of the shell primarily depends on the concrete tensile characteristics, such as tensile strength (before cracking) and the effective tension stiffening (after cracking). As the concrete characteristics would vary over the life of the shell, a degree of uncertainty is involved in deciding a specified ultimate strength of the saddle shell studied. By the present study, however, the overload factors based on ACI 318-95 are larger than unity for all the cases studied except that the tension stiffening parameter is weak by 3 with and without the large displacement effect, which shows that the Lin-Scordelis saddle shell studied here is at least safe.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.124-133
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• 1998

This paper describes a research work of developing a computer-aided design of blanking and piercing for irregular-shaped sheet metal products. An approach to the development of compact and practical CAB system is based on the knowledge-based rules. Knowledge for the CAD system is formulated from plasticity theories, experimental results and the empirical knowledge of field experts. The system has been written in AutoLISP on the AutoCAD with a personal computer. Based on knowledge-based rules, the system, STRT-DES, is designed by considering several factors, such as complexities of blank geometry and punch profile, availability of press equipment and standard parts, utilization ratio which minimizes the scrap in a single or a pairwise operation, bridge width, grain orientation and design requirements which maximize the strength of the part when subsequent bending is involved. This system checks a forming feasibility with both internal and external features, a dimension of blanked hole, and a corner and a fillet radius for irregualrly shaped sheet metal products. Therefore this system can carry out a die design for each process which is obtained from results of an automated blank layout drawing with a best utilization ratio for irregular shape of product that was successful in production feasibility check module and those of an automated strip layout drawing and generate part drawings and the assembly drawing of die set in graphic forms.

• Interaction and multiscale mechanics
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• 제2권4호
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• pp.397-411
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• 2009

The effect of soil-structure interaction on a simple single storeyed and two bay space frame resting on a pile group embedded in the cohesive soil (clay) with flexible cap is examined in this paper. For this purpose, a more rational approach is resorted to using the three dimensional finite element analysis with realistic assumptions. The members of the superstructure and substructure are descretized using 20 node isoparametric continuum elements while the interface between the soil and pile is modeled using 16 node isoparametric interface elements. Owing to viability in terms of computational resources and memory requirement, the approach of uncoupled analysis is generally preferred to coupled analysis of the system. However, an interactive analysis of the system is presented in this paper where the building frame and pile foundation are considered as a single compatible unit. This study is focused on the interaction between the pile cap and underlying soil. In the parametric study conducted using the coupled analysis, the effect of pile spacing in a pile group and configuration of the pile group is evaluated on the response of superstructure. The responses of the superstructure considered include the displacement at top of the frame and moments in the superstructure columns. The effect of soil-structure interaction is found to be quite significant for the type of foundation used in the study. The percentage variation in the values of displacement obtained using the coupled and uncoupled analysis is found in the range of 4-17 and that for the moment in the range of 3-10. A reasonable agreement is observed in the results obtained using either approach.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제50권2호
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• pp.241-255
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• 2014

The girder of self-anchored suspension bridge is subjected to large compression force applied by main cables. So, serious damage of the girder due to breakage of hangers may cause collapse of the whole bridge. With the time increasing, the hangers may break suddenly for their resistance capacities decrease due to corrosion. Using nonlinear static and dynamic analysis methods and adopting 3D finite element model, the responses of a concrete self-anchored suspension bridge to sudden breakage of hangers are studied in this paper. The results show that the sudden breakage of a hanger has significant effects on tensions of the hangers next to the broken hanger, bending and torsion moments of the girder, moments of the towers and reaction forces of the bearings. The results obtained from dynamic analysis method are very different from those obtained from static analysis method. The maximum tension of hanger produced by breakage of a hanger exceeds 2.2 times of its initial value, the maximum dynamic amplification factor reaches 2.54, which is larger than the value of 2.0 recommended for cable-stayed bridge in PTI codes. If two adjacent hangers on the same side of bridge break one after another, the maximum tension of other hangers exceeds 3.0 times of its initial value. If the safety factor adopted to design hanger is too small, or the hangers have been exposed to corrosion, the bridge may collapse due to breakage of two adjacent hangers.