• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.49-68
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• 2023

The three-dimensional failure criterion is essential for maintaining wellbore stability and sand production problem. The convenient factor for a stable wellbore is mud weight and borehole orientation, i.e., mud window design and selection of borehole trajectory. This study proposes a new three-dimensional failure criterion with linear relation of three in-situ principal stresses. The number of failure criteria executed to understand the phenomenon of rock failure under in-situ stresses is the Mohr-Coulomb criterion, Hoek-Brown criterion, Mogi-Coulomb criterion, and many more. A new failure criterion is the extended Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion with the influence of intermediate principal stress (σ₂). The influence of intermediate principal stress is considered as a weighting of (σ₂) on the mean effective stress. The triaxial compression test data for eleven rock types are taken from the literature for calibration of material constant and validation of failure prediction. The predictions on rock samples using new criteria are the best fit with the triaxial compression test data points. Here, Drucker-Prager and the Mogi-Coulomb criterion are also implemented to predict the failure for eleven different rock types. It has been observed that the Drucker-Prager criterion gave over prediction of rock failure. On the contrary, the Mogi-Coulomb criterion gave an equally good prediction of rock failure as our proposed new 3D failure criterion. Based on the yield surface of a new 3D linear criterion it gave the safest prediction for the failure of the rock. A new linear failure criterion is recommended for the unique solution as a linear relation of the principal stresses rather than the dual solution by the Mogi-Coulomb criterion.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.347-359
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• 2023

With the development of infrastructure, there is a critical shortage of filling materials all over the word. However, a large amount of silt accumulated in the lower reaches of the Yellow River is treated as waste every year, which will cause environmental pollution and waste of resources. Microbial induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) technology, with the advantage of efficient, economical and environmentally friendly protection, is selected to solidify the abandoned Yellow River silt with poor mechanical properties into high-quality filling material in this paper. Based on unconfined compressive strength (UCS) test, determination of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) content and scanning electron microscope (SEM) test, the effects of cementation solution concentration, treatment times and relative density on the solidification effect were studied. The results show that the loose silt particles can be effectively solidified together into filling material with excellent mechanical properties through MICP technology. The concentration of cementation solution have a significant impact on the solidification effect, and the reasonable concentration of cementation solution is 1.5 mol/L. With the increase of treatment times, the pores in the soil are filled with CaCO₃, and the UCS of the specimens after 10 times of treatment can reach 2.5 MPa with a relatively high CaCO₃ content of 26%. With the improvement of treatment degree, the influence of relative density on the UCS increases gradually. Microscopic analysis revealed that after MICP reinforcement, CaCO₃ adhered to the surface of soil particles and cemented with each other to form a dense structure.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.509-522
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• 2022

Tail-grouting is an effective measure in shield engineering for filling the gap at the shield tail to reduce ground deformation. However, the gap-filling ratio affects the value of the gap parameters, leading to different surface settlements. It is impossible to adjust the fill ratio indiscriminately to study its effect, because the allowable adjustment range of the grouting quantity is limited to ensure construction site safety. In this study, taking the shield tunnel section between Chaoyanggang Station and Shilihe Station of Beijing Metro Line 17 as an example, the correlation between the tail-grouting parameter and the surface settlement is investigated and the optimal grouting quantity is evaluated. This site is suitable for conducting field tests to reduce the tail-grouting quantity of shield tunneling over a large range. In addition, the shield tunneling under different grouting parameters was simulated. Furthermore, we analyzed the evolution law of the surface settlement under different grouting parameters and obtained the difference in the settlement parameters for each construction stage. The results obtained indicate that the characteristics of the grout affect the development of the surface settlement. Therefore, reducing the setting time or increasing the initial strength of the grout could effectively suppress the development of surface subsidence. As the fill ratio decreases, the loose zone of the soil above the tunnel expands, and the soil deformation is easily transmitted to the surface. Meanwhile, owing to insufficient grout support, the lateral pressure on the tunnel segments is significantly reduced, and the segment moves considerably after being removed from the shield tail.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.457-468
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• 2023

Buildings, bridges, and dams are examples of civil infrastructure that play an important role in public life. These structures are prone to structural variations over time as a result of external forces that might disrupt the operation of the structures, cause structural integrity issues, and raise safety concerns for the occupants. Therefore, monitoring the state of a structure, also known as structural health monitoring (SHM), is essential. Owing to the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution, next-generation sensors, such as wireless sensors, UAVs, and video cameras, have recently been utilized to improve the quality and efficiency of building forensics. This study presents a method that uses a target-based system to estimate the dynamic displacement and its corresponding dynamic properties of structures using UAV-based video. A laboratory experiment was performed to verify the tracking technique using a shaking table to excite an SDOF specimen and comparing the results between a laser distance sensor, accelerometer, and fixed camera. Then a field test was conducted to validate the proposed framework. One target marker is placed on the specimen, and another marker is attached to the ground, which serves as a stationary reference to account for the undesired UAV movement. The results from the UAV and stationary camera displayed a root mean square (RMS) error of 2.02% for the displacement, and after post-processing the displacement data using an OMA method, the identified natural frequency and damping ratio showed significant accuracy and similarities. The findings illustrate the capabilities and reliabilities of the methodology using UAV to evaluate the dynamic properties of structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.845-865
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• 2022

In this study, the performance of shear deficient reinforced concrete (RC) beams with rectangular cross-sections, which were externally bonded reinforced (EBR) with high strength CFRP and GFRP strips composite along shear spans, has been experimentally and analytically investigated under vertical load. In the study, the minimum CFRP and GFRP strips width over spacing were considered. The shear beam with turned end to a bending beam was investigated by applying different composite strips. Therefore various arising in each of strength, ductility, rigidity, and energy dissipation capacity were obtained. A total of 12 small-scaled experimental programs have been performed. Beam dimensions have been taken as 100×150×1000 mm. Four beams have been tested as unstrengthened samples. This paper focuses on the effect of minimum CFRP and GFRP strip width on behaviours of RC beams shear-strengthened with full-wrapping, U-wrapping, and U-wrapping+longitudinal bonding strips. Strengthened beams showed significant increments for flexural ductility, energy dissipation, and inelastic performance. The full wrapping strips applied against shear failure have increased the load-carrying capacity of samples 53%-63% interval rate. Although full wrapping is the best strengthening choice, the U-wrapping and U-wrapping+longitudinal strips of both CFRP and GFRP bonding increased the shear capacity by 53%~75% compared to the S2 sample. In terms of ductility, the best result has been obtained by the type of strengthening where the S5 beam was completely GFRP wrapped. The experimental results were also compared with the analytically given by ACI440.2R-17, TBEC-2019 and FIB-2001. Especially in U-wrapped beams, the estimation of FIB was determined to be 81%. The estimates of the other codes are far from meeting the experimental results; therefore, essential improvements should be applied to the codes, especially regarding CFRP and GFRP deformation and approaches for longitudinal strip connections. According to the test results, it is suggested that GFRP, which is at least as effective but cheaper than CFRP, may be preferred for strengthening applications.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.86 no.5
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• pp.673-686
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• 2023

Determining the properties of pile from cone penetration test (CPT) is costly, and need several in-situ tests. At the present study, two novel hybrid learning models, namely PSO-RF and HHO-RF, which are an amalgamation of random forest (RF) with particle swarm optimization (PSO) and Harris hawks optimization (HHO) were developed and applied to predict the pile set-up parameter "A" from CPT for the design aim of the projects. To forecast the "A," CPT data along were collected from different sites in Louisiana, where the selected variables as input were plasticity index (PI), undrained shear strength (S_u), and over consolidation ratio (OCR). Results show that both PSO-RF and HHO-RF models have acceptable performance in predicting the set-up parameter "A," with R² larger than 0.9094, representing the admissible correlation between observed and predicted values. HHO-RF has better proficiency than the PSO-RF model, with R² and RMSE equal to 0.9328 and 0.0292 for the training phase and 0.9729 and 0.024 for testing data, respectively. Moreover, PI and OBJ indices are considered, in which the HHO-RF model has lower results which leads to outperforming this hybrid algorithm with respect to PSO-RF for predicting the pile set-up parameter "A," consequently being specified as the proposed model. Therefore, the results demonstrate the ability of the HHO algorithm in determining the optimal value of RF hyperparameters than PSO.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.301-310
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• 2022

Cement-based sensors have been widely used as structural health monitoring systems, however, their long-term sensing performance have not actively investigated. In this study, a deep learning-based methodology is adopted to predict the long-term piezoresistive properties of cement-based sensors. Samples with different multi-walled carbon nanotube contents (0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 wt.%) are fabricated, and piezoresistive tests are conducted over 10,000 loading cycles to obtain the training data. Time-dependent degradation is predicted using a modified long short-term memory (LSTM) model. The effects of different model variables including the amount of training data, number of epochs, and dropout ratio on the accuracy of predictions are analyzed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated by comparing the predictions for long-term piezoresistive sensing performance with untrained experimental data. A sensitivity of 6% is experimentally examined in the sample containing 0.1 wt.% of MWCNTs, and predictions with accuracy up to 98% are found using the proposed LSTM model. Based on the experimental results, the proposed model is expected to be applied in the structural health monitoring systems to predict their long-term piezoresistice sensing performances during their service life.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.721-740
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• 2022

In this paper, an accurate kinematic model has been developed to study the mechanical response of functionally graded (FG) sandwich beams, mainly covering the bending, buckling and free vibration problems. The studied structure with homogeneous hardcore and softcore is considered to be simply supported in the edges. The present model uses a new refined shear deformation beam theory (RSDBT) in which the displacement field is improved over the other existing high-order shear deformation beam theories (HSDBTs). The present model provides good accuracy and considers a nonlinear transverse shear deformation shape function, since it is constructed with only two unknown variables as the Euler-Bernoulli beam theory but complies with the shear stress-free boundary conditions on the upper and lower surfaces of the beam without employing shear correction factors. The sandwich beams are composed of two FG skins and a homogeneous core wherein the material properties of the skins are assumed to vary gradually and continuously in the thickness direction according to the power-law distribution of volume fraction of the constituents. The governing equations are drawn by implementing Hamilton's principle and solved by means of the Navier's technique. Numerical computations in the non-dimensional terms of transverse displacement, stresses, critical buckling load and natural frequencies obtained by using the proposed model are compared with those predicted by other beam theories to confirm the performance of the proposed theory and to verify the accuracy of the kinematic model.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.545-556
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• 2022

Through the examination of literatures, electronic commerce is a subject which is accepted in enterprises to define e-commerce adoption, trends, and issues that are assisting and obstructing its efficacy. E-commerce offers numerous advantages to consumer satisfaction in any place and helps the company to get a competitive benefit over its competitors. The Internet has expanded the scope of business. Many business information is available by the global network that supports information gathering between organizations, businesses and their clients, while various divisions of a business is increasing at an exponential rate. Meanwhile, there are a few barriers to proper e-commerce usage and adoption, such as reliable internet connections, poor e-commerce supporting infrastructures, logistics systems presenting socio-regulatory and poor transportation barriers and demonstrating the significant improvement of e-commerce reliable and affordable Internet provisions, i.e., Internet cost, intensity, and reasonable level of e-readiness. The operational and strategic significance of information-based virtual value chains for all organizations cannot be emphasized. As a consequence, this study confirms worldwide market elements of e-commerce, such as its issues, benefits, relevance, scope, facilitators and projects prospective obstacles in a developing economy.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.359-367
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• 2023

High-rise structures are considered as symbols of economic power and leadership. Developing countries like India are also emerging as centers for new high-rise buildings (HRB). As the land is expensive and scarce everywhere, construction of tall buildings becomes the best solution to resolve the problem. But, as building's height increases, its stiffness reduces making it more susceptible to vibrations due to wind and earthquake forces. Several systems are available to control vibrations or deflections; however, outrigger systems are considered to be the most effective systems in improving lateral stiffness and overall stability of HRB. In this paper, a 42-storey RCC HRB is analyzed to determine the optimum position of outriggers of different materials. The linear static analysis of the building is performed with and without the provision of virtual outriggers of reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and pre-stressed concrete (PSC) at different storey levels by response spectrum method using finite element based Extended3D Analysis of building System (ETABS) software for determining responses viz. storey displacement, base shear and storey drift for individual models. The maximum allowable limit and percentage variations in earthquake responses are verified using the guidelines of Indian seismic codes. Results indicate that the outriggers contribute in significantly reducing the storey displacement and storey drift up to 28% and 20% respectively. Also, it is observed that the PSC outriggers are found to be more efficient over RCC outriggers. The optimum location of both types of outriggers is found to be at the mid height of building.