• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제67권2호
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• pp.115-123
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• 2018

By using the first order shear deformation plate theory (FSDT) in the present paper, the effect of porosity on the buckling behavior of carbon nanotube-reinforced composite porous plates has been investigated analytically. Two types of distributions of uniaxially aligned reinforcement material are utilized which uniformly (UD-CNT) and functionally graded (FG-CNT) of plates. The analytical equations of the model are derived and the exact solutions for critical buckling load of such type's plates are obtained. The convergence of the method is demonstrated and the present solutions are numerically validated by comparison with some available solutions in the literature. The central thesis studied and discussed in this paper is the Influence of Various parameters on the buckling of carbon nanotube-reinforced porous plate such as aspect ratios, volume fraction, types of reinforcement, the degree of porosity and plate thickness. On the question of porosity, this study found that there is a great influence of their variation on the critical buckling load. It is revealed that the critical buckling load decreases as increasing coefficients of porosity.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제10권4호
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• pp.337-357
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• 2000

Analytical formulations and solutions for the first time, to the stability analysis of a simply supported composite and sandwich plates based on a higher order refined theory, developed by the first author and already reported in the literature are presented. The theoretical model presented herein incorporates laminate deformations which account for the effects of transverse shear deformation, transverse normal strain/stress and a nonlinear variation of inplane displacements with respect to the thickness coordinate - thus modelling the warping of transverse cross sections more accurately and eliminating the need for shear correction coefficients. The equations of equilibrium are obtained using the Principle of Minimum Potential Energy (PMPE). The comparison of the results using this higher order refined theory with the available elasticity solutions and the results computed independently using the first order and the other higher order theories developed by other investigators and available in the literature shows that this refined theory predicts the critical buckling load more accurately than all other theories considered in this paper. New results for sandwich laminates are also presented which may serve as a benchmark for future investigations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제57권1호
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• pp.179-200
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• 2016

In this paper the differential transformation method (DTM) is utilized for vibration and buckling analysis of nanotubes in thermal environment while considering the coupled surface and nonlocal effects. The Eringen's nonlocal elasticity theory takes into account the effect of small size while the Gurtin-Murdoch model is used to incorporate the surface effects (SE). The derived governing differential equations are solved by DTM which demonstrated to have high precision and computational efficiency in the vibration analysis of nanobeams. The detailed mathematical derivations are presented and numerical investigations are performed while the emphasis is placed on investigating the effect of thermal loading, small scale and surface effects, mode number, thickness ratio and boundary conditions on the normalized natural frequencies and critical buckling loads of the nanobeams in detail. The results show that the surface effects lead to an increase in natural frequency and critical buckling load of nanotubes. It is explicitly shown that the vibration and buckling of a nanotube is significantly influenced by these effects and the influence of thermal loadings and nonlocal effects are minimal.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제57권1호
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• pp.45-63
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• 2016

Fiber metal laminates (FMLs) represent a high-performance family of hybrid materials which consist of thin metal sheets bonded together with alternating unidirectional fiber layers. In this study, the buckling behavior of a FML circular cylindrical shell under axial compression is investigated via both analytical and finite element approaches. The governing equations are derived based on the first-order shear deformation theory and solved by the Navier solution method. Also, the buckling load of a FML cylindrical shell is calculated using linear eigenvalue analysis in commercial finite element software, ABAQUS. Due to lack of experimental and analytical data for buckling behavior of FML cylindrical shells in the literature, the proposed model is simplified to the full-composite and full-metal cylindrical shells and buckling loads are compared with the available results. Afterwards, the effects of FML parameters such as metal volume fraction (MVF), composite fiber orientation, stacking sequence of layers and geometric parameters are studied on the buckling loads. Results show that the FML layup has the significant effect on the buckling loads of FML cylindrical shells in comparison to the full-composite and full-metal shells. Results of this paper hopefully provide a useful guideline for engineers to design an efficient and economical structure.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제55권6호
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• pp.1241-1260
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• 2015

Any rational approach to define the configuration and size of viscous fluid dampers in a structure should be based on the dynamic properties of the system with the dampers. In this paper we propose an alternative representation of the complex eigenvalues of multi degree of freedom systems with dampers to calculate new equivalent natural frequencies. Analytical expressions for the dynamic properties of a two-story building model with a linear viscous damper in the first floor (i.e. with a non-proportional damping matrix) are derived. The formulas permit to obtain the equivalent damping ratios and equivalent natural frequencies for all the modes as a function of the mass, stiffness and damping coefficient for underdamped and overdamped systems. It is shown that the commonly used formula to define the equivalent natural frequency is not applicable for this type of system and for others where the damping matrix is not proportional to the mass matrix, stiffness matrix or both. Moreover, the new expressions for the equivalent natural frequencies expose a novel phenomenon; the use of viscous fluid dampers can modify the vibration frequencies of the structure. The significance of the new equivalent natural frequencies is expounded by means of a simulated free vibration test. The proposed approach may offer a new perspective to study the effect of viscous dampers on the dynamic properties of a structure.

• Wind and Structures
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• 제17권3호
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• pp.263-274
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• 2013

A numerical technique for fluid-structure interaction, which is based on the finite element method (FEM) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), was developed for application to an industrial chimney equipped with a pendulum tuned mass damper (TMD). In order to solve the structural problem, a one-dimensional beam model (Navier-Bernoulli) was considered and, for the dynamical problem, the standard second-order Newmark method was used. Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flow are solved in several horizontal planes to determine the pressure in the boundary of the corresponding cross-section of the chimney. Forces per unit length were obtained by integrating the pressure and are introduced in the structure using standard FEM interpolation techniques. For the fluid problem, a fractional step scheme based on a second order pressure splitting has been used. In each fluid plane, the displacements have been taken into account considering an Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian approach. The stabilization of convection and diffusion terms is achieved by means of quasi-static orthogonal subscales. For each period of time, the fluid problem was solved and the geometry of the mesh of each fluid plane is updated according to the structure displacements. Using this technique, along-wind and across-wind effects have been properly explained. The method was applied to an industrial chimney in three scenarios (with or without TMD and for different damping values) and for two wind speeds, showing different responses.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• 제4권3호
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• pp.219-235
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• 2017

The large container ships and fast patrol boats are complex marine structures. Therefore, their global mechanical behaviour has long been modeled mostly by refined beam theories. Important issues of cross section warping and bending-torsion coupling have been addressed by introducing special functions in these theories with inherent assumptions and thus compromising their robustness. The 3D solid Finite Element (FE) models, on the other hand, are accurate enough but pose high computational cost. In this work, different marine vessel structures have been analysed using the well-known Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF). According to CUF, the governing equations (and consequently the finite element arrays) are written in terms of fundamental nuclei that do not depend on the problem characteristics and the approximation order. Thus, refined models can be developed in an automatic manner. In the present work, a particular class of 1D CUF models that was initially devised for the analysis of aircraft structures has been employed for the analysis of marine structures. This class, which was called Component-Wise (CW), allows one to model complex 3D features, such as inclined hull walls, floors and girders in the form of components. Realistic ship geometries were used to demonstrate the efficacy of the CUF approach. With the same level of accuracy achieved, 1D CUF beam elements require far less number of Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) compared to a 3D solid FE solution.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제68권6호
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• pp.721-733
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• 2018

The modal frequency responses of functionally graded (FG) sandwich doubly curved shell panels are investigated using a higher-order finite element formulation. The system of equations of the panel structure derived using Hamilton's principle for the evaluation of natural frequencies. The present shell panel model is discretised using the isoparametric Lagrangian element (nine nodes and nine degrees of freedom per node). An in-house MATLAB code is prepared using higher-order kinematics in association with the finite element scheme for the calculation of modal values. The stability of the opted numerical vibration frequency solutions for the various shell geometries i.e., single and doubly curved FG sandwich structure are proven via the convergence test. Further, close conformance of the finite element frequency solutions for the FG sandwich structures is found when compared with the published theoretical predictions (numerical, analytical and 3D elasticity solutions). Subsequently, appropriate numerical examples are solved pertaining to various design factors (curvature ratio, core-face thickness ratio, aspect ratio, support conditions, power-law index and sandwich symmetry type) those have the significant influence on the free vibration modal data of the FG sandwich curved structure.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제71권6호
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• pp.669-682
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• 2019

We in this article study nonlinear thermal buckling of bi-directional functionally graded beams in the theoretical frameworks of nonlocal strain graded theory. To begin with, it is assumed that the effective material properties of beams vary continuously in both the thickness and width directions. Then, we utilize a higher-order shear deformation theory that includes a physical neutral surface to derive the size-dependent governing equations combining with the Hamilton's principle and the von $K{\acute{a}}rm{\acute{a}}n$ geometric nonlinearity. It should be pointed out that the established model, containing a nonlocal parameter and a strain gradient length scale parameter, can availably account for both the influence of nonlocal elastic stress field and the influence of strain gradient stress field. Subsequently, via using a easier group of initial asymptotic solutions, the corresponding analytical solution of thermal buckling of beams is obtained with the help of perturbation method. Finally, a parametric study is carried out in detail after validating the present analysis, especially for the effects of a nonlocal parameter, a strain gradient length scale parameter and the ratio of the two on the critical thermal buckling temperature of beams.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제69권4호
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• pp.457-466
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• 2019

This paper presents an efficient higher-order nonlocal beam theory for the Critical buckling, of functionally graded (FG) nanobeams with porosities that may possibly occur inside the functionally graded materials (FG) during their fabrication, the nonlocal elastic behavior is described by the differential constitutive model of Eringen. The material properties of (FG) nanobeams with porosities are assumed to vary through the thickness according to a power law. The governing equations of the functionally graded nanobeams with porosities are derived by employing Hamilton's principle. Analytical solutions are presented for a simply supported FG nanobeam with porosities. The validity of this theory is studied by comparing some of the present results with other higher-order theories reported in the literature, Illustrative examples are given also to show the effects of porosity volume fraction, and thickness to length ratios on the critical buckling of the FG beams.