• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.3
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• pp.351-368
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• 2021

This paper, by applying a reliability-based framework, develops seismic vulnerability macrozonation maps for Tehran, the capital and one of the most earthquake-vulnerable city of Iran. Seismic performance assessment of 3-, 4- and 5-story steel moment resisting frames (SMRFs), designed according to ASCE/SEI 41-17 and Iranian Code of Practice for Seismic Resistant Design of Buildings (2800 Standard), is investigated in terms of overall maximum inter-story drift ratio (MIDR) and unit repair cost ratio which is hereafter known as "damage ratio". To this end, Tehran city is first meshed into a network of 66 points to numerically locate low- to mid-rise SMRFs. Active faults around Tehran are next modeled explicitly. Two different combination of faults, based on available seismological data, are then developed to explore the impact of choosing a proper seismic scenario. In addition, soil effect is exclusively addressed. After building analytical models, reliability methods in combination with structure-specific probabilistic models are applied to predict demand and damage ratio of structures in a cost-effective paradigm. Due to capability of proposed methodology incorporating both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties explicitly, this framework which is centered on the regional demand and damage ratio estimation via structure-specific characteristics can efficiently pave the way for decision makers to find the most vulnerable area in a regional scale. This technical basis can also be adapted to any other structures which the demand and/or damage ratio prediction models are developed.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.605-614
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• 2021

Water inrush from fault is one of the most severe hazards during tunnel excavation. However, the traditional evaluation methods are deficient in both quantitative evaluation and uncertainty handling. In this paper, a comprehensive methodology method combined intuitionistic fuzzy AHP with a Bayesian network for the risk assessment of water inrush from fault in the subsea tunnel was proposed. Through the intuitionistic fuzzy analytic hierarchy process to replace the traditional expert scoring method to determine the prior probability of the node in the Bayesian network. After the field data is normalized, it is classified according to the data range. Then, using obtained results into the Bayesian network, conduct a risk assessment with field data which have processed of water inrush disaster on the tunnel. Simultaneously, a sensitivity analysis technique was utilized to investigate each factor's contribution rate to determine the most critical factor affecting tunnel water inrush risk. Taking Qingdao Kiaochow Bay Tunnel as an example, by predictive analysis of fifteen fault zones, thirteen of them are consistent with the actual situation which shows that the IFAHP-Bayesian Network method is feasible and applicable. Through sensitivity analysis, it is shown that the Fissure development and Apparent resistivity are more critical comparing than other factor especially the Permeability coefficient and Fault dip. The method can provide planners and engineers with adequate decision-making support, which is vital to prevent and control tunnel water inrush.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.77-89
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• 2023

This study aims to establish the correlations between variables related to a slope during rainfall and factor of safety (FOS) and displacement using a coupling analysis method that is designed to consider both in rainfall conditions. With the recent development of measurement technologies, the approach of using the measurement data in the field has become easier. Particularly, they have been obtained in tests to determine the real-time safety and movement of a slope; however, a specific method has not been finalized. In addition, collected measurement data for recognizing the FOS and displacement in real-time with a specific relevance is difficult, and risks of uncertainty, such as in soil parameters and time, exist. In this study, the correlations between various slope-related variables (i.e., rainfall intensity, rainfall duration, angle of the slope, and mechanical properties including strength parameters of selected three types of soil; loamy sand, silt loam, sand) and the FOS and displacement are analyzed in order of seepage analysis, slope stability analysis and slope displacement analysis. Moreover, the methodology of coupling analysis is verified and a fundamental understanding of the factors that need to be considered in real-time observations is gained. The results show that the contributions of the abovementioned variables vary according to the soil type. Thus, the tendency of the displacement also differs by the soil type and variables but not same tendency with FOS. The friction angle and cohesion are negative while the rainfall duration and rainfall intensity are positive with the displacement. This suggests that understanding their correlations is necessary to determine the safety of a slope in real-time using displacement data. Additionally, databases considering rainfall conditions and a wide range of soil characteristics, including hydraulic and mechanical parameters, should be accumulated.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.187-198
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• 2023

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is an advanced control approach that uses the current states of the system model to predict its future behavior. In this article, according to the seismic dynamics of structural systems, the Predictive Functional Control (PFC) method is used to solve the control problem. Although conventional PFC is an efficient control method, its performance may be impaired due to problems such as uncertainty in the structure of state sensors and process equations, as well as actuator saturation. Therefore, it requires the utilization of appropriate estimation algorithms in order to accurately evaluate responses and implement actuator saturation. Accordingly, an extended PFC is presented based on the H-ifinity (H∞) filter (HPFC) while considering simultaneously the saturation actuator. Accordingly, an extended PFC is presented based on the H-ifinity (H∞) filter (HPFC) while considering the saturation actuator. Thus, the structural responses are formulated by two estimation models using the H∞ filter. First, the H∞ filter estimates responses using a performance bound (𝜃). Second, the H∞ filter is converted into a Kalman filter in a special case by considering the 𝜃 equal to zero. Therefore, the scheme based on the Kalman filter (KPFC) is considered a comparative model. The proposed method is evaluated through numerical studies on a building equipped with an Active Tuned Mass Damper (ATMD) under near and far-field earthquakes. Finally, HPFC is compared with classical (CPFC) and comparative (KPFC) schemes. The results show that HPFC has an acceptable efficiency in boosting the accuracy of CPFC and KPFC approaches under earthquakes, as well as maintaining a descending trend in structural responses.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.503-515
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• 2022

This paper presents the development of seismic fragility curves for a precast reinforced concrete bridge instrumented with a structural health monitoring (SHM) system. The bridge is located near an active seismic fault in the Dominican Republic (DR) and provides the only access to several local communities in the aftermath of a potential damaging earthquake; moreover, the sample bridge was designed with outdated building codes and uses structural detailing not adequate for structures in seismic regions. The bridge was instrumented with an SHM system to extract information about its state of structural integrity and estimate its seismic performance. The data obtained from the SHM system is integrated with structural models to develop a set of fragility curves to be used as a quantitative measure of the expected damage; the fragility curves provide an estimate of the probability that the structure will exceed different damage limit states as a function of an earthquake intensity measure. To obtain the fragility curves a digital twin of the bridge is developed combining a computational finite element model and the information extracted from the SHM system. The digital twin is used as a response prediction tool that minimizes modeling uncertainty, significantly improving the predicting capability of the model and the accuracy of the fragility curves. The digital twin was used to perform a nonlinear incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) with selected ground motions that are consistent with the seismic fault and site characteristics. The fragility curves show that for the maximum expected acceleration (with a 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years) the structure has a 62% probability of undergoing extensive damage. This is the first study presenting fragility curves for civil infrastructure in the DR and the proposed methodology can be extended to other structures to support disaster mitigation and post-disaster decision-making strategies.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.87-105
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• 2023

Seismic regulations have been updated from time to time to accommodate an increase in seismic hazards. Comparison of seismic fragility of the existing bridges in Indonesia from different historical periods since the era before 1990 will be the basis for seismic assessment of the bridge stock in Indonesia, most of which are located in earthquake-prone areas, especially those built many years ago with outdated regulations. In this study, seismic fragility curves were developed using incremental non-linear time history analysis and more holistically according to the actual strength of concrete and steel material in Indonesia to determine the uncertainty factor of structural capacity, βc. From the research that has been carried out, based on the current seismic load in SNI 2833:2016/Seismic Map 2017 (7% probability of exceedance in 75 years), the performance level of the bridge in the era before SNI 2833:2016 was Operational-Life Safety whereas the performance level of the bridge designed with SNI 2833:2016 was Elastic - Operational. The potential for more severe damage occurs in greater earthquake intensity. Collapse condition occurs at As = F_PGA x PGA value of bridge Era I = 0.93 g; Era II = 1.03 g; Era III = 1.22 g; Era IV = 1.54 g. Furthermore, the fragility analysis was also developed with geometric variations in the same bridge class to see the effect of these variations on the fragility, which is the basis for making bridge risk maps in Indonesia.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.661-675
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• 2022

In this paper, an electric vehicle drives with efficient control and low cost hardware using four quadrant DC converter with Permanent Magnet Direct Current (PMDC) motor fed by DC boost converter is presented. The main idea of this work is to improve the energy efficiency of the conversion chain of an electric vehicle by inserting a boost converter between the battery and the four quadrant-DC motor chopper assembly. Consequently, this method makes it possible to maintain the amplification gain of the 4 quadrant chopper constant regardless of the battery voltage drop and even in the presence of a fault in the battery. One of the most important control problems is control under heavy uncertainty conditions. The higher order sliding mode control technique is introduced for the adjustment of DC bus voltage and mechanical motor speed. To implement the proposed approach in the automotive field, experimental tests were carried out. The performances obtained show the usefulness of this system for a better energy management of an electric vehicle and an ideal control under different operating conditions and constraints, mostly at nominal operation, in the presence of a load torque, when reversing the direction of rotation of the motor speed and even in case of battery chamber failure. The whole system has been tested experimentally and its performance has been analyzed.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.129-147
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• 2022

The properties of soil are naturally highly variable and thus, to ensure proper safety and reliability, we need to test a large number of samples across the length and depth. In pile foundations, conducting field tests are highly expensive and the traditional empirical relations too have been proven to be poor in performance. The study proposes a state-of-art Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) hybridized Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) and Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS); and comparative analysis of metaheuristic models (ANN-PSO, ELM-PSO, ANFIS-PSO) for prediction of bearing capacity of pile foundation trained and tested on dataset of nearly 300 dynamic pile tests from the literature. A novel ensemble model of three hybrid models is constructed to combine and enhance the predictions of the individual models effectively. The authenticity of the dataset is confirmed using descriptive statistics, correlation matrix and sensitivity analysis. Ram weight and diameter of pile are found to be most influential input parameter. The comparative analysis reveals that ANFIS-PSO is the best performing model in testing phase (R² = 0.85, RMSE = 0.01) while ELM-PSO performs best in training phase (R² = 0.88, RMSE = 0.08); while the ensemble provided overall best performance based on the rank score. The performance of ANN-PSO is least satisfactory compared to the other two models. The findings were confirmed using Taylor diagram, error matrix and uncertainty analysis. Based on the results ELM-PSO and ANFIS-PSO is proposed to be used for the prediction of bearing capacity of piles and ensemble learning method of joining the outputs of individual models should be encouraged. The study possesses the potential to assist geotechnical engineers in the design phase of civil engineering projects.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.55-75
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• 2024

The present study introduces an optimum performance soft computing model for predicting the compressive strength of high-performance concrete (HPC) by comparing models based on conventional (kernel-based, covariance function-based, and tree-based), advanced machine (least square support vector machine-LSSVM and minimax probability machine regressor-MPMR), and deep (artificial neural network-ANN) learning approaches using a common database for the first time. A compressive strength database, having results of 1030 concrete samples, has been compiled from the literature and preprocessed. For the purpose of training, testing, and validation of soft computing models, 803, 101, and 101 data points have been selected arbitrarily from preprocessed data points, i.e., 1005. Thirteen performance metrics, including three new metrics, i.e., a20-index, index of agreement, and index of scatter, have been implemented for each model. The performance comparison reveals that the SVM (kernel-based), ET (tree-based), MPMR (advanced), and ANN (deep) models have achieved higher performance in predicting the compressive strength of HPC. From the overall analysis of performance, accuracy, Taylor plot, accuracy metric, regression error characteristics curve, Anderson-Darling, Wilcoxon, Uncertainty, and reliability, it has been observed that model CS4 based on the ensemble tree has been recognized as an optimum performance model with higher performance, i.e., a correlation coefficient of 0.9352, root mean square error of 5.76 MPa, and mean absolute error of 4.1069 MPa. The present study also reveals that multicollinearity affects the prediction accuracy of Gaussian process regression, decision tree, multilinear regression, and adaptive boosting regressor models, novel research in compressive strength prediction of HPC. The cosine sensitivity analysis reveals that the prediction of compressive strength of HPC is highly affected by cement content, fine aggregate, coarse aggregate, and water content.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.679-695
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• 2024

This paper presents a novel technique that combines machine learning (ML) with moth-flame optimization (MFO) methods to predict the axial compressive strength (ACS) of concrete filled double skin steel tubes (CFDST) columns. The proposed model is trained and tested with a dataset containing 125 tests of the CFDST column subjected to compressive loading. Five ML models, including extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), gradient tree boosting (GBT), categorical gradient boosting (CAT), support vector machines (SVM), and decision tree (DT) algorithms, are utilized in this work. The MFO algorithm is applied to find optimal hyperparameters of these ML models and to determine the most effective model in predicting the ACS of CFDST columns. Predictive results given by some performance metrics reveal that the MFO-CAT model provides superior accuracy compared to other considered models. The accuracy of the MFO-CAT model is validated by comparing its predictive results with existing design codes and formulae. Moreover, the significance and contribution of each feature in the dataset are examined by employing the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) method. A comprehensive uncertainty quantification on probabilistic characteristics of the ACS of CFDST columns is conducted for the first time to examine the models' responses to variations of input variables in the stochastic environments. Finally, a web-based application is developed to predict ACS of the CFDST column, enabling rapid practical utilization without requesting any programing or machine learning expertise.