• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.219-240
• /
• 2007

An analytical-numerical procedure has been presented in this paper to take into account the nonlinear effects of concrete cracking and time-dependent effects of creep and shrinkage in the concrete portion of the continuous composite beams under service load. The procedure is analytical at the element level and numerical at the structural level. The cracked span length beam element consisting of uncracked zone in middle and cracked zones near the ends has been proposed to reduce the computational effort. The progressive nature of cracking of concrete has been taken into account by division of the time into a number of time intervals. Closed form expressions for stiffness matrix, load vector, crack lengths and mid-span deflection of the beam element have been presented in order to reduce the computational effort and bookkeeping. The procedure has been validated by comparison with the experimental and analytical results reported elsewhere and with FEM. The procedure can be readily extended for the analysis of composite building frames where saving in computational effort would be very considerable.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.1-12
• /
• 2020

Railway tracks are the direct supporting structures of the trains, which are vulnerable to produce large deformation under the temperature stress or subgrade settlement. The health status of track is critical, and the track should be routinely monitored to improve safety, lower the risk of excess deformation and provide reliable maintenance strategy. In this paper, the distributed optical fiber sensor was proposed to monitor the continuous deformation of the track. In order to validate the feasibility of the monitoring method, two deformation monitoring tests on one steel rail model in laboratory and on one real railway tack in outdoor were conducted respectively. In the model test, the working conditions of simply supported beam and continuous beam in the rail model under several concentrated loads were set to simulate different stress conditions of the real rail, respectively. In order to evaluate the monitoring accuracy, one distributed optical fiber sensor and one fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor were installed on the lower surface of the rail model, the strain measured by FBG sensor and the strain calculated from FEA were taken as measurement references. The model test results show that the strain measured by distributed optical fiber sensor has a good agreement with those measured by FBG sensor and FEA. In the outdoor test, the real track suffered from displacement and temperature loads. The distributed optical fiber sensor installed on the rail can monitor the corresponding strain and temperature with a good accuracy.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.9 no.5
• /
• pp.491-504
• /
• 2000

A convenient method for enhancing the strength and stiffness of existing reinforced concrete beams is to bond adhesively steel plates to their tension faces. However, there is a limit to the applicability of tension face plating as the tension face plates are prone to premature debonding and, furthermore, the addition of the plate reduces the ductility of the beam. An alternative approach to tension face plating is to bond adhesively steel plates to the sides of reinforced concrete beams, as side plates are less prone to debonding and can allow the beam to remain ductile. Debonding at the ends of the side plates due to flexural forces, that is flexural peeling, is studied in this paper. A fundamental mathematical model for flexural peeling is developed, which is calibrated experimentally to produce design rules for preventing premature debonding of the plate-ends due to flexural forces. In the companion paper, the effect of shear forces on flexural peeling is quantified to produce design rules that are applied to the strengthening and stiffening of continuous reinforced concrete beams.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.51-59
• /
• 2013

The use of light-gauge steel framing in low-rise commercial and industrial building construction has experienced a significant increase in recent years. In such construction, the wall framing is an assembly of cold-formed steel (CFS) studs held between top and bottom CFS tracks. Current construction methods utilize heavy hot-rolled steel sections, such as steel angles or hollow structural section tubes, to transfer the load from the end seats of the floor joist and/or from the load-bearing wall studs of the stories above to the supporting load-bearing wall below. The use of hot rolled steel elements results in significant increase in construction cost and time. Such heavy steel elements would be unnecessary if the concrete slab thickening on top of the CFS wall can be made to act compositely with the CFS track. Composite action can be achieved by attaching stand-off screws to the track and encapsulating the screw shank in the deck concrete. A series of experimental studies were performed on full-scale test specimens representing concrete/CFS flexural elements under gravity loads. The studies were designed to investigate the structural performance of concrete/CFS simple beams and concrete/CFS continuous headers. The results indicate that concrete/CFS composite flexural elements are feasible and their structural behavior can be modeled with reasonable accuracy.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.237-246
• /
• 2008

The cross-sections of continuous multi-span beams sometimes suddenly increase, or become stepped, at the interior supports of continuous beams to resist high negative moments. The three-dimensional finite-element program ABAQUS (2006) was used to analytically investigate the inelastic lateral-torsional buckling behavior of stepped beams subjected to pure bending moment and resulted in the development of design equations. The flanges of the smaller cross-section were fixed at 30.48 by 2.54 cm, whereas the width and/or thickness of the flanges of the larger cross-section varied. The web thickness and height of beam was kept at 1.65 cm and 88.9 cm, respectively. The ratios of the flange thickness, flange width, and stepped length of beams are considered analytical parameters. Two groups of 27 cases and 35 cases, respectively, were analyzed for double and single stepped beams. The combined effects of residual stresses and geometrical imperfection on inelastic lateral-torsional buckling of beams are considered. First, the distributions of residual stress of the cross-section is same as shown in Pi, etc (1995), and the initial geometric imperfection of the beam is set by central displacement equal to 0.1% of the unbraced length of beam. The new proposed equations definitely improve current design methods for the inelastic LTB problem and increase efficiency in building and bridge design. The proposed solutions can be easily used to develop new design equation for inelastic LTB resistance of stepped beams subjected to general loading condition such as a concentrated load, a series of concentrated loads or uniformly distributed load.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.58-67
• /
• 2003

Welding characteristics of austienite 304 stainless and SM45C using a continuous wave Nd:YAG laser n experimentally investigated Laser beam welding is increasingly being used in welding of structural steels. The laser welding process is one of the most advanced manufacturing technologies owing to its high speed and deep penetration. The thermal cycles associated with laser welding are generally much Inter than those involved in conventional welding processes, leading to a rather small weld zone. Experiments are performed for 304 stainless steel plates changing several process parameter such as laser power, welding speed, shielding gas flow rate, presence of surface pollution, with fixed or variable gap and misalignment between the similar and dissimilar and plates, etc. The Nd:YAG laser welding process is one of the most advanced manufacturing technologies owing to its high speed and penetration. This paper describes the weld ability of SM45C carbon steel for machine structural use by Nd:YAG laser. The follow conclusions can be drawn that laser power and welding speed have a pronounced effect on size and shape of the fusion zone. Increase in welding speed resulted in an increase in weld depth/aspect ratio and hence a decrease in the fusion zone size. The penetration depth increased with the increase in laser power.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.55 no.4
• /
• pp.765-784
• /
• 2015

Connections are usually designed either as pinned usually associated with simple construction or rigid normally is associated with continuous construction. However, the actual behaviour falls in between these two extreme cases. The use of partial strength or semi-rigid connections has been encouraged by Euro-code 3 and studies on semi-continuous construction have shown substantial savings in steel weight of the overall construction. Composite connections are proposed in this paper as partial or full strength connections. Standardized connection tables are developed based on checking on all possible failure modes as suggested by "component method" for beam-to-column composite connection on major axis. Four experimental tests were carried out to validate the proposed standardised connection table. The test results showed good agreement between experimental and theoretical values with the ratio in the range between 1.06 to 1.50. All tested specimens of the composite connections showed ductile type of failure with the formation of cracks occurred on concrete slab at maximum load. No failure occurred on the Trapezoidal Web Profiled Steel Section as beam and on the British Section as column.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.29 no.3
• /
• pp.269-275
• /
• 2016

In this paper, shear performance of concrete wide beams was evaluated through shear failure tests. The specimens were designed to have two continuous spans with a column at the center of the wide beam. Also the specimens were reinforced with plates with openings as shear reinforcements. For the test, total eight specimens, including five specimens were reinforced with steel plates and the other three specimens were reinforced with GFRP plates were manufactured. And the shear strengths obtained from the tests were compared with ones from the equation provided by ACI 318. Support width of wide beam, support section of wide beam and shear reinforcement material were considered as variables. The results showed that the support width was proportional to the increase of shear strength. Also, regardless of material type of shear reinforcement, the shear reinforcing effect was similar when the amount of shear reinforcement was the same.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.83-96
• /
• 2019

The seismic behavior of PRC coupling beam-hybrid coupled shear wall system is analyzed by using the finite element software ABAQUS. The stress distribution of steel plate, reinforcing bar in coupling beam, reinforcing bar in slab and concrete is investigated. Meanwhile, the plastic hinges developing law of this hybrid coupled shear wall system is also studied. Further, the effect of coupling ratio, section dimensions of coupling beam, aspect ratio of single shear wall, total height of structure and the role of slab on the seismic behavior of the new structural system. A fitting formula of plate characteristic values for PRC coupling beams based on different displacement requirements is proposed through the experimental date regression analysis of PRC coupling beams at home and abroad. The seismic behavior control method for PRC coupling beam-hybrid coupled shear wall system is proposed based on the continuous connection method and through controlling the coupling ratio, the roof displacement, story drift angle of hybrid coupled shear wall system, displacement ductility of coupling beam.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.403-432
• /
• 2019

Axially functionally graded (AFG) beams are a new class of composite structures that have continuous variations in material and/or geometrical parameters along the axial direction. In this study, the exact analytical solutions for the free vibration of AFG and uniform beams with general elastic supports are obtained by using Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. The elastic supports are modeled with linear rotational and lateral translational springs. Moreover, the material and/or geometrical properties of the AFG beams are assumed to vary continuously and together along the length of the beam according to the power-law forms. Accordingly, the accuracy, efficiency and capability of the proposed formulations are demonstrated by comparing the responses of the numerical examples with the available solutions. In the following, the effects of the elastic end restraints and AFG parameters, namely, gradient index and gradient coefficient, on the values of the first three natural frequencies of the AFG and uniform beams are investigated comprehensively. The analytical solutions are presented in tabular and graphical forms and can be used as the benchmark solutions. Furthermore, the results presented herein can be utilized for design of inhomogeneous beams with various supporting conditions.