• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.137-144
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• 2003

Since quasi-brittle material like concrete shows strain localization behavior accompanied by strain softening, a numerical drawback such as mesh sensitivity is appeared in the finite element analysis. In this study, a homogenized crack model which overcomes the drawback and considers rate discontinuity in the constitutive equation is proposed for modeling of cracking in concrete and its propagation in strain softening regime. Then, a series of finite element analysis of the concrete under various loading conditions has been performed. From comparison of analysis results with experimental data, it is shown that failure behavior due to localized cracking of concrete under both compressive loading condition and tensile loading condition is well predicted by the homogenized crack model.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.689-704
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• 2017

The paper presents experimental and numerical investigations of prefabricated composite structural building reinforced concrete slabs with the insulating material for a residential building construction. The building slabs were composed of concrete and expanded polystyrene. In experiments, the slabs in the full-scale 1:1 were subjected to vertical concentrated loads and failed along a diagonal shear crack. The experiments were numerically evaluated using the finite element method based on two different constitutive continuum models for concrete. First, an elasto-plastic model with the Drucker-Prager criterion defined in compression and with the Rankine criterion defined in tension was used. Second, a coupled elasto-plastic-damage formulation based on the strain equivalence hypothesis was used. In order to describe strain localization in concrete, both models were enhanced in the softening regime by a characteristic length of micro-structure by means of a non-local theory. Attention was paid to the formation of critical diagonal shear crack which was a failure precursor.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.141-158
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• 2005

A new design of distributed crack sensors based on the topological change of transmission line cables is presented for the condition assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) structures during and immediately after an earthquake event. This study is primarily focused on the performance of cable sensors under dynamic loading, particularly a feature that allows for some "memory" of the crack history of an RC member. This feature enables the post-earthquake condition assessment of structural members such as RC columns, in which the earthquake-induced cracks are closed immediately after an earthquake event due to gravity loads, and are visually undetectable. Factors affecting the onset of the feature were investigated experimentally with small-scale RC beams under cyclic loading. Test results indicated that both crack width and the number of loading cycles were instrumental in the onset of the memory feature of cable sensors. Practical issues related to dynamic acquisition with the sensors are discussed. The sensors were proven to be fatigue resistant from shake table tests of RC columns. The sensors continued to show useful performance after the columns can no longer support additional loads.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.13-27
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• 2023

Fatigue crack is a fatal problem for steel structures. Early detection and maintenance can help extend the service life and prevent hazards. This paper presents the ultrasonic guided waves-based (UGWs-based) fatigue crack detection of a steel I-beam. The semi-analytical finite element model has been built to obtain the wave propagation characteristics. Damage indices in both time and frequency domains were analyzed by considering the characteristic variations of UGWs including the amplitude, phase angle, and wave packet energy. The pulse-echo and pitch-catch methods were combined in the detection scheme. Lab-scale experiments were conducted on welded steel I-beams to verify the proposed method. Results show that the damage indices based on the characteristic variations in the time domain can identify and localize the fatigue crack before it enters the rapid growth stage. The damage severity can be reasonably evaluated by analyzing the time-domain damage indices. Two nonlinear damage indices in the frequency domain give earlier warnings of the fatigue crack than the time-domain damage indices do. The identification results based on the above two nonlinear indices are found to be less consistent under various excitation frequencies. More robust nonlinear techniques needed to be searched and tested for early crack detection in steel I-beams in further study.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.357-364
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• 2002

The resistance curves (R-curves) for 381 m crack extension of CLWL-DCB specimens had been determined. The average velocities of the crack extension measured with strain gages were 0.70 and 55 ㎜/sec. The measured rotation angle of the notch faces showed the existence of the singularity at least before 171 and 93 mm crack extensions for the 0.70 and 55 ㎜/sec crack velocities, respectively. The maximum slopes of the R-curves occurred between 25 and 89 ㎜ crack extensions for 0.70 ㎜/sec crack velocity and between 51 and 127 ㎜ crack extensions for 55 ㎜/sec crack velocity During the maximum slopes of the R-curves, the micro-crack localization can be expected, and faster crack velocity may form longer micro-cracking and micro-crack localizing zones. The fracture resistance of 0.70 ㎜/sec crack velocity reached a roughly constant maximum value of 143 N/m at 152 ㎜ crack extension, while that of 55 ㎜/sec crack velocity increased continuously to 245 N/m at 254 ㎜ crack extension and then decreased to the value of 0.70 ㎜/sec crack velocity. The R-curve of 55 ㎜/sec crack velocity was similar to that of the small size three-point bend test, and it showed that small size specimen or fast crack velocity could cause more brittle behavior.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.377-402
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• 2007

The paper presents quasi-static plane strain FE-simulations of strain localization in reinforced concrete beams without stirrups. The material was modeled with two different isotropic continuum crack models: an elasto-plastic and a damage one. In case of elasto-plasticity, linear Drucker-Prager criterion with a non-associated flow rule was defined in the compressive regime and a Rankine criterion with an associated flow rule was adopted in the tensile regime. In the case of a damage model, the degradation of the material due to micro-cracking was described with a single scalar damage parameter. To ensure the mesh-independence and to capture size effects, both criteria were enhanced in a softening regime by nonlocal terms. Thus, a characteristic length of micro-structure was included. The effect of a characteristic length, reinforcement ratio, bond-slip stiffness, fracture energy and beam size on strain localization was investigated. The numerical results with reinforced concrete beams were quantitatively compared with corresponding laboratory tests by Walraven (1978).

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.103-119
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• 2013

The applicability of limit analysis methods in design and assessment of concrete structures generally requires a certain plastic deformation capacity. The latter is primarily provided by the ductility of the reinforcement, being additionally affected by the bond properties between reinforcing steel and concrete since they provoke strain localization in the reinforcement at cracks. The bond strength of reinforcing bars is not only governed by concrete quality, but also by construction details such as bar ribbing, bar spacing or concrete cover thickness. For new concrete structures, a potentially unfavorable impact on bond strength can easily be anticipated through appropriate code rules on construction details. In existing structures, these requirements may not be necessarily satisfied, consequently requiring additional considerations. This two-part paper investigates in a theoretical study the impacts of the most frequently encountered construction details which may not satisfy design code requirements on bond strength, steel strain localization and plastic deformation capacity of cracked structural concrete. The first part introduces basic considerations on bond, strain localization and plastic deformation capacity as well as the fundamentals of the Tension Chord Model underlying the further investigations. It also analyzes the impacts of the hardening behavior of reinforcing steel and concrete quality. The second part discusses the impacts of construction details (bar ribbing, bar spacing, and concrete cover thickness) and of additional structure-specific features such as bar diameter and crack spacing.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.319-334
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• 2023

Localizing damages is an essential task to monitor the health of the structures since they may not be able to operate anymore. Among the damage detection techniques, non-destructive methods are considerably more preferred than destructive methods since damage can be located without affecting the structural integrity. However, these methods have several drawbacks in terms of detecting abilities, time consumption, cost, and hardware or software requirements. Employing artificial intelligence techniques could overcome such issues and could provide a powerful damage detection model if the technique is utilized correctly. In this study, the crack localization in flat and folded plate structures has been conducted by employing a Backpropagated Artificial Neural Network (BPANN). For this purpose, cracks with 18 different dimensions in thin, flat, and folded structures having 15⁰, 30⁰, 45⁰, and 60⁰ folding angle have been modeled and subjected to free vibration analysis by employing the Classical Plate Theory with Finite Element Method. A Four-nodded quadrilateral element having six degrees of freedom has been considered to represent those structures mathematically. The first ten natural frequencies have been obtained regarding healthy and cracked structures. To localize the crack, the ratios of the frequencies of the cracked flat and folded structures to those of healthy ones have been taken into account. Those ratios have been given to BPANN as the input variables, while the crack locations have been considered as the output variables. A total of 500 crack locations have been regarded within the dataset obtained from the results of the free vibration analysis. To build the best intelligent model, a feature search has been conducted for BAPNN regarding activation function, the number of hidden layers, and the number of hidden neurons. Regarding the analysis results, it is concluded that the BPANN is able to localize the cracks with an average accuracy of 95.12%.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.8 no.11
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• pp.449-456
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• 2019

This paper is a study on the construction of a wall-climbing mobile robot using vacuum suction and wheel-type movement, and a comparison of the performance of an automatic wall crack detection algorithm based on machine learning that is suitable for such an embedded environment. In the embedded system environment, we compared performance by applying recently developed learning methods such as YOLO for object learning, and compared performance with existing edge detection algorithms. Finally, in this study, we selected the optimal machine learning method suitable for the embedded environment and good for extracting the crack features, and compared performance with the existing methods and presented its superiority. In addition, intelligent problem - solving function that transmits the image and location information of the detected crack to the manager device is constructed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.41-50
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• 2003

In this paper, nonlinear parallel structural analyses are introduced by using the parallel multifrontal solver and damage localization for 2D and 3D crack models is presented as the application of nonlinear parallel computation. The parallel algorithms related with nonliear reduce the amount of memory used is carried out because many variables should be utilized for this highly nonlinear damage analysis. Also, Riks' continuation method is parallelized to search the solution when strain softening occurs due to damage evolution. For damage localization problem, several computational models having up to around 1-million degree of freedoms are used. The parallel performance in this nonlinear parallel algorithm is shown through these examples and the local variation of damage at crack tip is compared among the models with different degree of freedoms.