• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.727-741
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• 2018

To mitigate vibrations, tuned mass dampers(TMD) are widely used for long span bridges or high-rise buildings. Due to some durability concerns, such as fluid degradation, oil leakage, etc., the alternative solutions, such as the non-contacted eddy current damping (ECD), are proposed for mechanical devices in small scales. In the present study, a new eddy current damping TMD (ECD-TMD) is proposed and developed for large scale civil infrastructure applications. Starting from parametric study on finite element analysis of the ECD-TMD, the new design is enhanced via using the permanent magnets to eliminate the power need and a combination of a copper plate and a steel plate to improve the energy dissipation efficiency. Additional special design includes installation of two permanent magnets at the same side above the copper plate to easily adjust the gap as well as the damping. In a case study, the proposed ECD-TMD is demonstrated in the application of a steel arch bridge to mitigate the wind-induced vibrations of the flexible hangers. After a brief introduction of the configuration and the installation process for the damper, the mitigation effects are measured for the ambient vibration and forced vibration scenarios. The results show that the damping ratios increase to 3% for the weak axis after the installation of the ECD-TMDs and the maximum vibration amplitudes can be reduced by 60%.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.83-94
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• 2019

Passive negative stiffness dampers (NSDs) that possess superior energy dissipation abilities, have been proved to be more efficient than commonly adopted passive viscous dampers in controlling stay cable vibrations. Recently, inertial mass dampers (IMDs) have attracted extensive attentions since their properties are similar to NSDs. It has been theoretically predicted that superior supplemental damping can be generated for a taut cable with an IMD. This paper aims to theoretically investigate the impact of the cable sag on the efficiency of an IMD in controlling stay cable vibrations, and experimentally validate superior vibration mitigation performance of the IMD. Both the numerical and asymptotic solutions were obtained for an inclined sag cable with an IMD installed close to the cable end. Based on the asymptotic solution, the cable attainable maximum modal damping ratio and the corresponding optimal damping coefficient of the IMD were derived for a given inertial mass. An electromagnetic IMD (EIMD) with adjustable inertial mass was developed to investigate the effects of inertial mass and cable sag on the vibration mitigation performance of two model cables with different sags through series of first modal free vibration tests. The results show that the sag generally reduces the attainable first modal damping ratio of the cable with a passive viscous damper, while tends to increase the cable maximum attainable modal damping ratio provided by the IMD. The cable sag also decreases the optimum damping coefficient of the IMD when the inertial mass is less than its optimal value. The theoretically predicted first modal damping ratio of the cable with an IMD, taking into account the sag generally, agrees well with that identified from experimental results, while it will be significantly overestimated with a taut-cable model, especially for the cable with large sag.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.622-629
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• 2020

The performance and cost of electric vehicles (EVs) are much influenced by the performance and service life of the Li-ion battery system. In particular, the cell performance and reliability of Li-ion battery packs are highly dependent on their operating temperature. Therefore, a novel battery thermal management is crucial for Li-ion batteries owing to heat dissipation effects on their performance. Among various types of battery thermal management systems (BTMS'), the phase change material (PCM) based BTMS is considered to be a promising cooling system in terms of guaranteeing the performance and reliability of Li-ion batteries. This work is mainly concerned with the basic research on PCM based BTMS. In this paper, a basic experimental study on PCM based battery cooling system was performed. The main purpose of the present study is to present a comparison of two PCM-based cooling systems (n-Eicosane and n-Docosane) of the unit 18650 battery module. To this end, the simplified PCM-based Li-ion battery module with two 18650 batteries was designed and fabricated. The thermal behavior (such as temperature rise of the battery pack) with various discharge rates (c-rate) was mainly investigated and compared for two types of battery systems employing PCM-based cooling. It is considered that the results obtained from this study provide good fundamental data on screening the appropriate PCMs for future research on PCM based BTMS for EV applications.

• Journal of Practical Agriculture & Fisheries Research
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.35-42
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• 2020

This study was conducted to investigate the photosystem II activities of Cercis chinensis by soil water condition. Drought stress was induced by withholding water and waterlogging treatments was immerging the pots for 15 days. Results showed that the relative activities per reaction center such as ABS/RC, TRo/RC and Dio/RC were significantly increased compared with the control group after 12 days in waterlogging treatments. Particularly, Dio/RC increased substantially under waterlogging stress, indicating that excessive energy was consumed by heat dissipation. Furthermore, the performance index on absorption basis(PI_abs) and responses to structural and functional PS II(SFI_abs) were dramatically decreased after 15 days in both the drought and waterlogging treatments, which reflects the relative reduction state of the photosystem II. These results of chlorophyll a fluorescence by OKJIP analysis show that the sensitive changes photosystem II activity. Thus, on the basis of our results that Cercis chinensis was exhibited a strong reduction of photosynthetic activity to waterlogging stress, and OKJIP parameters such as ABS/RC, DIo/RC, PI_abs and SFI_abs could be useful indicator to monitor the physiological states of Cercis chinensis under soil water condition.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.43-58
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• 2022

The BARC flow is studied via Direct Numerical Simulation at a relatively low turbulent Reynolds number, with focus on the geometrical representation of the leading-edge (LE) corners. The study contributes to further our understanding of the discrepancies between existing numerical and experimental BARC data. In a first part, rounded LE corners with small curvature radii are considered. Results show that a small amount of rounding does not lead to abrupt changes of the mean fields, but that the effects increase with the curvature radius. The shear layer separates from the rounded LE at a lower angle, which reduces the size of the main recirculating region over the cylinder side. In contrast, the longitudinal size of the recirculating region behind the trailing edge (TE) increases, as the TE shear layer is accelerated. The effect of the curvature radii on the turbulent kinetic energy and on its production, dissipation and transport are addressed. The present results should be contrasted with the recent work of Rocchio et al. (2020), who found via implicit Large-Eddy Simulations at larger Reynolds numbers that even a small curvature radius leads to significant changes of the mean flow. In a second part, the LE corners are fully sharp and the exact analytical solution of the Stokes problem in the neighbourhood of the corners is used to locally restore the solution accuracy degraded by the singularity. Changes in the mean flow reveal that the analytical correction leads to streamlines that better follow the corners. The flow separates from the LE with a lower angle, resulting in a slightly smaller recirculating region. The corner-correction approach is valuable in general, and is expected to help developing high-quality numerical simulations at the high Reynolds numbers typical of the experiments with reasonable meshing requirements.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.277-288
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• 2022

A novel flat steel plate-concrete-corrugated steel plate (FS-C-CS) sandwich panel was proposed for resisting impact load. The failure mode, impact force and displacement response of the FS-C-CS panel under impact loading were studied via drop-weight impact tests. The combined global flexure and local indentation deformation mode of the FS-C-CS panel was observed, and three stages of impact process were identified. Moreover, the effects of corrugated plate height and steel plate thickness on the impact responses of the FS-C-CS panels were quantitatively analysed, and the impact resistant performance of the FS-C-CS panel was found to be generally improved on increasing corrugated plate height and thickness in terms of smaller deformation as well as larger impact force and post-peak mean force. The Finite Element (FE) model of the FS-C-CS panel under impact loading was established to predict its dynamic response and further reveal its failure mode and impact energy dissipation mechanism. The numerical results indicated that the concrete core and corrugated steel plate dissipated the majority of impact energy. In addition, employing end plates and high strength bolts as shear connectors could prevent the slip between steel plates and concrete core and assure the full composite action of the FS-C-CS panel.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.155-170
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• 2022

An accurate analysis of structures supported on soft soils and subjected to seismic loading requires the consideration of the soil-foundation-structure interaction. An important aspect of this interaction lies with the energy dissipation due to soil material damping. Unlike advanced constitutive models that can induce energy loss, the use of simple elastoplastic constitutive models requires additional damping. The frequency dependent Rayleigh damping is a formulation that is frequently used in dynamic analysis. The main concern of this formulation is the correct selection of the target damping ratio and the frequency range where the response is frequency independent. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the Rayleigh damping parameters in soil-pile-structure and soil-inclusion-platform-structure systems in the presence of soft soil under seismic loading. Three-dimensional analyses of both systems are carried out using the finite difference software Flac3D. Different values of target damping ratios and minimum frequencies are utilized. Several earthquakes are used to study the influence of different excitation frequencies in the systems. The soil response in terms of accelerations, displacements and strains is obtained. For the rigid elements, the results are presented in terms of bending moments and normal forces. The results show that when the frequency of the input motion is close to the minimum (central) frequency in the Rayleigh damping formulation, the overdamping amount is reduced, and the surface spectral acceleration of the analyzed pile and inclusion systems increases. Thus, the bending moments and normal forces throughout the piles and inclusions also increase.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.827-841
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• 2022

The rotation capacities of the plastic hinges located at beam-ends are significantly reduced in traditional steel framed-tube structures (SFTSs) because of the small span-to-depth ratios of the deep beams, leading to the low ductility and energy dissipation capacities of the SFTSs. High-strength steel framed-tube structures with replaceable shear links (HSSFTS-RSLs) are proposed to address this issue. A replaceable shear link is located at the mid-span of a deep spandrel beam to act as a ductile fuse to dissipate the seismic energy in HSSFTS-RSLs. A 2/3-scaled HSSFTS-RSL specimen with a shear link fabricated of high-strength low-alloy Q355 structural steel was created, and a cyclic loading test was performed to study the hysteresis behaviors of this specimen. The test results were compared to the specimens with soft steel shear links in previous studies to investigate the feasibility of using high-strength low-alloy steel for shear links in HSSFTS-RSLs. The effects of link web stiffener spaces on the cyclic performance of the HSSFTS-RSLs with Q355 steel shear links were investigated based on the nonlinear numerical analysis. The test results indicate that the specimen with a Q355 steel shear link exhibited a reliable and stable seismic performance. If the maximum interstory drift of HSSFTS-RSL is designed lower than 2% under earthquakes, the HSSFTS-RSLs with Q355 steel shear links can have similar seismic performance to the structures with soft steel shear links, even though these shear links have similar shear and flexural strength. For the Q355 steel shear links with web height-to-thickness ratios higher than 30.7 in HSSFTS-RSLs, it is suggested that the maximum intermediate web stiffener space is decreased by 15% from the allowable space for the shear link in AISC341-16 due to the analytical results.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.1
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• pp.107-120
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• 2022

The bracing members capable of active control against seismic loads to reduce earthquake damage have been widely utilized in construction projects. Effectively reducing the structural damage caused by earthquake events, bracing systems equipped with retrofitting damper devices, which take advantage of the energy dissipation and impact absorption, have been widely used in practical construction sites. Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) are a new generation of smart materials with the capability of recovering their predefined shape after experiencing a large strain. This is mainly due to the shape memory effects and the superelasticity of SMA. These properties make SMA an excellent alternative to be used in passive, semi-active, and active control systems in civil engineering applications. In this research, a new system in diagonal braces with slit damper combined with SMA is investigated. The diagonal element under the effect of tensile and compressive force turns to shear force in the slit damper and creates tension in the SMA. Therefore, by creating shear forces in the damper, it leads to yield and increases the energy absorption capacity of the system. The purpose of using SMA, in addition to increasing the stiffness and strength of the system, is to create reversibility for the system. According to the results, the highest capacity is related to the case where the ratio of the width of the middle section to the width of the end section (b₁/b) is 1.0 and the ratio of the height of the middle part to the total height of the damper (h₁/h) is 0.1. This is mainly because in this case, the damper section has the highest cross-section. In contrast, the lowest capacity is related to the case where b₁/b=0.1 and the ratio h₁/h=0.8.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.497-512
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• 2023

Using light weight concrete as infill material in conventional cold-formed steel (CFS) shear wall systems can considerably increase their load bearing capacity, ductility, integrity and fire resistance. The compressive strength of the filler concrete is a key factor affecting the structural behaviour of the composite wall systems, and therefore, achieving maximum compressive strength in lightweight concrete while maintaining its lightweight properties is of significant importance. In this study a new type of optimum polystyrene lightweight concrete (OPLC) with high compressive strength is developed for infill material in composite CFS shear wall systems. To study the seismic behaviour of the OPLC-filled CFS shear wall systems, two full scale wall specimens are tested under cyclic loading condition. The effects of OPLC on load-bearing capacity, failure mode, ductility, energy dissipation capacity, and stiffness degradation of the walls are investigated. It is shown that the use of OPLC as infill in CFS shear walls can considerably improve their seismic performance by: (i) preventing the premature buckling of the stud members, and (ii) changing the dominant failure mode from brittle to ductile thanks to the bond-slip behaviour between OPLC and CFS studs. It is also shown that the design equations proposed by EC8 and ACI 318-14 standards overestimate the shear force capacity of OPLC-filled CFS shear wall systems by up to 80%. This shows it is necessary to propose methods with higher efficiency to predict the capacity of these systems for practical applications.