• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.525-539
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• 2010

Polymer matrix composites are widely used in many engineering applications as they can be customized to meet a desired performance while not only maintaining low cost but also reducing weight. Polymers can experience viscoelastic-viscoplastic response when subjected to external loadings. Various reinforcements and fillers are added to polymers which bring out more complexity in analyzing the timedependent response. This study formulates an integrated micromechanical model and finite element (FE) analysis for predicting effective viscoelastic-viscoplastic response of polymer based hybrid composites. The studied hybrid system consists of unidirectional short-fiber reinforcements and a matrix system which is composed of solid spherical particle fillers dispersed in a homogeneous polymer constituent. The goal is to predict effective performance of hybrid systems having different compositions and properties of the fiber, particle, and matrix constituents. A combined Schapery's viscoelastic integral model and Valanis's endochronic viscoplastic model is used for the polymer constituent. The particle and fiber constituents are assumed linear elastic. A previously developed micromechanical model of particle reinforced composite is first used to obtain effective mechanical properties of the matrix systems. The effective properties of the matrix are then integrated to a unit-cell model of short-fiber reinforced composites, which is generated using the FE. The effective properties of the matrix are implemented using a user material subroutine in the FE framework. Limited experimental data and analytical solutions available in the literatures are used for comparisons.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.31-36
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• 2010

The objective of this study is to evaluate effects of honeycomb cell size for compressive behaviors of square sandwich composite tubes with woven fabric carbon/epoxy skin and Al honeycomb core. In order to achieve these goals, four different kinds of tubes were fabricated and compressed to 200mm~250mm under quasi-static load of 10mm/min. The Al honeycombs with cell size of 6.35mm and 9.53mm were used. The relationship of mean compressive load and cell size was evaluated. In addition, the effect of peel strength and equivalent elastic modulus in ribbon direction for the mean compressive load was investigated.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.478-482
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• 2010

A series of molecular dynamic (MD), finite element (FE) and ab initio simulations are carried out to establish suitable modeling schemes for the continuum-based analysis of aluminum matrix nanocomposites reinforced with carbon nanotubes (CNTs). From a comparison of the MD with FE models and inferences based on bond structures and electron distributions, we propose that the effective thickness of a CNT wall for its continuum representation should be related to the graphitic inter-planar spacing of 3.4${\AA}$. We also show that shell element representation of a CNT structure in the FE models properly simulated the carbon-carbon covalent bonding and long-range interactions in terms of the load-displacement behaviors. Estimation of the effective interfacial elastic properties by ab initio simulations showed that the in-plane interfacial bond strength is negligibly weaker than the normal counterpart due to the nature of the weak secondary bonding at the CNT-Al interface. Therefore, we suggest that a third-phase solid element representation of the CNT-Al interface in nanocomposites is not physically meaningful and that spring or bar element representation of the weak interfacial bonding would be more appropriate as in the cases of polymer matrix counterparts. The possibility of treating the interface as a simply contacted phase boundary is also discussed.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.81-85
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• 2009

Interests in micro/nano-particles have been greatly increasing due to their wide applications in various fields such as environmental and medical sciences as well as engineering. In order to obtain a fundamental understanding of the tribological characteristics at particle-surface contact interface, frictional behaviors according to load/pressure and materials were obtained by using atomic force microscope(AFM) cantilevers with different stiffnesses and tips. Lateral contact stiffnesses were observed in various tip-surface contact situations. Experimental results show that stick-slip friction behavior occurs even when the colloidal probes with a particle of a few micrometers in diameter, which have a relatively large contact area and lack a well-shaped apex, were used. This indicates that atomic stick-slip friction may be a more common phenomenon than it is currently thought to be. Also, experimental results were investigated by considering the competition between the stiffness of the interatomic potential across the interface and the elastic stiffnesses of the contacting materials and the force sensor itself.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.285-296
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• 2014

Material damping affects the dynamic behaviors of engineering structures considerably, but up to till now little research is maintained on influence factors of material damping. Based on the damping-stress function of steel, the material damping of steel beams is obtained by calculating the stress distribution of the beams with an analytical method. Some key influence factors of the material damping, such as boundary condition, amplitude and frequency of excitation, load position as well as the cross-sectional dimension of a steel beam are analyzed respectively. The calculated results show that even in elastic scope, material damping does not remain constant but varies with these influence factors. Although boundary condition affects material damping to some extent, such influence can be neglected when the maximum stress amplitude of the beam is less than the fatigue limit of steel. Exciting frequency, load position and cross-section dimension have great effects on the material damping of the beam which maintain the similar changing trend under different boundary conditions respectively.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.123-136
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• 2008

A new plastic-damage constitutive model applicable to lightweight concrete (LWC) and normal weight concrete (NWC) is proposed in this paper based on both continuum damage mechanics and plasticity theories. Two damage variables are used to represent tensile and compressive damage independently. The effective stress is computed in the Drucker-Prager multi-surface plasticity framework. The stress is then computed by multiplication of the damaged part and the effective part. The proposed model is coded as a user material subroutine and incorporated in a finite element analysis software. The constitutive integration algorithm is implemented by adopting the operator split involving elastic predictor, plastic corrector and damage corrector. The numerical study shows that the algorithm is efficient and robust in the finite element analysis. Experimental investigation is conducted to verify the proposed model involving both static and dynamic tests. The very good agreement between the numerical results and experimental results demonstrates the capability of the proposed model to capture the behaviors of LWC and NWC structures for static and impact loading.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.495-508
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• 1995

The self-excited vibrations of airfoil is related to the classical flutter problems, and it has been studied as a system with linear stiffness and small damping. However, since the actual aircraft wing and the many mechanical elements of airfoil type have various design variables and parameters, some of these could have strong nonlinearities, and the nonlinearities could be unexpectedly strong as the parameters vary. This abrupt chaotic behavior undergoes ordered routes, and the behaviors after these routes are uncontrollable and unexpectable since it is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. In order to study the chaotic behavior of the system, three parameters are considered, i.e., free-stream velocity, elastic distance and zero-lift angle. If the chaotic parameter region can be identified from the mathematically modeled nonlinear differential equation system, the designs which avoid chaotic regions could be suggested. In this study, by using recently developed dynamically system methods, and chaotic regions on the parameter plane will be found and the safe design variables will be suggested.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.533-538
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• 2009

The magnitude of constraint effect $A_2$ values on the non-linear elastic plastic fracture toughness was experimentally estimated by using displacement at various measuring positions near crack tip. Constraint effect $A_2$ value was dependent on specimen configuration and on the measured displacement near crack front. The crack tip opening displacement in the vicinity of the crack tip front should be estimated within plastic region when appropriately constraint effect was calculated. It was found that the magnitude of constrain effect |$A_2$| is below 8.0 at the crack tip. But an appropriate location to measure the effective constraint effects $A_2$ at the critical value of J that crack initiation is characterizable by is r = 2mm and ${\theta}=90^{\circ}$ away from original crack tip, and the constraint effect |$A_2$| estimated is 5.3.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.877-889
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• 2019

The developments of double skin composite (DSC) walls with novel enhanced C-channel connectors (DSCW-EC) were reported. Followed axial compression tests on prototype walls were carried to evaluate structural performances of this novel DSC composite structures. The testing program consists of five specimens and focused on the layout of the novel enhanced C-channel (EC) connectors, which include the web direction of C-channels, steel-faceplate thickness, vertical and horizontal spacing of C-channels. Crushing in concrete core and buckling of steel faceplate were two main observed failed modes from the compression tests. However, elastic or plastic buckling of the steel faceplate varies with designed parameters in different specimens. The influences of those investigated parameters on axial compressive behaviors of DSCW-ECs were analyzed and discussed. Recommendations on the layout of novel EC connectors were then given based on these test results and discussions. This paper also developed analytical models for predictions on ultimate compressive resistance of DSCW-ECs. Validation against the reported test results show that the developed theoretical models predict well the ultimate compressive resistance of DSCW-ECs.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.906-913
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• 2006

The failure mechanism of a hollow bridge deck which is made of glass fiber reinforced polymer(GFRP) is investigated using both experiments and analysis. While the load-displacement behavior of the deck in the transverse direction shows a strong nonlinearity even in its initial response with relatively small magnitude of loads. In order to imporve the structural behavior of the deck in the transverse direction, we suggested that the empty space of the bridge deck is filled with a foam and investigated experimentally the static behavior of the orthotropic bridge deck which is made from GFRP and polyurethane foam. It is found that although the elastic modulus of the foam compared to that of the GFRP is about the order of $10^{-3}$, the structural behaviors in the weak axis such as nominal strength, stiffness, etc. are greatly improved. Owing to the low mass density of the foam used in this study, the bridge deck is still light enough with the improved structural properties.