• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.355-374
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• 2006

Thin walled steel bridge-piers/columns are vulnerable to damage, when subjected to earthquake excitations. Local buckling, global buckling or interaction between local and global buckling usually is the cause of this damage, which results in significant strength reduction of the member. In this study new innovative design concepts, "thin-walled corrugated steel columns" and "thin-walled cellular steel columns" are presented, which allow the column to undergo large plastic deformations without significant strength reduction; hence dissipate energy under cyclic loading. It is shown that, compared with the conventional designs, circular and stiffened box sections, these new innovative concepts might results in cost-effective designs, with improved buckling and ductility properties. Using a finite element model, that takes the non-linear material properties into consideration, it is shown that the corrugations will act like longitudinal stiffeners that are supporting each other, thus improving the buckling behavior and allowing for reduction of the overall wall thickness of the column.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.613-630
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• 1996

The homogenization method is used to develop a beam element in space for thermo-mechanical analysis of unidirectional composites. Local stress and temperature field in the microscale are described using the function of homogenization. The global (macroscopic) behaviour of the structure is supposed to be that of a beam. Beam-type kinematical hypotheses (including independent shear rotations) are hence applied and superposed on the microdescription. A macroscopic stiffness matrix for such a beam element is then developed which contains the microscale properties of the single cell of periodicity. The presented model enables us to analyse without too much computational effort complicated composite structures such as e.g. toroidal coils of a fusion reactor. We need only a FE mesh sufficiently fine for a correct description of the local geometry of a single cell and a few of the newly developed elements for the description of the global behaviour. An unsmearing procedure gives the stress and temperature field in the different materials of a single cell.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.783-797
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• 2012

A new hybrid meta-heuristic optimization algorithm is presented for design of structures. The algorithm is based on the concepts of the charged system search (CSS) and the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithms. The CSS is inspired by the Coulomb and Gauss's laws of electrostatics in physics, the governing laws of motion from the Newtonian mechanics, and the PSO is based on the swarm intelligence and utilizes the information of the best fitness historically achieved by the particles (local best) and by the best among all the particles (global best). In the new hybrid algorithm, each agent is affected by local and global best positions stored in the charged memory considering the governing laws of electrical physics. Three different types of structures are optimized as the numerical examples with the new algorithm. Comparison of the results of the hybrid algorithm with those of other meta-heuristic algorithms proves the robustness of the new algorithm.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.821-848
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• 2014

This paper presents a novel method to carry out monitoring of transport infrastructure such as pavements and bridges through the analysis of vehicle accelerations. An algorithm is developed for the identification of dynamic vehicle-bridge interaction forces using the vehicle response. Moving force identification theory is applied to a vehicle model in order to identify these dynamic forces between the vehicle and the road and/or bridge. A coupled half-car vehicle-bridge interaction model is used in theoretical simulations to test the effectiveness of the approach in identifying the forces. The potential of the method to identify the global bending stiffness of the bridge and to predict the pavement roughness is presented. The method is tested for a range of bridge spans using theoretical simulations and the influences of road roughness and signal noise on the accuracy of the results are investigated.

• Interaction and multiscale mechanics
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.83-105
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• 2013

In this paper, a multi-scale meshfree-enriched finite element formulation is presented for the analysis of acoustic wave propagation problem. The scale splitting in this formulation is based on the Variational Multi-scale (VMS) method. While the standard finite element polynomials are used to represent the coarse scales, the approximation of fine-scale solution is defined globally using the meshfree enrichments generated from the Generalized Meshfree (GMF) approximation. The resultant fine-scale approximations satisfy the homogenous Dirichlet boundary conditions and behave as the "global residual-free" bubbles for the enrichments in the oscillatory type of Helmholtz solutions. Numerical examples in one dimension and two dimensional cases are analyzed to demonstrate the accuracy of the present formulation and comparison is made to the analytical and two finite element solutions.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.319-328
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• 2017

Higher prediction efficacy is a very challenging task in any field of engineering. Due to global warming, there is a considerable increase in the global sea level. Through this work, an attempt has been made to find the sea level variability due to climate change impact at Haldia Port, India. Different statistical downscaling techniques are available and through this paper authors are intending to compare and illustrate the performances of three regression models. The models: Wavelet Neural Network (WNN), Minimax Probability Machine Regression (MPMR), Feed-Forward Neural Network (FFNN) are used for projecting the sea level variability due to climate change at Haldia Port, India. Model performance indices like PI, RMSE, NSE, MAPE, RSR etc were evaluated to get a clear picture on the model accuracy. All the indices are pointing towards the outperformance of WNN in projecting the sea level variability. The findings suggest a strong recommendation for ensembled models especially wavelet decomposed neural network to improve projecting efficiency in any time series modeling.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.6
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• pp.723-736
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• 2020

In this paper, acoustic emission (AE) and pattern recognition are utilized to identify the AE signal signatures caused by propagation of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in a 304 stainless steel plate. The surface of the plate is under almost uniform tensile stress at a notch. A corrosive environment is provided by exposing the notch to a solution of 1% Potassium Tetrathionate by weight. The Global b-value indicated an occurrence of the first visible crack and damage stages during the SCC. Furthermore, a method based on linear regression has been developed for damage identification using AE data.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.175-181
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• 1998

Torsional flutter occurs at 2D rectangular cylinders with side ratios B/D smaller than about 8 or 10. On the other hand, slender cylinders indicate the occurrence of coupled flutter, which means the coupled derivatives of slender cylinders have more significant role for flutter instability than that of bluffer ones. In this paper, based upon so called "Step-by-step analysis", it is clarified the coupled derivatives stabilize torsional flutter instability of bluffer cylinders (e.x. B/D=5), while they destabilize torsional flutter or coupled flutter instabilities of mores slender cylinders. The boundary of them exists between B/D=5 and 8.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.407-421
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• 2009

The present paper addresses the optimal design of composite laminates with the aim of minimizing free-edge delamination stresses. A technique involving the application of particle swarm optimization (PSO) integrated with FEM was developed for the optimization. Optimization was also conducted with the zero-order method (ZOM) included in ANSYS. The semi-analytical method, which provides an approximation of the interlaminar normal stress of laminates under in-plane load, was used to partially validate the optimization results. It was found that optimal results based on ZOM are sensitive to the starting design points, and an unsuitable initial design set will lead to a result far from global solution. By contrast, the proposed method can find the global optimal solution regardless of initial designs, and the solutions were better than those obtained by ZOM in all the cases investigated.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.393-416
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• 2011

Hybrid acceleration-impedance sensor nodes on Imote2-platform are designed for damage monitoring in steel girder connections. Thus, the feasibility of the sensor nodes is examined about its performance for vibration-based global monitoring and impedance-based local monitoring in the structural systems. To achieve the objective, the following approaches are implemented. First, a damage monitoring scheme is described in parallel with global vibration-based methods and local impedance-based methods. Second, multi-scale sensor nodes that enable combined acceleration-impedance monitoring are described on the design of hardware components and embedded software to operate. Third, the performances of the multi-scale sensor nodes are experimentally evaluated from damage monitoring in a lab-scaled steel girder with bolted connection joints.