• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.39-54
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• 2014

Node layout optimization of structural wireless systems is investigated as a means to prolong the network lifetime without, if possible, compromising information quality of the measurement data. The trade-off between these antagonistic objectives is studied within a multi-objective layout optimization framework. A Genetic Algorithm is adopted to obtain a set of Pareto-optimal solutions from which the end user can select the final layout. The information quality of the measurement data collected from a heterogeneous WSN is quantified from the placement quality indicators of strain and acceleration sensors. The network lifetime or equivalently the network energy consumption is estimated through WSN simulation that provides realistic results by capturing the dynamics of the wireless communication protocols. A layout optimization study of a monitoring system on the Great Belt Bridge is conducted to evaluate the proposed approach. The placement quality of strain gauges and accelerometers is obtained as a ratio of the Modal Clarity Index and Mode Shape Expansion values that are computed from a Finite Element model of the monitored bridge. To estimate the energy consumption of the WSN platform in a realistic scenario, we use a discrete-event simulator with stochastic communication models. Finally, we compare the optimization results with those obtained in a previous work where the network energy consumption is obtained via deterministic communication models.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.97-119
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• 2013

This paper presents numerical and experimental results on the use of guided waves for structural health monitoring (SHM) of crack growth during a fatigue test in a thick steel plate used for civil engineering application. Numerical simulation, analytical modeling, and experimental tests are used to prove that piezoelectric wafer active sensor (PWAS) can perform active SHM using guided wave pitch-catch method and passive SHM using acoustic emission (AE). AE simulation was performed with the multi-physic FEM (MP-FEM) approach. The MP-FEM approach permits that the output variables to be expressed directly in electric terms while the two-ways electromechanical conversion is done internally in the MP-FEM formulation. The AE event was simulated as a pulse of defined duration and amplitude. The electrical signal measured at a PWAS receiver was simulated. Experimental tests were performed with PWAS transducers acting as passive receivers of AE signals. An AE source was simulated using 0.5-mm pencil lead breaks. The PWAS transducers were able to pick up AE signal with good strength. Subsequently, PWAS transducers and traditional AE transducer were applied to a 12.7-mm CT specimen subjected to accelerated fatigue testing. Active sensing in pitch catch mode on the CT specimen was applied between the PWAS transducers pairs. Damage indexes were calculated and correlated with actual crack growth. The paper finishes with conclusions and suggestions for further work.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.116-122
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• 2014

This study proposes a system reliability analysis of rack storage facilities subjected to forklift colliding events. The proposed system reliability analysis consists of two steps: the first step is to identify dominant failure modes that most contribute to the failure of the whole rack facilities, and the second step is to evaluate the system failure probability. In the first step, dominant failure modes are identified by using a simulation-based selective searching technique where the contribution of a failure mode to the system failure is roughly estimated based on the distance from the origin in the space of the random variables. In the second step, the multi-scale system reliability method is used to compute the system reliability where the first-order reliability method (FORM) is initially used to evaluate the component failure probability (failure probability of one member), and then the probabilities of the identified failure modes and their statistical dependence are evaluated, which is called as the lower-scale reliability analysis. Since the system failure probability is comprised of the probabilities of the failure modes, a higher-scale reliability analysis is performed again based on the results of the lower-scale analyses, and the system failure probability is finally evaluated. The illustrative example demonstrates the results of the system reliability analysis of the rack storage facilities subjected to forklift impact loadings. The numerical efficiency and accuracy of the approach are compared with the Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that the proposed two-step approach is able to provide accurate reliability assessment as well as significant saving of computational time. The results of the identified failure modes additionally let us know the most-critical members and their failure sequence under the complicated configuration of the member connections.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.123-130
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• 2022

During the past decades, detection of gear defects remains as a major problem, especially when the gears are subject to non-stationary phenomena. The idea of this paper is to mixture a multilevel wavelet transform with a fast EMD decomposition in order to early detect gear defects. The sensitivity of a kurtosis is used as an indicator of gears defect burn. When the gear is damaged, the appearance of a crack on the gear tooth disrupts the signal. This is due to the presence of periodic pulses. Nevertheless, the existence of background noise induced by the random excitation can have an impact on the values of these temporal indicators. The denoising of these signals by multilevel wavelet transform improves the sensitivity of these indicators and increases the reliability of the investigation. Finally, a defect diagnosis result can be obtained after the fast transformation of the EMD. The proposed approach consists in applying a multi-resolution wavelet analysis with variable decomposition levels related to the severity of gear faults, then a fast EMD is used to early detect faults. The proposed mixed methods are evaluated on vibratory signals from the test bench, CETIM. The obtained results have shown the occurrence of a teeth defect on gear on the 5th and 8th day. This result agrees with the report of the appraisal made on this gear system.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.123-129
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• 2009

Ubiquitous home is emerging as the future digital home environments that provide various ubiquitous home services like u-Life, u-Health, etc. It is composed of some home appliances and sensors which are connected through wired/wireless network. Ubiquitous home services become aware of user's context with the information gathered from sensors and make home appliances adapt to the current home situation for maximizing user convenience. In these context-aware home environments, it is the one of significant research topics to predict user behaviors in order to proactively control the home environment. In this paper, we propose Multi-Level prediction algorithm for context-aware services in ubiquitous home environment. The algorithm has two phases, prediction and execution. In the first prediction phase, the next location of user is predicted using tree algorithm with information on users, time, location, devices. In the second execution phase, our table matching method decides home appliances to run according to the prediction, device's location, and user requirement. Since usually home appliances operate together rather than separately, our approach introduces the concept of mode service, so that it is possible to control multiple devices as well as a single one. We also devised some scenarios for the conceptual verification and validated our algorithm through simulations.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.518-525
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• 2019

Recently, the Sub-Committee on SDC (Ship Design and Construction) of IMO have discussed actively the technical issues associated with the second-generation intact stability criteria of ships. Generally, second generation intact stability criteria refer to vulnerability five modes ship stability which occurs when the ship navigating in rough seas. As waves passes the ship, dynamic roll motion phenomenon will affect ship stability that may lead to capsizing. Multi-tiered approach for second generation of intact stability criteria of IMO instruments covers apply for all ships. Each ship is checked for vulnerability to pure loss of stability, parametric roll, and broaching/surf-riding phenomena using L1(level 1) vulnerability criteria. If a possible vulnerability is detected, then the L2(level 2) criteria is used, followed by direct stability assessment, if necessary. In this study, we propose a new method to verify the criteria of the surf-riding/broaching mode of small ships. In case, L1 vulnerability criteria is not satisfied based on the relatively simple calculation using the Froude number, we presented the calculation code for the L2 criteria considering the hydrodynamics in waves to perform the more complicated calculation. Then the vulnerability criteria were reviewed based on the data for a given ship. The value of C, which is the probability of the vulnerability criteria for surf-riding/broaching, was calculated. The criteria value C is considered in new approach method using the Froude-Krylov force and the diffraction force. The result shows lower values when considering both the Froude-rylov force and the diffraction force than with only the Froude-Krylov force was considered. This difference means that when dynamic roll motion of ship, more exact wave force needs considered for second generation intact stability criteria This result will contribute to basic ship design process according to the IMO Second-Generation Intact Stability Criteria.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.225-237
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• 2018

The difficulties of satellite vibration testing are due to the commonly expressed qualification requirements being incompatible with the limited performance of the entire controlled system (satellite + interface + shaker + controller). Two features cause the problem: firstly, the main satellite modes (i.e., the first structural mode and the high and low tank modes) are very weakly damped; secondly, the controller is just too basic to achieve the expected performance in such cases. The combination of these two issues results in oscillations around the notching levels and high amplitude beating immediately after the mode. The beating overshoots are a major risk source because they can result in the test being aborted if the qualification upper limit is exceeded. Although the abort is, in itself, a safety measure protecting the tested satellite, it increases the risk of structural fatigue, firstly because the abort threshold has been already reached, and secondly, because the test must restart at the same close-resonance frequency and remain there until the qualification level is reached and the sweep frequency can continue. The beat minimum relates only to small successive frequency ranges in which the qualification level is not reached. Although they are less problematic because they do not cause an inadvertent test shutdown, such situations inevitably result in waiver requests from the client. A controlled-system analysis indicates an operating principle that cannot provide sufficient stability: the drive calculation (which controls the process) simply multiplies the frequency reference (usually called cola) and a function of the following setpoint, the ratio between the amplitude already reached and the previous setpoint, and the compression factor. This function value changes at each cola interval, but it never takes into account the sensor signal phase. Because of these limitations, we firstly examined whether it was possible to empirically determine, using a series of tests with a very simple dummy, a controller setting process that significantly improves the results. As the attempt failed, we have performed simulations seeking an optimum adjustment by finding the Least Mean Square of the difference between the reference and response signal. The simulations showed a significant improvement during the notch beat and a small reduction in the beat amplitude. However, the small improvement in this process was not useful because it highlighted the need to change the reference at each cola interval, sometimes with instructions almost twice the qualification level. Another uncertainty regarding the consequences of such an approach involves the impact of differences between the estimated model (used in the simulation) and the actual system. As limitations in the current controller were identified in different approaches, we considered the feasibility of a new controller that takes into account an estimated single-input multi-output (SIMO) model. Its parameters were estimated from a very low-level throughput. Against this backdrop, we analyzed the feasibility of an LQG control in cancelling beating, and this article highlights the relevance of such an approach.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2010

According to the capacity design concept which forms the basis of the current steel seismic codes, the braces in concentrically braced frames (CBFs) should dissipate seismic energy through cyclic tension yielding and cyclic compression buckling while the beams and the columns should remain elastic. Brace buckling in inverted V-braced frames induces unbalanced vertical forces which, in turn, impose the additional beam moments and column axial forces. However, due to difficulty in predicting the location of buckling stories, the most conservative approach implied in the design code is to estimate the column axial forces by adding all the unbalanced vertical forces in the upper stories. One alternative approach, less conservative and recommended by the current code, is to estimate the column axial forces based on the amplified seismic load expected at the mechanism-level response. Both are either too conservative or lacking technical foundation. In this paper, three combination rules for a rational estimation of the column axial forces were proposed. The idea central to the three methods is to detect the stories of high buckling potential based on pushover analysis and dynamic behavior. The unbalanced vertical forces in the stories detected as high buckling potential are summed in a linear manner while those in other stories are combined by following the SRSS(square root of sum of squares) rule. The accuracy and design advantage of the three methods were validated by comparing extensive inelastic dynamic analysis results. The mode-shape based method(MSBM), which is both simple and accurate, is recommended as the method of choice for practicing engineers among the three.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.393-402
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• 2018

While interacting with a sloping structure, an ice floe may fracture in different patterns. For example, it can be local bending failure or global splitting failure depending on the contact properties, geometry and confinement of the ice floe. Modelling these different fracture patterns as a natural outcome of numerical simulations is rather challenging. This is mainly because the effects of crack propagation, crack branching, multi fracturing modes and eventual fragmentation within a solid material are still questions to be answered by the on-going research in the Computational Mechanic community. In order to simulate the fracturing of ice floes with arbitrary geometries and confinement; and also to simulate the fracturing events at such a large scale yet with sufficient efficiency, we propose a semi-analytical/empirical and semi-numerical approach; but with focus on the global splitting failure mode in this paper. The simulation method is validated against data we collected during the Oden Arctic Technology Research Cruise 2015 (OATRC2015). The data include: 1) camera images based on which we specify the exact geometry of ice floes before and after an impact and fracturing event; 2) IMU data based on which the global dynamic force encountered by the icebreaker is extracted for the impact event. It was found that this method presents reasonably accurate results and realistic fracturing patterns upon given ice floes.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.589-604
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• 2013

Identification of damage has become an evolving area of research over the last few decades with increasing the need of online health monitoring of the large structures. The visual damage detection can be impractical, expensive and ineffective in case of large structures, e.g., offshore platforms, offshore pipelines, multi-storied buildings and bridges. Damage in a system causes a change in the dynamic properties of the system. The structural damage is typically a local phenomenon, which tends to be captured by higher frequency signals. Most of vibration-based damage detection methods require modal properties that are obtained from measured signals through the system identification techniques. However, the modal properties such as natural frequencies and mode shapes are not such good sensitive indication of structural damage. Identification of damaged jacket type offshore platform members, based on wavelet packet transform is presented in this paper. The jacket platform is excited by simple wave load. Response of actual jacket needs to be measured. Dynamic signals are measured by finite element analysis result. It is assumed that this is actual response of the platform measured in the field. The dynamic signals first decomposed into wavelet packet components. Then eliminating some of the component signals (eliminate approximation component of wavelet packet decomposition), component energies of remained signal (detail components) are calculated and used for damage assessment. This method is called Detail Signal Energy Rate Index (DSERI). The results show that reduced wavelet packet component energies are good candidate indices which are sensitive to structural damage. These component energies can be used for damage assessment including identifying damage occurrence and are applicable for finding damages' location.