• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.71 no.5
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• pp.545-552
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• 2019

The analysis and design of complex structures like sandwich-panel elements are difficult; the use of finite element method for the analysis is complicated and time consuming when non-linear effects are considered. On the other hand, artificial neural network (ANN) models can capture the non-linear effects and its application requires lesser computational demand. Two ANN models were trained, tested and validated to compute the force for a given displacement of a sandwich-type roof element; 2555 force and element deformation pairs were used for training the ANN models. For the models trained without considering the damping effect, there were two values in the input layer: maximum displacement and current displacement, and for the model considering damping, displacement from the previous step was used as an additional input. Totally, 400 ANN models were trained. Results show that there is a good agreement between the experimental and simulated data, and the models showed a good performance with a mean square error value of 4548.85. Both the ANN models could simulate the inelastic behaviour, loss of rigidity, and evolution of permanent displacements. The models could also interpolate and extrapolate, which enables them to be used as an analysis and design tool for such complex elements.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.1-11
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• 2024

This study aims to evaluate the repair status of stone structures, which are landscape heritage, focusing on cultural heritage repair norms. The study reviewed 296 repair reports published by the Cultural Heritage Administration and selected 8 cases of stone structure repairs. The repair status of these stone structures was evaluated based on three value attributes in the repair norms applied to cultural heritage both domestically and internationally: form and design, materials and quality, and tradition and technology. The results are as follows. First, in terms of form and design, changes were mainly focused on the foundation and backfill stones, which are non-visible structures, rather than the visible face stones. Second, in terms of materials and quality, there were numerous cases of inadequate verification and historical investigation. Despite significant differences in the strength and color of stones depending on their origin, which greatly impact the value attributes of the stone structures, the process of verifying the origin of replacement materials was omitted. Third, crucial elements such as tools, instruments, and techniques, which are vital for maintaining the value attributes of tradition and technology, were not recorded. Adherence to cultural heritage repair norms in the repair of stone structures was low. To enhance the repair quality of stone heritage, it is essential to strengthen compliance standards for maintaining the value attributes of non-visible structures, improve the historical investigation and verification of material origins, and establish detailed recording methods for the repair techniques and procedures used.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.75-88
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• 2022

Engineering structures in operation essentially belong to time-varying or nonlinear structures and the resultant response signals are usually non-stationary. For such time-varying structures, it is of great importance to extract time-dependent dynamic parameters from non-stationary response signals, which benefits structural health monitoring, safety assessment and vibration control. However, various traditional signal processing methods are unable to extract the embedded meaningful information. As a newly developed technique, variational mode decomposition (VMD) shows its superiority on signal decomposition, however, it still suffers two main problems. The foremost problem is that the number of modal components is required to be defined in advance. Another problem needs to be addressed is that VMD cannot effectively separate non-stationary signals composed of closely spaced or overlapped modes. As such, a new method named generalized adaptive variational modal decomposition (GAVMD) is proposed. In this new method, the number of component signals is adaptively estimated by an index of mean frequency, while the generalized demodulation algorithm is introduced to yield a generalized VMD that can decompose mode overlapped signals successfully. After that, synchrosqueezing wavelet transform (SWT) is applied to extract instantaneous frequencies (IFs) of the decomposed mono-component signals. To verify the validity and accuracy of the proposed method, three numerical examples and a steel cable with time-varying tension force are investigated. The results demonstrate that the proposed GAVMD method can decompose the multi-component signal with overlapped modes well and its combination with SWT enables a successful IF extraction of each individual component.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.933-936
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• 2006

Many non-destructive inspection methods have recently been developed for concrete structures. However, these methods can obtain only physical information of concrete, such as crack depth, delamination or position of reinforcement etc. near its surface. If chemical information is required, sampling and componential analyses may be earned out. Non-destructive method that can detect deterioration factors such as carbonation, chloride content or sulfate attack would be an outstanding innovation in inspection methodologies. In this research, near-infrared spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence analysis were applied for componential analysis for concrete. These methods are very effective compared to traditional methods, therefore, working efficiency and maintenance cost will be improved.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.983-1000
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• 2016

To date the engineering community has seen facade systems as non-structural elements with high aesthetic value and a barrier between the outdoor and indoor environments. The role of facades in energy use in a building has also been recognized and the industry is also witnessing the emergence of many energy efficient facade systems. This paper will focus on using exterior skin of the double skin facade system as a dissipative movable element during earthquake excitation. The main aim of this study is to investigate the potential of the facade system to act as a damper system to reduce earthquake-induced vibration of the primary structure. Unlike traditional mass dampers, which are usually placed at the top level of structures, the movable/smart double skin facade systems are distributed throughout the entire height of building structures. The outer skin is moveable and can act as a multi tuned mass dampers (MTMDs) that move and dissipate energy during strong earthquake motions. In this paper, using a three dimensional 10-storey building structure as the example, it is shown that with optimal choice of materials for stiffness and damping of brackets connecting the two skins, a substantial portion of earthquake induced vibration energy can be dissipated which leads to avoiding expensive ductile seismic designs. It is shown that the engineering demand parameters (EDPs) for a low-rise building structures subjected to moderate to severe earthquakes can be substantially reduced by introduction of a smart designed double skin system.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1067-1085
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• 2016

Nonstationary features existing in tropical storms have been frequently captured in recent field measurements, and the applicability of the stationary theory to the analysis of wind characteristics needs to be discussed. In this study, a tropical storm called Nakri measured at Taizhou Bridge site based on structural health monitoring (SHM) system in 2014 is analyzed to give a comparison of the stationary and nonstationary characteristics. The stationarity of the wind records in the view of mean and variance is first evaluated with the run test method. Then the wind data are respectively analyzed with the traditional stationary model and the wavelet-based nonstationary model. The obtained wind characteristics such as the mean wind velocity, turbulence intensity, turbulence integral scale and power spectral density (PSD) are compared accordingly. Also, the stationary and nonstationary PSDs are fitted to present the turbulence energy distribution in frequency domain, among which a modulating function is included in the nonstationary PSD to revise the non-monotonicity. The modulated nonstationary PSD can be utilized to unconditionally simulate the turbulence presented by the nonstationary wind model. The results of this study recommend a transition from stationarity to nonstationarity in the analysis of wind characteristics, and further in the accurate prediction of wind-induced vibrations for engineering structures.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.569-585
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• 2023

This paper proposes an efficient approach for the structural topology optimization of bi-directional functionally graded structures by incorporating popular radial basis functions (RBFs) into an implicit level set (ILS) method. Compared to traditional element density-based methods, a level set (LS) description of material boundaries produces a smoother boundary description of the design. The paper develops RBF implicit modeling with multiquadric (MQ) splines, thin-plate spline (TPS), exponential spline (ES), and Gaussians (GS) to define the ILS function with high accuracy and smoothness. The optimization problem is formulated by considering RBF-based nodal densities as design variables and minimizing the compliance objective function. A LS-RBF optimization method is proposed to transform a Hamilton-Jacobi partial differential equation (PDE) into a system of coupled non-linear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) over the entire design domain using a collocation formulation of the method of lines design variables. The paper presents detailed mathematical expressions for BiDFG beams topology optimization with two different material models: continuum functionally graded (CFG) and mechanical functionally graded (MFG). Several numerical examples are presented to verify the method's efficiency, reliability, and success in accuracy, convergence speed, and insensitivity to initial designs in the topology optimization of two-dimensional (2D) structures. Overall, the paper presents a novel and efficient approach to topology optimization that can handle bi-directional functionally graded structures with complex geometries.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1481-1501
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• 2015

MR-TLCD (Magneto-Rheological Tuned Liquid Column Damper) is a new developed vibration control device, which combines the traditional passive control property with active controllability advantage. Based on traditional TLCD governing equation, this study further considers MR-fluid viscosity in the equation and by transforming the non-linear damping term into an equivalent linear damping, a solution can be obtained. In order to find a countable set of parameters for the design of the MR-TLCD system and also to realize its applicability to structures, a series of experimental test were designed and carried out. The testing programs include the basic material properties of the MR-fluid, the damping ratio of a MR-TLCD and the dynamic responses for a frame structure equipped with the MR-TLCD system subjected to strong ground excitations. In both the analytical and experimental results of this study, it is found that the accurately tuned MR-TLCD system could effectively reduce the dynamic response of a structural system.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.903-921
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• 2016

To study the effect of looseness on mechanical behavior of dovetail mortise-tenon joints, five dovetail mortise-tenon joints, including one intact joint and four loose joints, were fabricated and tested under cycle lateral loadings, and non-linear finite element models using the software ABAQUS were also developed. The effects of looseness on stress distribution, rotational stiffness and bearing capacity of joints were studied based on the analysis of test and simulation results. The results indicate that the hysteretic loops are anti-Z-shaped and present typical characteristics of pinching and slippage, the envelop curves of joints are classified as following two stages: elastic and strengthening stage. The peak stress, rotational stiffness and bearing capacity of joints were reduced due to looseness. The moment-rotation theoretical model of intact joint was simplified in terms of the relation of construction dimensions for buildings, and the moment-rotation theoretical model considering the effect of looseness was proposed and validated.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.461-469
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• 2022

One of the most important factors that should be considered for using any ground improvement technique is the stability of stabilized soil and the durability of the provided solution for getting the required engineering properties. Generally, most of the earth structures that are constructed on clayey soils are exposing movements due to the long periods of drying or wetting cycles. Over time, environmental changes may result in swells or settlements for these structures. In order to mitigate this problem, this research has been performed on mixtures of high plasticity clay with traditional additives such as lime, cement and non-traditional additives such as polypropylene fiber. The purpose of the research is to assess the most appropriate ground improvement technique by using commercially available additives for resisting the developed desiccation cracks during the drying process and resisting the volume changes that may result during wet/dry cycles as an attempt to simulate the changes of environmental conditions. The results show that the fiber-reinforced samples have the lowest volumetric deformation in comparision with cement and lime stabilized samples, and the optimum fiber content is identified as 0.38%. In addition, the desiccation cracks were not visible on the samples' surface for both unreinforced and chemically stabilized samples. Regarding cracks resistance resulting from the desiccation process, it is observed, that the resistance is connected with the fiber content and increases with the increase of the fiber inclusion, and the optimum content is between 1% and 1.5%.