• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.72 no.1
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• pp.83-97
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• 2019

In this research, the vulnerability of some reinforced concrete frames with different stories are studied based on the Park-Ang Damage Index. The damages of the frames are investigated under various earthquakes with nonlinear dynamic analysis in IDARC software. By examining the most important characteristics of earthquake parameters, the damage index and vulnerability of these frames are investigated in this software. The intensity of Erias, velocity spectral intensity (VSI) and peak ground velocity (PGV) had the highest correlation, and root mean square of displacement ($D_{rms}$) had the lowest correlation coefficient among the parameters. Then, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm was used, and the sinusoidal waves were equivalent to the used earthquakes according to the most influential parameters above. The damage index equivalent to these waves is estimated using nonlinear dynamics analysis. The comparison between the damages caused by earthquakes and equivalent sinusoidal waves is done too. The generations of sinusoidal waves equivalent to different earthquakes are generalized in some reinforced concrete frames. The equivalent sinusoidal wave method was exact enough because the greatest difference between the results of the main and artificial accelerator damage index was about 5 percent. Also sinusoidal waves were more consistent with the damage indices of the structures compared to the earthquake parameters.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.67 no.1
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• pp.79-85
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• 2018

Topology optimization of steel and concrete composite based on truss-like material model is studied in this paper. First, the initial design domain is filled with concrete, and the steel is distributed in it. The problem of topology optimization is to minimize the volume of steel material and solved by full stress method. Then the optimized steel and concrete composite truss-like continuum is obtained. Finally, the distribution of steel material is determined based on the optimized truss-like continuum. Several numerical results indicate the numerical instability and rough boundary are settled. And more details of manufacture and construction can be presented based on the truss-like material model. Hence, the truss-like material model of steel and concrete is efficient to establish the distribution of steel material in concrete.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.635-642
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• 2021

In this paper, soft learning techniques are used to predict the ultimate torsional capacity of Reinforced Concrete beams strengthened with Fiber Reinforced Polymer. Soft computing techniques, namely Artificial Neural Network, trained by various back propagation algorithms, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, have been used to model and predict the torsional strength of Reinforced Concrete beams strengthened with Fiber Reinforced Polymer. The performance of each model has been evaluated by using statistical parameters such as coefficient of determination (R²), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The hybrid PSO NN model resulted in an R² of 0.9292 with an RMSE of 5.35 for training and an R² of 0.9328 with an RMSE of 4.57 for testing. Another model, ANN BP, produced an R² of 0.9125 with an RMSE of 6.17 for training and an R² of 0.8951 with an RMSE of 5.79 for testing. The results of the PSO NN model were in close agreement with the experimental values. Thus, the PSO NN model can be used to predict the ultimate torsional capacity of RC beams strengthened with FRP with greater acceptable accuracy.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.347-360
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• 2022

Fiber-reinforced cementitious composites (FRCC) have emerged as a response to the calls for strong, ductile and sustainable concrete mixes. FRCC has shown outstanding mechanical properties and ductility where special fibres are used in the mixes to give it the strength and the ability to exhibit strain hardening. With the possibility of designing the FRCC mixes to include sustainable constituents and by-products materials such as fly ash, FRCC started to emerge as a green alternative as well. To be able to design mixes that achieve these conflicting properties in concrete, there is a need to understand the composition effect on FRCC and optimize these compositions. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the influence of FRCC compositions on the properties of fresh and hardened of FRCC and then to optimize these mix compositions using factorial design approach. Three factors, water-to-binder ratio (w/b), mineral admixtures (total of fly ash and metakaolin by cement content (MAR)), and metakaolin content (MK), were investigated to determine their effects on the properties of fresh and hardened FRCC. The results show the importance of combining both FA and MK in obtaining a satisfactory fresh and mechanical properties of FRCC. Models were suggested to elucidate the role of the studied factors and a method for optimization was proposed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.723-740
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• 2013

This paper presents a parametric study of reinforced concrete bridge tall piers with hollow, rectangular sections. Such piers are typically used in railway construction of prestressed concrete viaducts. Twenty one different piers have been studied with seven column heights of 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 m and three types of 10-span continuous viaducts, whose main span lengths are 40, 50 and 60 m. The piers studied are intermediate columns placed in the middle of the viaducts. The total number of optimization design variables varies from 139 for piers with column height of 40 m to 307 for piers with column height of 100 m. Further, the results presented are of much value for the preliminary design of the piers of prestressed concrete viaducts of high speed railway lines.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.275-281
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• 2013

In this paper, determination of the scalability of the cluster composed common personal computer was performed when optimization of reinforced concrete structure using genetic algorithm. The goal of this research is watching the potential of multi-core-PC cluster for optimization of seismic design of reinforced-concrete structures. By increasing the number of core-processer of cluster, decreasing of computation time per each generation of genetic algorithm was observed. After classifying the components in singular personal computer, the estimation of the expected bottle-neck phenomenon and comparison with wall-clock time and Amdahl's law equation was performed. So we could obseved the scalability of the cluster appear complex tendency. For separating the bottle-neck phenomenon of physical and algorithm, the different size of population was selected for genetic algorithm cases. When using 64 core-processor, the efficiency of cluster is low as 31.2% compared with Amdahl's law efficiency.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.375-391
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• 2022

This paper examined the impact of the cross-sectional structure on the structural results under different loading conditions of reinforced concrete (RC) members' management limited in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP). The mechanical properties of CFRC was investigated, then, totally 32 samples were examined. Test parameters included the cross-sectional shape as square, rectangular and circular with two various aspect rates and loading statues. The loading involved concentrated loading, eccentric loading with a ratio of 0.46 to 0.6 and pure bending. The results of the test revealed that the CFRP increased ductility and load during concentrated processing. A cross sectional shape from 23 to 44 percent was increased in load capacity and from 250 to 350 percent increase in axial deformation in rectangular and circular sections respectively, affecting greatly the accomplishment of load capacity and ductility of the concentrated members. Two Artificial Intelligence Models as Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) were used to estimating the tensile and flexural strength of specimen. On the basis of the performance from RMSE and RSQR, C-Shape CFRC was greater tensile and flexural strength than any other FRP composite design. Because of the mechanical anchorage into the matrix, C-shaped CFRCC was noted to have greater fiber-matrix interfacial adhesive strength. However, with the increase of the aspect ratio and fiber volume fraction, the compressive strength of CFRCC was reduced. This possibly was due to the fact that during the blending of each fiber, the volume of air input was increased. In addition, by adding silica fumed to composites, the tensile and flexural strength of CFRCC is greatly improved.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.635-645
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• 2018

Beam-column joints play a significant role in static and dynamic performances of reinforced concrete frame structures. This study contributes a numerical approach of topologically optimal design of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) to retrofit existing beam-column connections with crack patterns. In recent, CFRP is used commonly in the rehabilitation and strengthening of concrete members due to the remarkable properties, such as lightweight, anti-corrosion and simplicity to execute construction. With the target to provide an optimal CFRP configuration to effectively retrofit the beam-column connection under semi-failure situation such as given cracks, extended finite element method (X-FEM) is used by combining with multi-material topology optimization (MTO) as a mechanical description approach for strong discontinuity state to mechanically model cracked structures. The well founded mathematical formulation of topology optimization problem for cracked structures by using multiple materials is described in detail in this study. In addition, moved and regularized Heaviside functions (MRHF), that have the role of a filter in multiple materials case, is also considered. The numerical example results illustrated in two cases of beam-column joints with stationary cracks verify the validity, benefit and supremacy of the proposed method.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.295-306
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• 2012

Optimum cost design of a simply supported reinforced concrete beam is presented in this paper. In the formulation of the optimum design problem, the height and width of the beam, and reinforcement steel area are treated as design variables. The design constraints are implemented according to ACI 318-08 and studies in the literature. The objective function is taken as the cost of unit length of the beam consisting the cost of concrete, steel and shuttering. The solution of the design problem is obtained using the artificial bee colony algorithm which is one of the recent additions to metaheuristic techniques. The artificial bee colony algorithm is imitated the foraging behaviors of bee swarms. In application of this algorithm to the constraint problem, Deb's constraint handling method is used. Obtained results showed that the optimum value of numerical example is nearly same with the existing values in the literature.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 1994.10a
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• pp.267-272
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• 1994

This work presents a method of optimum design for reinforced concrete building frames with rectangular cross sections. The optimization techniques used is based on the principle of divided parameters. The design variable parameters are divided into two groups, external and internal, and the optimization is also divided into external and internal procedure. This principle overcomes difficulties arising from the presence of two materials in one element, the property peculiar to reinforced concrete. Several search algorithms are tested to verify their accuracy for the external optimization. Among them pattern search algorithms has been found consistent. This work proposes a new method, modified pattern search, and a number of sample problems prove its accuracy and usefulness. Exhaustive search for all local minima in the design spaces for two sample problems has been carried out to understand the nature of the problem. The number of local minima identified is quite more than expected and it has become understood that the researcher's task in this field is to find a better local minimum if not global. The designs produced by the method preposed have been found better than those from other method, and they are in full accord with ACI Building Code Requirments(ACI 318-89).