• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.1
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• pp.59-68
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• 2022

Prestressed prefabricated hollow core concrete slabs with spans of 5 m and 10 m are commonly used since last century and still in service due to the advantage of construction convenience and durability. However, the end slabs are regularly subjected to cracks at the top and fail with brittleness due to the asymmetric boundary conditions. To better maintain such widely used type of hollow core slabs, the effect of asymmetric constraint in the end slabs are systematically studied through detailed nonlinear finite element analyses and experimental data. Experimental tests of slabs with four prestressed tendons and seven prestressed tendons with different boundary conditions were conducted. Results observe three failure modes of the slabs: the bending failure mode, shear and torsion failure mode, and transverse failure mode. Detailed nonlinear finite element models are developed to well match the failure modes and to reveal potential damage scenarios with asymmetric boundary conditions. Recommendations regarding ultimate capacity of the slabs with asymmetric boundary conditions are made to ensure a safe and rational design of prestressed concrete hollow slabs for short span bridges.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.75-91
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• 2024

Reliable wind signal reconstruction can be beneficial to the operational safety of long-span bridges. Non-Gaussian characteristics of wind signals make the reconstruction process challenging. In this paper, non-Gaussian wind signals are converted into a combined prediction of two kinds of features, actual wind speeds and wind angles of attack. First, two decomposition techniques, empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and variational mode decomposition (VMD), are introduced to decompose wind signals into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) to reduce the randomness of wind signals. Their principles and applicability are also discussed. Then, four artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are utilized for wind signal reconstruction by combining the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with back propagation neural network (BPNN), support vector regression (SVR), long short-term memory (LSTM) and bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM), respectively. Measured wind signals from a bridge site in a deep-cutting gorge are taken as experimental subjects. The results showed that the reconstruction error of high-frequency components of EMD is too large. On the contrary, VMD fully extracts the multiscale rules of the signal, reduces the component complexity. The combination of VMD-PSO-Bi-LSTM is demonstrated to be the most effective among all hybrid models.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.233-245
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• 2007

Previous finite element studies have shown that AASHTO Standard load distribution factor (LDF) equations appear to be conservative for longer spans and larger girder spacing, but too permissible for short spans and girder spacing. AASHTO LRFD specification defines the distribution factor equation for girder spacing, span length, slab thickness, and longitudinal stiffness. However, this equation requires an iterative procedure to correctly determine the LDF value due to an initially unknown longitudinal stiffness parameter. This study presents a simplified LDF equation for interior and exterior girders of two-span continuous I-girder bridges that does not require an iterative design procedure. The finite element method was used to investigate the effect of girder spacing, span length, slab thickness, slab width, and spacing and size of bracing. The computer program, GTSTRUDL, was used to idealize the bridge superstructures as the eccentric beam model, the concrete slab by quadrilateral shell elements, steel girders by space frame members, and the composite action between these elements by rigid links. The distribution factors obtained from these analyses were compared with those from the AASHTO Standard and LRFD methods. It was observed through the parametric studies that girder spacing, span length, and slab thickness were the dominant parameters compared with others. The LRFD distribution factor for the interior girder was found to be conservative in most cases, whereas the factor for the exterior girder to be unconservative in longer spans. Furthermore, a regression analysis was performed to develop simplified LDF formulas. The formulas developed in this study produced LDF values that are always conservative to those from the finite element method and are generally smaller than the LDF values obtained from the AASHTO LRFD specification. The proposed simplified equation will assist bridge engineers in predicting the actual LDF in two-span continuous I-girder bridges.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.55-61
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• 2020

Social infrastructure facilities that have been under construction since the country's high-growth period are undergoing rapid aging, and, thus, safety assessments of large structures such as bridge tunnels, which can be directly linked to large-scale casualties in the event of an accident, are necessary. It is difficult to construct economical and efficient wireless smart sensor networks that improve structural health monitoring (SHM) because the existing wire sensors have a short signal reach. However, low-power wide-area networks (LPWANs) are becoming popular within the Internet of Things, and enable economical and efficient SHM. In this study, the technology trends of a wireless measuring sensor based on LoRa LPWANs were investigated, and an installation and maintenance plan for this type of sensor is proposed.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.563-572
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• 2017

Ordinary reinforced concrete (RC) and prestressed concrete bridges are two popular and typical types of short- and medium-span bridges that accounts for the vast majority of all existing bridges. The cost of maintaining, repairing or replacing degraded existing RC bridges is immense. Detecting the abnormality of RC bridges at an early stage and taking the protective measures in advance are effective ways to improve maintenance practices and reduce the maintenance cost. This study proposes a systematic method from influence line (IL) identification to damage detection with applications to RC bridges. An IL identification method which integrates the cubic B-spline function with Tikhonov regularization is first proposed based on the vehicle information and the corresponding moving vehicle induced bridge response time history. Subsequently, IL change is defined as a damage index for bridge damage detection, and information fusion technique that synthesizes ILs of multiple locations/sensors is used to improve the efficiency and accuracy of damage localization. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed systematic method is verified through experimental tests on a three-span continuous RC beam. The comparison suggests that the identified ILs can well match with the baseline ILs, and it demonstrates that the proposed IL identification method has a high accuracy and a great potential in engineering applications. Results in this case indicate that deflection ILs are superior than strain ILs for damage detection of RC beams, and the performance of damage localization can be significantly improved with the information fusion of multiple ILs.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2012

In bridge engineering, maintenance strategies and thus budgetary demands are highly influenced by construction type and quality of design. Nowadays bridge owners and planners tend to include life-cycle cost analyses in their decision processes regarding the overall design trying to optimize structural reliability and durability within financial constraints. Smart permanent and short term monitoring can reduce the associated risk of new design concepts by observing the performance of structural components during prescribed time periods. The objectives of this paper are the discussion and analysis of influence line or influence field approaches in terms of (a) an efficient incorporation of monitoring information in the structural performance assessment, (b) an efficient characterization of performance indicators for the assessment of structures, (c) the ability of optimizing the positions of sensors of a monitoring system, and (d) the ability of checking the robustness of the monitoring systems applied to a structure. The proposed influence line- model correction approach has been applied to an integrative monitoring system that has been installed for the performance assessment of an existing three-span jointless bridge.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.219-229
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• 2019

This paper presents an experimental study on the structural performance of an innovative ultra-high performance fiber reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) deck with coarse aggregate of composite bridge under shear force. Test parameters included curing method and shear span-to-height ratio. Test results indicated that more short fine cracks developed beside the existing cracks due to the randomly dispersed fibers, resulting in re-distributing and homogenizing of the concrete stress beside cracks and allowing for the occurrence of more cracks with small spacing compared to normal strength concrete beams. Curing methods, incorporating steam curing and natural curing, did not have obvious effect on the nominal bending cracking strength and the ultimate strength of the test specimens. Shear reinforcement need not be provided for UHPFRC decks with a fiber volume fraction of 2%. UHPFRC decks showed superior load resistance ability after the appearance of cracks and excellent post-cracking deformability. Lastly, the current shear provisions were evaluated by the test results.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.853-871
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• 2015

Up to now, Japan has more than 200 corrugated steel web composite beam bridges which are under construction and have been constructed, and China has more than 30 corrugated steel web composite beam bridges. The bridge type includes the simply supported beam, continuous beam, continuous rigid frame and cable stayed bridge etc. The section form has developed to the single box and multi-cell box girder from the original single box and single chamber. From the stress performance and cost saving, the span range of 50~150 m is the most competitive. At present, the design mostly adopts the computational analytical method combining the spatial bar system model, plane beam grillage model and solid model. However, the spatial bar system model is short of the refinement analysis on the space effect, such as the shear lag effect, effective distribution width problem, and eccentric load factor problem etc. Due to the similarity of the plane beam grillage method in the equivalence principle, it cannot accurately reflect the shearing stress distribution and local stress of the top and bottom plates of the box type composite beam. The solid model is very difficult to combine with the overall calculation. Moreover, the spatial grid model can achieve the refinement analysis, with the integrity of the analysis and the comprehensiveness of the stress checking calculation, and can make up the deficiency of the analytical method currently. Through the example verification of the solid model and spatial grid model, it can be seen that the calculation results for the stress and the displacement of two models are almost consistent, indicating the applicability and precision of the spatial grid model.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.625-635
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• 2020

Suspension bridges have the extended in plan configuration which makes them prone to dynamic events like earthquake. The longer span lead to more flexibility and slender of them. So, control systems seem to be essential in order to protect them against ground motion excitation. Tuned mass damper or in brief TMD is a passive control system that its efficiency is practically proven. Moreover, its parameters i.e. mass ratio, tuning frequency and damping ratio can be optimized in a manner providing the best performance. Meta-heuristic optimization algorithm is a powerful tool to gain this aim. In this study, TMD parameters are optimized in different-length suspension bridges in three distinct cases including 3, 4 and 5 TMDs by observer-teacher-learner based algorithm under a complete set of ground motions formed from both near-field and far-field instances. The Vincent Thomas, Tacoma Narrows and Golden Gate suspension bridges are selected for case studies as short, mean and long span ones, respectively. The results indicate that All cases of used TMDs result in response reduction and case 4TMD can be more suitable for bridges in near and far-field conditions.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.62-68
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• 2024

The Republic of Korea experiences four distinct seasons, with significant temperature differences between summer and winter, causing bridges to undergo large temperature variations throughout the year. When the temperature changes, the dynamic characteristics of bridge structures also change. However, during load-bearing capacity assessments in domestic bridge maintenance, this temperature effect is not considered, and only the natural frequency measured over a short period is used for evaluation. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the impact of changes in natural frequency on bridges and extract daily estimated natural frequency data from bridges with continuous vertical acceleration measurements taken over more than a year to confirm temperature-induced changes. The results show that a 1% decrease in natural frequency corresponds to an approximately 2% decrease in the load-bearing capacity of the bridge. Additionally, it was found from the measurement data that a 10℃ increase in temperature did not affect the natural frequency of RC slab bridges and Rahmen bridges, but in PSC-I girder bridges and steel box girder bridges, the natural frequency decreased by approximately 1.04% to 2.48%.