• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.84 no.1
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• pp.63-76
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• 2022

Major engineering requirements and technological developments in the steel construction industry are discussed to support a new innovative system, namely corrugated web beams, for future structural projections. These new-generation steel beams, fabricated as welded plate girders with corrugated webs, are designed to combine large spans with very low weight. In the present study, the flexural capacity of optimally designed trapezoidal and sinusoidal corrugated web beams was aimed at. For this purpose, the new metaheuristic methods, specifically hunting search and firefly algorithms, were used for the minimum weight design of both beams according to the rules of Eurocode EN 1193 15 and DASt-Ri 015. In addition, the strengthening effects of the corrugation geometry at the web posts on the load capacity of fabricated steel beams were tested in a reaction frame. The experimental tests displayed that the lateral capacity of trapezoidal web beams is more durable under flexural loads compared to sinusoidal web beams. These thin-walled beams were also simulated using a 3-D finite element model with plane strain to validate test results and describe the effectiveness of the ABAQUS software.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.153-166
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• 2022

Identifying fine cracks in steel bridge facilities is a challenging task of structural health monitoring (SHM). This study proposed an end-to-end crack image segmentation framework based on a one-step Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for pixel-level object recognition with high accuracy. To particularly address the challenges arising from small object detection in complex background, efforts were made in loss function selection aiming at sample imbalance and module modification in order to improve the generalization ability on complicated images. Specifically, loss functions were compared among alternatives including the Binary Cross Entropy (BCE), Focal, Tversky and Dice loss, with the last three specialized for biased sample distribution. Structural modifications with dilated convolution, Spatial Pyramid Pooling (SPP) and Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) were also performed to form a new backbone termed CrackDet. Models of various loss functions and feature extraction modules were trained on crack images and tested on full-scale images collected on steel box girders. The CNN model incorporated the classic U-Net as its backbone, and Dice loss as its loss function achieved the highest mean Intersection-over-Union (mIoU) of 0.7571 on full-scale pictures. In contrast, the best performance on cropped crack images was achieved by integrating CrackDet with Dice loss at a mIoU of 0.7670.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.15-23
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• 2022

One of the key tools in assessing the seismic vulnerability of the structures is the use of fragile functions, which is the possibility of damage from a particular damage surface for several levels of risk from the seismic movements of the earth. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of two categories of earthquake events on the fragile curve (FRC) of the steel construction system. In this study, the relative lateral displacement of the structures is considered as a damage criterion. The limits set for modifying the relative lateral position in the HAZUS instruction are used to determine the failure modes, which include: slight, moderate, extensive and complete. The results show, as time strong-motion increases, the probability of exceeding (PoE) increases (for Peak ground acceleration (PGA) less than 0.5). The increase in seismic demand increases the probability of exceeding. In other words, it increases the probability of exceeding, if the maximum earthquake acceleration increases. Also, 7-storey model in extensive mode has 20 and 26.5% PoE larger than 5- and 3-storey models, respectively.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.667-679
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• 2023

Concrete filled rectangular steel tubular (CFRST) composite truss girder is composed of the CFRST truss and concrete slab. The failure mechanism of the girder was different under bending and shear failure modes. The bending and shear strength of the girder were investigated experimentally. The influences of composite effect and shear to span ratio on failure modes of the girder was studied. Results indicated that the top chord and the joint of the truss were strengthened by the composited effect. The failure modes of the specimens were changed from the joint on top chord to the bottom chord. However, the composite effect had limited effect on the failure modes of the girder with small shear to span ratio. The concrete slab and top chord can be regarded as the composite top chord. In this case, the axial force distribution of the girder was close to the pin-jointed truss model. An approach of strength prediction was proposed which can take the composite effect and shear to span ratio into account. The approach gave accurate predictions on the strength of CFRST composite truss girder under different bending and shear failure modes.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.606-615
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• 2009

Estimating the reasonable construction-cost according to the construction phase in public construction is an important element for securing and executing a national budget efficiently. As a general rule, the predetermined cost of construction is estimated at the end of the design of the target structure. Therefore, it seems to be a considerably difficult problem to estimate the approximate cost of construction, only with its basic information of the bridge in the design planning phase and the early design stage where we can not have specific detailed-section of the target structure. In this paper, we present the calculation of construction-cost in the planning phase based on the analysis of factors affecting the cost of construction conducted in the previous study. Beside, to estimate the cost of construction in early design phase, we would like to present the calculation of construction-cost in the early design phase by executing the analysis of data collected from 61 steel box bridges. It was found from the result of study that the estimated cost of construction gained by the calculation of construction-cost in this paper reduces the error between the real cost of construction and that by the existing method of using.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.13-24
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• 2023

In this study, alternative seismic force-resisting systems for plant structure supporting equipment were designed, and the seismic performance thereof was compared using nonlinear dynamic analysis. One alternative seismic force-resisting system was designed per the requirement for ordinary moment-resisting and concentrically braced frames but with a reduced base shear. The other seismic force-resisting system was designed by accommodating seismic details of intermediate and unique moment-resisting frames and special concentrically braced frames. Different plastic hinge models were applied to ordinary and ductile systems based on the validation using existing test results. The control model obtained by code-based flexible design and/or reduction of base shear did not satisfy the seismic performance objectives, but the alternative structural system did by strengthened panel zones and a reduced effective buckling length. The seismic force to equipment calculated from the nonlinear dynamic analysis was significantly lower than the equivalent static force of KDS 41 17 00. The comparison of design alternatives showed that the seismic performance required for a plant structure could be secured economically by using performance-based design and alternative seismic-force resisting systems adopting minimally modified seismic details.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.87 no.1
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• pp.19-28
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• 2023

This paper describes the experimental investigation of steel pallet rack beam-to-column connec-tions. Total behavior of moment-rotation (M-φ) curve and the effect of particular characteristics on the behavior of connection were studied and the associated load strain relationship and corre-sponding failure modes are presented. In this respect, an estimation of SPRBCCs moment and rotation are highly recommended in early stages of design and construction. In this study, a new approach based on Support Vector Machines (SVMs) coupled with discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is designed and adapted to estimate SPRBCCs moment and rotation according to four input parameters (column thickness, depth of connector and load, beam depth,). Results of SVM-WAVELET model was compared with genetic programming (GP) and artificial neural networks (ANNs) models. Following the results, SVM-WAVELET algorithm is helpful in order to enhance the accuracy compared to GP and ANN. It was conclusively observed that application of SVM-WAVELET is especially promising as an alternative approach to estimate the SPRBCCs moment and rotation.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.759-779
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• 2023

The paper proposes two hybrid metaheuristic optimization and artificial neural network (ANN) methods for the close prediction of the ultimate axial compressive capacity of concentrically loaded concrete filled double skin steel tube (CFDST) columns. Two metaheuristic optimization, namely genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), approaches enable the dynamic training architecture underlying an ANN model by optimizing the number and sizes of hidden layers as well as the weights and biases of the neurons, simultaneously. The former is termed as GA-ANN, and the latter as PSO-ANN. These techniques utilize the gradient-based optimization with Bayesian regularization that enhances the optimization process. The proposed GA-ANN and PSO-ANN methods construct the predictive ANNs from 125 available experimental datasets and present the superior performance over standard ANNs. Both the hybrid GA-ANN and PSO-ANN methods are encoded within a user-friendly graphical interface that can reliably map out the accurate ultimate axial compressive capacity of CFDST columns with various geometry and material parameters.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.781-794
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• 2023

In order to directly apply seawater and sea sand in construction without desalination, a type of square concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) encased with prefabricated seawater sea-sand concrete filled Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC)/Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) tube column was proposed. Twenty short columns were tested under uniaxial loads, and the test parameters included inner tube types, seawater sea-sand concrete replacement ratios, concrete strength, the wrapping area of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) strips and the thickness of GFRP tube. The effects of the parameters on failure modes, loading capacity, ductility and strain responses were discussed. All the tested specimens failed with serious buckling of the steel tubes and fracture of the inner tubes. The specimens had good residual bearing capacity corresponding to 64% to 88.9% of the peak capacity. The inner GFRP tubes and PVC tubes wrapped by CFRP strips provided stronger confinement to the core concrete, and were good choices for the proposed columns. Moreover, an analytical model for the composite column with different inner tube types was proposed.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.45-52
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• 2023

This study proposes an RCS composite damping device that can achieve seismic reinforcement of existing buildings by dissipating energy by inelastic deformation. A series of experiments assessing the performances of the rubber core pad, hysteretic steel slit damping device, and hybrid RCS damping device were conducted. The results showed that the ratios of the deviations to the mean values satisfied the domestic damping-device conformity condition for the load at maximum device displacement in each direction, at the maximum force and minimum force at zero displacement, as well as the hysteresis curve area. In addition, three analysis models based on load-displacement characteristics were proposed for application to seismic reinforcement design. In addition, the validity of the three proposed models was confirmed, as they simulated the experimental results well. Meanwhile, as the shear deformation of the rubber-core pad increased, the hysteretic behavior of super-elasticity greatly increased the horizontal force of the damping device. Therefore, limiting the allowable displacement during design is deemed to be necessary.