• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.367-382
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• 2012

This paper is dedicated to the buckling behaviors of strengthened perforated plates under edge shear loading, which is a typical load pattern of steel plates in civil engineering, especially in plate and box girders. The square plates considered each has a centric circular hole and is simply supported on four edges in the out-of-plane direction. Three types of strengthening stiffeners named ringed stiffener (RS), flat stiffener (FSA and FSB) and strip stiffener (SSA, SSB and SSC) are mainly discussed. The finite element method (FEM) has been employed to analyse the elastic and elasto-plastic buckling behavior of unstrengthened and strengthened perforated plates. Results show that most of the strengthened perforated plates behave higher buckling strengths than the unstrengthened ones, while the enhancements in elastic buckling stress and elasto-plastic ultimate strength are closely related to stiffener types as well as plate geometric parameters including plate slenderness ratio and hole diameter to plate width ratio. The critical slenderness ratios of shear loaded strengthened perforated plates, which determine the practical buckling pattern (i.e., elastic or elasto-plastic buckling) of the plates, are also studied. Based on the contrastive analyses of strengthening efficiency considering the influence of stiffener consumption, the most efficient cutout-strengthening methods for shear loaded perforated square plates with different slenderness ratios and circular hole diameter to plate width ratios are preliminarily identified.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.811-831
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• 2015

This paper focuses on the strengthening methods used for improving the compression behaviors of perforated box-section walls as provided in the anchorage zones of steel pylons. Rectangular plates containing double-row continuous elliptical holes are investigated by employing the boundary condition of simple supporting on four edges in the out-of-plane direction of plate. Two types of strengthening stiffeners, named flat stiffener (FS) and longitudinal stiffener (LS), are considered. Uniaxial compression tests are first conducted for 18 specimens, of which 5 are unstrengthened plates and 13 are strengthened plates. The mechanical behaviors such as stress concentration, out-of-plane deformation, failure pattern, and elasto-plastic ultimate strength are experimentally investigated. Finite element (FE) models are also developed to predict the ultimate strengths of plates with various dimensions. The results of FE analysis are validated by test data. The influences of non-dimensional parameters including plate aspect ratio, hole spacing, hole width, stiffener slenderness ratio, as well as stiffener thickness on the ultimate strengths are illustrated on the basis of numerous parametric studies. Comparison of strengthening efficiency shows that the continuous longitudinal stiffener is the best strengthening method for such perforated plates. The simplified formulas used for estimating the compression strengths of strengthened plates are finally proposed.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.181-199
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• 2014

The infill walls, whose contribution to the earthquake resistance of a structure is generally ignored due to their limited lateral rigidities, constitute a part of the lateral load bearing system of an RC frame structure. A common method for improving the earthquake behavior of RC frame structures is increasing the contribution of the infill walls to the overall lateral rigidity by strengthening them through different techniques. The present study investigates the influence of externally bonded perforated steel plates on the load capacities, rigidities, and ductilities of hollow brick infill walls. For this purpose, a reference (unstrengthened) and twelve strengthened specimens were subjected to monotonic diagonal compression. The experiments indicated that the spacing of the bolts, connecting the plates to the wall, have a more profound effect on the behavior of a brick wall compared to the thickness of the strengthening plates. Furthermore, an increase in the plate thickness was shown to result in a considerable improvement in the behavior of the wall only if the plates are connected to the wall with closely-spaced bolts. This strengthening technique was found to increase the energy absorption capacities of the walls between 4 and 14 times the capacity of the reference wall. The strengthened walls reached ultimate loads 30-160% greater than the reference wall and all strengthened walls remained intact till the end of the test.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.554-562
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• 2016

Recently, regulations pertaining to the noise and vibration environment of offshore plants have been strengthened. For example, the NORSOK standards have been applied, which are very strict regulations that are comparable to those applied to passenger ships. Furthermore, the use of porous materials, such as those used in most of the current insulating panels, has been forbidden. Therefore, honeycomb-backed Micro-Perforated Plates (MPPs) are now regarded as next-generation absorber materials. This paper reports the results of parametric studies that were performed using numerical methods to determine the effect of the thickness on the performance of a honeycomb panel and the effect of the perforation ratio on the MPP performance. The numerical results were verified through experiments. Finally, we propose a combined honeycomb/MPP panel where the MPP is placed between upper and lower honeycomb panels and one end surface is also replaced with an MPP.