• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.425-439
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• 2017

As a thin-walled structure, local joint flexibility (LJF) in a tubular structure is prominent, and it may produce significant effect on the static performance for the overall structure. This study presents a simplified analytical model to analyze the static behavior for a steel tubular structure with LJF. The presented model simplifies a tubular structure into a frame model consisted of beam elements with considering the LJFs at the connections between any two elements. Theoretical equations of the simplified analytical model are deduced. Through comparison with 3-D finite element results of two typical planar tubular structures consisted of T- and Y-joints respectively, the presented method is proved to be accurate. Furthermore, the effect of LJF on the overall performance of the two tubular structures (including the deflection and the internal forces) is also investigated, and it is found from analyses of internal forces and deformation that a rigid connection assumption in a frame model by using beam elements in finite element analysis can provide unsafe and inaccurate estimation.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.361-368
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• 2014

Modal properties for tapered cantilever pipe-type beam is identified by applying the boundary conditions to a general solution for tapered beam. A bending stiffness for cracked beam is constructed based on an energy method for tapered cantilever thin-walled pipe, which has a through-the-thickness crack, subjected to bending. Then the natural frequencies and mode shapes of a tapered cantilever thin-walled cracked pipe are identified. It can be found that the phenomenon of the bending stiffness distribution along the beam length of the cracked beam is quite reasonable, the natural frequencies are decreased as the crack sizes are increased, and the mode shapes are changed due to the crack. This results may be used to the vibration-based crack identification for the tapered cantilever pipe-type tower structures.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.1013-1021
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• 1994

The stiffness and mass matrices are developed for free torsional vibration analysis in linearly tapered thin-walled I-beams that takes into account the effect of warping torsion. The approximate shape functions are used for formulating stiffness and mass matrices. Significant improvements of accuracy and efficiency of free vibration analysis are achieved by using the stiffness and mass matrices developed in this study. Frequencies of free vibration of tapered members are compared with solutions based upon stepped representation of beam element and also are verified with model tests. The stiffness and mass matrices presented in this study can be used for the free vibration analysis of tapered and prismatic thin walled I-beams and space structures involving warping torsion.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.427-438
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• 2018

In this paper, the single and multi-objective optimization of thin-walled conical tubes with different types of indentations under axial impact has been investigated using surrogate models called metamodels. The geometry of tapered thin-walled tubes has been studied in order to achieve maximum specific energy absorption (SEA) and minimum peak crushing force (PCF). The height, radius, thickness, tapered angle of the tube, and the radius of indentation have been considered as design variables. Based on the design of experiments (DOE) method, the generated sample points are computed using the explicit finite element code. Different surrogate models including Kriging, Feed Forward Neural Network (FNN), Radial Basis Neural Network (RNN), and Response Surface Modelling (RSM) comprised to evaluate the appropriation of such models. The comparison study between surrogate models and the exploration of indentation shapes have been provided. The obtained results show that the RNN method has the minimum mean squared error (MSE) in training points compared to the other methods. Meanwhile, optimization based on surrogate models with lower values of MSE does not provide optimum results. The RNN method demonstrates a lower crashworthiness performance (with a lower value of 125.7% for SEA and a higher value of 56.8% for PCF) in comparison to RSM with an error order of $10^{-3}$. The SEA values can be increased by 17.6% and PCF values can be decreased by 24.63% by different types of indentation. In a specific geometry, higher SEA and lower PCF require triangular and circular shapes of indentation, respectively.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.75-92
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• 2023

The novel composite cold-formed steel (CFS)/engineered cementitious composites (ECC) beams have been recently presented. The new composite section exhibited superior structural performance as a flexural member, benefiting from the lightweight thin-walled CFS sections with improved buckling and torsional properties due to the restraints provided by thinlayered ECC. This paper investigated the shear performance of the new composite CFS/ECC section. Twenty-eight simply supported beams, with a shear span-to-depth ratio of 1.0, were assembled back-to-back and tested under a 3-point loading scheme. Bare CFS, composite CFS/ECC utilising ECC with Polyethylene fibres (PE-ECC), composite CFS/MOR, and CFS/HSC utilising high-strength mortar (MOR) and high-strength concrete (HSC) as replacements for PE-ECC were compared. Different failure modes were observed in tests: shear buckling modes in bare CFS sections, contact shear buckling modes in composite CFS/MOR and CFS/HSC sections, and shear yielding or block shear rupture in composite CFS/ECC sections. As a result, composite CFS/ECC sections showed up to 96.0% improvement in shear capacities over bare CFS, 28.0% improvement over composite CFS/MOR and 13.0% over composite CFS/HSC sections, although MOR and HSC were with higher compressive strength than PE-ECC. Finally, shear strength prediction formulae are proposed for the new composite sections after considering the contributions from the CFS and ECC components.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.189-208
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• 2012

Lock-in and drag amplification phenomena are studied for a flexible cantilever using a simplified fluid-structure interaction approach. Instead of solving the 3D domain, a simplified setup is devised, in which 2D flow problems are solved on a number of planes parallel to the wind direction and transversal to the structure. On such planes, the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved to estimate the fluid action at different positions of the line-like structure. The fluid flow on each plane is coupled with the structural deformation at the corresponding position, affecting the dynamic behaviour of the system. An Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach is used to take in account the deformation of the domain, and a fractional-step scheme is used to solve the fluid field. The stabilization of incompressibility and convection is achieved through orthogonal quasi-static subscales, an approach that is believed to provide a first step towards turbulence modelling. In order to model the structural problem, a special one-dimensional element for thin walled cross-section beam is implemented. The standard second-order Bossak method is used for the time integration of the structural problem.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.659-683
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• 2014

The static analysis of structures with arbitrary cross-section geometry and material lamination via a refined one-dimensional (1D) approach is presented in this paper. Higher-order 1D models with a variable order of expansion for the displacement field are developed on the basis of Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF). Classical Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theories are obtained as particular cases of the first-order model. Numerical results of displacement, strain and stress are provided by using the finite element method (FEM) along the longitudinal direction for different configurations in excellent agreement with three-dimensional (3D) finite element solutions. In particular, a layered thin-walled cylinder is considered as first assessment with a laminated conventional cross-section. An atherosclerotic plaque is introduced as a typical structure with arbitrary cross-section geometry and studied for both the homogeneous and nonhomogeneous material cases through the 1D variable kinematic models. The analyses highlight limitations of classical beam theories and the importance of higher-order terms in accurately detecting in-plane cross-section deformation without introducing additional numerical problems. Comparisons with 3D finite element solutions prove that 1D CUF provides remarkable three-dimensional accuracy in the analysis of even short and nonhomogeneous structures with arbitrary geometry through a significant reduction in computational cost.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.71-76
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• 2005

Marine structures are often in contact with inner or outer fluid as stern, ballast and oil tanks. The effect of interaction between fluid and structure has to be taken into consideration when we estimate the dynamic response of the structure appropriately. Fatigue damages can also be sometimes observed in these tanks which seem to be caused by resonance. Thin walled tank structures in ships which are in contact with water and located near engine or propeller where vibration characteristics are strongly affected by the added mass of containing water. Therefore it is essentially important to estimate the added mass effect to predict vibration characteristics of tank structures. But it is difficult to estimate exactly the magnitude of the added mass because this is a fluid-structure interaction problem and is affected by the free surface, vibration modes of structural panels and the depth of water. I have developed a numerical tool of vibration analysis of 3-dimensional tank structure using finite elements for plates and boundary elements for fluid region. In the present study, the effect of added mass of containing water, the effect of structural constraint between panels on the vibration characteristics are investigated numerically and discussed. Especially a natural frequencies by the fluid interaction between 2 panels and a breath mode of the water tank are focused on.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2016

The Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF) is here extended to perform free-vibrational analyses of rotating structures. CUF is a hierarchical formulation, which enables one to obtain refined structural theories by writing the unknown displacement variables using generic functions of the cross-section coordinates (x, z). In this work, Taylor-like expansions are used. The increase of the theory order leads to three-dimensional solutions while, the classical beam models can be obtained as particular cases of the linear theory. The Finite Element technique is used to solve the weak form of the three-dimensional differential equations of motion in terms of "fundamental nuclei", whose forms do not depend on the adopted approximation. Including both gyroscopic and stiffening contributions, structures rotating about either transversal or longitudinal axis can be considered. In particular, the dynamic characteristics of thin-walled cylinders and composite blades are investigated to predict the frequency variations with the rotational speed. The results reveal that the present one-dimensional approach combines a significant accuracy with a very low computational cost compared with 2D and 3D solutions. The advantages are especially evident when deformable and composite structures are analyzed.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.331-349
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• 2016

Stiff and light fibre reinforced composites as used in air- and space-craft applications tend to high sound emission. Therefore, the damping properties are essential for the entire structural and acoustic engineering. Viscous damping is an established and reasonably linear model of the dissipation behaviour. Commonly, it is assumed to be isotropic and constant over all modes. For anisotropic materials it depends on the fibre orientation as well as the elastic and thermal material properties. To portray the orthogonal anisotropic behaviour, a model for unidirectional fibre reinforced plastics (frp) has been developed based on the classical laminate theory by ADAMS and BACON starting in 1973. Their approach includes three damping coefficients - for longitudinal damping in fibre direction, damping transversal to the fibres and shear based dissipation. The damping of a laminate is then accumulated layer wise including the anisotropic stiffness. So far, the model has been applied mainly to thermoset matrix materials. In this study, an experimental parameter estimation for different thermoplastic frp with angle ply and cross ply layups was carried out by measuring free vibrations of cantilever beams. The results show potential and limits of the ADAMS/BACON damping criterion. In addition, a possibility of modelling the anisotropic damping is shown. The implementation in standard FEA software is used to study the influence of boundary conditions on the damping properties and numerically estimate the radiated sound power of thin-walled frp parts.