• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1318-1324
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• 2018

This paper evaluates the effects of door opening, collar stiffener, and initial imperfection on the ultimate strength of a 10 MW wind tower. The lower segment of the tower was modeled to investigate the ultimate strength using steel cylindrical shell elements of finite element program ABAQUS. The wind tower was classified into three categories; without opening nor stiffener (C1), with opening but no stiffener (C2), and with opening and stiffener (C3). The C2 and C3 were further divided into long axis and short axis categories depending on the position of the opening. Result from linear and nonlinear analyses shows that the bigger the opening the bigger the reduction in strength and the same thing goes for the initial imperfection ratio or ovality of the shell. Also, there is a significant decreased in strength as the initial imperfection ratio increases by as high as 18.08%.

• Journal of Ship and Ocean Technology
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.27-48
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• 1999

The paper is concerned with application to develop the expert system, which structural analysis and design process for tower cranes. The system is organized into three groups. One is pre-processor for creating input data files, another is `model former' which combines knowledge-base with inference engine for automatic generating structural analysis models, a third is application group for final analysis checks. In this study, geometric subroutine of `model former' designates node positions, nodes, elements numbers and element types. Load data subroutine computes weight of tower crane and device, slewing force, cargo load, wind force form rules or equations in knowledge-base. Also, Property and boundary subroutine applies element properties and boundary conditions to suitable elements and nodes. Design and analysis expert system for tower crane integrates these subroutine, `model former' and pre-processor. RBR(Rule-Base Reasoning) was adopted for a reasoning strategy of this expert system. And this expert system can produce structural analysis model and data, which can be used in ordinary structural analysis program (SAP, ADINA or NASTRAN, etc.). In this paper, this expert system produces format of the analysis model data, which are used in MSC/NASTRAN. The main discussions included in the paper are introduction of the tower crane and structural analysis, composition of the design expert system for tower crane and structural analysis using the expert system.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.63-77
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• 2017

When railway vehicles run by towers of long span bridges, the railway vehicles might experience a sudden load-off and load-on phenomenon in crosswind conditions. To ensure the running safety of the railway vehicles and the running comfort of the passengers, some studies were carried out to investigate the impacts of sudden changes of aerodynamic loads on moving railway vehicles. In the present study, the aerodynamic coefficients which were measured in wind tunnel tests using a moving train model are converted into the aerodynamic coefficients in the actual scale. The three-component aerodynamic loads are calculated based on the aerodynamic coefficients with consideration of the vehicle movement. A three-dimensional railway vehicle model is set up using the multibody dynamic theory, and the aerodynamic loads are treated as the inputs of excitation varied with time for kinetic simulations of the railway vehicle. Thus the dynamic responses of the railway vehicle passing by the bridge tower can be obtained from the kinetic simulations in the time domain. The effects of the mean wind speeds and the rail track positions on the running performance of the railway vehicle are discussed. The three-component aerodynamic loads on the railway vehicle are found to experience significant sudden changes when the vehicle passes by the bridge tower. Correspondingly, such sudden changes of aerodynamic loads have a large impact on the dynamic performance of the running railway vehicle. The dynamic responses of the railway vehicle have great fluctuations and significant sudden changes, which is adverse to the running safety and comfort of the railway vehicle passing by the bridge tower in crosswind conditions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.12
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• pp.1489-1495
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• 2012

In this study, we perform the structural analysis of a floating offshore wind turbine tower by considering the dynamic response of the floating platform. A multibody system consisting of three blades, a hub, a nacelle, the platform, and the tower is used to model the floating wind turbine. The blades and the tower are modeled as flexible bodies using three-dimensional beam elements. The aerodynamic force on the blades is calculated by the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory with hub rotation. The hydrostatic, hydrodynamic, and mooring forces are considered for the platform. The structural dynamic responses of the tower are simulated by numerically solving the equations of motion. From the simulation results, the time history of the internal forces at the nodes, such as the bending moment and stress, are obtained. In conclusion, the internal forces are compared with those obtained from static analysis to assess the effects of wave loads on the structural stability of the tower.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.299-313
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• 2019

In order to examine the effects of different wind deflectors on the wind load distribution characteristics of extra-large cooling towers, a comparative study of the distribution characteristics of wind pressures on the surface of three large cooling towers with typical wind deflectors and one tower without wind deflector was conducted using wind tunnel tests. These characteristics include aerodynamic parameters such as mean wind pressures, fluctuating wind pressures, peak factors, correlation coefficients, extreme wind pressures, drag coefficients and vorticity distribution. Then distribution regularities of different wind deflectors on global and local wind pressure of extra-large cooling towers was extracted, and finally the fitting formula of extreme wind pressure of the cooling towers with different wind deflectors was provided. The results showed that the large eddy simulation (LES) method used in this article could be used to accurately simulate wind loads of such extra-large cooling towers. The three typical wind deflectors could effectively reduce the average wind pressure of the negative pressure extreme regions in the central part of the tower, and were also effective in reducing the root of the variance of the fluctuating wind pressure in the upper-middle part of the windward side of the tower, with the curved air deflector showing particularly. All the different wind deflectors effectively reduced the wind pressure extremes of the middle and lower regions of the windward side of the tower and of the negative pressure extremes region, with the best effect occurring in the curved wind deflector. After the wind deflectors were installed the drag coefficient values of each layer of the middle and lower parts of the tower were significantly higher than that without wind deflector, but the effect on the drag coefficients of layers above the throat was weak. The peak factors for the windward side, the side and leeward side of the extra-large cooling towers with different wind deflectors were set as 3.29, 3.41 and 3.50, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2013

It is difficult to avoid measurement errors caused by the shading effect of the meteorological tower, which is used for wind resource assessment according to the IEC Standard. This paper presents a validation of the computational flow analysis results by comparing the results with the wind tunnel experiment conducted for Reynolds numbers in the $10^4$ to $10^5$ range, for the preparation of a database for use in an automatic method of correcting met-tower shading errors. A three-dimensional simulation employing the MP (Modified Production) $k-{\varepsilon}$ turbulence model predicted a wind speed deficit in the wake region according to minimum wind speed ratio, within an MAE (Mean Absolute Error) of 2.4%.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.4_5
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• pp.313-329
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• 2012

A challenging issue in design and implementation of an effective structural health monitoring (SHM) system is to determine where a number of sensors are properly installed. In this paper, research on the optimal sensor placement (OSP) is carried out on the Canton Tower (formerly named Guangzhou New Television Tower) of 610 m high. To avoid the intensive computationally-demanding problem caused by tens of thousands of degrees of freedom (DOFs) involved in the dynamic analysis, the three dimension finite element (FE) model of the Canton Tower is first simplified to a system with less DOFs. Considering that the sensors can be physically arranged only in the translational DOFs of the structure, but not in the rotational DOFs, a new method of taking the horizontal DOF as the master DOF and rotational DOF as the slave DOF, and reducing the slave DOF by model reduction is proposed. The reduced model is obtained by IIRS method and compared with the models reduced by Guyan, Kuhar, and IRS methods. Finally, the OSP of the Canton Tower is obtained by a kind of dual-structure coding based generalized genetic algorithm (GGA).

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.397-408
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• 2018

In a recent tragic fire incident, the Plasco Tower collapsed after an intense outburst of fire lasting for three and a half hours and claiming the lives of 16 firefighters and 6 civilians. This paper will present continuing collaborative work between Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Queen's University in Canada to model the progressive collapse of the tower. The fire started at the 10th floor and was observed to have travelled along the floor horizontally and through the staircase and windows vertically. Plasco Tower was steel structure and all the steel sections were fabricated by welding standard European channel or angle profiles and no fire protection was applied. Four internal columns carried the loads transferred by the primary beams, and box columns were constructed along the perimeter of the building as a braced tube for resisting seismic loading. OpenSees fibre-based sections and displacement-based beam-column elements are used to model the frames, while shell elements are used for the reinforced concrete floor slabs. The thermal properties and elevated temperature mechanical properties are as recommended in the Eurocodes. The results in this preliminarily analysis are based on rough estimations of the structure's configuration. The ongoing work looks at modeling the Plasco Tower based on the most accurate findings from reviewing many photographs and collected data.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.313-319
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• 2022

The resiliency of electricity transmission and distribution lines towards natural and man-made hazards is critical to the operation of cities and businesses. The extension of these lines throughout the country increases their risk of extreme loading conditions. This paper investigates a unique extreme loading condition of a 100-year old distribution line segment that passes across a river and got entangled with a boom of a ship. The study adopts the Applied Elements Method (AEM) for simulating 54 cases of the highly deformable structural behaviour of the tower. The most significant effects on the tower's structural integrity were found to occur when applying the load with components in all three of the cartesian directions (i.e., X, Y and Z) with the full capacities of the four cables. The studied extreme loading condition was determined to be within the tower's structural capacity, attributed to the shear failure of the anchor bolts, which acted as a sacrificing element that fails to protect the transfer of tensioning load to the supporting tower.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1994.04a
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• pp.171-180
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• 1994

Full scale structural test of 765kv electric transmission tower was performed to measure the stresses and displacement of towers under the design loadings, and the results were compared with analytical results based on three dimensional frame analysis. Also, the actual ultimate strength of the tower was measured through destructive test. Especially, to predict the behavior and failure of the connection of tubular member, finite element analysis was performed and compression test for the segments of tubular member were carried out. Valuable information for the overall and local behavior of the tower was obtained and reliability of current analytical method was confirmed.