Aiming at the mechanical and structural characteristics of the contact zone composite rock, the shear tests and numerical studies were carried out. The effects of the differences in mechanical properties of different materials and the normal stress on shear properties of contact zone composite samples were analyzed from a macro-meso level. The results show that the composite samples have high shear strength, and the interface of different materials has strong adhesion. The differences in mechanical properties of materials weakens the shear strength and increase the shear brittleness of the sample, while normal stress will inhibit these effect. Under low/high normal stress, the sample show two failure modes, at the meso-damage level: elastic-shearing-frictional sliding and elastic-extrusion wear. This is mainly controlled by the contact and friction state of the material after damage. The secondary failure of undulating structure under normal-shear stress is the nature of extrusion wear, which is positively correlated to the normal stress and the degree of difference in mechanical properties of different materials. The increase of the mechanical difference of the sample will enhance the shear brittleness under lower normal stress and the shear interaction under higher normal stress.

As a vehicle moves on multiple equal-span beams at constant speed, the running vehicle would be subjected to repetitive excitations from the beam vibrations under it. Once the exciting frequency caused by the vibrating beams coincides with any of the vehicle's frequencies, resonance would take place on the vehicle. A similar resonance phenomenon occurs on a beam subject to sequential moving loads with identical axle-intervals. To reduce both resonant phenomena of a vehicle moving on guideway girders, this study proposed an additional feedback controller based the condensed virtual dynamic absorber (C-VDA) scheme. This condensation scheme has the following advantages: (1) the feedback tuning gains required to adapt the control currents or voltages are directly obtained from the tuning forces of the VDA; (2) the condensed VDA scheme does not need additional DoFs of the absorber to control the vibration of the maglev-vehicle/guideway system. By decomposing the maglev vehicle-guideway coupling system into two sub-systems (the moving vehicle and the supporting girders), an incremental-iterative procedure associated with the Newmark method is presented to solve the two sets of sub-system equations. From the present studies, the proposed C-VDA scheme is a feasible approach to suppress the interaction response for a maglev vehicle in resonance moving on a series of guideway girders.

In this study, the effect of Nano silica (SiO2) on the buckling strength of the glass fiber reinforced laminates containing the machining process causes holes were investigated. The tests have been applied on two status milled and non-milled. To promote the mechanical behavior of the fiber-reinforced glass epoxy-based composites, Nano sio2 was added to the matrix to improve and gradation. Nano sio2 is chosen because of flexibility and high mechanical features; the effect of Nanoparticles on surface serenity has been studied. Thus the effect of Nanoparticles on crack growth and machining process and delamination caused by machining has been studied. We can also imply that many machining factors are essential: feed rate, thrust force, and spindle speed. Also, feed rate and spindle speed were studied in constant values, that the thrust forces were studied as the main factor caused residual stress. Moreover, entrance forces were measured by local calibrated load cells on machining devices. The results showed that the buckling load of milled laminates had been increased by about 50% with adding 2 wt% of silica in comparison with the neat damaged laminates while adding more contents caused adverse effects. Also, with a comparison of two milling tools, the cylindrical radius-end tool had less destructive effects on specimens.

The growing need for assuring efficient and sustainable investments in civil engineering structures has determined a renovated interest in the rational design of such structures from designers, clients and authorities. As a result, risk-informed decision-making methodologies are increasingly being used as a direct decision tool or as an upper-level layer from which performance-based approaches are then calibrated against. One of the most important and challenging aspects of today's structural design is to adequately handle the system-level effects, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. These aspects revolve around assessing and evaluating relevant damage scenarios, namely those involving unacceptable/intolerable damage levels. Hence, the importance of risk analysis of disproportionate collapse, and along with it of robustness. However, the way robustness has been used in modern design codes varies substantially, from simple provisions of prescriptive rules to complex risk analysis of the disproportionate collapse. As a result, implementing design for robustness is still very much a grey area and more so when it comes to defining means to quantify robustness. This paper revisits the most common robustness frameworks, highlighting their merits and limitations, and identifies one among them which is very promising as a way forward to solve the still open challenges.

Due to the rugged terrain, metro lines in mountain city across numerous wide rivers and deep valleys, resulting in instability of high-pier bridge and insecurity of metro train subjected to fluctuating crosswind. To ensure the safe operation in metro lines in mountain cities, running safety of the metro train over the high-pier bridge under crosswind is analyzed in this paper. Firstly, the dynamic model of the wind-train-bridge (WTB) system is built, in which the speed-up effect of crosswind is fully considered. On the basis of time domain analysis, the basic characteristics of the WTB system with high-pier are analyzed. Afterwards, the dynamic responses varies with train speed and wind speed are calculated, and the safety zone of metro train over a high-pier bridge subjected to fluctuating crosswind in mountain city is determined. The results indicate that, fluctuating crosswind triggers drastic vibration to the metro train and high-pier bridges, which in turn causes running instability of the train. For this reason, the corresponding safety zone for metro train running on the high-pier is proposed, and the metro traffic on the high-pier bridge should be closed as the mean wind speed of standard height reaches 9 m/s (15.6 m/s for the train).

Transmission towers have come to represent one of the most important infrastructures in today's society, which may suffer severe earthquakes during their service lives. However, in the conventional seismic analyses of transmission towers, the towers are normally assumed to be fixed on the ground without considering the effect of soil-structure interaction (SSI) on the pile-supported transmission tower. This assumption may lead to inaccurate seismic performance estimations of transmission towers. In the present study, the seismic response and failure analyses of pile-supported transmission towers considering SSI are comprehensively performed based on the finite element method. Specifically, two detailed finite element (FE) models of the employed pile-supported transmission tower with and without consideration of SSI effects are established in ABAQUS analysis platform, in which SSI is simulated by the classical p-y approach. A simulation method is developed to stochastically synthesize the earthquake ground motions at different soil depths (i.e. depth-varying ground motions, DVGMs). The impacts of SSI on the dynamic characteristic, seismic response and failure modes are investigated and discussed by using the generated FE models and ground motions. Numerical results show that the vibration mode shapes of the pile-supported transmission towers with and without SSI are basically same; however, SSI can significantly affect the dynamic characteristic by altering the vibration frequencies of different modes. Neglecting the SSI and the variability of earthquake motions at different depths may cause an underestimate and overestimate on the seismic responses, respectively. Moreover, the seismic failure mode of pile-supported transmission towers is also significantly impacted by the SSI and DVGMs.

This paper deals with free vibration of plates with steps and internal line supports by using a modified matched interface and boundary (MMIB) method. Different kinds of interfaces caused by steps, rigid and elastic line supports and their combinations are taken into account. Detailed MMIB procedures for dealing with these different interfaces are presented. Various examples are chosen to illustrate the accuracy and convergence of MMIB method. Numerical results show that the proposed MMIB is a highly accurate and convergent approach for solving the title issue. This study will extend the application range of MMIB method.

Transmission tower-line systems have come to represent one of the most important infrastructures in today's society. Recent strong earthquakes revealed that transmission tower-line systems are vulnerable to earthquake excitations, and that ground motions may arrive at such structures from any direction during an earthquake event. Considering these premises, this paper presents experimental and numerical studies on the dynamic responses of a 1000 kV ultrahigh-voltage (UHV) transmission tower-line system under different seismic incidence angles. Specifically, a 1:25 reduced-scale experimental prototype model is designed and manufactured, and a series of shaking table tests are carried out. The influence of the seismic incidence angle on the dynamic structural response is discussed based on the experimental data. Additionally, the incidence angles corresponding to the maximum peak displacement of the top of the tower relative to the ground (referred to herein as the critical seismic incidence angles) are summarized. The experimental results demonstrate that seismic incidence angle has a significant influence on the dynamic responses of transmission tower-line systems. Subsequently, an approximation method is employed to orient the critical seismic incidence angle, and a corresponding finite element (FE) analysis is carried out. The angles obtained from the approximation method are compared with those acquired from the numerical simulation and shaking table tests, and good agreement is observed. The results demonstrate that the approximation method can properly predict the critical seismic incidence angles of transmission tower-line systems. This research enriches the available experimental data and provides a simple and convenient method to assess the seismic performance of UHV transmission systems.

In this paper, the mechanical characteristics of the open type hyperbolic-parabolic membrane structure under wind load were investigated. First, the numerical simulation of a typical plane membrane structure was performed based on the Large-Eddy Simulation method. The accuracy of the simulation method was validated by the corresponding wind tunnel test results. Then, the wind load shape coefficients of open type hyperbolic-parabolic membrane structures are obtained from the series of numerical calculations and compared with the recommended values in the "Technical Specification for Membrane Structures (CECS 158: 2015). Finally, the influences of the wind directions and wind speeds on the mean wind pressure distribution of open type hyperbolic-parabolic membrane structures were investigated. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the wind-induced response for this type of structure and be useful to engineers and researchers.