• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.99-117
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• 2015

The Stonecutters Bridge (SCB) in Hong Kong is the third-longest cable-stayed bridge in the world with a main span stretching 1,018 m between two 298 m high single-leg tapering composite towers. A Wind and Structural Health Monitoring System (WASHMS) is being implemented on SCB by the Highways Department of The Hong Kong SAR Government, and the SCB-WASHMS is composed of more than 1,300 sensors in 15 types. In order to establish a linkage between structural health monitoring and maintenance management, a Structural Health Rating System (SHRS) with relevant rating tools and indices is devised. On the basis of a 3D space frame finite element model (FEM) of SCB and model updating, this paper presents the development of an SHR-oriented 3D multi-scale FEM for the purpose of load-resistance analysis and damage evaluation in structural element level, including modeling, refinement and validation of the multi-scale FEM. The refined 3D structural segments at deck and towers are established in critical segment positions corresponding to maximum cable forces. The components in the critical segment region are modeled as a full 3D FEM and fitted into the 3D space frame FEM. The boundary conditions between beam and shell elements are performed conforming to equivalent stiffness, effective mass and compatibility of deformation. The 3D multi-scale FEM is verified by the in-situ measured dynamic characteristics and static response. A good agreement between the FEM and measurement results indicates that the 3D multi-scale FEM is precise and efficient for WASHMS and SHRS of SCB. In addition, stress distribution and concentration of the critical segments in the 3D multi-scale FEM under temperature loads, static wind loads and equivalent seismic loads are investigated. Stress concentration elements under equivalent seismic loads exist in the anchor zone in steel/concrete beam and the anchor plate edge in steel anchor box of the towers.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.12-18
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• 2015

Bridge piers typically have circular or rectangular shapes without decorative design. Prefabrication for accelerated construction has been widely adopted in bridge structures. Cost for steel formwork is a main restriction of creative irregular shapes. 3D modelling techniques allow creative design of columns and 3D printing provides possibility to minimize the fabrication cost. In this paper, 3D design process of bridge piers was suggested by converting 2D picture into 3D decorative shape. Formwork design using 3D printed panels was also proposed and mock-up tests were conducted. Precast columns need accurate geometry control from fabrication to assembly. Laser scanning and geometry control devices were adopted. Through the digitalized process of design, fabrication and assembly, creative design of structures can be realized in reasonable cost range.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.193-201
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• 2009

Structural design of most nonprismatic Pre-Engineered Building Systems (PEBS) is performed using optimizing software developed in foreign countries. In this study, a structural optimizing software for the design of 3-D structures of nonprismatic PEBS is developed according to the allowable stress design method of AISC2005 and KBC. Optimizing structural design with nonprismatic members is carried out by repeating the process of structural analysis and member design to minimize the weight of a structure. According to the optimizing design results of 2-D and 3-D structures with nonprismatic members, there are considerable steel savings in designing structures with nonprismatic H-shaped built-up sections rather than with H-shaped rolled sections. When H-shaped built-up sections were used, the weight of the structural steel was reduced when AISC2005 specification rather than AISC1898 was used in the design. It is therefore concluded that utilizing the new AISC2005 specification is safer in preventingweb buckling because the height of a member is designed to be small despite some differences depending on the structural type.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.207-222
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• 2010

Fire incident in buildings is common, so the fire safety design of the framed structure is imperative, especially for the unprotected or partly protected bare steel frames. However, software for structural fire analysis is not widely available. As a result, the performance-based structural fire design is urged on the basis of using user-friendly and conventional nonlinear computer analysis programs so that engineers do not need to acquire new structural analysis software for structural fire analysis and design. The tool is desired to have the capacity of simulating the different fire scenarios and associated detrimental effects efficiently, which includes second-order P-D and P-d effects and material yielding. Also the nonlinear behaviour of large-scale structure becomes complicated when under fire, and thus its simulation relies on an efficient and effective numerical analysis to cope with intricate nonlinear effects due to fire. To this end, the present fire study utilizes a second-order elastic/plastic analysis software NIDA to predict structural behaviour of bare steel framed structures at elevated temperatures. This fire study considers thermal expansion and material degradation due to heating. Degradation of material strength with increasing temperature is included by a set of temperature-stress-strain curves according to BS5950 Part 8 mainly, which implicitly allows for creep deformation. This finite element stiffness formulation of beam-column elements is derived from the fifth-order PEP element which facilitates the computer modeling by one member per element. The Newton-Raphson method is used in the nonlinear solution procedure in order to trace the nonlinear equilibrium path at specified elevated temperatures. Several numerical and experimental verifications of framed structures are presented and compared against solutions in literature. The proposed method permits engineers to adopt the performance-based structural fire analysis and design using typical second-order nonlinear structural analysis software.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Advanced Composite Structures
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.22-29
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• 2013

In recent years, the construction of high-rise buildings are promoted. According to these, there are many needs about new technologies to strengthen the building performance and high-strength steel is regarded as one of these for promoting building performance. In Korea, high-strength steels which stress are over 600MPa are on market and in aborad, super high-strength steels over 1000MPa are developing and they expected to promote the building performance. But there are still doubts about applying high-strength steel members because of size effect and worry of brittle fracture. In this reports, we propose results of performance and analysis tests for use with general steel. We propose the characteristic of high-strength steels first and next the results of performance test to show they satisfy the performance that designers expect. And last, we compare the results of test and analysis for acquire the alanysis reliability in non-linear analysis with high-strength steels.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.259-275
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• 2012

Concrete filled steel tubular (CFST) member has been widely used in the construction of high-rise buildings for its high axial bearing capacity. It can also be applied on long-span structures such as spatial structures or bridges not only for its high bearing capacity but also for its construction convenience. Concrete casting effect of CFST member is considered in the study of its bearing capacity in this paper. Firstly, in order to authenticate the applicability of constitutive relationship and yield criterion of steel and concrete based on FEM, two ANSYS models are built to simulate and compared with other's test. Secondly, in order to find the huge difference in bearing capacity due to different construction processes, two full-size CFST models are studied when they are horizontally cast and axially compressed. Finally, the effects of slenderness ratio (L/D) and confining parameter (D/t) of CFST members are studied to reveal the intrinsic links between bearing capacity and slenderness ratio or confining parameter.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.215-236
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• 2014

The flexural behaviour of steel beams significantly affects the structural performance of the steel frame structures. In particular, the flexural overstrength (namely the ratio between the maximum bending moment and the plastic bending strength) that steel beams may experience is the key parameter affecting the seismic design of non-dissipative members in moment resisting frames. The aim of this study is to present a new formulation of flexural overstrength factor for steel beams by means of artificial neural network (NN). To achieve this purpose, a total of 141 experimental data samples from available literature have been collected in order to cover different cross-sectional typologies, namely I-H sections, rectangular and square hollow sections (RHS-SHS). Thus, two different data sets for I-H and RHS-SHS steel beams were formed. Nine critical prediction parameters were selected for the former while eight parameters were considered for the latter. These input variables used for the development of the prediction models are representative of the geometric properties of the sections, the mechanical properties of the material and the shear length of the steel beams. The prediction performance of the proposed NN model was also compared with the results obtained using an existing formulation derived from the gene expression modeling. The analysis of the results indicated that the proposed formulation provided a more reliable and accurate prediction capability of beam overstrength.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.3_4
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• pp.231-248
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• 2012

In this study, a systematic investigation is carried out on the seismic behaviour of plane moment resisting steel frames (MRF) to repeated strong ground motions. Such a sequence of earthquakes results in a significant damage accumulation in a structure because any rehabilitation action between any two successive seismic motions cannot be practically materialised due to lack of time. In this work, thirty-six MRF which have been designed for seismic and vertical loads according to European codes are first subjected to five real seismic sequences which are recorded at the same station, in the same direction and in a short period of time, up to three days. Furthermore, the examined frames are also subjected to sixty artificial seismic sequences. This investigation shows that the sequences of ground motions have a significant effect on the response and, hence, on the design of MRF. Additionally, it is concluded that ductility demands, behaviour factor and seismic damage of the repeated ground motions can be satisfactorily estimated using appropriate combinations of the corresponding demands of single ground motions.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.397-408
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• 2019

In this paper, a geometrically nonlinear meshfree analysis of 3D various forms of shell structures using the double director shell theory with finite rotations is proposed. This theory is introduced in the present method to remove the shear correction factor and to improve the accuracy of transverse shear stresses with the consideration of rotational degrees of freedom.The present meshfree method is based on the radial point interpolation method (RPIM) which is employed for the construction of shape functions for a set of nodes distributed in a problem domain. Discrete system of geometrically nonlinear equilibrium equations solved with the Newton-Raphson method is obtained by incorporating these interpolations into the weak form. The accuracy of the proposed method is examined by comparing the present results with the accurate ones available in the literature and good agreements are found.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.217-243
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• 2016

The linear and nonlinear seismic responses of steel buildings with perimeter moment resisting frames and welded connections (WC) are estimated and compared with those of buildings with post-tensioned connections (PC). Two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) structural representations of the buildings as well as global and local response parameters are considered. The seismic responses and structural damage of steel buildings with PC may be significantly smaller than those of the buildings with typical WC. The reasons for this are that the PC buildings dissipate more hysteretic energy and attract smaller inertia forces. The response reduction is larger for global than for local response parameters. The reduction may significantly vary from one structural representation to another. One of the main reasons for this is that the energy dissipation characteristics are quite different for the 2D and 3D models. In addition, in the case of the 3D models, the contribution of each horizontal component to the axial load on an specific column may be in phase each other during some intervals of time, but for some others they may be out of phase. It is not possible to observe this effect on the 2D structural formulation. The implication of this is that 3D structural representation should be used while estimating the effect of the PC on the structural response. Thus, steel frames with post-tensioned bolted connections are a viable option in high seismicity areas due to the fact that brittle failure is prevented and also because of their reduced response and self-centering capacity.