• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.139-148
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• 2015

By increasing the vertical stiffness of the rail fastening system, the dynamic wheel load of the vehicle can be increased on the ballast track, though this increases the cost of track maintenance. On the other hand, the resistance acting on the wheel is decreased, which lowers the cost of the electric power to run the train. For this reason, the determination of the optimal fastener stiffness is important when attempting to minimize the economic costs associated with both track maintenance and energy to operate the train. In this study, a numerical method for evaluating the optimal vertical stiffness of the fasteners used on ballast track is presented on the basis of the process proposed by L$\acute{o}$pez-Pita et al. They used an approximation formula while calculating the dynamic wheel load. The evaluated fastener stiffness is mainly affected by the calculated dynamic wheel load. In this study, the dynamic wheel load is more precisely evaluated with an advanced vehicle-track interaction model. An appropriate range of the stiffness of the fastener applicable to the design of ballast track along domestic high-speed lines is proposed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.435-448
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• 2018

This paper reports the development of a theoretically rigorous method for permanent way engineers to assess the condition of railway ballast under a concrete sleeper with the potential to be extended to a smart system for long-term health monitoring of railway ballast. Owing to the uncertainties induced by the problems of modeling error and measurement noise, the Bayesian approach was followed in the development. After the selection of the most plausible model class for describing the damage status of the rail-sleeper-ballast system, Bayesian model updating is adopted to calculate the posterior PDF of the ballast stiffness at various regions under the sleeper. An obvious drop in ballast stiffness at a region under the sleeper is an evidence of ballast damage. In model updating, the model that can minimize the discrepancy between the measured and model-predicted modal parameters can be considered as the most probable model for calculating the posterior PDF under the Bayesian framework. To address the problems of non-uniqueness and local minima in the model updating process, a two-stage hybrid optimization method was developed. The modified evolutionary algorithm was developed in the first stage to identify the important regions in the parameter space and resulting in a set of initial trials for deterministic optimization to locate all most probable models in the second stage. The proposed methodology was numerically and experimentally verified. Using the identified model, a series of comprehensive numerical case studies was carried out to investigate the effects of data quantity and quality on the results of ballast damage detection. Difficulties to be overcome before the proposed method can be extended to a long-term ballast monitoring system are discussed in the conclusion.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.615-632
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• 2001

Ductility of open piled wharves under reversed cyclic loads has been investigated. Experimental testing of five wharf models having a scale of about 1:4 was conducted under the application of horizontal reversed cyclic loading. The experiments were designed to focus on the horizontal ultimate load, ductility and failure mode of the considered wharf models. Nonlinear numerical analyses using the finite element method were also performed on numerical models representing the experimentally tested wharves. The results of the experimental tests showed that open piled wharves possessed favourable ductile behaviour and that their load bearing capacity did not depreciate until a ductility factor of 3 to 4 was reached. The numerical analysis showed that the relative rotation that took place at the joints between the steel piles and the R.C. beam was responsible for a considerable portion of the total horizontal deformation of the wharves. Therefore, it was concluded that introducing the joint stiffness in calculating the deformations of open piled wharves was important to achieve reasonable accuracy.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.681-695
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• 2021

Many existing transmission or communication towers designed several decades ago have undergone nonreversible performance degradation, making it hardly meet the additional requirements from upgrades in wind load design codes and extra services of electricity and communication. Therefore, a new-type non-destructive reinforcement method was proposed to reduce the on-site operation of drilling and welding for improving the quality and efficiency of reinforcement. Six built-up steel angle members were tested under compression to examine the reinforcement performance. Subsequently, the cyclic loading test was conducted on a pair of steel angle tower sub-structures to investigate the reinforcement effect, and a simplified prediction method was finally established for calculating the buckling bearing capacity of those new-type retrofitted built-up steel angles. The results indicates that: no apparent difference exists in the initial stiffness for the built-up specimens compared to the unreinforced steel angles; retrofitting the steel angles by single-bolt clamps can guarantee a relatively reasonable reinforcement effect and is suggested for the reduced additional weight and higher construction efficiency; for the substructure test, the latticed substructure retrofitted by the proposed reinforcement method significantly improves the lateral stiffness, the non-deformability and energy dissipation capacity; moreover, an apparent pinching behavior exists in the hysteretic loops, and there is no obvious yield plateau in the skeleton curves; finally, the accuracy validation result indicates that the proposed theoretical model achieves a reasonable agreement with the test results. Accordingly, this study can provide valuable references for the design and application of the non-destructive upgrading project of steel angle towers.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.8 s.197
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• pp.89-96
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• 2007

In this paper, a new air bearing stage with magnetic preload and a linear motor has been developed for the small precision machine systems. The new air bearing stage is unique in the sense that permanent magnets attached bottom of the iron core of table are used not only for preloading air bearings in vertical direction but also for generating thrust force by current of the coil at base. The characteristics of air bearings using porous pads were analyzed with numerical method, and the magnetic circuit model was derived for linear motor for calculating required preload force and thrust force. A prototype of single axis miniature stage with size of $120(W){\times}120(L){\times}50(H)\;mm^3$ was designed and fabricated and examined its performances, vertical stiffness, load capacity, thrust force and positioning resolution.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.77-83
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• 1993

A modified Lanczos method combined with a substructure analysis technique was used for calculating natural frequencies and mode shapes of large structural systems. The method does not require generation and storage of stiffness and mass matrices of the entire structure. It only uses the stiffness and mass matrices of each substucture. No approximating assumptions are required other than the usual assumption of linear elastic system modelled by finite elements. Thus, natural frequencies and mode shapes for the finite element model employed are the same as those with or without the suhstructuring algorithm. To check the efficiency of the proposed method, first ten natural frequencies and the corresponding mode shapes of an open truss helicopter tail-boom structure are calculated by using it.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Advanced Composite Structures
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.42-47
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• 2011

A method of calculating natural frequencies corresponding to the modes of vibration of beams and tower structures with irregular cross sections and arbitrary boundary conditions was developed. The result is compared with that of the beam theory. Finite difference method is used for this purpose. The influence of the $D_{22}$ stiffness on the natural frequency is rigorously investigated. In this paper, the relation between the applied loading sizes and the natural frequency of vibration of some structural elements is presented. The results of application of this method to steel bridge and reinforced concrete slab bridge by using specially orthotropic plate theory is presented.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.946-952
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• 2010

A method for the identification of structural characteristic parameters of a steel bar in the matrices form such as stiffness matrices and mass matrices from frequency response function(FRF) by genetic algorithm is proposed. As the method is based on the finite element method(FEM), the obtained matrices have perfect physical meanings if the FRFs got from the analysis and the FRFs from the experiments were well coincident each other. The identified characteristic matrices from the FRFs with maximun 40 % of random errors by the genetic algorithm are coincident with the characteristic matrices from exact FEM FRFs well each other. The fitted element diameters by using only 2 points experimental FRFs are similar to the actual diameters of the bar. The fitted FRFs are good accordance with the experimental FRFs on the graphs. FRFs of the rest 9 points not used for calculating could be fitted even well.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.551-565
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• 2023

Coupled porous curved beams, due to their low weight and high flexibility, have many applications in engineering. This study investigates the vibration behavior of coupled porous curved beams in different boundary conditions. The system consists of two curved beams connected by a mid-layer of elastic springs. These beams are made of various materials, such as homogenous steel foam, and composite materials with PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) and SWCNT (single-walled carbon nanotube) used as the matrix and nanofillers, respectively. To obtain equivalent material properties, the role of mixture (RoM) was employed, followed by the implementation of the porosity function. The system's governing equations were obtained by employing FSDT and Hamilton's law. To investigate thermal vibration, temperature was implemented as a load in the governing equations. The GDQ method was used to solve these equations. To demonstrate the applicability of the GDQ method in calculating the frequencies of the system and the correctness of the developed program, a validation study was conducted. After validation, numerous examples were presented to investigate the behavior of single and coupled curved beams in various material properties and boundary conditions. The results indicate that the frequencies of the curved beams and the system depend highly on the amount of porosity (n) and the distribution pattern. The system frequencies decreased with an increase in the porosity coefficient. The stiffness of the springs had no effect on the first mode frequency but increased frequencies of other modes in a specific range. The frequencies of the system decreased with an increase in environmental temperature.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.293-301
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• 2020

Blades of tidal stream turbines have to sustain many different loads during operation in the underwater environment, so securing their structural safety is a key issue. In this study, we focused on periodic loads due to wave orbital motion and propose a load reduction method with a blade design. The flap of an airplane wing is a well-known structure designed to increase lift, and it can also change the load distribution on the wing through deflection. For this reason, we adopted a passive flap structure for the load reduction and investigated its effectiveness by an analytical method based on the blade element moment theory. Flap torsional stiffness required for the design of the passive flap can be obtained by calculating the flap moment based on the analytic method. Comparison between a flapped and a fixed blade showed the effect of the flap on load reduction in a high amplitude wave condition.