• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.563-572
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• 2017

The safety of structures is closely associated with the structural out-of-plane behavior. In particular, long and slender beam structures have been increasingly used in the design and construction. Therefore, an evaluation of the lateral and torsional behavior of a structure is important for the safety of the structure during construction as well as under service conditions. The current contact measurement method using displacement meters cannot measure independent movements directly and also requires caution when installing the displacement meters. Therefore, in this study, a vision-based system was used to measure the in-plane and out-of-plane displacements of a structure. The image processing algorithm was based on reference objects, including multiple targets in Lab color space. The captured targets were synchronized using a load indicator connected wirelessly to a data logger system in the server. A laboratory beam test was carried out to compare the displacements and rotation obtained from the proposed vision-based measurement system with those from the current measurement method using string potentiometers. The test results showed that the proposed vision-based measurement system could be applied successfully and easily to evaluating both the in-plane and out-of-plane movements of a beam including twisting rotation.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.503-526
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• 2014

Concrete is a versatile construction material used in many engineering structures. The design of concrete structures requires a thorough understanding of their material properties under various loading conditions. Several experimental investigations have been carried out to examine the behavior of concrete. This paper is an attempt to summarize the behavioral aspects of concrete under different loading conditions. Failure models developed out of these experimental investigations are reported in this paper with their merits and demerits.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.231-243
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• 2022

The earthquake with a magnitude of Mw 6.8, which occurred on January 24, 2020, hit Sivrice (Elazığ) province of Turkey. The earthquake area takes place on the East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ) located between the Arabian and Turkish plates, one of the most active seismic regions in Turkey. According to the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Turkey (AFAD), 584 buildings collapsed, 6845 were heavily damaged, 1207 were moderately damaged, and 14389 were slightly damaged. The authors went to the region of earthquake after the mainshock to investigate the earthquake performances of masonry buildings. This paper presents the seismological aspects of the earthquake, acceleration records, and response spectra with different damping ratios. Furthermore, some typical damages and failure mechanisms on masonry buildings like rubble stone dwellings and minarets are discussed with illustrative photos. Although many major earthquakes have occurred in the region, similar mistakes are still being made in masonry building construction. In consequence, some suggestions viewpoint of the wooden tie beams, the corner details of masonry walls, the door and window openings, the metal fasteners and the earthquake codes are made to be more careful in masonry constructions at the end of the article.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.177-194
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• 2016

The cable-supported ribbed beam composite slab structure (CBS) is a new type of pre-stressed hybrid structure. The standard construction method of CBS including five steps and two key phases are proposed in this paper. The theoretical analysis and experimental research on a 1:5 scaled model were carried out. First, the tensioning construction method based on deformation control was applied to pre-stress the cables. The research results indicate that the actual tensile force applied to the cable is slightly larger than the theoretical value, and the error is about 6.8%. Subsequently, three support dismantling schemes are discussed. Scheme one indicates that each span of CBS has certain level of mechanical independence such that the construction of a span is not significantly affected by the adjacent spans. It is shown that dismantling from the middle to the ends is an optimal support dismantling method. The experimental research also indicates that by using this method, the CBS behaves identically with the numerical analysis results during the construction and service.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1001-1025
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• 2016

Building structures generally have inherent low damping capability and hence are vulnerable to seismic excitations. Control devices therefore play a useful role in providing safety to building structures subject to seismic events. In recent years semi-active dampers have gained considerable attention as structural control devices in the building construction industry. Magneto-rheological (MR) damper, a type of semi-active damper has proven to be effective in seismic mitigation of building structures. MR dampers contain a controllable MR fluid whose rheological properties vary rapidly with the applied magnetic field. Although some research has been carried out on the use of MR dampers in building structures, optimal design of MR damper and combined use of MR and passive dampers for real scale buildings has hardly been investigated. This paper investigates the use of MR dampers and incorporating MR-passive damper combinations in building structures in order to achieve acceptable levels of seismic performance. In order to do so, it first develops the MR damper model by integrating control algorithms commonly used in MR damper modelling. The developed MR damper is then integrated in to the seismically excited structure as a time domain function. Linear and nonlinear structure models are evaluated in real time scenarios. Analyses are conducted to investigate the influence of location and number of devices on the seismic performance of the building structure. The findings of this paper provide information towards the design and construction of earthquake safe buildings with optimally employed MR dampers and MR-passive damper combinations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.685-702
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• 2010

In this paper, a nonlinear finite element procedure is presented for the dynamic analysis of reinforced concrete shell structures. A computer program, named RCAHEST (Reinforced Concrete Analysis in Higher Evaluation System Technology), was used. A 4-node flat shell element with drilling rotational stiffness was used for spatial discretization. The layered approach was used to discretize the behavior of concrete and reinforcement in the thickness direction. Material nonlinearity was taken into account by using tensile, compressive and shear models of cracked concrete and a model of reinforcing steel. The smeared crack approach was incorporated. The low-cycle fatigue of both concrete and reinforcing bars was also considered to predict a reliable dynamic behavior. The solution to the dynamic response of reinforced concrete shell structures was obtained by numerical integration of the nonlinear equations of motion using Hilber-Hughes-Taylor (HHT) algorithm. The proposed numerical method for the nonlinear dynamic analysis of reinforced concrete shell structures was verified by comparison of its results with reliable experimental and analytical results.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.283-290
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• 2015

Crack control remains a primary concern for mass concrete structures, where the majority of cracking is caused by temperature changes during the hydration process. One-time pouring is a useful construction method for mass concrete structures. The suitability of this method for constructingon of the Shanghai Tower's mass concrete foundation slab of Shanghai Tower is considered here by a numerical simulation method based on a 6- meter- thick slab. Some of the conclusions, which can be verified by monitoring results conducted during construction, are as follows. The temperature gradient is greater in the vertical direction than in the radial direction, therefore, the vertical temperature gradient should be carefully considered for the purpose of crack control. Moreover, owing to cooling conditions at the surfaces and the cement mortar content of the slab, the temperatures and temperature gradients with respect to time vary according to the position within the slab.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.331-350
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• 2017

Based on the alternative stabilization diagram by varying the time lag parameter in the stochastic subspace identification analysis, this study aims to investigate the measurements from several cases of civil structures for extending the applicability of a recently noticed criterion to ensure stable identification results. Such a criterion demands the time lag parameter to be no less than a critical threshold determined by the ratio of the sampling rate to the fundamental system frequency and is firstly validated for its applications with single measurements from stay cables, bridge decks, and buildings. As for multiple measurements, it is found that the predicted threshold works well for the cases of stay cables and buildings, but makes an evident overestimation for the case of bridge decks. This discrepancy is further explained by the fact that the deck vibrations are induced by multiple excitations independently coming from the passing traffic. The cable vibration signals covering the sensor locations close to both the deck and pylon ends of a cable-stayed bridge provide convincing evidences to testify this important discovery.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.617-630
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• 2019

Currently most of the vision-based structural identification research focus either on structural input (vehicle location) estimation or on structural output (structural displacement and strain responses) estimation. The structural condition assessment at global level just with the vision-based structural output cannot give a normalized response irrespective of the type and/or load configurations of the vehicles. Combining the vision-based structural input and the structural output from non-contact sensors overcomes the disadvantage given above, while reducing cost, time, labor force including cable wiring work. In conventional traffic monitoring, sometimes traffic closure is essential for bridge structures, which may cause other severe problems such as traffic jams and accidents. In this study, a completely non-contact structural identification system is proposed, and the system mainly targets the identification of bridge unit influence line (UIL) under operational traffic. Both the structural input (vehicle location information) and output (displacement responses) are obtained by only using cameras and computer vision techniques. Multiple cameras are synchronized by audio signal pattern recognition. The proposed system is verified with a laboratory experiment on a scaled bridge model under a small moving truck load and a field application on a footbridge on campus under a moving golf cart load. The UILs are successfully identified in both bridge cases. The pedestrian loads are also estimated with the extracted UIL and the predicted weights of pedestrians are observed to be in acceptable ranges.

• 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.