• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.1229-1242
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• 2005

When natural rubber is used for a long period of time, it becomes aged; it usually becomes hardened and loses its damping capability. This aging process affects not only the material property but also the (fatigue) life of natural rubber. In this paper the aging effects on the material property and the fatigue life were experimentally investigated. In addition, several fatigue life prediction equations for natural rubber were proposed. In order to investigate the aging effects on the material property, the load-stretch ratio curves were plotted from the results of the tensile test, the compression test and the simple shear test for virgin and heat-aged rubber specimens. Rubber specimens were heat-aged in an oven at a temperature ranging from $50^{\circ}C$ to $90^{\circ}C$ for a period ranging from 2 days to 16 days. In order to investigate the aging effects on the fatigue life, fatigue tests were conducted for differently heat-aged hourglass-shaped and simple shear specimens. Moreover, finite element simulations were conducted for the specimens to calculate physical quantities occurring in the specimens such as the maximum value of the effective stress, the strain energy density, the first invariant of the Cauchy-Green deformation tensor and the maximum principal nominal strain. Then, four fatigue life prediction equations based on one of the physical quantities could be obtained by fitting the equations to the test data. Finally, the fatigue life of a rubber bush used in an automobile was predicted by using the prediction equations, and it was compared with the test data of the bush to evaluate the reliability of those equations.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.139-160
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• 2015

The global performance of the 5MW OC4 semisubmersible floating wind turbine in random waves was numerically simulated by using the turbine-floater-mooring fully coupled and time-domain dynamic analysis program FAST-CHARM3D. There have been many papers regarding floating offshore wind turbines but the effects of second-order wave-body interactions on their global performance have rarely been studied. The second-order wave forces are actually small compared to the first-order wave forces, but its effect cannot be ignored when the natural frequencies of a floating system are outside the wave-frequency range. In the case of semi-submersible platform, second-order difference-frequency wave-diffraction forces and moments become important since surge/sway and pitch/roll natural frequencies are lower than those of typical incident waves. The computational effort related to the full second-order diffraction calculation is typically very heavy, so in many cases, the simplified approach called Newman's approximation or first-order-wave-force-only are used. However, it needs to be justified against more complete solutions with full QTF (quadratic transfer function), which is a main subject of the present study. The numerically simulated results for the 5MW OC4 semisubmersible floating wind turbine by FAST-CHARM3D are also extensively compared with the DeepCWind model test results by Technip/NREL/UMaine. The predicted motions and mooring tensions for two white-noise input-wave spectra agree well against the measure values. In this paper, the numerical static-offset and free-decay tests are also conducted to verify the system stiffness, damping, and natural frequencies against the experimental results. They also agree well to verify that the dynamic system modeling is correct to the details. The performance of the simplified approaches instead of using the full QTF are also tested.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.3
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• pp.305-317
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• 2021

An AMD control system is usually built based on the original model of a target building. As a result, the fact leads a large calculation workload exists. Therefore, the orders of a structural model should be reduced appropriately. Among various model-reduction methods, a suitable reduced-order model is important to high-rise buildings. Meanwhile, a partial structural information is discarded directly in the model-reduction process, which leads to the accuracy reduction of its controller design. In this paper, an optimal technique is selected through comparing several common model-reduction methods. Then, considering the dynamic characteristics of a high-rise building, an improved balanced truncation (BT) method is proposed for establishing its reduced-order model. The abandoned structural information, including natural frequencies, damping ratios and modal information of the original model, is reconsidered. Based on the improved reduced-order model, a new reduced-order controller is designed by a regional pole-placement method. A high-rise building with an AMD system is regarded as an example, in which the energy distribution, the control effects and the control parameters are used as the indexes to analyze the performance of the improved reduced-order controller. To verify its effectiveness, the proposed methodology is also applied to a four-storey experimental frame. The results demonstrate that the new controller has a stable control performance and a relatively short calculation time, which provides good potential for structural vibration control of high-rise buildings.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.68 no.6
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• pp.747-760
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• 2018

In the present study, a methodology for developing fragilities of arch concrete dams to assess their performance against seismic hazards is introduced. Firstly, the probability risk and fragility curves are presented, followed by implementation and representation of the way this method is used. Amirkabir arch concrete dam was subjected to non-linear dynamic analyses. A modified three dimensional rotating smeared crack model was used to take the nonlinear behavior of mass concrete into account. The proposed model considers major characteristics of mass concrete. These characteristics are pre-softening behavior, softening initiation criteria, fracture energy conservation, suitable damping mechanism and strain rate effect. In the present analysis, complete fluid-structure interaction is included to account for appropriate fluid compressibility and absorptive reservoir boundary conditions. In this study, the Amirkabir arch concrete dam is subjected to a set of 8 three-component earthquakes each scaled to 10 increasing intensity levels. Using proposed nonlinear smeared crack model, nonlinear analysis is performed where the structure is subjected to a large set of scaled and un-scaled ground motions and the maximum responses are extracted for each one and plotted. Based on the results, fragility curves were plotted according to various and possible damages indexes. Discrete damage probabilities were calculated using statistical methods for each considered performance level and incremental nonlinear analysis. Then, fragility curves were constructed based on the lognormal distribution assumption. Two damage indexes were introduced and compared to one another. The results indicate that the dam has a proper stability under earthquake conditions at MCE level. Moreover, displacement damages index is more conservative and impractical in the fragility analysis than tensional damage index.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.617-627
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• 2018

After earthquakes FRP sheets are often used for the rehabilitation of damaged Reinforced Concrete (RC) beamcolumn connections. Connections with minor to moderate damage are often dealt with by applying FRP sheets after a superficial repair of the cracks using resin paste or high strength mortar but without infusion of thin resin solution under pressure into the cracking system. This technique is usually adopted in these cases due to the fast and easy-to-apply procedure. The experimental investigation reported herein aims at evaluating the effectiveness of repairing the damaged beam-column connections using FRP sheets after a meticulous but superficial repair of their cracking system using resin paste. The investigation comprises experimental results of 10 full scale beam-column joint specimens; five original joints and the corresponding retrofitted ones. The repair technique has been applied to RC joints with different joint reinforcement arrangements with minor to severe damage brought about by cyclic loading for the purposes of this work. Aiming at quantitative concluding remarks about the effectiveness of the repair technique, data concerning response loads, loading stiffness and energy absorption values have been acquired and commented upon. Furthermore, comparisons of damage index values and values of equivalent viscous damping, as obtained during the test of the original specimens, with the corresponding ones observed in the loading of the repaired ones have also been evaluated and commented. Based on these comparisons, it is deduced that the technique under investigation can be considered to be a rather satisfactory repair technique for joints with minor to moderate damage taking into account the rapid, convenient and easy-to-apply character of its application.

• Plant Journal
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.41-45
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• 2022

The conventional communication method using mud flow pressure waves has a speed of 1-2 bps, so it takes a long time to communicate, making real-time control impossible. Although the sound wave communication method for improving the communication speed by 10 times or more has been commercialized, its use is limited due to its high price and there are not many application cases. In this study, the simulator corresponding to the facility was developed to develop performance similar to the actual test results. For simulating sound wave communication through a drill pipe, we proposed a governing equation that can simulate friction damping by mud and developed a numerical analysis model. The attenuation factor was corrected by comparing it with the attenuation rate of sound wave energy at the drilling site. The developed numerical analysis model was applied to the QPSK modulation type communication algorithm to confirm the excellent performance of the communication error rate of 0.04% in the ground. This is the communication performance under the condition that noise has not been mixed yet, and in order to apply it, the technology of reproducing the actual noise signal for mixing by securing the field noise data was established.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.377-389
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• 2021

Reinforced concrete vertical silos are universal structures that store large amounts of granular materials. Due to the asymmetric structure, heavy load, uneven storage material distribution, and the difference between the storage volume and the storage material bulk density, the corresponding earthquake is very complicated. Some scholars have proposed the calculation method of horizontal forces on reinforced concrete vertical silos under the action of earthquakes. Without considering the effect of torsional effect, this article aims to reveal the expansion factor of the silo group considering the torsional effect through experiments. Through two-way seismic simulation shaking table tests on reinforced concrete column-supported group silo structures, the basic dynamic characteristics of the structure under earthquake are obtained. Taking into account the torsional response, the structure has three types of storage: empty, half and full. A comprehensive analysis of the internal force conditions under the material conditions shows that: the different positions of the group bin model are different, the side bin displacement produces a displacement difference, and a torsional effect occurs; as the mass of the material increases, the structure's natural vibration frequency decreases and the damping ratio Increase; it shows that the storage material plays a role in reducing energy consumption of the model structure, and the contribution value is related to the stiffness difference in different directions of the model itself, providing data reference for other researchers; analyzing and calculating the model stiffness and calculating the internal force of the earthquake. As the horizontal side shift increases in the later period, the torsional effect of the group silo increases, and the shear force at the bottom of the column increases. It is recommended to consider the effect of the torsional effect, and the increase factor of the torsional effect is about 1.15. It can provide a reference for the structural safety design of column-supported silos.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.409-423
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• 2022

Nowadays, there is a high demand for great structural implementation and multifunctionality with excellent mechanical properties. The porous structures reinforced by graphene platelets (GPLs) having valuable properties, such as heat resistance, lightweight, and excellent energy absorption, have been considerably used in different engineering implementations. However, stiffness of porous structures reduces significantly, due to the internal cavities, by adding GPLs into porous medium, effective mechanical properties of the porous structure considerably enhance. This paper is relating to vibration analysis of fluidconveying cantilever porous graphene platelet reinforced (GPLR) pipe with fractional viscoelastic model resting on foundations. A dynamical model of cantilever porous GPLR pipes conveying fluid and resting on a foundation is proposed, and the vibration, natural frequencies and primary resonant of such a system are explored. The pipe body is considered to be composed of GPLR viscoelastic polymeric pipe with porosity in which Halpin-Tsai scheme in conjunction with the fractional viscoelastic model is used to govern the construction relation of nanocomposite pipe. Three different porosity distributions through the pipe thickness are introduced. The harmonic concentrated force is also applied to the pipe and the excitation frequency is close to the first natural frequency. The governing equation for transverse motions of the pipe is derived by the Hamilton principle and then discretized by the Galerkin procedure. In order to obtain the frequency-response equation, the differential equation is solved with the assumption of small displacement, damping coefficient, and excitation amplitude by the multiple scale method. A parametric sensitivity analysis is carried out to reveal the influence of different parameters, such as nanocomposite pipe properties, fluid velocity and nonlinear viscoelastic foundation coefficients, on the primary resonance and linear natural frequency. Results indicate that the GPLs weight fraction porosity coefficient, fractional derivative order and the retardation time have substantial influences on the dynamic response of the system.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.86 no.5
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• pp.647-661
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• 2023

It is recognized that the installation of energy dissipation devices, such as the tuned mass damper (TMD), decreases the dynamic response of structures, however, the best parameters of each device persist hard to determine. Unlike many works that perform only a deterministic optimization, this work proposes a complete methodology to minimize the dynamic response of footbridges by optimizing the parameters of multiple tuned mass dampers (MTMD) taking into account uncertainties present in the parameters of the structure and also of the human excitation. For application purposes, a steel footbridge, based on a real structure, is studied. Three different scenarios for the MTMD are simulated. The proposed robust optimization problem is solved via the Circle-Inspired Optimization Algorithm (CIOA), a novel and efficient metaheuristic algorithm recently developed by the authors. The objective function is to minimize the mean maximum vertical displacement of the footbridge, whereas the design variables are the stiffness and damping constants of the MTMD. The results showed the excellent capacity of the proposed methodology, reducing the mean maximum vertical displacement by more than 36% and in a computational time about 9% less than using a classical genetic algorithm. The results obtained by the proposed methodology are also compared with results obtained through traditional TMD design methods, showing again the best performance of the proposed optimization method. Finally, an analysis of the maximum vertical acceleration showed a reduction of more than 91% for the three scenarios, leading the footbridge to acceleration values below the recommended comfort limits. Hence, the proposed methodology could be employed to optimize MTMD, improving the design of footbridges.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.2B
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• pp.249-259
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• 2008

The present paper studies the effect of the slope gradient of a fully permeable submerged breakwater using a newly developed numerical model that is able to consider the flow through a porous midium with inertial, laminar and turbulent resistance terms, i.e. simulate directly WAve-Structure (submerged breakwater)-Sand seabed interaction and can determine the eddy viscosity with LES turbulence model in 2-Dimensional wave field (LES-WASS-2D). The developed model was validated through the comparison with an existing experimental data, and further used for various numerical experiments in oder to investigate the complicated hydrodynamics on the varying slope gradient of permeable submerged breakwater. We found an acceptable phenomenon, as we expect intuitively, that reflection and transmission coefficients decrease simultaneously as slope gradient decrease. In addition, the breaking point, the circulation flow and mean vorticity around a submerged breakwater are throughly discussed.