• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.199-223
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• 2003

The formulation of a non-linear shear deformable shell element is presented for the solution of stability problems of stiffened plates and shells. The formulation of the geometrical stiffness presented here is exactly defined on the midsurface and is efficient for analyzing stability problems of thick plates and shells by incorporating bending moment and transverse shear resultant force. As a result of the explicit integration of the tangent stiffness matrix, this formulation is computationally very efficient in incremental nonlinear analysis. The element is free of both membrane and shear locking behaviour by using the assumed strain method such that the element performs very well in the thin shells. By using six degrees of freedom per node, the present element can model stiffened plate and shell structures. The formulation includes large displacement effects and elasto-plastic material behaviour. The material is assumed to be isotropic and elasto-plastic obeying Von Mises's yield condition and its associated flow rules. The results showed good agreement with references and computational efficiency.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.115-136
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• 2015

We present for one-dimensional model for elastoplastic bar with combined hardening in FPZ - fracture process zone and softening with embedded strong discontinuities. The simplified version of the model without FPZ is directly compared and validated against analytical solution of Bazant and Belytschko (1985). It is shown that deformation localizes in an area which is governed by the chosen element size and therefore causes mesh sensitivity and that the length of the strain-softening region tends to localize into a point, which also agrees with results obtained by stability analysis for static case. Strain increases in the softening domain with a simultaneous decrease of stress. The problem unloads elastically outside the strain-softening region. The more general case with FPZ leads to more interesting results that also account for induced strain heterogeneities.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.365-378
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• 2012

In this study, strength reduction factors are investigated for SDOF systems with period range of 0.1-3.0 s with elastoplastic behavior considering soil structure interaction for 64 different earthquake motions recorded on different site conditions such as rock, stiff soil, soft soil and very soft soil. Soil structure interacting systems are modeled and analyzed with effective period, effective damping and effective ductility values differing from fixed-base case. For inelastic time history analyses, Newmark method for step by step time integration was adapted in an in-house computer program. Results are compared with those calculated for fixed-base case. A new equation is proposed for strength reduction factor of interacting system as a function of structural period of system (T), ductility ratio (${\mu}$) and period lengthening ratio (T/T). It is concluded that soil structure interaction reduces the strength reduction factors for soft soils, therefore, using the fixed-base strength reduction factors for interacting systems lead to non-conservative design forces.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.385-392
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• 2019

The present fractional-order plasticity models for granular soil are mainly established under the triaxial compression condition, due to its difficult in analytically solving the fractional differentiation of the third stress invariant, e.g., Lode's angle. To solve this problem, a three dimensional fractional-order elastoplastic model based on the transformed stress method, which does not rely on the analytical solution of the Lode's angle, is proposed. A nonassociated plastic flow rule is derived by conducting the fractional derivative of the yielding function with respect to the stress tensor in the transformed stress space. All the model parameters can be easily determined by using laboratory test. The performance of this 3D model is then verified by simulating multi series of true triaxial test results of rockfill.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.69-82
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• 2019

As the residual displacement and/or drift demands are commonly used for seismic assessment of buildings, the estimation of these values play a very critical role through earthquake design philosophy. The residual displacement estimation of fixed base structures has been the topic of numerous researches up to now, but the effect of soil flexibility is almost always omitted. In this study, residual displacement demands are investigated for SDOF systems with period range of 0.1-3.0 s for near-field and far-field ground motions for both fixed and interacting cases. The elastoplastic model is used to represent non-degrading structures. Based on time history analyses, a new simple yet effective equation is proposed for residual displacement demand of any system whether fixed base or interacting as a function of structural period, lateral strength ratio and spectral displacement.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.343-365
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• 2019

Among the themes related to earthquake countermeasures at construction sites, those for tower cranes are particularly important. An accident involving the collapse of a crane during the construction of a skyscraper has serious consequences, such as human injury or death, enormous repair costs, and significant delays in construction. One of the causes of deadly tower crane collapses is the destruction of the site joints of the tower crane mast. This paper proposes a new design method by static elastoplastic finite element analysis using a supercomputer for the design of the end plate-type tensile bolted joints, which are generally applied to the site joints of a tower crane mast. This new design method not only enables highly accurate and reliable joint design but also allows for a design that considers construction conditions, such as the introduction of a pre-tension axial force on the bolts. By applying this new design method, the earthquake resistance of tower cranes will undoubtedly be improved.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.589-597
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• 2021

The present study evaluates geocell reinforced slope behavior. A three dimensional analysis is carried out to simulate soil and geocell elastoplastic behavior using the finite difference software FLAC3D. In order to investigate the geocell reinforcement effect, the geocell aperture size, thickness, geocell placement condition and soil compaction had been considered as variable parameters. Moreover, a comparison is evaluated between geocell reinforcing system and conventional planar reinforcement. The obtained results showed that the pocket size, thickness and soil compaction have considerable influence on the geocell reinforcement slope performance. Moreover, it was found that the critical sliding surface was bounded by the first geocell reinforcement and the slope stability increases, by increasing the vertical space between geocell layers. In addition, the comparison between geocell and geogrid reinforcement indicates the efficiency of using cellular honeycomb geosynthetic reinforcement.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.3
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• pp.377-386
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• 2022

This paper considers dynamic impedance functions and presents a detailed analysis of the soil plasticity influence on the pile-group foundation dynamic response. A three-dimensional finite element model is proposed, and a calculation method considering the time domain is detailed for the nonlinear dynamic impedance functions. The soil mass is modeled as continuum elastoplastic solid using the Mohr-Coulomb shear failure criterion. The piles are modeled as continuum solids and the slab as a structural plate-type element. Quiet boundaries are implemented to avoid wave reflection on the boundaries. The model and method of analysis are validated by comparison with those published on literature. Numerical results are presented in terms of horizontal and vertical nonlinear dynamic impedances as a function of the shear soil parameters (cohesion and internal friction angle), pile spacing ratio and frequencies of the dynamic signal.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2022

A semi-analytical solution to responses of overconsolidated (OC) unsaturated soils surrounding an expanding spherical cavity under constant suction condition is presented. To capture the elastoplastic hydro-mechanical property of OC unsaturated soils, the unified hardening (UH) model for OC unsaturated soil is adopted in corporation with a soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC) and two suction yield surfaces. Taking the specific volume, radial stress, tangential stress and degree of saturation as the four basic unknowns, the problem investigated is formulated by solving a set of first-order ordinary differential equations with the help of an auxiliary variable and an iterative algorithm. The present solution is validated by comparing with available solution based on the modified Cam Clay (MCC) model. Parametric studies reveal that the hydraulic and mechanical responses of spherical cavity expanding in unsaturated soils are not only coupled, but also affected by suction and overconsolidation ratio (OCR) significantly. More importantly, whether hydraulic yield will occur or not depends only on the initial relationship between suction yield stress and suction. The presented solution can be used for calibration of some insitu tests in OC unsaturated soil.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.15-26
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• 2023

It is of great importance to assess the residual displacement demand in the performance-based seismic design. In this paper, a hybrid deep learning model for predicting the residual displacement spectra under near-fault (NF) ground motions is proposed by combining the long short-term memory network (LSTM) and back-propagation (BP) network. The model is featured by its capacity of predicting the residual displacement spectrum under a given NF ground motion while considering the effects of structural parameters. To construct this model, 315 natural and artificial NF ground motions were employed to compute the residual displacement spectra through elastoplastic time history analysis considering different structural parameters. Based on the resulted dataset with a total of 9,450 samples, the proposed model was finally trained and tested. The results show that the proposed model has a satisfactory accuracy as well as a high efficiency in predicting residual displacement spectra under given NF ground motions while considering the impacts of structural parameters.