• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.549-571
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• 2011

This paper presents analytical solutions for skewed thick plates under transverse loading that have previously been unreported in the literature. The thick plate solution is obtained in a framework of an oblique coordinate system. The governing equation is first derived in the oblique coordinate system, and the solution is obtained using deflection and rotation as partial derivatives of a potential function developed in this research. The solution technique is applied to three illustrative application examples, and the results are compared with numerical solutions in the literature and those derived from the commercial finite element analysis package ANSYS 11. These results are in excellent agreement. The present solution may also be used to model skewed structures such as skewed bridges, to facilitate efficient routine design or evaluation analyses, and to form special elements for finite element analysis. At the same time, the analytical solution developed in this research could be used to develop methods to address post-buckling and dynamic problems.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.305-312
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• 2006

In the case of hospital buildings, where seismic design requirements are very high, existing structuresand especially those attacked by past earthquakes, appear, often, unable to fulfil the necessary safety prerequisites. In this paper, the retrofitting of hospital buildings is investigated, using alternative methods of repair and strengthening. Analysis of an existing hospital building in Patras, Greece, is performed. The load-bearing system is a reinforced concrete system. Two solutions are proposed: strengthening using concrete jackets around column and beam elements and application of viscoelastic dampers for the increase of the stability of the structure. Adequate finite element models are constructed for each case and conclusions are drawn on the efficiency of each rehabilitation method.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.193-212
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• 2009

The resilience of a city confronted with a terrorist bomb attack is the background of the paper. The resilience strongly depends on vital infrastructure and the physical protection of people. The protection buildings provide in case of an external explosion is one of the important elements in safety assessment. Besides the aspect of protection, buildings facilitate and enable many functions, e.g., offices, data storage, -handling and -transfer, energy supply, banks, shopping malls etc. When a building is damaged, the loss of functions is directly related to the location, amount of damage and the damage level. At TNO Defence, Security and Safety methods are developed to quantify the resilience of city infrastructure systems (Weerheijm et al. 2007b). In this framework, the dynamic response, damage levels and residual bearing capacity of multi-storey RC buildings is studied. The current paper addresses the aspects of dynamic response and progressive collapse, as well as the proposed method to relate the structural damage to a volume-damage parameter, which can be linked to the loss of functionality. After a general introduction to the research programme and progressive collapse, the study of the dynamic response and damage due to blast loading for a single RC element is described. Shock tube experiments on plates are used as a reference to study the possibilities of engineering methods and an explicit finite element code to quantify the response and residual bearing capacity. Next the dynamic response and progressive collapse of a multi storey RC building is studied numerically, using a number of models. Conclusions are drawn on the ability to predict initial blast damage and progressive collapse. Finally the link between the structural damage of a building and its loss of functionality is described, which is essential input for the envisaged method to quantify the resilience of city infrastructure.

• Korea-Australia Rheology Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.131-150
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• 2003

A new numerical algorithm of finite element methods is presented to solve high Deborah number flow problems with geometric singularities. The steady inertialess planar 4 : 1 contraction flow is chosen for its test. As a viscoelastic constitutive equation, we have applied the globally stable (dissipative and Hadamard stable) Leonov model that can also properly accommodate important nonlinear viscoelastic phenomena. The streamline upwinding method with discrete elastic-viscous stress splitting is incorporated. New interpolation functions classified as rational interpolation, an alternative formalism to enhance numerical convergence at high Deborah number, are implemented not for the whole set of finite elements but for a few elements attached to the entrance comer, where stress singularity seems to exist. The rational interpolation scheme contains one arbitrary parameter b that controls the singular behavior of the rational functions, and its value is specified to yield the best stabilization effect. The new interpolation method raises the limit of Deborah number by 2∼5 times. Therefore on average, we can obtain convergent solution up to the Deborah number of 200 for which the comer vortex size reaches 1.6 times of the half width of the upstream reservoir. Examining spatial violation of the positive definiteness of the elastic strain tensor, we conjecture that the stabilization effect results from the peculiar behavior of rational functions identified as steep gradient on one domain boundary and linear slope on the other. Whereas the rational interpolation of both elastic strain and velocity distorts solutions significantly, it is shown that the variation of solutions incurred by rational interpolation only of the elastic strain is almost negligible. It is also verified that the rational interpolation deteriorates speed of convergence with respect to mesh refinement.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.77-83
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• 2015

PURPOSES : In this study, a fracture-based finite element (FE) model is proposed to evaluate the fracture behavior of fiber-reinforced asphalt (FRA) concrete under various interface conditions. METHODS : A fracture-based FE model was developed to simulate a double-edge notched tension (DENT) test. A cohesive zone model (CZM) and linear viscoelastic model were implemented to model the fracture behavior and viscous behavior of the FRA concrete, respectively. Three models were developed to characterize the behavior of interfacial bonding between the fiber reinforcement and surrounding materials. In the first model, the fracture property of the asphalt concrete was modified to study the effect of fiber reinforcement. In the second model, spring elements were used to simulated the fiber reinforcement. In the third method, bar and spring elements, based on a nonlinear bond-slip model, were used to simulate the fiber reinforcement and interfacial bonding conditions. The performance of the FRA in resisting crack development under various interfacial conditions was evaluated. RESULTS : The elastic modulus of the fibers was not sensitive to the behavior of the FRA in the DENT test before crack initiation. After crack development, the fracture resistance of the FRA was found to have enhanced considerably as the elastic modulus of the fibers increased from 450 MPa to 900 MPa. When the adhesion between the fibers and asphalt concrete was sufficiently high, the fiber reinforcement was effective. It means that the interfacial bonding conditions affect the fracture resistance of the FRA significantly. CONCLUSIONS : The bar/spring element models were more effective in representing the local behavior of the fibers and interfacial bonding than the fracture energy approach. The reinforcement effect is more significant after crack initiation, as the fibers can be pulled out sufficiently. Both the elastic modulus of the fiber reinforcement and the interfacial bonding were significant in controlling crack development in the FRA.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.949-966
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• 2016

The second order analysis taking place due to non-linear behavior of the structures under the mechanical and geometric factors through implementing exact and approximate methods is an indispensible issue in the analysis of such structures. Among the exact methods is the slope-deflection method that due to its simplicity and efficiency of its relationships has always been in consideration. By solving the differential equations of the modified slope-deflection method in which the effect of axial compressive force is considered, the stiffness matrix including trigonometric entries would be obtained. The complexity of computations with trigonometric functions causes replacement with their Maclaurin expansion. In most cases only the first two terms of this expansion are used but to obtain more accurate results, more elements are needed. In this paper, the effect of utilizing higher order terms of Maclaurin expansion on reducing the number of required elements and attaining more rapid convergence with less error is investigated for the Bernoulli beam with various boundary conditions. The results indicate that when using only one element along the beam length, utilizing higher order terms in Maclaurin expansion would reduce the relative error in determining the critical buckling load and kinematic parameters in the second order analysis.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.29 no.9 s.240
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• pp.1175-1182
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• 2005

General systems have many substructures assembled at joints. The bolted joint is generally used in assembling the mechanical parts. However, there are no effective modeling methods to analyze the dynamic characteristics of bolt jointed structure using the finite element (FE) analysis, especially in case of large area contact. Moreover, the design methods for the appropriate bolt locations and the number of bolts considering the dynamic characteristics are not guided properly. In this study, a proper modeling method is developed to simulate the dynamic characteristics of a structure with the large interfaced area using the cone frusta method and spring elements. The natural frequencies are also controlled by adjusting the bolt-joint location and the number of bolts considering relative distances in mode shapes at the interface of bolt-jointed plates. The Modeling method and the optimized design method are verified based on the experimental and the FE analysis results.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.65-73
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• 1989

Continuum formulations for the expressions of dynamic energy release rates and computational methods for dynamic stress intensity factors are developed for the analysis of dynamic fracture problems subjected to stress wave loading. Explicit volume integral expressions for instantaneous dynamic energy release rates are derived by modeling virtual crack extensions with the dynamic Eulerian-Lagrangian kinematic description. In the finite element applications a finite region around a crack-tip is modeled by using quarter-point singular isoparametric elements, and the volume integrals are evaluated for each crack-tip element during virtual crack extensions while the singularity is maintained. It is shown that the use of the present method is more reliable and accurate for the dynamic fracture analysis than that of other path-independent integral methods when the effects of stress waves are significant.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1798-1803
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• 2003

In this work the dynamic heat transfer occurring in a cable penetration fire stop system built in the firewall of nuclear power plants is three-dimensionally investigated to develop a test-simulator that can be used to verify effectiveness of the sealants. The dynamic heat transfer can be described by a partial differential equation (PDE) and its initial and boundary conditions. For the shake of simplicity PDE is divided into two parts; one corresponding to the heat transfer in the axial direction and the other corresponding to the heat transfer on the vertical layers. Two numerical methods, SOR (Sequential Over-Relaxation) and FEM (Finite Element Method), are implemented to solve these equations respectively. The axial line is discretized, and SOR is applied. Similarly, all the layers are separated into finite elements, where the time and spatial functions are assumed to be of orthogonal collocation state at each element. The heat fluxes on the layers are calculated by FEM. It is shown that the penetration cable influences the temperature distribution of the fire stop system very significantly. The simulation results are shown in the three-dimensional graphics for the understanding of the transient temperature distribution in the fire stop system.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.2410-2413
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• 2005

Finite element method (FEM) has been widely used as a useful numerical method that can analyze complex engineering problems in electro-magnetics, mechanics, and others. CEMTool, which is similar to MATLAB, is a command style design and analyzing package for scientific and technological algorithm and a matrix based computation language. In this paper, we present new 3D FEM package in CEMTool environment. In contrast to the existing CEMTool 2D FEM package and MATLAB PDE (Partial Differential Equation) Toolbox, our proposed 3D FEM package can deal with complex 3D models, not a cross-section of 3D models. In the pre-processor of 3D FEM package, a new 3D mesh generating algorithm can make information on 3D Delaunay tetrahedral mesh elements for analyses of 3D FEM problems. The solver of the 3D FEM package offers three methods for solving the linear algebraic matrix equation, i.e., Gauss-Jordan elimination solver, Band solver, and Skyline solver. The post-processor visualizes the results for 3D FEM problems such as the deformed position and the stress. Consequently, with our new 3D FEM toolbox, we can analyze more diverse engineering problems which the existing CEMTool 2D FEM package or MATLAB PDE Toolbox can not solve.