• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.599-624
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• 2010

Offshore wind turbines are relatively complex structural and mechanical systems located in a highly demanding environment. In the present paper the fundamental aspects and the major issues related to the design of these special structures are outlined. Particularly, a systemic approach is proposed for a global design of such structures, in order to handle coherently their different parts: the decomposition of these structural systems, the required performance and the acting loads are all considered under this philosophy. According to this strategy, a proper numerical modeling requires the adoption of a suitable technique in order to organize the qualitative and quantitative assessments in various sub-problems, which can be solved by means of sub-models at different levels of detail, for both structural behavior and loads simulation. Specifically, numerical models are developed to assess the safety performances under aerodynamic and hydrodynamic actions. In order to face the problems of the actual design of a wind farm in the Mediterranean Sea, in this paper, three schemes of turbines support structures have been considered and compared: the mono pile, the tripod and the jacket support structure typologies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.56-56
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• 2001

Ni-W alloy deposit is one of the best alternatives to hard chromium plating because of its good mechanical properties (high hardness, high strength, and good wear resistance). Ni-W alloy is deposited from weakly acidic or alkaline electrolytic bath with nickel sulfate, sodium tungstate or APT, and some kinds of organic hydroxy-acid complex and ammonia salts. W content of the deposit can be changed from 0 to 5Owt% and the coating with high W content is more attracted. But, meanwhile, the deposited layers are always found high internal stress, which cause them to become brittle and to bond insufficiently with the substrate. On the second hand, as the W content is incresed, the current efficiency reduced, which results in large quantities of hydrogen evolution and then produces bubbles on surface and pitting appearance In this paper, the influence of some additives on Ni-W alloy electroplating was investigated by means of compositional analysis and SEM. The initial results showed that 2-butyne-1,4-diol was the best brightener for Ni-W plating process. It could brighten and level deposit, but decreased the cathodic current efficiency. Its optimum concentration range is from O.lgjL to 0.5gjL. Besides, three kinds of additives including 2-butyne-1,4-diol were examined with Dagguchi method.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1085-1092
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• 2015

In this paper, the expressions of the estimated information of a single-phase enhanced phase-locked loop (EPLL), when input signal contains harmonics and a DC offset while the fundamental component takes step changes, are derived. The theoretical analysis results indicate that in the estimated information, the n^th-order harmonics cause n+1^th-order periodic ripples, and the DC offset causes a periodic ripple at the fundamental frequency. Step changes of the amplitude, phase angle and frequency of the fundamental component cause a transient periodic ripple at twice the frequency. These periodic ripples deteriorate the performance of the EPLL. A hybrid filter based EPLL (HF-EPLL) is proposed to eliminate these periodic ripples. A delay signal cancellation filter is set at the input of the EPLL to cancel the DC offset and even-order harmonics. A sliding Goertzel transform-based filter is introduced into the amplitude estimation loop and frequency estimation loop to eliminate the periodic ripples caused by the residual input odd-order harmonics and step change of the input fundamental component. The parameter design rules of the two filters are discussed in detail. Experimental waveforms of both the conventional EPLL and the proposed HF-EPLL are given and compared with each other to verify the theoretical analysis and advantages of the proposed HF-EPLL.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.467-471
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• 1999

BN films were grown on silicon (l00) substrate by magnetically enhanced activated reactive evaporation (ME-ARE) with pulsed DC power instead of r.f. for substrate biasing. The deposited films were analyzed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). FTIR results show that the intensity of absorption band of $sp^2$ bond of BN decreased and that of $sp^3$ bond of c-BN increased with increasing pulsed DC bias voltage applied to substrate. The initially grown layer at the interface was observed by TEM and considered to be of$ sp^2$-bonded BN. The cross-sectional and planar TEM micrographs show that the upper layer on the initial layer was the single phase c-BN. It is concluded that cubic boron nitride films could be synthesized by ME-ARE process with pulsed DC biasing.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.365-378
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• 2011

Piezo-based active structural health monitoring (SHM) requires amplifiers specifically designed for capacitive loads. Moreover, with the increase in number of applications of wireless SHM systems, energy efficiency and cost reduction for this type of amplifiers is becoming a requirement. General lab grade amplifiers are big and costly, and not built for outdoor environments. Although some piezoceramic power amplifiers are available in the market, none of them are specifically targeting the wireless constraints and low power requirements. In this paper, a piezoceramic transducer amplifier for wireless active SHM systems has been designed. Power requirements are met by two digital On/Off switches that set the amplifier in a standby state when not in use. It provides a stable ${\pm}180$ Volts output with a bandwidth of 7k Hz using a single 12 V battery. Additionally, both voltage and current outputs are provided for feedback control, impedance check, or actuator damage verification. Vibration control tests of an aluminum beam were conducted in the University of Houston lab, while wireless active SHM tests of a wind turbine blade were performed in the Harbin Institute of Technology wind tunnel. The results showed that the developed amplifier provided equivalent results to commercial solutions in suppressing structural vibrations, and that it allows researchers to perform active wireless SHM on moving objects with no power wires from the grid.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.743-755
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• 2015

It is well known that the quality of sample significantly determines the accuracy of soil parameters for laboratory testing. Although sampling disturbance has been studied over the last few decades, the theoretical investigation of soil disturbance due to sampling penetration has been rarely reported. In this paper, an analytical solution for estimating the soil disturbance due to sampling penetration was presented using cavity expansion method. Analytical results in several cases reveal that the soil at different location along the sample centerline experiences distinct phases of strain during the process of sampling penetration. The magnitude of induced strain is dependent on the position of the soil element within the sampler and the sampler geometry expressed as diameter-thickness ratio D/t and length-diameter ratio L/D. Effects of sampler features on soil disturbance were also studied. It is found that the induced maximum strain decreases exponentially with increasing diameter-thickness ratio, indicating that the sampling disturbance will reduce with increasing diameter or decreasing wall thickness of sampler. It is also found that a large length-diameter ratio does not necessarily reduce the disturbance. An optimal length-diameter ratio is suggested for the further design of improved sampler in this study.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.295-306
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• 2019

Shanghai Tower is a 632-meter super high-rise building located in an area with wind and active earthquake. A sophisticated structural health monitoring (SHM) system consisting of more than 400 sensors has been built to carry out a long-term monitoring for its operational safety. In this paper, a reduced-order model including 31 elements was generated from a full model of this super tall building. An iterative regularized matrix method was proposed to tune the system parameters, making the dynamic characteristic of the reduced-order model be consistent with those in the full model. The updating reduced-order model can be regarded as a benchmark model for further analysis. A long-term monitoring for structural dynamic characteristics of Shanghai Tower under different construction stages was also investigated. The identified results, including natural frequency and damping ratio, were discussed. Based on the data collected from the SHM system, the dynamic characteristics of the whole structure was investigated. Compared with the result of the finite element model, a good agreement can be observed. The result provides a valuable reference for examining the evolution of future dynamic characteristics of this super tall building.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.43-53
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• 2019

Vortex-induced vibration of three circular cylinders (each of diameter D) in an equilateral triangular arrangement is investigated using the immersed boundary method. The cylinders, with one placed upstream and the other two side-by-side downstream, are free to vibrate in the cross-flow direction. The cylinder center-to-center spacing L is adopted as L/D = 2.0. Other parameters include the Reynolds number Re = 100, mass ratio $m^*=2.0$, reduced velocity $U_r=2{\sim}15$ and damping ratio ${\zeta}=0$. Cylinder vibration responses are dependent on $U_r$ and classified into five regimes, i.e. Regime I ($U_r{\leq}3.2$), Regime II ($3.2<U_r{\leq}5.0$), Regime III ($5.0<U_r{\leq}6.4$), Regime IV ($6.4<U_r{\leq}9.2$) and Regime V ($U_r>9.2$). Different facets of vibration amplitude, hydrodynamic forces, wake patterns and displacement spectra are extracted and presented in detail for each regime.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.15-32
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• 2019

Much advancement has been made in wind power due to modern technological developments. The wind energy technology is the world's fastest-growing energy option. More power can be generated from wind energy by the use of new design and techniques of wind energy machines. The geographical areas with suitable wind speed are more favorable and preferred for wind power deployment over other sources of energy generation. Today's wind turbines are mainly the horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs) and vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). HAWTs are commercially available in various sizes starting from a few kilowatts to multi-megawatts and are suitable for almost all applications, including both onshore and offshore deployment. On the other hand, VAWTs finds their places in small and residential wind applications. The objective of the present work is to review the technological development, available sizes, efficiencies, structural types, and structural stability of VAWTs. Structural stability and efficiencies of the VAWTS are found to be dependent on the structural shape and size.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.65-75
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• 2019

A heated square cylinder (with height $A^*$) is kept parallel to the cold wall at a fixed gap height $0.5A^*$ from the wall. Another adiabatic rectangular cylinder (of same height $A^*$ and width $0.5A^*$) is placed upstream in an inline tandem arrangement. The spacing between the two cylinders is fixed at $3.0A^*$. The inlet flow is taken as Couette-Poiseuille flow based non-linear velocity profile. The conventional fluid (also known as base fluid) is chosen as water (W) whereas the nanoparticle material is selected as $Al_2O_3$. Numerical simulations are performed by using SIMPLE algorithm based Finite Volume approach with staggered grid arrangement. The dependencies of hydrodynamic and heat transfer characteristics of the cylinder on non-dimensional parameters governing the nanofluids and the fluid flow are explored here. A critical discussion is made on the mechanism of improvement/reduction (due to the presence of the upstream cylinder) of heat transfer and drag coefficient, in comparison to those of an isolated cylinder. It is observed that the heat transfer increases with the increase in the non-linearity in the incident velocity profile at the inlet. For the present range studied, particle concentration has a negligible effect on heat transfer.