• Computers and Concrete
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• 제19권6호
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• pp.651-658
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• 2017

High-performance concrete, besides aggregate, cement, and water, incorporates supplementary cementitious materials, such as fly ash and blast furnace slag, and chemical admixture, such as superplasticizer. Hence, it is a highly complex material and modeling its behavior represents a difficult task. This paper presents an evolutionary system for the prediction of high performance concrete strength. The proposed framework blends a recently developed version of genetic programming with a local search method. The resulting system enables us to build a model that produces an accurate estimation of the considered parameter. Experimental results show the suitability of the proposed system for the prediction of concrete strength. The proposed method produces a lower error with respect to the state-of-the art technique. The paper provides two contributions: from the point of view of the high performance concrete strength prediction, a system able to outperform existing state-of-the-art techniques is defined; from the machine learning perspective, this case study shows that including a local searcher in the geometric semantic genetic programming system can speed up the convergence of the search process.

• Wind and Structures
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• 제10권3호
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• pp.269-285
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• 2007

This paper assesses the damage to high-set rectangular-plan houses with low-pitch gable roofs (built in the 1960 and 70s in the northern parts of Australia) to wind speeds experienced in tropical cyclones. The study estimates the likely failure mode and percentage of failure for a representative proportion of houses with increasing wind speed. Structural reliability concepts are used to determine the levels of damage. The wind load and the component connection strengths are treated as random variables with log-normal distributions. These variables are derived from experiments, structural analysis, damage investigations and experience. This study also incorporates progressive failures and considers the inter-dependency between the structural components in the house, when estimating the types and percentages of the overall failures in the population of these houses. The progressively increasing percentage of houses being subjected to high internal pressures resulting from damage to the envelope is considered. Results from this study also compare favourably with levels of damage and related modes of failure for high-set houses observed in post-cyclone damage surveys.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제40권5호
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• pp.595-616
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• 2011

Impact experiments have been carried out on concrete slabs. The first group was traditionally manufactured, densely reinforced concrete targets, and the next were ordinary Portland and calcium aluminate cement based HPSFRC (High performance steel fiber reinforced concrete) and SIFCON (Slurry infiltrated concrete) targets. All specimens were hit by anti-armor tungsten projectiles at a muzzle velocity of over 4 Mach causing destructive perforation. In Part I of this article, production and experimental procedures are described. The first group of specimens were ordinary CEM I 42.5 R cement based targets including only dense reinforcement. In the second and third groups, specimens were produced using CEM I 42.5 R cement and Calcium Aluminate Cement (CAC40) with ordinary reinforcement and steel fibers 2 percent in volume. In the fourth group, SIFCON specimens including 12 percent of steel fibers without reinforcement were tested. A high-speed camera was used to capture impact and residual velocities of the projectile. Sample tests were performed to obtain mechanical properties of the materials. In the companion Part II of this study, numerical investigations and simulations performed will be presented. Few studies exist that examine high-velocity impact effects on CAC40 based HPSFRC targets, so this investigation gives an insight for comparison of their behavior with Portland cement based and SIFCON specimens.

• 한국공작기계학회논문집
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• 제17권1호
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• pp.7-15
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• 2008

Currently existing high-accuracy and high-speed die sets used in reciprocal press create scratches at the surface of guide posts, steel balls, and bushes due to vertical movement of balls with point-contacts between inner surface of bushes and guide posts. Consequently, accuracy of the die set and the life span of the metal mold are reduced. However, those scratches could reduce the pre-load of the steel ball. This research designed and developed a groove-type die set which improves life span of the die set by eliminating point-contacts of steel balls with guide posts. The guide post consisted of a steel-ball retainer, a steel-ball retainer stopper, a guide bush, a guide pin, a snap ring, and a spring. The steel-ball retainer has 72 holes with 8 columns of 9 holes in each column. The inner surface of the guide bush was grinded(surface roughness: $Ra\;\\;0.2{\mu}m$, accuracy: $0\;{\sim}\;-0.002mm$) after NC turning and heat treatment. Also, a line of small intermediate pocket was processed inside of the guide bush for lubrication and elimination of foreign materials. Guide grooves of steel balls were processed using a wire EDM(Electrical Discharge Machining) after heat treatment. With such a design of the guide post stated above, loads against steel balls could be dispersed greatly by the line contacts through the guide groove between the guide post and the guide bush, and the life span of the guide post could be expanded semi-permanently.

• Advances in materials Research
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• 제6권3호
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• pp.245-255
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• 2017

High energy ball milling is employed to produce iron matrix- multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) reinforced composite. The damage caused to MWCNT due to harsh ball milling condition and its influence on interfacial bonding is studied. Different amount of MWCNT is used to find the optimal percentage of MWCNT for avoidance of the formation of chemical reaction product at the matrix - reinforcement interface. Effect of process control agent is assessed by the use of different materials for the purpose. It is observed that ethanol as a process control agent (PCA) causes degradation of MWCNT reinforcements after milling for two hours whereas solid stearic acid used as process control agent, allows satisfactory conservation of MWCNT structure. It is further noted that at a high MWCNT content (~ 2wt.%), high energy ball milling leads to reaction of iron and carbon and forms iron carbide (cementite) at the iron-MWCNT interface. At low percentage of MWCNT, dissolution of carbon in iron takes place and the amount of reinforcement in iron matrix composite becomes negligibly small. However, under the present ball milling condition (ball to metal ratio~ 6:1 and 200 rpm vial speed) iron-1wt.% MWCNT composite of good interfacial bonding can retain the tubular structure of reinforcing MWCNT.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제16권5호
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• pp.503-512
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• 2018

Globally there is an increasing need to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and increase the use of renewable sources of energy. The storage of solar thermal energy is a crucial aspect for implementing the solar energy for space heating in high latitudes, where solar insolation is high in summer and almost negligible in winter when the domestic heating demand is high. To use the solar heating during winter thermal energy storage is required. In this paper, equations representing the single U-tube heat exchanger are implemented in weak form edge elements in COMSOL Multiphysics(R) to speed up the calculation process for modelling of a borehole storage layout. Multiple borehole seasonal solar thermal energy storage scenarios are successfully simulated. After 5 years of operation, the most efficient simulated borehole pattern containing 168 borehole heat exchangers recovers 69% of the stored seasonal thermal energy and provides 971 MWh of thermal energy for heating in winter.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제83권1호
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• pp.93-108
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• 2022

Real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS) was applied to investigate the train-bridge interaction of a high-speed railway system, where the railway bridge was selected as the numerical substructure, and the train was physically tested. The interaction between the two substructures was reproduced by a servo-hydraulic shaking table. To accurately reproduce the high-frequency interaction responses ranging from 10-25Hz using the hydraulic shaking table with an inherent delay of 6-50ms, an adaptive time series (ATS) compensation algorithm combined with the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) was proposed and implemented in the RTHS. Testing cases considering different train speeds, track irregularities, bridge girder cross-sections, and track settlements featuring a wide range of frequency contents were conducted. The performance of the proposed ATS+LQG delay compensation method was compared to the ATS method and RTHS without any compensation in terms of residual time delays and root mean square errors between commands and responses. The effectiveness of the ATS+LQG method to compensate time delay in RTHS with high-frequency responses was demonstrated and the proposed ATS+LQG method outperformed the ATS method in yielding more accurate responses with less residual time delays.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제20권6호
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• pp.655-672
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• 2005

Seismic random responses due to the wave passage effect are extensively investigated by using the pseudo excitation method (PEM). Two examples are used. The first is very simple but also very informative, while the second is a realistic suspension bridge. Numerical results show that the seismic responses vary significantly with wave speed, especially for low velocity or large span. Such variations are not monotonic, especially for flexible structures. The contributions of the dynamic and quasi-static components depend heavily on the seismic wave velocity and the natural frequencies of structures. For the lower natural frequency cases, the dynamic component has significant effects on the dynamic responses of the structure, whereas the quasi-static component dominates for higher natural frequencies unless the wave speed is also high. It is concluded that if insufficient data on local seismic wave velocity is available, it is advisable to select several possible velocity values in the seismic analysis and to choose the most conservative of the results thus obtained as the basis for design.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제14권6호
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• pp.1131-1150
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• 2014

One of the issues in extending the range of applicable problems of real-time hybrid simulation is the computation speed of the simulator when large-scale computational models with a large number of DOF are used. In this study, functionality of real-time dynamic simulation of MDOF systems is achieved by creating a logic circuit that performs the step-by-step numerical time integration of the equations of motion of the system. The designed logic circuit can be implemented to an FPGA-based system; FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) allows large-scale parallel computing by implementing a number of arithmetic operators within the device. The operator splitting method is used as the numerical time integration scheme. The logic circuit consists of blocks of circuits that perform numerical arithmetic operations that appear in the integration scheme, including addition and multiplication of floating-point numbers, registers to store the intermediate data, and data busses connecting these elements to transmit various information including the floating-point numerical data among them. Case study on several types of linear and nonlinear MDOF system models shows that use of resource sharing in logic synthesis is crucial for effective application of FPGA to real-time dynamic simulation of structural response with time step interval of 1 ms.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제76권2호
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• pp.175-191
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• 2020

In this study, the effect of Nano silica (SiO2) on the buckling strength of the glass fiber reinforced laminates containing the machining process causes holes were investigated. The tests have been applied on two status milled and non-milled. To promote the mechanical behavior of the fiber-reinforced glass epoxy-based composites, Nano sio2 was added to the matrix to improve and gradation. Nano sio2 is chosen because of flexibility and high mechanical features; the effect of Nanoparticles on surface serenity has been studied. Thus the effect of Nanoparticles on crack growth and machining process and delamination caused by machining has been studied. We can also imply that many machining factors are essential: feed rate, thrust force, and spindle speed. Also, feed rate and spindle speed were studied in constant values, that the thrust forces were studied as the main factor caused residual stress. Moreover, entrance forces were measured by local calibrated load cells on machining devices. The results showed that the buckling load of milled laminates had been increased by about 50% with adding 2 wt% of silica in comparison with the neat damaged laminates while adding more contents caused adverse effects. Also, with a comparison of two milling tools, the cylindrical radius-end tool had less destructive effects on specimens.