• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.323-331
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• 2020

Pile foundation is widely used for railway bridges in loess throughout northwestern China. Modeling of the loess-pile interaction is an essential part for seismic analysis of bridge with pile foundation at seismically active regions. A quasi-static test is carried out to investigate the hysteretic behaviors of pile foundation in collapsible loess. The failure characteristics of the bridge pile-loess system under the cyclic lateral loading are summarized. From the test results, the energy dissipation, stiffness degradation and ductility of the pile foundation in loess are analyzed. Therefore, a bilinear model with stiffness degradation is recommended for the nonlinearity of the bridge pier-pile-loess system. It can be found that the stiffness of the bridge pier-pile-loess system decreases quickly in the initial stage, and then becomes more slowly with the increase of the displacement ductility. The equivalent viscous damping ratio is defined as the ratio of the dissipated energy in one cycle of hysteresis curves and increases with the lateral displacement.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.173-203
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• 2014

The cross-section warping due to the passage of high-speed trains can be a relevant issue to consider in the dynamic analysis of bridges due to (i) the usual layout of railway systems, resulting in eccentric moving loads; and (ii) the use of cross-sections prone to warping deformations. A thin-walled beam formulation for the dynamic analysis of bridges including the cross section warping is presented in this paper. Towards a numerical implementation of the beam formulation, a finite element with seven degrees of freedom is proposed. In order to easily consider the compatibility between elements, and since the coupling between flexural and torsional effects occurs in non-symmetric cross-sections due to dynamic effects, a single axis is considered for the element. The coupled flexural-torsional free vibration of thin-walled beams is analysed through the presented beam model, comparing the results with analytical solutions presented in the literature. The dynamic analysis due to an eccentric moving load, which results in a coupled flexural-torsional vibration, is considered in the literature by analytical solutions, being therefore of a limited applicability in practice engineering. In this paper, the dynamic response due to an eccentric moving load is obtained from the proposed finite element beam model that includes warping by a modal analysis.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.65-75
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• 2015

Among the destruction instances of half-through arch bridges, the shorter hangers are more likely to be ruined. For a thorough investigation of the hanger system durability, we have studied vehicle impact effect on hangers with vehicle-bridge coupling method for a half-through concrete-filled-steel-tube arch bridge. A numerical method has been applied to simulate the variation of dynamic internal force (stress) in hangers under different vehicle speeds and road surface roughness. The characteristics and differences in impact effect among hangers with different length (position) are compared. The impact effect is further analyzed comprehensively based on the vehicle speed distribution model. Our results show that the dynamic internal force induced by moving vehicles inside the shorter hangers is significantly greater than that inside the longer ones. The largest difference of dynamic internal force among the hangers could be as high as 28%. Our results well explained a common phenomenon in several hanger damage accidents occurred in China. This work forms a basis for hanger system's fatigue analysis and service life evaluation. It also provides a reference to the design, management, maintenance, monitoring, and evaluation for this kind of bridge.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.65-87
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• 2016

The wind velocity profile over the height of a structure in high intensity wind (HIW) events, such as downbursts, differs from that associated with atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) winds. Current design codes for lattice transmission structures contain only limited advice on the treatment of HIW effects, and structural design is carried out using wind load profiles and response factors derived for ABL winds. The present study assesses the load-deformation curve (capacity curve) of a transmission tower under modeled downburst wind loading, and compares it with that obtained for an ABL wind loading profile. The analysis considers nonlinear inelastic response under simulated downburst wind fields. The capacity curve is represented using the relationship between the base shear and the maximum tip displacement. The results indicate that the capacity curve remains relatively consistent between different downburst scenarios and an ABL loading profile. The use of the capacity curve avoids the difficulty associated with defining a reference wind speed and corresponding wind profile that are adequate and applicable for downburst and ABL winds, thereby allowing a direct comparison of response under synoptic and downburst events. Uncertainty propagation analysis is carried out to evaluate the tower capacity by considering the uncertainty in material properties and geometric variables. The results indicated the coefficient of variation of the tower capacity is small compared to those associated with extreme wind speeds.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.463-484
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• 2014

Solid piers with a rounded rectangular cross-section are widely used in railway bridges for high-speed trains in China. Compared to highway bridge piers, these railway bridge piers have a larger crosssection and less steel reinforcement. Existing material models cannot accurately predict the seismic behavior of this kind of railway bridge piers. This is because only a few parameters, such as axial load, longitudinal and transverse reinforcement, are taken into account. To enable a better understanding of the seismic behavior of this type of bridge pier, a simultaneous influence of the various parameters, i.e. ratio of height to thickness, axial load to concrete compressive strength ratio and longitudinal to transverse reinforcements, on the failure characteristics, hysteresis, skeleton curves, and displacement ductility were investigated. In total, nine model piers were tested under cyclic loading. The hysteretic response obtained from the experiments is compared with that obtained from numerical studies using existing material models. The experimental data shows that the hysteresis curves have significantly pinched characteristics that are associated with small longitudinal reinforcement ratios. The displacement ductility reduces with an increase in ratio of axial load to concrete compressive strength and longitudinal reinforcement ratio. The experimental results are largely in agreement with the numerical results obtained using Chang-Mander concrete model.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.231-237
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• 2018

A significant data problem is encountered with condition monitoring because the sensors need to measure vibration data at a continuous and sometimes high sampling rate. In this study, compressive sensing approaches for condition monitoring are proposed to demonstrate their efficiency in handling a large amount of data and to improve the damage detection capability of the current condition monitoring process. Compressive sensing is a novel sensing/sampling paradigm that takes much fewer data than traditional data sampling methods. This sensing paradigm is applied to condition monitoring with an improved machine learning algorithm in this study. For the experiments, a built-in rotating system was used, and all data were compressively sampled to obtain compressed data. The optimal signal features were then selected without the signal reconstruction process. For damage classification, we used the Variance Considered Machine, utilizing only the compressed data. The experimental results show that the proposed compressive sensing method could effectively improve the data processing speed and the accuracy of condition monitoring of rotating systems.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.74 no.5
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• pp.589-600
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• 2020

The bonding interface of the concrete slab track and cement-asphalt mortar layer plays an important role in transferring load and restraining the track slab's deformation for slab track structures without concrete bollards in high-speed railway. However, the interfacial bond-slip behavior is seldom considered in the structural analysis; no credible constitutive model has been presented until now. Elaborating the field tests of concrete to cement-asphalt mortar interface subjected to longitudinal and transverse shear loads, this paper revealed its bond capacity and failure characteristics. Interfacial fractures all happen on the contact surface of the concrete track slab and mortar-layer in the experiments. Aiming at this failure mechanism, an interfacial mechanical model that employed the bilinear local bond-slip law was established. Then, the interfacial shear stresses of different loading stages and the load-displacement response were derived. By ensuring that the theoretical load-displacement curve is consistent with the experiment result, an interfacial bond-slip constitutive model including its the corresponding parameters was proposed in this paper. Additionally, a finite element model was used to validate this constitutive model further. The constitutive model presented in this paper can be used to describe the real interfacial bonding effect of slab track structures with similar materials under shear loads.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.1041-1063
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• 2014

This work introduces a two-module robotic pipe inspection system with ultrasonic NDE device to evaluate the integrity of pipe structures. The proposed robotic platform has high mobility. The two module mobile robot platform overcomes pipe obstacle structures such as elbow, or T-branch joints by cooperative maneuvers. Also, it can climb up the straight pipeline at a fast speed due to the wheel driven mechanism. For inspection of pipe structure, SH-waves generated by EMAT are applied with additional signal processing methods. A wavelet transform is implemented to extract a meaningful and specific signal from the superposed SH-wave signals. Intensity ratio which is normalized the defect signals intensity by the maximum intensity of directly transmitted signals in the wavelet transforms spectrum is applied to evaluate defects quantitatively. It is experimentally verified that the robotic ultrasonic inspection system with EMAT is capable of non-destructive inspection and evaluation of defects in pipe structure successfully by applying signal processing method based on wavelet transform.

• Advances in Automotive Engineering
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.61-77
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• 2018

In this study, the effects of sitting position of the driver on the whiplash neck injury have been analyzed experimentally by using hybrid III series 50 percentile male crash test dummy. A testing platform consisting of vehicle ground, driver foot rest, driver seat and a 3-point seatbelt has been prepared. This testing platform and the instrumented crash test dummy are prepared for tests according to the Euro NCAP whiplash testing protocol. The prepared test set-up has been exposed to 3 different acceleration-time loading curves defined in the Euro NCAP whiplash testing protocol by performing sled tests. 9 different sled tests have been performed with the combinations of 3 different seating positions of the crash test dummy and 3 different acceleration-time loading curves. The sensor data obtained from the crash test dummy and high-speed videos taken are analyzed according to the injury assessments criteria defined in the Euro NCAP whiplash testing protocol and the criticality of the whiplash injury is defined. It is seen that the backset distance of the driver head with the headrest and the height difference of the top of the head of the driver with the headrest have a great importance on whiplash injuries.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.393-402
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• 2020

Long-span bridges with high flexibility and low structural damping are very susceptible to the vortex-induced vibration (VIV), which causes extremely negative impacts on the ride comfort of vehicles running on the bridges. To assess the ride comfort of vehicles running on the long-span bridges subjected to VIV, a coupled wind-vehicle-bridge system applicable to the VIV case is firstly developed in this paper. In this system, the equations of motion of the vehicles and the bridge subjected to VIV are established and coupled through the vehicle-bridge interaction. Based on the dynamic responses of the vehicles obtained by solving the coupled system, the ride comfort of the vehicles can be evaluated using the method given in ISO 2631-1. At last, the proposed framework is applied to several case studies, where a long-span suspension bridge and two types of vehicles are taken into account. The effects of vehicle speed, vehicle type, road roughness and vehicle number on the ride comfort are investigated.