• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.311-326
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• 2024

Transmission tower structures are particularly susceptible to damage and even collapse under strong seismic ground motions. Conventional seismic analyses of transmission towers are usually performed by considering only ground motion uncertainty while ignoring structural uncertainty; consequently, the performance evaluation and failure prediction may be inaccurate. In this context, the present study numerically investigates the seismic responses and failure mechanism of transmission towers by considering multiple sources of uncertainty. To this end, an existing transmission tower is chosen, and the corresponding three-dimensional finite element model is created in ABAQUS software. Sensitivity analysis is carried out to identify the relative importance of the uncertain parameters in the seismic responses of transmission towers. The numerical results indicate that the impacts of the structural damping ratio, elastic modulus and yield strength on the seismic responses of the transmission tower are relatively large. Subsequently, a set of 20 uncertainty models are established based on random samples of various parameter combinations generated by the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) method. An uncertainty analysis is performed for these uncertainty models to clarify the impacts of uncertain structural factors on the seismic responses and failure mechanism (ultimate bearing capacity and failure path). The numerical results show that structural uncertainty has a significant influence on the seismic responses and failure mechanism of transmission towers; different possible failure paths exist for the uncertainty models, whereas only one exists for the deterministic model, and the ultimate bearing capacity of transmission towers is more sensitive to the variation in material parameters than that in geometrical parameters. This research is expected to provide an in-depth understanding of the influence of structural uncertainty on the seismic demand assessment of transmission towers.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.73-78
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• 2010

Estimation of tensile properties measurement uncertainty of material was carried out. Sources of uncertainty affecting the measurement of tensile properties were classified and analyzed. The models for uncertainty evaluation of measurands to be determined from tensile test, such as elastic modulus, yield strength and tensile strength, were suggested and derived from the mathematical relations, corresponding to the respective measurands, and the measuring quantities by calculating each sensitivity coefficient of the quantities. Based on these models, the uncertainty of the tensile properties was evaluated from the experimental data of SUS316LN determined according to ISO 6892.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.1163-1170
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• 2009

Reliability analysis is of great importance in the advanced product design, which is to evaluate reliability due to the associated uncertainties. There are three types of uncertainties: the first is the aleatory uncertainty which is related with inherent physical randomness that is completely described by a suitable probability model. The second is the epistemic uncertainty, which results from the lack of knowledge due to the insufficient data. These two uncertainties are encountered in the input variables such as dimensional tolerances, material properties and loading conditions. The third is the metamodel uncertainty which arises from the approximation of the response function. In this study, an integrated method for the reliability analysis is proposed that can address all these uncertainties in a single Bayesian framework. Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is employed to facilitate the simulation of the posterior distribution. Mathematical and engineering examples are used to demonstrate the proposed method.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.5 no.8
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• pp.923-931
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• 1999

In this paper, a modeling and a robust time-delay control for the reclaimer are investigated. Supplying the same amount of a raw material throughout the reclamation process from the raw yard to a sinter plant is important to keep the quality of the molten steel uniform in blast furnaces. As the actual parameter values of the reclaimer are not available, the boom rotational dynamics are modeled as a second order differential equation with unknown coefficients. The unknown parameters in the nominal model are estimated using a recursive estimation method. Another important factor in the control design of the reclaimer is the large time-delay in output measurement. Assuming a multiplicative uncertainty, that accounts for both the unstructured uncertainty neglected in the modeling and the structured uncertainty contained in the parameter estimation, a robust Smith predictor is designed. A robust stability criterion for the multiplicative uncertainty is also derived. Following the work of Goodwin et al. [4], a quantifying procedure of the multiplicative uncertainty bound, through experiments , is described. Experimental and simulation results are provided.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.443-458
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose a method for taking into account uncertainties based on the projection on polynomial chaos. Due to the manufacturing and assembly errors, uncertainties in material and geometric properties, the system parameters including assembly defect, damping coefficients, bending stiffness and traction-compression stiffness are uncertain. The proposed method is used to determine the dynamic response of a one-stage spur gear system with uncertainty associated to gear system parameters. An analysis of the effect of these parameters on the one stage gear system dynamic behavior is then treated. The simulation results are obtained by the polynomial chaos method for dynamic analysis under uncertainty. The proposed method is an efficient probabilistic tool for uncertainty propagation. The polynomial chaos results are compared with Monte Carlo simulations.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.1051-1058
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• 2011

The military communication equipment is required the high reliability for operating adequate functions under severe conditions. This reliability is the essential element for the quality of the product, for the uncontrolled factors, such as the clearance, damage of the material, the reduction of stiffness, which are the designer is unable to handle. In this paper, the uncertainty for the dimension was supposed to the probability model for the military communication equipment, and the average of the objective function was minimized for reducing design uncertainty. The reliability-based design optimization which was implemented the limit state function was formulated into the mathematical model, so the reliable optimized structure was implemented than the base-line design.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.19-43
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• 2014

A risk assessment framework for evaluating building structures is implemented in this study. This framework allows considering sources of uncertainty both on structural capacity and seismic demand. In particular randomness on seismic load, incident angle, material properties, floor mass and structural damping are considered; in addition the choice of fibre modelling versus plastic hinge model is also considered as a source of uncertainty. The main objective of this work is to study the contribution of these sources of uncertainty on the fragilities of steel and steel-reinforced concrete composite 3D building structures. The fragility curves are expressed in the form of a two-parameter lognormal distribution where vertical statistics in conjunction with metaheuristic optimization are implemented for calculating the two parameters.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.504-509
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• 2011

The military communication equipment is required the high reliability for operating adequate functions under severe conditions. This reliability is the essential element for the quality of the product, for the uncontrolled factors, such as the clearance, damage of the material, the reduction of stiffness, which are the designer is unable to handle. In this paper, the uncertainty for the design was supposed to the probability model for the military communication equipment, and the average of the objective function was minimized for reducing design uncertainty. The reliability-based design optimization which was implemented the limit state function was formulated into the mathematical model, so the reliable optimized structure was implemented than the base-line design.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.263-276
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• 2007

This paper presents a fuzzy finite element model for the analysis of structures in the presence of multiple uncertainties. A new methodology to evaluate the cumulative effect of multiple uncertainties on structural response is developed in the present work. This is done by modifying Muhanna's approach for handling single uncertainty. Uncertainty in load and material properties is defined by triangular membership functions with equal spread about the crisp value. Structural response is obtained in terms of fuzzy interval displacements and rotations. The results are further post-processed to obtain interval values of bending moment, shear force and axial forces. Membership functions are constructed to depict the uncertainty in structural response. Sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the relative sensitivity of displacements and forces to uncertainty in structural parameters. The present work demonstrates the effectiveness of fuzzy finite element model in establishing sharp bounds to the uncertain structural response in the presence of multiple uncertainties.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.5
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• pp.577-591
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• 2022

This paper develops a comparatively time-efficient methodology for performing seismic fragility analysis of the reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in the presence of uncertainty sources. It aims to appraise the effectiveness of any variation in the material's mechanical properties as epistemic uncertainty, and the record-to-record variation as aleatory uncertainty in structural response. In this respect, the fuzzy set theory, a well-known 𝛼-cut approach, and the Genetic Algorithm (GA) assess the median of collapse fragility curves as a fuzzy response. GA is requisite for searching the maxima and minima of the objective function (median fragility herein) in each membership degree, 𝛼. As this is a complicated and time-consuming process, the authors propose utilizing the Gene Expression Programming-based (GEP-based) equation for reducing the computational analysis time of the case study building significantly. The results indicate that the proposed structural analysis algorithm on the derived GEP model is able to compute the fuzzy median fragility about 33.3% faster, with errors less than 1%.