• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.9 no.5
• /
• pp.957-981
• /
• 2015

Earthquakes occur as a cluster in many regions around the world where complex fault systems exist. The repeated shaking usually induces accumulative damage to affected structures. Damage accumulation in structural systems increases their level of degradation in stiffness and also reduces their strength. Many existing analytical tools of modeling RC structures lack the salient damage features that account for stiffness and strength degradation resulting from repeated earthquake loading. Therefore, these tools are inadequate to study the response of structures in regions prone to multiple earthquakes hazard. The objective of this paper is twofold: (a) develop a tool that contains appropriate damage features for the numerical analysis of RC structures subjected to more than one earthquake; and (b) conduct a parametric study that investigates the effects of multiple earthquakes on the response of RC moment resisting frame systems. For this purpose, macroscopic constitutive models of concrete and steel materials that contain the aforementioned damage features and are capable of accurately capturing materials degrading behavior, are selected and implemented into fiber-based finite element software. Furthermore, finite element models that utilize the implemented concrete and steel stress-strain hysteresis are developed. The models are then subjected to selected sets of earthquake sequences. The results presented in this study clearly indicate that the response of degrading structural systems is appreciably influenced by strong-motion sequences in a manner that cannot be predicted from simple analysis. It also confirms that the effects of multiple earthquakes on earthquake safety can be very considerable.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.467-478
• /
• 2019

Running safety and ride comfort of high speed railway largely depend on the track geometry that is dependent on the bridge deformation. This study presents a theoretical study on mapping the bridge vertical deformations to the change of track geometry. Analytical formulae are derived through the theoretical analysis to quantify the track geometry change, and validated against the finite element analysis and experimental data. Based on the theoretical formulae, parametric studies are conducted to evaluate the effects of key parameters on the track geometry of a high speed railway. The results show that the derived formulae provide reasonable prediction of the track geometry change under various bridge vertical deformations. The rail deflection increases with the magnitude of bridge pier settlement and vertical girder fault. Increasing the stiffness of the fasteners or mortar layer tends to cause a steep rail deformation curve, which is undesired for the running safety and ride comfort of high-speed railway.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.288-295
• /
• 2019

Rectifiers are widely used in industrial applications. Although detailed models of rectifiers are usually used to evaluate their performance, they are complex and time-consuming. Therefore, the Average Value Model (AVM) has been introduced to meet the demand for a simple and accurate model. This type of rectifier modeling can be used to simplify the simulations of large systems. The AVM of diode rectifiers has been an area of interest for many electrical engineers. However, healthy diode rectifiers are only considered for average value modeling. By contrast, faults occur frequently on diodes, which eventually cause the diodes to open-circuit. Therefore, it is essential to model bridge rectifiers under this faulty condition. Indeed, conventional AVMs are not appropriate or accurate for faulty rectifiers. In addition, they are significantly different in modeling. In this paper, a novel application of the parametric average value of a three-phase line-commutated rectifier is proposed in which one diode of the rectifier is considered open-circuited. In order to evaluate the proposed AVM, it is compared with experimental and simulation results for the application of a brushless synchronous generator field. The results clearly demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed model.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 1991.10b
• /
• pp.1659-1663
• /
• 1991

A new control design methodology is presented here which is based on a nonlinear time-series reference model. It is indicated by highly nonlinear simulations that such designs successfully stabilize troublesome aircraft maneuvers undergoing large changes in angle of attack as well as large electric power transients due to line faults. In both applications, the nonlinear controller was significantly better than the corresponding linear adaptive controller. For the electric power network, a flexible a.c. transmission system (FACTS) with series capacitor power feedback control is studied. A bilinear auto-regressive moving average (BARMA) reference model is identified from system data and the feedback control manipulated according to a desired reference state. The control is optimized according to a predictive one-step quadratic performance index (J). A similar algorithm is derived for control of rapid changes in aircraft angle of attack over a normally unstable flight regime. In the latter case, however, a generalization of a bilinear time-series model reference includes quadratic and cubic terms in angle of attack. These applications are typical of the numerous plants for which nonlinear adaptive control has the potential to provide significant performance improvements. For aircraft control, significant maneuverability gains can provide safer transportation under large windshear disturbances as well as tactical advantages. For FACTS, there is the potential for significant increase in admissible electric power transmission over available transmission lines along with energy conservation. Electric power systems are inherently nonlinear for significant transient variations from synchronism such as may result for large fault disturbances. In such cases, traditional linear controllers may not stabilize the swing (in rotor angle) without inefficient energy wasting strategies to shed loads, etc. Fortunately, the advent of power electronics (e.g., high-speed thyristors) admits the possibility of adaptive control by means of FACTS. Line admittance manipulation seems to be an effective means to achieve stabilization and high efficiency for such FACTS. This results in parametric (or multiplicative) control of a highly nonlinear plant.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.517-538
• /
• 2016

This paper presents a probabilistic fragility analysis for two groups of bridges: simply supported and integral bridges. Comparisons are based on the seismic fragility of the bridges subjected to accelerograms of two seismic sources. Three-dimensional finite-element models of the bridges were created for each set of bridge samples, considering the nonlinear behaviour of critical bridge components. When the seismic hazard in the site is controlled by a few seismic sources, it is important to quantify separately the contribution of each fault to the structure vulnerability. In this study, seismic records come from earthquakes that originated in strike-slip and reverse faulting mechanisms. The influence of the earthquake mechanism on the seismic vulnerability of the bridges was analysed by considering the displacement ductility of the piers. An in-depth parametric study was conducted to evaluate the sensitivity of the bridges' seismic responses to variations of structural parameters. The analysis showed that uncertainties related to the presence of lap splices in columns and superstructure type in terms of integral or simply supported spans should be considered in the fragility analysis of the bridge system. Finally, the fragility curves determine the conditional probabilities that a specific structural demand will reach or exceed the structural capacity by considering peak ground acceleration (PGA) and acceleration spectrum intensity (ASI). The results also show that the simply supported bridges perform consistently better from a seismic perspective than integral bridges and focal mechanism of the earthquakes plays an important role in the seismic fragility analysis of highway bridges.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.7 no.4
• /
• pp.485-510
• /
• 2014

In performance-based seismic design procedures Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) and pseudo-Spectral acceleration ($S_a$) are commonly used to predict the response of structures to earthquake. Recently, research has been carried out to evaluate the predictive capability of these standard Intensity Measures (IMs) with respect to different types of structures and Engineering Demand Parameter (EDP) commonly used to measure damage. Efforts have been also spent to propose alternative IMs that are able to improve the results of the response predictions. However, most of these IMs are not usually employed in probabilistic seismic demand analyses because of the lack of reliable Ground Motion Prediction Equations (GMPEs). In order to define seismic hazard and thus to calculate demand hazard curves it is essential, in fact, to establish a GMPE for the earthquake intensity. In the light of this need, new GMPEs are proposed here for the elastic input energy spectra, energy-based intensity measures that have been shown to be good predictors of both structural and non-structural damage for many types of structures. The proposed GMPEs are developed using mixed-effects models by empirical regressions on a large number of strong-motions selected from the NGA database. Parametric analyses are carried out to show the effect of some properties variation, such as fault mechanism, type of soil, earthquake magnitude and distance, on the considered IMs. Results of comparisons between the proposed GMPEs and other from the literature are finally shown.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.27-44
• /
• 2020

This work presents a comparison of three performance-based seismic design methods (PBSD) as applied to plane steel frames having eccentric braces (EBFs) and buckling restrained braces (BRBFs). The first method uses equivalent modal damping ratios (ξ_k), referring to an equivalent multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) linear system, which retains the mass, the elastic stiffness and responds in the same way as the original non-linear MDOF system. The second method employs modal strength reduction factors (${\bar{q}}_k$) resulting from the corresponding modal damping ratios. Contrary to the behavior factors of code based design methods, both ξ_k and ${\bar{q}}_k$ account for the first few modes of significance and incorporate target deformation metrics like inter-storey drift ratio (IDR) and local ductility as well as structural characteristics like structural natural period, and soil types. Explicit empirical expressions of ξ_k and ${\bar{q}}_k$, recently presented by the present authors elsewhere, are also provided here for reasons of completeness and easy reference. The third method, developed here by the authors, is based on a hybrid force/displacement (HFD) seismic design scheme, since it combines the force-base design (FBD) method with the displacement-based design (DBD) method. According to this method, seismic design is accomplished by using a behavior factor (q_h), empirically expressed in terms of the global ductility of the frame, which takes into account both non-structural and structural deformation metrics. These expressions for q_h are obtained through extensive parametric studies involving non-linear dynamic analysis (NLDA) of 98 frames, subjected to 100 far-fault ground motions that correspond to four soil types of Eurocode 8. Furthermore, these factors can be used in conjunction with an elastic acceleration design spectrum for seismic design purposes. Finally, a comparison among the above three seismic design methods and the Eurocode 8 method is conducted with the aid of non-linear dynamic analyses via representative numerical examples, involving plane steel EBFs and BRBFs.