• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.8 no.3 s.29
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• pp.143-153
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• 2006

The differences in the stress distribution and the critical stresses in concrete pavement systems were analyzed when the dual-wheel single-, tandem-, and tridem-axle loads were applied at the interior and the edge of the pavement. The effects of the concrete elastic modulus, slab thickness, foundation stiffness, and tire contact pressure were investigated. The stresses under the interior loads were calculated using the transformed field domain analysis and stresses under the edge loads were obtained using the finite element method. The critical stresses under the interior and the edge loads were compared with respect to various parameters and the equations to predict the ratio between the stresses under the edge and the interior loads were developed and verified. From this study, it was found that the trends of the changes in the critical concrete stresses under the interior and the edge loads were very similar and the critical stress locations under those loads were identical. The critical stress ratio, which was obtained by dividing the critical stress under the edge loads into that under the interior loads, decreased with increasing the number of axles. That ratio became larger as the concrete elastic modulus increased, the slab thickness increased, the foundation stiffness decreased, and the tire contact pressure increased.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.72 no.6
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• pp.747-762
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• 2019

Based on the ball-screw mechanism, a tuned viscous mass damper (TVMD) has been proposed, which has functions of amplifying physical mass of the system and frequency tuning. Considering the sensitivity of a single TVMD's effectiveness to frequency mistuning like that of the conventional tuned mass damper (TMD) and according to the concept of the conventional multiple tuned mass damper (MTMD), in the present paper, multiple tuned mass viscous dampers (MTVMD) consisting of many tuned mass dampers (TVMD) with a uniform distribution of natural frequencies are considered for attenuating undesirable vibration of a structure. The MTVMD is manufactured by keeping the stiffness and damping constant and varying the mass associated with the lead of the ball-screw type inerter element in the damper. The structure is represented by its mode-generalized system in a specific vibration mode controlled using the mode reduced-order method. Modal properties and fundamental characteristics of the MTVMD-structure system are investigated analytically with the parameters, i.e., the frequency band, the average damping ratio, the tuning frequency ratio, the total number of TVMD and the total mass ratio. It is found that there exists an optimum set of the parameters that makes the frequency response curve of the structure flattened with smaller amplitudes in a wider input frequency range. The effectiveness and robustness of the MTVMD are also discussed in comparison with those of the usual single TVMD (STVMD) and the results shows that the MTVMD is more effective and robust with the same level of total mass.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.273-286
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• 2020

The pile group foundation is widely used for gravity pier of high-speed railway bridges in China. If a moderate or strong earthquake occurs, the pile-surrounding soil will exhibit obvious nonlinearity and significant pile group effect. In this study, an improved pushover analysis model for the pile group foundation with consideration of pile group effect is presented and validated by the quasi-static test. The improved model uses simplified springs to simulate the soil lateral resistance, side friction and tip resistance. PM (axial load-bending moment) plastic hinge model is introduced to simulate the impact of the axial force changing of pile group on their elastic-plastic characteristics. The pile group effect is considered in stress-stain relations of the lateral soil resistance with a reduction factor. The influence factors on nonlinear characteristics and plastic hinge distribution of the pile group foundation are discussed, including the pier height, longitudinal reinforcement ratio and stirrup ratio of the pile, and soil mechanical parameters. Furthermore, the displacement ductility factor, resistance increase factor and yielding stiffness ratio are provided to evaluate the seismic performance of soil-pile system. A case study for the pile group foundation of a railway simply supported beam bridge with a 32 m-span is conducted by numerical analysis. It is shown that the ultimate lateral force of pile group is not determined by the yielding force of the single one in these piles. Therefore, the pile group effect is essential for the seismic performance evaluation of the railway bridge with pile group foundation.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.795-812
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• 2011

Estimation of damage probability of buildings under a future earthquake is an essential issue to ensure the seismic reliability. Fragility curves are useful tools for showing the probability of structural damage due to earthquakes as a function of ground motion indices. The purpose of this study is to compare the damage probability of R/C buildings with low and high level of strength and ductility through fragility analysis. Two different types of sample buildings have been considered which represent the building types mentioned above. The first one was designed according to TEC-2007 and the latter was designed according to TEC-1975. The pushover curves of sample buildings were obtained via pushover analyses. Using 60 ground motion records, nonlinear time-history analyses of equivalent single degree of freedom systems were performed using bilinear hysteretic model and peak-oriented hysteretic model with stiffness - strength deterioration for each scaled elastic spectral displacement. The damage measure is maximum inter-story drift ratio and each performance level considered in this study has an assumed limit value of damage measure. Discrete damage probabilities were calculated using statistical methods for each considered performance level and elastic spectral displacement. Consequently, continuous fragility curves have been constructed based on the lognormal distribution assumption. Furthermore, the effect of hysteresis model parameters on the damage probability is investigated.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.363-377
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• 2018

An efficient and free of shear locking finite element model is developed and employed to study free vibration of tapered bidirectional functionally graded material (BFGM) beams. The beam material is assumed to be formed from four distinct constituent materials whose volume fraction continuously varies along the longitudinal and thickness directions by power-law functions. The finite element formulation based on the first-order shear deformation theory is derived by using hierarchical functions to interpolate the displacement field. In order to improve efficiency and accuracy of the formulation, the shear strain is constrained to constant and the exact variation of the cross-sectional profile is employed to compute the element stiffness and mass matrices. A comprehensive parametric study is carried out to highlight the influence of the material distribution, the taper and aspect ratios as well as the boundary conditions on the vibration characteristics. Numerical investigation reveals that the proposed model is efficient, and it is capable to evaluate the natural frequencies of BFGM beams by using a small number of the elements. It is also shown that the effect of the taper ratio on the fundamental frequency of the BFGM beams is significantly influenced by the boundary conditions. The present results are of benefit to optimum design of tapered FGM beam structures.

• Advances in nano research
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.191-202
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• 2020

The article brings the study of nonlocal, surface and the couple stress together to apparent the frequency retaliation of FG nanobeams (Functionally graded). For the examination of frequency retaliation, the article considers the accurate spot of neutral axis. This article aims to enhance the coherence of proposed model to accurately encapsulate the significant effects of the nonlocal stress field, size effects together with material length scale parameters. These considered parameters are assimilated through what are referred to as modified couple stress as well as nonlocal elasticity theories, which encompasses the stiffness-hardening and softening influence on the nanobeams frequency characteristics. Power-law distribution is followed by the functional gradation of the material across the beam width in the considered structure of the article. Following the well-known Hamilton's principle, fundamental basic equations alongside their correlated boundary conditions are solved analytically. Validation of the study is also done with published result. Distinct parameters (such as surface energy, slenderness ratio, as nonlocal material length scale and power-law exponent) influence is depicted graphically following the boundary conditions on non-dimensional FG nanobeams frequency.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.49-63
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• 2020

Studying the critical response characteristics of box culverts with diverse geometrical configurations under seismic excitations is a necessary step to develop a reasonable design method. In this work, a numerical parametric study is conducted on various soil-culvert systems, aiming to highlight the critical difference in the seismic performances between three- and four-sided culverts. Two-dimensional numerical models consider a variety of burial depths, flexibility ratios and foundation widths, assuming a visco-elastic soil condition, which permits to compare with the analytical solutions and previous studies. The results show that flexible three-sided culverts at a shallow depth considerably amplify the spectral acceleration and Arias intensity. Larger racking deformation and rocking rotation are also predicted for the three-sided culverts, but the bottom slab influence decreases with increasing burial depth and foundation width. The bottom slab combined with the burial depth and structural stiffness also significantly influences the magnitude and distribution of the dynamic earth pressure. The findings of this work shed light on the critical role of the bottom slab in the seismic responses of box culverts and may have a certain reference value for the preliminary seismic design using R-F relation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.1-8
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• 2018

A fuel cell is an energy conversion device that converts a chemical energy directly into an electrical energy and has higher energy efficiency than an internal combustion engine, but solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) consisting of brittle ceramic material remains as a major issue regarding the mechanical properties as the crack formation and propagation. In this study, the stress distribution and crack behavior around the crack tip were evaluated, due to investigated the effects of the surface crack at the operating condition of high temperature. As a result, the difference of the generated stress was insignificant at operating conditions of high temperature according to the surface crack length changes. This is because, the high stiffness interconnect has a closed structure to suppress cell deformation about thermal expansion. The stress intensity factor ratio $K_{II}/K_I$ increased as the crack depth increased, at that time the effect of $K_{II}$ is larger than that of $K_I$. Also the maximum stress intensity factor increased as the crack depth increased, but the location of crack was generated at the electrolyte/anode interface, not at the crack tip.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.434-441
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• 2013

Bending motion has been used in the surgical instruments with bending structures and tendon mechanisms. A simplified bending angle amplification ratio between the proximal and distal bending joint was derived in this article. The bending structure of disk and rib in the proximal joint was analyzed based on finite element method with an emphasis on the circumferential uniformity of bending stiffness. Regarding the distal joint, optimal design and sensitivity analysis was done with four design variables of outer and inner diameter, rib height and rib width while maximizing the deformation under the stress distribution below the yield stress. Outer diameter and rib width are most critical to maximum deformation as the outer diameter and inner diameters are so to maximum equivalent stress.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.371-384
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• 2020

The steel-concrete double composite girder in the negative flexural region combines an additional concrete slab to the steel bottom flange to prevent the local steel buckling, however, the additional concrete slab may lower down the neutral axis of the composite section, which is a sensitive factor to the tensile stress restraint on the concrete deck. This is actually of great importance to the structural rationality and durability, but has not been investigated in detail yet. In this case, a series of 5.5 m-long composite girder specimens were tested by negative bending, among which the bottom slab configuration and the longitudinal reinforcement ratio in the concrete deck were the parameters. Furthermore, an analytical study concerning about the influence of bottom concrete slab thickness on the cracking and sectional bending-carrying capacity were carried out. The test results showed that the additional concrete at the bottom improved the composite sectional bending stiffness and bending-carrying capacity, whereas its effect on the concrete crack distribution was not obvious. According to the analytical study, the additional concrete slab at the bottom with an equivalent thickness to the concrete deck slab may provide the best contributions to the improvements of crack initiation bending moment and the sectional bending-carrying capacity. This can be applied for the design practice.