• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.603-617
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• 2022

Structural design, in general, is developed through trial and error technique which is guided by standards criteria and based on the intuition and experience of the engineer, a context that leads to structural over-dimensioning, with uneconomic solutions. Aiming to find the optimal design, structural optimization methods have been developed to find a balance between cost, structural safety, and material performance. These methods have become a great opportunity in the steel structural engineering domain since they have as their main purpose is weight minimization, a factor directly correlated to the real cost of the structure. Assuming an objective function of minimum weight with stress and displacement constraints provided by Brazilian standards, the present research proposes the sizing optimization and combined approach of sizing and shape optimization, through a software developed to implement the Simulated Annealing metaheuristic algorithm. Therefore, two steel plane frame layouts, each admitting four typical truss geometries, were proposed in order to expose the difference between the optimal solutions. The assessment of the optimal solutions indicates a notable weight reduction, especially in sizing and shape optimization combination, in which the quantity of design variables is increased along with the search space, improving the efficiency of the optimal solutions achieved.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2009

The safe and reliable performance of fusion and fission plants depends on the choice of suitable materials and an assessment of long-term materials degradation. These materials are degraded by their exposure to extreme conditions; it is necessary, therefore, to address the issue of long-term damage evolution of materials under service exposure in advanced plants. The empirical approach to the study of structural materials and fuels is reaching its limit when used to define and extrapolate new materials, new environments, or new operating conditions due to a lack of knowledge of the basic principles and mechanisms present. Materials designed for future Gen IV systems require significant innovation for the new environments that the materials will be exposed to. Thus, it is a challenge to understand the materials more precisely and to go far beyond the current empirical design methodology. Breakthrough technology is being achieved with the incorporation in design codes of a fundamental understanding of the properties of materials. This paper discusses the multi-scale, multi-code computations and multi-dimensional modelling undertaken to understand the mechanical properties of these materials. Such an approach is envisaged to probe beyond currently possible approaches to become a predictive tool in estimating the mechanical properties and lifetimes of materials.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.1-6
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• 2019

The mobile elevated work platforms(MEWPs) consist of work platform, extending structure, and car, and it is a facility to move persons to working positions. MEWPs are useful but composed complex pieces of equipments, and accidents are caused by equipment defects. Among them, accidents caused by fracture of the bolts fixing the extension structure and the turntable are increasing. In this study, fatigue failure and fatigue life of a turntable fixing bolt subjected to irregular fatigue load were analyzed by FEA. For this purpose, finite element modeling is proposed and structural analysis and fatigue analysis are performed simultaneously for fixing bolts. As a result of the structural analysis, it was confirmed that there is no risk of permanent deformation because the maximum stress acting on the fixing bolt is lower than the yield strength, and fatigue analysis was confirmed that the fatigue life is less than the design standard. The fatigue analysis results of this study can be effectively used for the design and the documentary assessment of the safety certification of the MEWPs by examining the fatigue life of the turntable fixing bolt.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.794-799
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• 2006

For various historical reasons and some technical reasons, the safety of dams has been controlled by an engineering standards-based approach, which has developed over many years, initially for the design of new dams, but increasingly applied over the past few decades to assess the safety of existing dams. And some countries were asked for risk assessment on existing dam, which included structural, hydraulic safety of dam and social risk. So, Many countries were developed and could be adapted as an additional tool to assist in decision-making for dam safety management.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.355-365
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• 2018

Five previously-tested reinforced concrete frames were modelled using a nonlinear finite element analysis procedure to demonstrate the accurate response simulations for seismically-deficient frames through pushover analyses. The load capacities, story drifts, and failure modes were simulated. This procedure accounts for the effects of shear failures and the shear-axial force interaction, and thus is suitable for modeling seismically-deficient frames. It is demonstrated that a comprehensive analysis method with a capability of simulating material constitutive response and significant second-order mechanisms is essential in achieving a satisfactory response simulation. It is further shown that such analysis methods are invaluable in determining the expected seismic response, safety, and failure mode of the frame structures for a performance-based seismic evaluation. In addition, a new computer program was developed to aid researchers and engineers in the direct displacement-based seismic design process by assessing whether a frame structure meets the code-based performance requirements by analyzing the analysis results. As such, the proposed procedure facilitates the performance-based design of new buildings as well as the numerical assessment and retrofit design of existing buildings. A sample frame analysis was presented to demonstrate the application and verification of the approach.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.69-91
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• 2010

Current seismic design codes do not contemplate explicitly some variables that are relevant for the design of structures subjected to ground motions exhibiting large energy content. Particularly, the lack of explicit consideration of the cumulative plastic demands and of the degradation of the hysteretic cycle may result in a significant underestimation of the lateral strength of reinforced concrete structures built on soft soils. This paper introduces and illustrates the use of a numerical performance-based methodology for the predesign of standard-occupation reinforced concrete ductile structures. The methodology takes into account two limit states, the performance of the non-structural system, and in the case of the life safety limit state, the effect of cumulative plastic demands and of the degradation of the hysteretic cycle on the assessment of structural performance.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.159-166
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• 2006

Although the strain distribution along the length of a beam in buildings or infrastructures is non-uniform, most fiber optic sensors are point sensors that can measure the strain only at a local point of a beam. Long gage fiber optic sensors that measure integrated strain over a relatively long length can consider strain variation. This type of sensor was found to be efficient and useful for monitoring large-scale structures. On the other hand, the maximum strain or stress in a beam can not be measured with long gage optic sensors. However, for the assessment of the safety of multi-span steel beams subjected to various vertical loads, the maximum strain or stress measured during monitoring is required for comparison with the allowable stress of the beam calculated by a design code. Therefore, in this paper, mathematical models are presented for determination of the maximum values of strains in more three-span steel beams based on the average strains measured by long gage optic sensors.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.607-617
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• 2019

Global warming and climate change are increasing the intensity of typhoons and hurricanes and thus increasing the risk effects of typhoon and hurricane hazards on nuclear power plants (NPPs). To reflect these changes, a new NPP should be designed to endure design-basis hurricane wind speeds corresponding to an exceedance frequency of $10^{-7}/yr$. However, the short typhoon and hurricane observation records and uncertainties included in the inputs for an estimation cause significant uncertainty in the estimated wind speeds for return periods of longer than 100,000 years. A logic-tree framework is introduced to handle the epistemic uncertainty when estimating wind speeds. Three key parameters of a typhoon wind field model, i.e., the central pressure difference, pressure profile parameter, and radius to maximum wind, are used for constructing logic tree branches. The wind speeds of the simulated typhoons and the probable maximum wind speeds are estimated using Monte Carlo simulations, and wind hazard curves are derived as a function of the annual exceedance probability or return period. A logic tree decreases the epistemic uncertainty included in the wind intensity models and provides reasonably acceptable wind speeds.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.148-157
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• 2012

Reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) problem is usually formulated as an optimization problem to minimize an objective function subjected to probabilistic constraint functions which may include deterministic design variables as well as random variables. The challenging task is that, because the probability models of the random variables are often assumed based on limited data, there exists a possibility of selecting inappropriate distribution models and/or model parameters for the random variables, which can often lead to disastrous consequences. In order to select the most appropriate distribution model from the limited observation data as well as model parameters, this study takes into account a set of possible candidate models for the random variables. The suitability of each model is then investigated by employing performance and risk functions. In this regard, this study enables structural design optimization and fitness assessment of the distribution models of the random variables at the same time. As the first paper of a two-part series, this paper describes a new design method considering probability model uncertainties. The robust performance of the proposed method is presented in Part 2. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, an example of ten-bar truss structure is considered. The numerical results show that the proposed method can provide the optimal design variables while guaranteeing the most desirable distribution models for the random variables even in case the limited data are only available.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.389-398
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• 2018

The seismic isolation system makes a structure isolated from ground motions to protect the structure from seismic events. Seismic isolation techniques have been implemented in full-scale buildings and bridges because of their simplicity, economic effectiveness, inherent stability and reliability. As for the responses of an isolated structure due to seismic events, it is well known that the most uncertain aspects are the seismic loading itself and structural properties. Due to the randomness of earthquakes and uncertainty of structures, seismic response distributions of an isolated structure are needed when evaluating the seismic fragility assessment (or probabilistic seismic safety assessment) of an isolated structure. Seismic response time histories are useful and often essential elements in its design or evaluation stage. Thus, a large number of non-linear dynamic analyses should be performed to evaluate the seismic performance of an isolated structure. However, it is a monumental task to gather the design or evaluation information of the isolated structure from too many seismic analyses, which is impractical. In this paper, a new methodology that can evaluate the seismic fragility assessment of an isolated structure is proposed by using stochastic response database, which is a device that can estimate the seismic response distributions of an isolated structure without any seismic response analyses. The seismic fragility assessment of the isolated nuclear power plant is performed using the proposed methodology. The proposed methodology is able to evaluate the seismic performance of isolated structures effectively and reduce the computational efforts tremendously.