• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.453-464
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• 1999

Safety monitoring systems of structures generally resort to detecting possible changes of dynamic system parameters. Sensitivity analysis of these dynamic system parameters may implement these techniques. Conventional structural eigenvalue problems are discussed in the scope of those systems with deterministic parameters. Large and flexible structures, such as suspension bridges, actually possess stochastic material properties and these random properties unavoidably affect the dynamic system parameters. The sensitivity matrix of structural modal parameters to basic design variables has been established in this paper. Moreover, second order statistics of natural frequencies due to the randomness of material properties have been discussed. It is concluded from numerical analysis of a modem suspension bridge that although the second order statistics of frequencies are small relatively to the change of basic design variables, such as density of mass and modulus of elasticity, the sensitivities of modal parameters to these variables at different locations change in magnitude.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.73-84
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• 2012

This paper strongly addresses to the problem of the mechanical systems in which parameters are uncertain and bounded. Interval calculation is used to find sharp bounds of the structural parameters for infilled frame system modeled with finite element method. Infill walls are generally treated as non-structural elements considerably to improve the lateral stiffness, strength and ductility of the structure together with the frame elements. Because of their complex nature, they are often neglected in the analytical model of building structures. However, in seismic design, ignoring the effect of infill wall in a numerical model does not accurately simulate the physical behavior. In this context, there are still some uncertainties in mechanical and also geometrical properties in the analysis and design procedure of infill walls. Structural uncertainties can be studied with a finite element formulation to determine sharp bounds of the structural parameters such as wall thickness and Young's modulus. In order to accomplish this sharp solution as much as possible, interval finite element approach can be considered, too. The structural parameters can be considered as interval variables by using the interval number, thus the structural stiffness matrix may be divided into the product of two parts which correspond to the interval values and the deterministic value.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.261-276
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• 2015

Structural damage and moving load identification are the two aspects of structural system identification. However, they universally coexist in the damaged structures subject to unknown moving load. This paper proposed a dynamic response sensitivity-based model updating method to simultaneously identify the structural damage and moving force. The moving force which is equivalent as the nodal force of the structure can be expressed as a series of orthogonal polynomial. Based on the system Markov parameters by the state space method, the dynamic response and the dynamic response derivatives with respect to the force parameters and elemental variations are analytically derived. Afterwards, the damage and force parameters are obtained by minimizing the difference between measured and analytical response in the sensitivity-based updating procedure. A numerical example for a simply supported beam under the moving load is employed to verify the accuracy of the proposed method.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.57-80
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• 2015

Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) has been widely used for structural identification and damage detection. However, conventional EKF approaches require that external excitations are measured. Also, in the conventional EKF, unknown structural parameters are included as an augmented vector in forming the extended state vector. Hence the sizes of extended state vector and state equation are quite large, which suffers from not only large computational effort but also convergence problem for the identification of a large number of unknown parameters. Moreover, such approaches are not suitable for intelligent structural damage detection due to the limited computational power and storage capacities of smart sensors. In this paper, a two-stage and two-step algorithm is proposed for the identification of structural damage as well as unknown external excitations. In stage-one, structural state vector and unknown structural parameters are recursively estimated in a two-step Kalman estimator approach. Then, the unknown external excitations are estimated sequentially by least-squares estimation in stage-two. Therefore, the number of unknown variables to be estimated in each step is reduced and the identification of structural system and unknown excitation are conducted sequentially, which simplify the identification problem and reduces computational efforts significantly. Both numerical simulation examples and lab experimental tests are used to validate the proposed algorithm for the identification of structural damage as well as unknown excitations for structural health monitoring.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.327-334
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• 2002

The global behavior of tube structures (including tube and tube(s)-in-tube constructions) is investigated for the behavioral characteristics of the structures and their performance in relation to the various structural parameters. The stiffness factor in terms of the axial stiffness of the columns and the bending stiffness of both columns and beams is chosen as a parameter to explain the global behavior of the structures. The shear-lag phenomenon is also discussed to explain the general behavior of the structures. Three types of tube structures, with various structural parameters, are analysed for the comparative study, and the results are compared to investigate the structural response and performance of such structures. As a result of the comparison it is obtained that the axial stiffness of the columns is the most important factor governing the response of the tube structures under lateral loading

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.4_5
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• pp.427-442
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• 2012

An effective approach for updating finite element model is presented which can provide reliable estimates for structural updating parameters from identified operational modal data. On the basis of the dynamic perturbation method, an exact relationship between the perturbation of structural parameters such as stiffness change and the modal properties of the tested structure is developed. An iterative solution procedure is then provided to solve for the structural updating parameters that characterise the modifications of structural parameters at element level, giving optimised solutions in the least squares sense without requiring an optimisation method. A regularization algorithm based on the Tikhonov solution incorporating the generalised cross-validation method is employed to reduce the influence of measurement errors in vibration modal data and then to produce stable and reasonable solutions for the structural updating parameters. The Canton Tower benchmark problem established by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is employed to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed model updating technique. The results from the benchmark problem studies show that the proposed technique can successfully adjust the reduced finite element model of the structure using only limited number of frequencies identified from the recorded ambient vibration measurements.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.41-57
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• 2018

Concentrated Solar Photovoltaic (CPV) is a promising alternative to conventional solar structures. These solar tracking structures need to be optimized to be competitive against other types of energy production. In particular, the selection of the structural parameters needs to be optimized with regards to the dynamic wind response. This study aims to evaluate the effect of the main structural parameters, as selected in the preliminary design phase, on the wind response and then on the weight of the steel support structure. A parametric study has been performed where parameters influencing dynamic wind response are varied. The study is performed using a semi-deterministic time-domain wind analysis method. Unsteady aerodynamic model is applied for the shape of the CPV structure collector at different configurations in conjunction with a consistent mass-spring-damper model with the corresponding degrees of freedom to describe the dynamic response of the system. It is shown that, unlike the static response analysis, the variation of the peak wind response with many structural parameters is highly nonlinear because of the dynamic wind action. A steel structural optimization process reveals that close attention to structural and site wind parameters could lead to optimal design of CPV steel support structure.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.507-517
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• 2020

This study aims to present new frequency-related seismic intensity parameters (SIPs) based on the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) analysis. The proposed procedure is utilized for the processing of several seismic accelerograms. Thus, the entire evaluated Hilbert Spectrum (HS) of each considered seismic velocity time-history is investigated first, and then, a delimited area of the same HS around a specific frequency is explored, for the proposition of new SIPs. A first application of the suggested new parameters is to reveal the interrelation between them and the structural damage of a reinforced concrete frame structure. The index of Park and Ang describes the structural damage. The fundamental frequency of the structure is considered as the mentioned specific frequency. Two statistical methods, namely correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis, are used to identify the relationship between the considered SIPs and the corresponding structural damage. The results confirm that the new proposed HHT-based parameters are effective descriptors of the seismic damage potential and helpful tools for forecasting the seismic damages on buildings.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1990.10a
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• pp.79-84
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• 1990

The modal parameter estimations of linear multi-degree-of-freedom structural dynamic systems are carried out in time domain. For this purpose, the equation of motion is transformed into the autoregressive and moving average model with auxiliary stochastic input (ARMAX) model. The parameters of the ARMAX model are estimated by using the sequential prediction error method. Then, the modal parameters of the system are obtained thereafter. Experimental results are given for a 3-story building model subject to ground exitations.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.147-154
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• 1999

A new approach to conducting the vibration parameters identification algorithm is proposed. The approach employs the concept of modal amplitude ratio implemented in a mode shape estimation. The accuracy of the improved Ibrahim Time Domain identification algorithm in extracting structural modal parameters from free response functions has been studied using computer simulated data for 9 stations on the two-span continuous beam. Simulated responses from the lumped and distributed parameter system demonstrate that this algorithm produces excellent results, even in the 300% noise response.