• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.462-465
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• 1996

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.599-602
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• 2008

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.237-240
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• 2008

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.90-94
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• 2002

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.17-27
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• 2024

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.4
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• pp.415-424
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• 2020

Recently, many structural damage detection (SDD) methods have been proposed to monitor the safety of structures. As an important modal parameter, mode shape has been widely used in SDD, and the difference of vectors was adopted based on sensitivity analysis and mode shapes in the existing studies. However, amplitudes of mode shapes in different measured points are relative values. Therefore, the difference of mode shapes will be influenced by their amplitudes, and the SDD results may be inaccurate. Focus on this deficiency, a multi-strategy SDD method is proposed based on the included angle of vectors and sparse regularization in this study. Firstly, inspired by modal assurance criterion (MAC), a relationship between mode shapes and changes in damage coefficients is established based on the included angle of vectors. Then, frequencies are introduced for multi-strategy SDD by a weighted coefficient. Meanwhile, sparse regularization is applied to improve the ill-posedness of the SDD problem. As a result, a novel convex optimization problem is proposed for effective SDD. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, numerical simulations in a planar truss and experimental studies in a six-story aluminum alloy frame in laboratory are conducted. The identified results indicate that the proposed method can effectively reduce the influence of noises, and it has good ability in locating structural damages and quantifying damage degrees.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.595-611
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• 2013

This paper aims to compare three collocation point methods associated with the odd order stochastic response surface method (SRSM) in a systematical and quantitative way. The SRSM with the Hermite polynomial chaos is briefly introduced first. Then, three collocation point methods, namely the point method, the root method and the without origin method underlying the odd order SRSMs are highlighted. Three examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the three methods. The results indicate that the condition that the Hermite polynomial information matrix evaluated at the collocation points has a full rank should be satisfied to yield reliability results with a sufficient accuracy. The point method and the without origin method are much more efficient than the root method, especially for the reliability problems involving a large number of random variables or requiring complex finite element analysis. The without origin method can also produce sufficiently accurate reliability results in comparison with the point and root methods. Therefore, the origin often used as a collocation point is not absolutely necessary. The odd order SRSMs with the point method and the without origin method are recommended for the reliability analysis due to their computational accuracy and efficiency. The order of SRSM has a significant influence on the results associated with the three collocation point methods. For normal random variables, the SRSM with an order equaling or exceeding the order of a performance function can produce reliability results with a sufficient accuracy. The order of SRSM should significantly exceed the order of the performance function involving strongly non-normal random variables.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.507-526
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• 2009

Based on numerical and experimental methods, a systematic structural evaluation of a steel natatorium in service was carried out in detail in this paper. Planning of inspection tasks was proposed firstly according to some national codes in China in order to obtain the economic and reliable results. The field visual inspections and static computation were conducted in turn under in-service environmental conditions. Further a three-dimensional finite element model was developed according to its factual geometry properties obtained from the field inspection. An analytical modal analysis was performed to provide the analytical modal properties. The field vibration tests on the natatorium were conducted and then two different system identification methods were used to obtain the dynamic characteristics of the natatorium. A good correlation was achieved in results obtained from the two system identification methods and the finite element method (FEM). The numerical and experimental results demonstrated that the main structure of the natatorium in its present status is safe and it still satisfies the demand of the national codes in China. But the roof system such as purlines and skeletons must be removed and rebuilt completely. Moreover the system identification results showed that field vibration test is sufficient to identify the reliable dynamic properties of the natatorium. The constructive suggestion on structural evaluation of the natatorium is that periodic assessment work must be maintained to ensure the natatorium's safety in the future.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.957-980
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• 2016

Structural damage detection (SDD) is a challenging task in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM). As an exploring attempt to the SDD problem, a hybrid self-adaptive Firefly-Nelder-Mead (SA-FNM) algorithm is proposed for the SDD problem in this study. First of all, the basic principle of firefly algorithm (FA) is introduced. The Nelder-Mead (NM) algorithm is incorporated into FA for improving the local searching ability. A new strategy for exchanging the information in the firefly group is introduced into the SA-FNM for reducing the computation cost. A random walk strategy for the best firefly and a self-adaptive control strategy of three key parameters, such as light absorption, randomization parameter and critical distance, are proposed for preferably balancing the exploitation and exploration ability of the SA-FNM. The computing performance of the SA-FNM is evaluated and compared with the basic FA by three benchmark functions. Secondly, the SDD problem is mathematically converted into a constrained optimization problem, which is then hopefully solved by the SA-FNM algorithm. A multi-step method is proposed for finding the minimum fitness with a big probability. In order to assess the accuracy and the feasibility of the proposed method, a two-storey rigid frame structure without considering the finite element model (FEM) error and a steel beam with considering the model error are taken examples for numerical simulations. Finally, a series of experimental studies on damage detection of a steel beam with four damage patterns are performed in laboratory. The illustrated results show that the proposed method can accurately identify the structural damage. Some valuable conclusions are made and related issues are discussed as well.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.277-284
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• 2006

In order to ensure the structural integrity of nuclear welded structures during design life, the fatigue life has to be evaluated by fatigue analysis procedures presented in technical codes such as ASME B&PV Code Section III. However, existing fatigue analysis procedures do not explicitly consider the presence of welded joints. A new fatigue analysis procedure based on a structural stress/fracture mechanics approach has been recently developed in order to reduce conservatism by erasing uncertainty in the analysis procedure. A recent review of fatigue crack growth data under various mean loading conditions using the structural stress/fracture mechanics approach, does not consider the mean loading effect, revealed some significant discrepancies in fatigue crack growth curves according to the mean loading conditions. In this paper, we propose the use of the stress intensity factor range ${\Delta}K$ characterized with loading ratio R effects in terms of the structural stress. We demonstrate the effectiveness in characterizing fatigue crack growth and S-N behavior using the well-known data. It was identified that the S-N data under high mean loading could be consolidated in a master S-N curve for welded joints.