• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제31권2호
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• pp.149-158
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• 2019

The force-deformation behavior, strain distribution and failure modes of a variable damping self-centering brace (VD-SCB) are theoretically analyzed, experimentally studied, and numerically simulated to guide its design. The working principle of the brace is explained by describing the working stages and the key feature points of the hysteretic curve. A large-scale brace specimen was tested under different sinusoidal excitations to analyze the recentering capability and energy dissipation. Results demonstrate that the VD-SCB exhibits a full quasi-flag-shaped hysteretic response, high ultimate bearing capacity, low activation force and residual deformation, and excellent recentering and energy dissipation capabilities. Calculation equations of the strain distribution in different parts of the brace are proposed and are compared with the experimental data and simulated results. The developments of two failure modes are compared. Under normal circumstances, the brace fails due to the yielding of the spring blocking plates, which are easily replaced to restore the normal operating conditions of the brace. A brief description of the design procedure of the brace is proposed for application.

• Wind and Structures
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• 제30권2호
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• pp.141-153
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• 2020

Probabilistic information regarding directional extreme wind speeds is important for the precise estimation of the design wind loads on structures. A joint probability distribution model of directional extreme typhoon wind speeds is established using Monte Carlo simulation and empirical copula function to fully consider the correlations of extreme typhoon wind speeds among the different directions. With this model, a procedure for estimating directional extreme wind speeds for given return periods, which ensures that the overall risk is distributed uniformly by direction, is established. Taking 5 typhoon-prone cities in China as examples, the directional extreme typhoon wind speeds for given return periods estimated by the present method are compared with those estimated by the method proposed by Cook and Miller (1999). Two types of directional factors are obtained based on Cook and Miller (1999) and the UK standard's drafting committee (Standard B, 1997), and the directional risks for the given overall risks are discussed. The influences of the extreme wind speed correlations in the different directions and the simulated typhoon wind speed sample sizes on the estimated extreme wind speeds for a given return period are also discussed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제81권1호
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• pp.81-91
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• 2022

The effects of interaction between concrete-gypsum interface and edge crack on the failure behavior of the specimens in senicircular bend (SCB) test were studied in the laboratory and also simulated numerically using the discrete element method. Some quarter circular specimens of gypsum and concrete with 5 cm radii and hieghts were separately prepared. Then the semicircular testing specimens were made by attaching one gypsum and one concrete sample to one another using a special glue and one edge crack is produced (in the interface) by do not using the glue in that part of the interface. The tensile strengths of concrete and gypsum samples were separately measured as 2.2 MPa and 1.3 MPa, respectively. during all testing performances a constant loading rate of 0.005 mm/s were stablished. The proposed testing method showed that the mechanism of failure and fracture in the brittle materials were mostly governed by the dimensions and number of discontinuities. The fracture toughnesses of the SCB samples were related to the fracture patterns during the failure processes of these specimens. The tensile behaviour of edge notch was related to the number of induced tensile cracks which were increased by decreasing the joint length. The fracture toughness of samples was constant by increasing the joint length. The failure process and fracture pattern in the notched semi-circular bending specimens were similar for both methods used in this study (i.e., the laboratory tests and the simulation procedure using the particle flow code (PFC2D)).

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제30권4호
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• pp.339-351
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• 2022

Evaluating the current condition of existing structures is of primary importance for economic and safety reasons. This can be addressed by Structural System Identification (SSI). A reliable static SSI depends on well-designed sensor configuration and loading cases, as well as efficient parameter estimation algorithms. Static SSI by the Measurement Error-Minimizing Observability Method (MEMOM) is a model-based deterministic static SSI method that could estimate structural parameters from static responses. In the current state of the art, this method is only applicable when structures are subjected to one loading case. This might lead to lack of information in some local regions of the structure (such as the null curvatures zones). To address this issue, the SSI by MEMOM using multiple loading cases is proposed in this work. Observability equations obtained from different loading cases are concatenated simultaneously and an optimization procedure is introduced to obtain the estimations by minimizing the discrepancy between the predicted response and the measured one. In addition, a Genetic-Algorithm (GA)-based Optimal Sensor Placement (OSP) method is proposed to tackle the OSP problem under multiple static loading cases for the very first time. In this approach, the Fisher Information Matrix (FIM)'s determinant is used as the metric of the goodness of sensor configurations. The numerical examples of a 3-span continuous bridge and a 13-story frame, are analyzed to validate the applicability of the extended SSI by MEMOM and the GA-based OSP method.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제56권4호
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• pp.569-588
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• 2015

A comprehensive methodology is proposed for design of metallic dampers in seismic retrofit of earthquake-damaged frame structures. It is assumed that the metallic dampers remain elastic and only provide stiffness during frequent earthquake (i.e., earthquake with a 63% probability of exceedance in 50-year service period), while in precautionary earthquake (i.e., earthquake with a 10% probability of exceedance in 50-year service period), the metallic dampers yield before the main frame and dissipate most of the seismic energy to either prevent or minimize structural damages. Therefore by converting multi-story frame to an equivalent single-degree-of-freedom system, the added stiffness provided by metallic dampers is designed to control elastic story drifts within code-based demand under frequent earthquake, and the added damping with the combination of added stiffness influences is obtained to control structural stress within performance-based target under precautionary earthquake. With the equivalent added damping ratio, the expected damping forces provided by metallic dampers can be calculated to carry out the configuration and design of metallic dampers along with supporting braces. Based on a detailed example for retrofit of an earthquake-damaged reinforced concrete frame by using metallic dampers, the proposed design procedure is demonstrated to be simple and practical, which can not only meet current China's design codes but also be used in retrofit design of earthquake-damaged frame with metallic damper for reaching desirable performance objective.

• 국제초고층학회논문집
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.123-130
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• 2013

In the past two decades, researchers from different countries have conducted series of experimental and theoretical studies to investigate the behaviour of structures in fire. Many new insights, data and calculation methods have been reported, which form the basis for modern interdisciplinary structural fire engineering. Some of those methods are now adopted in quantitative performance-based codes and have been migrated into practice. Mainly based on the achievements in structural fire research at China, the Chinese national code for fire safety of steel structures in buildings has been drafted and approved, and will be released in this year. The code is developed to prevent steel structures subjected to fire from collapsing, ensure safe evacuation of building occupants, and reduce the cost for repairing the damages of the structure caused by fire. This paper presents the main contents of the code, which includes the fire duration requirements of structural components, fundamental requirements on fire safety design of steel components, temperature increasing of atmosphere and structural components in fire, loading effect and capacity of various components in fire, and procedure for fire-resistant check and design of steel components. The analytical approaches employed in the code and their validation works are also presented.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.179-200
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• 2022

This paper proposes a data-driven methodology for online early damage identification under changing environmental conditions. The proposed method relies on two data analysis methods: feature-based method and hybrid principal component analysis (PCA) and kernel PCA to separate damage from environmental influences. First, spectral sub-band features, namely, spectral sub-band centroids (SSCs) and log spectral sub-band energies (LSSEs), are proposed as damage-sensitive features to extract damage information from measured structural responses. Second, hybrid modeling by integrating PCA and kernel PCA is performed on the spectral sub-band feature matrix for data normalization to extract both linear and nonlinear features for nonlinear procedure monitoring. After feature normalization, suppressing environmental effects, the control charts (Hotelling T² and SPE statistics) is implemented to novelty detection and distinguish damage in structures. The hybrid PCA-KPCA technique is compared to KPCA by applying support vector machine (SVM) to evaluate the effectiveness of its performance in detecting damage. The proposed method is verified through numerical and full-scale studies (a Bridge Health Monitoring (BHM) Benchmark Problem and a cable-stayed bridge in China). The results demonstrate that the proposed method can detect the structural damage accurately and reduce false alarms by suppressing the effects and interference of environmental variations.

• 한국측량학회지
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• 제33권6호
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• pp.537-546
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• 2015

This paper deals with the retrieval of integrated water vapor (IWV) from the zenith tropospheric delay estimated by precisely processing GPS observations at IEODO ocean research station in the East China Sea. A comparison of GPS-IWV with the radiosonde profiling from June and November in 2014 was made to confirm the method and the procedure, adopted for the IWV determination. A series of analysis of these IWV values was performed to capture characteristics of their seasonal and diurnal variations. Furthermore, the troposphere around the ocean research station during typhoon events was spatiotemporally analyzed by including thirteen GPS sites over the Korean Peninsula, indicating correlation between the typhoon location and the tropospheric density.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제66권5호
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• pp.649-663
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• 2018

The scaled boundary finite element method is extended to evaluate the dynamic stress intensity factors and T-stress with a numerical procedure based on the improved continued-fraction. The improved continued-fraction approach for the dynamic stiffness matrix is introduced to represent the inertial effect at high frequencies, which leads to numerically better conditioned matrices. After separating the singular stress term from other high order terms, the internal displacements can be obtained by numerical integration and no mesh refinement is needed around the crack tip. The condition numbers of coefficient matrix of the improved method are much smaller than that of the original method, which shows that the improved algorithm can obtain well-conditioned coefficient matrices, and the efficiency of the solution process and its stability can be significantly improved. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the increased robustness and efficiency of the proposed method in both homogeneous and bimaterial crack problems.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제27권3호
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• pp.337-353
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• 2018

In previous weak-axis moment connection tests, brittle fracture always initiated near the edge of the beam flange groove weld due to force flow towards the stiffer column flanges, which is the opposite pattern as strong-axis moment connections. As part of the China NSFC (51278061) study, this paper tested two full-scale novel weak-axis reduced beam section moment connections, including one exterior frame connection specimen SJ-1 under beam end monotonic loading and one interior frame joint specimen SJ-2 under column top cyclic loading. Test results showed that these two specimens were able to satisfy the demands of FEMA-267 (1995) or ANSI/AISC 341-10 (2010) without experiencing brittle fracture. A parametric analysis using the finite element software ABAQUS was carried out to better understand the cyclic performance of the novel weak-axis reduced beam section moment connections, and the influence of the distance between skin plate and reduced beam section, a, the length of the reduced beam section, b, and the cutting depth of the reduced beam section, c, on the cyclic performance was analyzed. It was found that increasing three parametric values reasonably is beneficial to forming beam plastic hinges, and increasing the parameter a is conducive to reducing stress concentration of beam flange groove welds while increasing the parameters b and c can only reduce the peak stress of beam flange groove welds. The rules recommended by FEMA350 (2000) are suitable for designing the proposed weak-axis RBS moment connection, and a proven calculation formulation is given to determine the thickness of skin plate, the key components in the proposed weak-axis connections. Based on the experimental and numerical results, a design procedure for the proposed weak-axis RBS moment connections was developed.