• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.45-52
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• 2009

Generally, structures are analyzed as continuum. However, sometimes it is more efficient to analyze structure as a discrete model rather than as a continuum model in case of the structure has complex shape or loading condition. This study, therefore, suggests an improved analysis discrete model, named Equivalent Truss Model (further as "ETM"), which can obtain similar results with analyzing continuums analysis. ETM adopts a lattice truss to compose the members of the model, and analyses the structures. As a consequence, the ETM produced the identical outcome with the continuums analysis in section force of different structures and loading conditions. Similar results have been shown in internal stress analysis as well. Make use of that ETM is discrete, fractural path of beam was analyzed by ETM and the result was reasonable.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.49-54
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• 2009

In this study, the numerical analysis model for fatigue life prediction of welded structures are presented. In order to evaluate the structural degradation of welded structures due to fatigue loading, continuum damage mechanics approach is applied. Damage evolution equation of welded structures under arbitrary fatigue loading is constructed as a unified plasticity-damage theory. Moreover, by integration of damage evolution equation regarding to stress amplitude and number of cycles, the simplified fatigue life prediction model is derived. The proposed model is compared with fatigue test results of T-joint welded structures to obtain its validation and usefulness. It is confirmed that the predicted fatigue life of T-joint welded structures are coincided well with the fatigue test results.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.931-937
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• 2008

The rail/wheel rolling contact affects the microstructure in the surface layer of rail. Recently. continuum damage mechanics allows us to describe the microprocesses involved during the straining of materials and structures at the macroscale. Elastic and plastic strains. the corresponding hardening effects are generally accepted to be represented by global continuum variables. The purpose of continuum damage mechanics is to introduce the possibility of describing the coupling effects between damage processes and the stress-strain behavior of materials. In this study. the continuum damage mechanics caused by elastic deformation was briefly introduced and applied to the fatigue damage of the rails under the condition of cyclic loading. The material parameter for damage analysis was first determined so that it could reproduce the life span under the compressive loading in the vicinity of fatigue limit. Some numerical studies have been conducted to show the validity of the present computational mechanics analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.43-50
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• 2000

The corrugated panels are the prime candidate structure for the floor, roof and wall of Korean high speed train. The equivalent continuum modeling approach panels can be used for the efficient design and evaluation of their structural characteristics. The equivalent continuum models, derived from the true complex corrugated panels, should have the same structural behavior as the original structures have. This paper briefly reviews three representative continuum modeling methods: the static analysis method and two plate-models based on modal analysis methods (MAM). These methods are evaluated through some numerical examples by comparing the natural frequencies and static deflections. It is observed that the plate-model based on Rayleigh-Ritz method seems to provide the best results when used in conjunction with the cantilever-type boundary conditions. The equivalent elastic constants of various corrugated panels, depending on the changes in their configurations, are tabulated for efficient use in structural design.

• Interaction and multiscale mechanics
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.107-122
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• 2011

Mechanical behavior in nano-sized structures differs from those in macro sized structures due to surface effect. As the ratio of surface to volume increases, surface effect is not negligible and causes size-dependent mechanical behavior. In order to identify this size effect, atomistic simulations are required; however, it has many limitations because too much computational resource and time are needed. To overcome the restrictions of the atomistic simulations and graft the well-established continuum theories, the continuum model considering surface effect, which is based on the bridging technique between atomistic and continuum simulations, is introduced. Because it reflects the size effect, it is possible to carry out a variety of analysis which is intractable in the atomistic simulations. As a part of the application examples, the homogenization method is applied to micro/nano thin films with porosity and the homogenized elastic coefficients of the nano scale thickness porous films are computed in this paper.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.905-929
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• 2016

This paper assesses efficiency of the continuum method as the idealized system of building structures. A modified Coupled Two-Beam (CTB) model equipped with classical and non-classical damping has been proposed and solved analytically. In this system, complementary (non-classical) damping models composed of bending and shear mechanisms have been defined. A spatial shear damping model which is non-homogeneously distributed has been adopted in the CTB formulation and used to equivalently model passive dampers, viscous and viscoelastic devices, embedded in building systems. The application of continuum-based models for the dynamic analysis of shear wall systems has been further discussed. A reference example has been numerically analyzed to evaluate the efficiency of the presented CTB, and the optimization problems of the shear damping have been finally ascertained using local and global performance indices. The results reveal the superior performance of non-classical damping models against the classical damping. They show that the critical position of the first modal rotation in the CTB is reliable as the optimum placement of the shear damping. The results also prove the good efficiency of such a continuum model, in addition to its simplicity, for the fast estimation of dynamic responses and damping optimization issues in building systems.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2000.04b
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• pp.215-221
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• 2000

A simple numerical modeling technique is proposed for the analysis of framed tube structures with multiple internal tubes. The structures are analysed using a continuum approach in which each tube is individually modelled by a tube beam that accounts for the flexural and shear deformations, as well as the shear lag effects. By simplifying assumptions regarding the form of strain distributions in external and internal tubes, the structural behaviours is reduced to the solution of a single second order linear differential equation. The numerical analysis uses the variational approach on the basis of the minimum potential energy priniciple. Three framed-tube sructures with single, two and three internal tubes are analysed to verify the applicability and reliability of the proposed method.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.283-294
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• 2001

In the present work a constitutive model is developed which permits the assessment of the structural performance through a criterion based on cumulative damage. For it, a damage index is defined and is evaluated through the application of the Miner's rule in low-cycle fatigue. However, the damage index is not considered as a posteriori variable since is incorporated explicitly as an internal variable in the constitutive equations which produces a direct coupling between the damage and the structural mechanical behaviour allowing the possibility of considering as a whole different coupled phenomena. For the elaboration of this damage model, the concepts of the mechanics of continuum medium are applied on lumped dissipative models in order to obtain a coupled simplified model. As a result an elastoplastic model coupled with damage and fatigue damage is obtained.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.569-585
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• 2023

This paper proposes an efficient approach for the structural topology optimization of bi-directional functionally graded structures by incorporating popular radial basis functions (RBFs) into an implicit level set (ILS) method. Compared to traditional element density-based methods, a level set (LS) description of material boundaries produces a smoother boundary description of the design. The paper develops RBF implicit modeling with multiquadric (MQ) splines, thin-plate spline (TPS), exponential spline (ES), and Gaussians (GS) to define the ILS function with high accuracy and smoothness. The optimization problem is formulated by considering RBF-based nodal densities as design variables and minimizing the compliance objective function. A LS-RBF optimization method is proposed to transform a Hamilton-Jacobi partial differential equation (PDE) into a system of coupled non-linear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) over the entire design domain using a collocation formulation of the method of lines design variables. The paper presents detailed mathematical expressions for BiDFG beams topology optimization with two different material models: continuum functionally graded (CFG) and mechanical functionally graded (MFG). Several numerical examples are presented to verify the method's efficiency, reliability, and success in accuracy, convergence speed, and insensitivity to initial designs in the topology optimization of two-dimensional (2D) structures. Overall, the paper presents a novel and efficient approach to topology optimization that can handle bi-directional functionally graded structures with complex geometries.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.861-876
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• 2015

Composite sections design consists on checking that the point defined by axial load and bending moment keeps included within the surface enclosed by the section interaction curve. Eurocode 4 suggests a method for tracing this diagram based on the plastic stress distribution method. However curves obtained according to this criterion overvalue concrete encased sections bearing capacity, especially when axial force comes with high bending moment values, so a correction factor is required. This article proposes a method for tracing this diagram based on the strain compatibility method. When stresses on the section are integrated by considering the Navier hypothesis, the use of the materials nonlinear constitutive equations provides curves much more adjusted to reality. This process requires the use of rather complex software which might reveal as too complex for practitioners. Preserving the same criteria of an elastic-plastic stress distribution, this article presents alternative expressions to obtain the failure internal forces in five significant points of the interaction diagram having considered five different positions of the neutral axis. These expressions are simply enough for their practical application. Concordance of curves traced strictly relying on these five points with those obtained by computer assisted stress integration considering the strain compatibility method and even with Eurocode 4 weighted curves will be presented for three different cross-sections and two different concrete strengths, revealing very good results.