• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제32권3호
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• pp.305-312
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• 2019

In this study, we investigated the effect of fatigue crack propagation of the beams which have a vital importance in engineering applications, on the natural frequency of the system. Beams which have a wide range of applications, are used as fundamental structural elements in engineering structures. Therefore, early detection of any damages in these structures is of vital importance for the prevention of possible destructive damages. One of the widely used methods of early detection of damages is the vibration analysis of the structure. Hence, it is of vital importance to detect and monitor any changes in the natural frequencies of the structure. From this standpoint, in this study we experimentally investigated the effect of fatigue crack propagation on beams produced from 4140 steel, of the natural frequency of the beam. A crack was opened on the $8{\times}16{\times}500mm$ beam using a 3 mm long and 0.25 mm wide wire erosion. The beam, then, underwent 3 point bending tests at 10 Hz with a dynamic fatigue device and its natural frequencies were measured in scheduled intervals and any changes taking place on the natural frequencies of the beam were measured. This data allowed us to identify and measure the crack occurring on the beam subjected to dynamic loading, during the propagation phase. This method produced experimental data. The experimental data showed that the natural frequency of the beam decreased with the propagation of the fatigue crack on the beam.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제40권1호
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• pp.105-120
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• 2011

The strengthening and rehabilitation of reinforced concrete structures with externally bonded carbon fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) laminates has shown excellent performance and, as a result, this technology is rapidly replacing steel plate bonding techniques. This paper addresses this issue, and presents results deals with the influence of external bonded CFRP-reinforcement on the time-dependent behavior of reinforced concrete beams. A total of eight reinforced concrete beams with cracked and un-cracked section, with and without externally bonded CFRP laminates, were investigated for their creep and shrinkage behavior. All the beams considered in this paper were simply supported and subjected to a uniform sustained loading for the period of six months. The main parameters of this study are two types of sustained load and different degrees of strengthening scheme for both cracked and un-cracked sections of beams. Both analytical and experimental work has been carried out on strengthened beams to investigate the cracking and deflection performance. The applied sustained load was 56% and 38% of the ultimate static capacities of the un-strengthened beams for cracked and un-cracked section respectively. The analytical values based on effective modulus method (EMM) are compared to the experimental results and it is found that the analytical values are in general give conservative estimates of the experimental results. It was concluded that the attachment of CFRP composite laminates has a positive influence on the long term performance of strengthened beams.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제29권5호
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• pp.635-645
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• 2018

Beam-column joints play a significant role in static and dynamic performances of reinforced concrete frame structures. This study contributes a numerical approach of topologically optimal design of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) to retrofit existing beam-column connections with crack patterns. In recent, CFRP is used commonly in the rehabilitation and strengthening of concrete members due to the remarkable properties, such as lightweight, anti-corrosion and simplicity to execute construction. With the target to provide an optimal CFRP configuration to effectively retrofit the beam-column connection under semi-failure situation such as given cracks, extended finite element method (X-FEM) is used by combining with multi-material topology optimization (MTO) as a mechanical description approach for strong discontinuity state to mechanically model cracked structures. The well founded mathematical formulation of topology optimization problem for cracked structures by using multiple materials is described in detail in this study. In addition, moved and regularized Heaviside functions (MRHF), that have the role of a filter in multiple materials case, is also considered. The numerical example results illustrated in two cases of beam-column joints with stationary cracks verify the validity, benefit and supremacy of the proposed method.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제46권4호
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• pp.565-575
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• 2023

This study represents a numerical research in vibration and buckling of functionally graded material (FGM) beam comprising edge crack by using finite element method (FEM) and multilayer perceptron (MLP). It is assumed that the material properties change only according to the exponential distributions along the beam thickness. FEM and MLP solutions of the natural frequencies and critical buckling load are obtained of the cracked FGM beam for clamped-free (C-F), hinged-hinged (H-H), and clamped-clamped (C-C) boundary conditions. Numerical results are obtained to show the effects of crack location (c/L), material properties (E₂/E₁), slenderness ratio (L/h) and end supports on the bending vibration and buckling properties of cracked FGM beam. The FEM analysis used in this paper was verified with the literature, and the fundamental frequency ratio ($\overline{P_{cr}}$) and critical buckling load ratio ($\overline{{\omega}}$) results obtained were compared with FEM and MLP. The results obtained are quite compatible with each other.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.159-180
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• 2003

In this paper spacing and width of flexural cracks in reinforced concrete beams are determined using two-dimensional finite element analysis. At early loading stages on the beam the primary crack spacing is based on the slip length, which is the development length required to resist the steel stress increment that occurs at a cracked section on the formation of the first flexural crack. A semi-empirical formula is presented in this paper for the determination of the slip length for a given beam. At higher load levels, the crack spacing is based on critical crack spacing, which is defined as the particular crack spacing that would produce a concrete tensile stress equal to the flexural strength of concrete. The resulting crack width is calculated as the relative difference in extensions of steel reinforcement and adjacent concrete evaluated at the cracked section. Finally a comparative study is undertaken, which indicates that the spacing and width of cracks calculated by this method agree well with values measured by other investigators.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제58권1호
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• pp.103-119
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• 2016

Multi-storey frame structures are frequently exposed to static and dynamic forces. Therefore analyses of static (buckling) and dynamic stability come into prominence for these structures. In this study, the effects of number of storey, static and dynamic load parameters, crack depth and crack location on the in-plane static and dynamic stability of cracked multi-storey frame structures subjected to periodic loading have been investigated numerically by using the Finite Element Method. A crack element based on the Euler beam theory is developed by using the principles of fracture mechanics. The equation of motion for the cracked multi-storey frame subjected to periodic loading is achieved by Lagrange's equation. The results obtained from the stability analysis are presented in three dimensional graphs and tables.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제30권4호
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• pp.327-336
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• 2019

This paper presents geometrically nonlinear behavior of cracked fiber reinforced composite beams by using finite element method with and the first shear beam theory. Total Lagrangian approach is used in the nonlinear kinematic relations. The crack model is considered as the rotational spring which separate into two parts of beams. In the nonlinear solution, the Newton-Raphson is used with incremental displacement. The effects of fibre orientation angles, the volume fraction, the crack depth and locations of the cracks on the geometrically nonlinear deflections of fiber reinforced composite are examined and discussed in numerical results. Also, the difference between geometrically linear and nonlinear solutions for the cracked fiber reinforced composite beams.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.27-41
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• 2019

Shear lag effect can be an important phenomenon to consider in design of the steel-concrete composite beams. Researchers have found that the effect can be strongly related with the moment distribution, the stiffness and the ductility of the composite beams. For continuous composite beams expected to sustain hogging moment, the shear lag effect can be more distinct as cracking of the concrete slab reduces its shear stiffness. Despite its influences on behaviour of the steel-concrete composite beams, a method for calculating the shear lag effect in steel-concrete composite beams sustaining hogging moment is still not available. Shear lag effect in steel-concrete composite beams sustaining hogging moment is investigated in this paper. A method was proposed specifically for predicting the effect in the cracked part of the steel-concrete composite beam. The method is validated against available experimental data. At last, FE studies are conducted for steel-concrete composite beams with different design parameters, loading conditions and boundary conditions to further investigate the shear lag effect and compare with the proposed method.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제46권4호
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• pp.539-551
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• 2023

In order to study the fire resistance of castellated composite beams with ortho-hexagonal holes and different beam-end restraints, temperature rise tests with constant load were conducted on full-scale castellated composite beams with ortho-hexagonal holes and hinge or rigid joint constraints to investigate the temperature distribution, displacement changes and failure patterns of castellated composite beams with two different beam-end constraints during the whole course of fire. The results show that (1) During the fire, the axial pressure and horizontal expansion deformation generated in the rigid joint constrained composite beam were larger than those in the hinge joint constrained castellated composite beam, and their maximum horizontal expansion displacements were 30.2 mm and 17.8 mm, respectively. (2) After the fire, the cracks on the slab surface of the castellated composite beam with rigid joint constraint were more complicated than hinge restraint, and the failure more serious; the lower flange and web at the ends of the castellated steal beams with hinge and rigid joint constraint produced serious local buckling, and the angles of the ortho-hexagonal holes at the support cracked; the welds at both ends of the castellated composite beam with rigid joint constraint cracked. (3) Based on the simplified calculation method of solid-web composite beam, considering the effect of holes on the web, this paper calculated the axial force and displacement of the beam-end constrained castellated composite beams under fire. The calculation results agreed well with the test results.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제28권3호
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• pp.279-288
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• 2018

In this paper, a new method has been proposed to detect crack in beam structures under moving mass using regularized extreme learning machine. For this purpose, frequencies of beam under moving mass used as input to train machine. This data is acquired by the analysis of cracked structure applying the finite element method (FEM). Also, a validation study used for verification of the FEM. To evaluate performance of the presented method, a fixed simply supported beam and two span continuous beam are considered containing single or multi cracks. The obtained results indicated that this method can provide a reliable tool to accurately identify cracks in beam structures under moving mass.