• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.5
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• pp.659-667
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• 2017

Rail support failure is inevitably subjected to track geometric deformations. Due to the randomness and evolvements of track irregularities, it is naturally a hard work to grasp the trajectories of dynamic responses of railway systems. This work studies the influence of rail fastener failure on dynamic behaviours of wheel/rail interactions and the railway tracks by jointly considering the effects of track random irregularities. The failure of rail fastener is simulated by setting the stiffness and damping of rail fasteners to be zeroes in the compiled vehicle-track coupled model. While track random irregularities will be transformed from the PSD functions using a developed probabilistic method. The novelty of this work lays on providing a method to completely reveal the possible responses of railway systems under jointly excitation of track random irregularities and rail support failure. The numerical results show that rail fastener failure has a great influence on both the wheel/rail interactions and the track vibrations if the number of rail fastener failure is over three. Besides, the full views of time-dependent amplitudes and probabilities of dynamic indices can be clearly presented against different failing status.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.429-441
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• 2024

This paper studies the free vibration behavior of trapezoidal shaped coupled double-layered graphene sheets (DLGS) system using first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) and incorporating nonlocal elasticity theory. Two nanoplates are assumed to be bonded by an interlayer van der walls force and surrounded by an external kelvin-voight viscoelastic medium. The governing equations together with related boundary condition are discretized using a mapping-differential quadrature method (DQM) in the spatial domain. Then the natural frequency of the system is obtained by solving the eigen value matrix equation. The validity of the current study is evaluated by comparing its numerical results with those available in the literature and then a parametric study is thoroughly performed, concentrating on the series effects of angles and aspect ratio of GS, viscoelastic medium, and nonlocal parameter. The model is used to study the vibration of DLGS for two typical deformation modes, the in-phase and out-of-phase vibrations, which are investigated. Numerical results indicate that due to Increasing the damping parameter of the viscoelastic medium has reduced the frequency of both modes and this medium has been able to overdamped the oscillations and by increasing stiffness parameters both in-phase and out-of-phase vibration frequencies increased.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.2-18
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• 1979

Due to increasing ship dimensions and installed propulsive power, resonance frequencies of the propeller shaft system tend to decrease and they can appear in some cases within the operating range of the shaft revolution. For calculation of transverse shaft vibrations, various methods have been proposed but as they are mainly for approximate calculation, no contented results are obtained. For fairly accurate estimation of resonance frequencies in the design stage, one can use transfer matrix method of the finite element method and former is rather prefered in ordinary cases. In this study, the finite element method which is utilized for calculation of the propulsion shaft alignment, is introduced to derive the vibration equation of the ship's propulsion shaftings. The digital computer program is developed to solve the above equation, and the details of preparing the input data are described. The method presented in the underlying report was applied to the shafting of ship which has a lignumvitae bearing to verify its reliability and the results of calculation and those of the measurements on rotating shaft show a good agreement. Calculating methods of exciting of forces and damping forces are also discussed for future work.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.315-329
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• 2013

The construction of an experimental nonlinear structural model with little cost and unlimited repeatability for vibration control study represents a challenging task, especially for material nonlinearity. This paper reports the design, analysis and vibration control of a nonlinear structural experiment platform with adjustable hinges. In our approach, magnetorheological rotary brakes are substituted for the joints of a frame structure to simulate the nonlinear material behaviors of plastic hinges. For vibration control, a separate magnetorheological damper was employed to provide semi-active damping force to the nonlinear structure. A dynamic neural network was designed as a state observer to enable the feedback based semi-active vibration control. Based on the dynamic neural network observer, an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode based output control was developed for the magnetorheological damper to suppress the vibrations of the structure. The performance of the intelligent control algorithm was studied by subjecting the structure to shake table experiments. Experimental results show that the magnetorheological rotary brake can simulate the nonlinearity of the structural model with good repeatability. Moreover, different nonlinear behaviors can be achieved by controlling the input voltage of magnetorheological rotary damper. Different levels of nonlinearity in the vibration response of the structure can be achieved with the above adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control algorithm using a dynamic neural network observer.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.41-57
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• 2011

A deeper understanding of the effectiveness of adopting devices mounting shape memory alloy (SMA) elements in applications targeted to the mitigation of vibrations is pursued via an experimental approach. During a seismic event, less than 1000 loading-unloading cycles of the alloy are required to mitigate the earthquake effects. However, the aging effects during the time of inactivity prior to the oscillations (several decades characterized by the yearly summer-winter temperature wave) should be considered in order to avoid and/or minimize them. In this paper, the results obtained by carrying out, in different laboratories, fatigue tests on SMA specimens are compared and discussed. Furthermore, the effects of seismic events on a steel structure, with and without SMA dampers, are numerically simulated using ANSYS. Under an earthquake excitation, the SMA devices halve the oscillation amplitudes and show re-centering properties. To confirm this result, an experimental campaign is conducted by actually installing the proposed devices on a physical model of the structure and by evaluating their performance under different excitations induced by an actuator.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.71-80
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• 2021

In steel cable bridges, the use of magnetorheological (MR) dampers between butt cables is constantly increasing to dampen vibrations caused by rain and wind. The biggest problem in the actual applications of those devices is to launch a kind of appropriate algorithm that can effectively and efficiently suppress the perturbation of the tie through basic calculations and optimal solutions. This article discusses the optimal evolutionary design based on a linear and quadratic regulator (hereafter LQR) to lessen the perturbation of the bridges with cables. The control numerical algorithms are expected to effectively and efficiently decrease the possible risks of the structural response in amplification owing to the feedback force in the direction of the MR attenuator. In addition, these numerical algorithms approximate those optimal linear quadratic regulator control forces through the corresponding damping and stiffness, which significantly lessens the work of calculating the significant and optimal control forces. Therefore, it has been shown that it plays an important and significant role in the practical application design of semiactive MR control power systems. In the present proposed novel evolutionary parallel distributed compensator scheme, the vibrational control problem with a simulated demonstration is used to evaluate the numerical algorithmic performance and effectiveness. The results show that these semiactive MR control numerical algorithms which are present proposed in the present paper has better performance than the optimal and the passive control, which is almost reaching the levels of linear quadratic regulator controls with minimal feedback requirements.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.5
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• pp.571-585
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• 2022

As a vital component of power grids, long-span transmission tower-line systems are vulnerable to wind load excitation due to their high flexibility and low structural damping. Therefore, it is essential to reduce wind-induced responses of tower-line coupling systems to ensure their safe and reliable operation. To this end, a shape memory alloy-bidirectional tuned mass damper (SMA-BTMD) is proposed in this study to reduce wind-induced vibrations of long-span transmission tower-line systems. A 1220 m Songhua River long-span transmission system is selected as the primary structure and modeled using ANSYS software. The vibration suppression performance of an optimized SMA-BTMD attached to the transmission tower is evaluated and compared with the effects of a conventional bidirectional tuned mass damper. Furthermore, the impacts of frequency ratios and SMA composition on the vibration reduction performance of the SMA-BTMD are evaluated. The results show that the SMA-BTMD provides superior vibration control of the long-span transmission tower-line system. In addition, changes in frequency ratios and SMA composition have a substantial impact on the vibration suppression effects of the SMA-BTMD. This research can provide a reference for the practical engineering application of the SMA-BTMD developed in this study.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2023

A model for calculating structure interacted mechanics is proposed. A structural interaction model and controller design based on tuned mass damping (TMD) was developed to control the induced vibration. A key point is to introduce a new analytical model to evaluate the properties of the TMD that recognizes the motion-dependent nonlinear response observed in the simulations. Aiming at the problem of increased current harmonics and low efficiency of permanent magnet synchronous motors for electric vehicles due to dead time effect, a dead time compensation method based on neural network filter and current polarity detection is proposed. Firstly, the DC components and the higher harmonic components of the motor currents are obtained by virtue of what the neural network filters and the extracted harmonic currents are adjusted to the required compensation voltages by virtue of what the neural network filters. Then, the extracted DC components are used for current polarity dead time compensation control to avert the false compensation when currents approach zero. The neural network filter method extracts the required compensation voltages from the speed component and the current polarity detection compensation method obtains the required compensation voltages by discriminating the current polarity. The combination of the two methods can more precisely compensate the dead time effect of the control system to improve the control performance. Furthermore, based on the relaxed method, the intelligent approach of stability criterion can be regulated appropriately and the artificial TMD was found to be effective in reducing cross-wind vibrations.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.1023-1047
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• 2015

In this study, the optimal location of the MR fluid segments in a partially treated laminated composite sandwich plate has been identified to maximize the natural frequencies and the loss factors. The finite element formulation is used to derive the governing differential equations of motion for a partially treated laminated composite sandwich plate embedded with MR fluid and rubber material as the core layer and laminated composite plate as the face layers. An optimization problem is formulated and solved by combining finite element analysis (FEA) and genetic algorithm (GA) to obtain the optimal locations to yield maximum natural frequency and loss factor corresponding to first five modes of flexural vibration of the sandwich plate with various combinations of weighting factors under various boundary conditions. The proposed methodology is validated by comparing the natural frequencies evaluated at optimal locations of MR fluid pockets identified through GA coupled with FEA and the experimental measurements. The converged results suggest that the optimal location of MR fluid pockets is strongly influenced not only by the boundary conditions and modes of vibrations but also by the objectives of maximization of natural frequency and loss factors either individually or combined. The optimal layout could be useful to apply the MR fluid pockets at critical components of large structure to realize more efficient and compact vibration control mechanism with variable damping.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.681-704
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• 2012

The dynamic response of Euler-Bernoulli beams to resonant harmonic moving loads is analysed. The non-dimensional form of the motion equation of a beam crossed by a moving harmonic load is solved through a perturbation technique based on a two-scale temporal expansion, which permits a straightforward interpretation of the analytical solution. The dynamic response is expressed through a harmonic function slowly modulated in time, and the maximum dynamic response is identified with the maximum of the slow-varying amplitude. In case of ideal Euler-Bernoulli beams with elastic rotational springs at the support points, starting from analytical expressions for eigenfunctions, closed form solutions for the time-history of the dynamic response and for its maximum value are provided. Two dynamic factors are discussed: the Dynamic Amplification Factor, function of the non-dimensional speed parameter and of the structural damping ratio, and the Transition Deamplification Factor, function of the sole ratio between the two non-dimensional parameters. The influence of the involved parameters on the dynamic amplification is discussed within a general framework. The proposed procedure appears effective also in assessing the maximum response of real bridges characterized by numerically-estimated mode shapes, without requiring burdensome step-by-step dynamic analyses.