• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.131-140
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• 2014

This study focuses on seismic behaviour of tall piers characterized by high slender ratio. Two analysis models were developed based on elastic-plastic hinged beam element and elastic-plastic fiber beam element, respectively. The effect of the division density of elastic-plastic hinged beam element on seismic demand was discussed firstly to seek a rational analysis model for tall piers. Then structural seismic behaviour such as the formation of plastic hinges, the development of plastic zone, and the displacement at the top of the tall piers were investigated through incremental dynamic analysis. It showed that the seismic behaviour of a tall pier was quite different from that of a lower pier due to higher modes contributions. In a tall pier, an additional plastic zone may occur at the middle height of the pier with the increase of seismic excitation. Moreover, the maximum curvature reaction at the bottom section and maximum lateral displacement at the top turned out to be seriously out of phase for a tall pier due to the higher modes effect, and thus pushover analysis can not appropriately predict the local displacement capacity.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.1
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• pp.47-53
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• 2017

The fundamental goal of this study is to minimize the uncertainty of the median fragility curve and to assess the structural vulnerability under earthquake excitation. Bayesian Inference with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation has been presented for efficient collapse response assessment of the independent intake water tower. The intake tower is significantly used as a diversion type of the hydropower station for maintaining power plant, reservoir and spillway tunnel. Therefore, the seismic fragility assessment of the intake tower is a pivotal component for estimating total system risk of the reservoir. In this investigation, an asymmetrical independent slender reinforced concrete structure is considered. The Bayesian Inference method provides the flexibility to integrate the prior information of collapse response data with the numerical analysis results. The preliminary information of risk data can be obtained from various sources like experiments, existing studies, and simplified linear dynamic analysis or nonlinear static analysis. The conventional lognormal model is used for plotting the fragility curve using the data from time history simulation and nonlinear static pushover analysis respectively. The Bayesian Inference approach is applied for integrating the data from both analyses with the help of MCMC simulation. The method achieves meaningful improvement of uncertainty associated with the fragility curve, and provides significant statistical and computational efficiency.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.97-102
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• 2008

The vibration of a vehicle, which is caused by and transmitted from the engine, has significant effect on the ride comfort and the dynamic characteristics of the engine mount system have direct influence on the vibration and noise of the vehicle. This paper examines the body shake caused by the engine excitation force on engine key on/off of a medium truck by experiment and simulation. The analysis model consists of the engine, a body including the frame, front and rear suspensions and tires. The force element between the body and the suspension is modeled as a combination of a suspension spring and a damper. The engine shake obtained from the experiment was compared with the result of the computer simulation, and by using the verified computer model, parametric study of the body shake on engine key on/off is performed with changing the stiffness of an engine mount rubber, the engine mount angle, and the position of engine mounts.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2011

This paper reviews most of the research done in the field of tensile buckling characteristics pertaining to aerospace structural elements with special attention to local buckling and parametric excitation due to periodic loading on plate and shell elements. The concepts of buckling in aerospace structures appear as the result of the application of a global compressive applied load or shear load. A less usual situation is the case, in which a global tensile stress creates buckling instability and the formation of complex spatial buckling pattern. In contrast to the case of a pure compression or shear load, here the applied macroscopic load has no compressive component and is thus globally stabilizing. The instability stems from a local compressive stress induced by the presence of a defect, such as a crack or a hole, due to partial or non-uniform applied load at the far end. This is referred to as tensile buckling. This paper discusses all aspects of tensile buckling, theoretical and experimental. Its far reaching applications causing local instability in aerospace structural components are discussed. The important effects on dynamic stability behaviour under locally induced periodic compression have been identified and influences of various parameters are discussed. Experimental results on simple and combination resonance characteristics on plate structures due to tensile buckling effects are elaborated.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.17 no.3_4
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• pp.429-444
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• 2004

The ambient vibration measurement is a kind of output data-only dynamic testing where the traffics and winds are used as agents responsible for natural or environmental excitation. Therefore an experimental modal analysis procedure for ambient vibration testing will need to base itself on output-only data. The modal analysis involving output-only measurements presents a challenge that requires the use of special modal identification technique, which can deal with very small magnitude of ambient vibration contaminated by noise. Two complementary modal analysis methods are implemented. They are rather simple peak picking (PP) method in frequency domain and more advanced stochastic subspace identification (SSI) method in time domain. This paper presents the application of ambient vibration testing and experimental modal analysis on large civil engineering structures. A 15 storey reinforced concrete shear core building and a concrete filled steel tubular arch bridge have been chosen as two case studies. The results have shown that both techniques can identify the frequencies effectively. The stochastic subspace identification technique can detect frequencies that may possibly be missed by the peak picking method and gives a more reasonable mode shapes in most cases.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.473-500
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• 2014

Tuned mass dampers (TMDs) have been installed in many high-rise buildings, to improve their resiliency under dynamic loads. However, high-rise buildings may experience natural frequency changes under ambient temperature fluctuations, extreme wind loads and relative humidity variations. This makes the design of a TMD challenging and may lead to a detuned scenario, which can reduce significantly the performance. To alleviate this problem, the current paper presents a proposed approach for the design of a robust and efficient TMD. The approach accounts for the uncertain natural frequency, the optimization objective and the input excitation. The study shows that robust design parameters can be different from the optimal parameters. Nevertheless, predetermined optimal parameters are useful to attain design robustness. A case study of a high-rise building is executed. The TMD designed with the proposed approach showed its robustness and effectiveness in reducing the responses of high-rise buildings under multidirectional wind. The case study represents an engineered design that is instructive. The results show that shear buildings may be controlled with less effort than cantilever buildings. Structural control performance in high-rise buildings may depend on the shape of the building, hence the flow patterns, as well as the wind direction angle. To further increase the performance of the robust TMD in one lateral direction, active control using LQG and fuzzy logic controllers was carried out. The performance of the controllers is remarkable in enhancing the response reduction. In addition, the fuzzy logic controller may be more robust than the LQG controller.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.243-257
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• 2016

The aim of this study is to investigate the seismic resistance of dry stone arches under in-plane seismic loading. For that purpose, several numerical analyses were performed using the combined finite-discrete element method (FDEM). Twelve types of arches with different ratios of a rise at the mid-span to the span, different thicknesses of stone blocks and different numbers of stone blocks in the arch were subjected to an incremental dynamic analysis based on excitation from three real horizontal and vertical ground motions. The minimum value of the failure peak ground acceleration that caused the collapse of the arch was adopted as a measure of the seismic resistance. In this study, the collapse mechanisms of each type of stone arch, as well as the influence of the geometry of stone blocks and stone arches on the seismic resistance of structures were observed. The conclusions obtained on the basis of the performed numerical analyses can be used as guidelines for the design of dry stone arches.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.153-177
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• 2013

Pendulums can be used as passive vibration control devices in several structures and machines. In the present work, the nonlinear behavior of a pendulum-tower system is studied. The tower is modeled as a bar with variable cross-section with concentrated masses. First, the vibration modes and frequencies of the tower are obtained analytically. The primary structure and absorber together constitute a coupled system which is discretized as a two degrees of freedom nonlinear system, using the normalized eigenfunctions and the Rayleigh-Ritz method. The analysis shows the influence of the geometric nonlinearity of the pendulum absorber on the response of the tower. A parametric analysis also shows that, with an appropriate choice of the absorber parameters, a pendulum can decrease the vibration amplitudes of the tower in the main resonance region. The results also show that the pendulum nonlinearity cannot be neglected in this type of problem, leading to multiplicity of solutions, dynamic jumps and instability. In order to improve the effectiveness of the control during the transient response, a hybrid control system is suggested. The added control force is implemented as a non-linear variable stiffness device based on position and velocity feedback. The obtained results show that this strategy of nonlinear control is attractive, has a good potential and can be used to minimize the response of slender structures under various types of excitation.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2008

The dynamic characteristics of the passive, semi-active, and active tuned-liquidcolumn dampers (or TLCDs) are studied in this paper. The design of the latter two are based on the first one. A water-head difference (or simply named as water head in this paper) of a passive TLCD is pre-set to form the so-called semi-active one in this paper. The pre-set of water head is released at a proper time instant during an earthquake excitation in order to enhance the vibration reduction of a structure. Two propellers are installed along a shaft inside and at the center of a passive TLCD to form an active one. These two propellers are driven by a servo-motor controlled by a computer to provide the control force. The seismic responses of a five-story shear building with a passive, semiactive, and active TLCDs are computed for demonstration and discussion. The responses of this building with a tuned mass damper (or TMD) are also included for comparison. The small-scale shaking-table experiments of a pendulum-like system with a passive or active TLCD to harmonic and seismic excitations are conducted for verification.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.285-302
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• 2017

Buckling-restrained braced frames (BRBFs) are commonly used as the lateral force-resisting systems in building structures in the seismic regions. The nearly-symmetric hysteretic response and the delayed brace core fracture of buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) under the axial cyclic loading provide the adequate lateral force and deformation capacity to BRBFs under the earthquake excitation. However, the smaller axial stiffness of BRBs result in the undesirable higher residual drift response of BRBFs in the post-earthquake scenario. Two alternative approaches are investigated in this study to improve the elastic axial stiffness of BRBs, namely, (i) by shortening the yielding cores of BRBs; and (ii) by reducing the BRB assemblies and adding the elastic brace segments in series. In order to obtain the limiting yielding core lengths of BRBs, a modified approach based on Coffin-Manson relationship and the higher mode compression buckling criteria has been proposed in this study. Both non-linear static and dynamic analyses are carried out to analytically evaluate the seismic response of BRBFs fitted with short-core BRBs of two medium-rise building frames. Analysis results showed that the proposed brace systems are effective in reducing the inter-story and residual drift response of braced frames without any significant change in the story shear and the displacement ductility demands.