• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.87-102
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• 1993

A $C^{\circ}$ continuous finite element formulation of a higher order displacement theory is presented for predicting linear and geometrically non-linear in the sense of von Karman transient responses of composite and sandwich plates. The displacement model accounts for non-linear cubic variation of tangential displacement components through the thickness of the laminate and the theory requires no shear correction coefficients. In the time domain, the explicit central difference integrator is used in conjunction with the special mass matrix diagonalization scheme which conserves the total mass of the element and included effects due to rotary inertia terms. The parametric effects of the time step, finite element mesh, lamination scheme and orthotropy on the linear and geometrically non-linear responses are investigated. Numerical results for central transverse deflection, stresses and stress resultants are presented for square/rectangular composite and sandwich plates under various boundary conditions and loadings and these are compared with the results from other sources. Some new results are also tabulated for future reference.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.221-238
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• 2014

A four-noded curved shell finite element for the geometrically non-linear analysis of beams curved in plan is introduced. The structure is conceived as a sequence of macro-elements (ME) having the form of transversal segments of identical topology where each slice is formed using a number of the curved shell elements which have 7 degrees of freedom (DOF) per node. A curved box-girder beam example is modelled using various meshes and linear analysis results are compared to the solutions of a well-known computer program SAP2000. Linear and non-linear analyses of the beam under increasing uniformly distributed loads are also carried out. In addition to box-girder beams, the proposed element can also be used in modelling open-section beams with curved or straight axes and circular plates under radial compression. Buckling loads of a circular plate example are obtained for coarse and successively refined meshes and results are compared with each other. The advantage of this element is that curved systems can be realistically modelled and satisfactory results can be obtained even by using coarse meshes.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.301-309
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• 2003

The non linear control algorithm with actuator saturation for a randomly excited oscillator has been widely explored and has shown promising results, but the probabilistic analysis of the algorithm has been rarely made due to its non-linear nature and the fact that the analytical solution of probability density function (PDF) for controlled responses does not exist. In this paper, a method for the probabilistic analysis on the non linear control algorithm with actuator saturation is proposed based on the equivalent non linear system method. Numerical examples are given to verify the approximation solution of PDF comparing to a statistically obtained PDF using a Gaussian white noise and a Kanai - Tagimi filtered Gaussian white noise.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.669-682
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• 2017

The normalised version of bispectrum, the so-called bicoherence, has often proved a reliable method of damage detection on engineering applications. Indeed, higher-order spectral analysis (HOSA) has the advantage of being able to detect non-linearity in the structural dynamic response while being insensitive to ambient vibrations. Skewness in the response may be easily spotted and related to damage conditions, as the majority of common faults and cracks shows bilinear effects. The present study tries to extend the application of HOSA to damage localisation, resorting to a neural network based classification algorithm. In order to validate the approach, a non-linear finite element model of a 4-meters-long cantilever beam has been built. This model could be seen as a first generic concept of more complex structural systems, such as aircraft wings, wind turbine blades, etc. The main aim of the study is to train a Neural Network (NN) able to classify different damage locations, when fed with bispectra. These are computed using the dynamic response of the FE nonlinear model to random noise excitation.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.239-260
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• 2014

Non-stationary random vibration of linear structures with uncertain parameters is investigated in this paper. A time-domain explicit formulation method is first presented for dynamic response analysis of deterministic structures subjected to non-stationary random excitations. The method is then employed to predict the random responses of a structure with given values of structural parameters, which are used to fit the conditional expectations of responses with relation to the structural random parameters by the response surface technique. Based on the total expectation theorem, the known conditional expectations are averaged to yield the random responses of stochastic structures as the total expectations. A numerical example involving a frame structure is investigated to illustrate the effectiveness of the present approach by comparison with the power spectrum method and the Monte Carlo simulation method. The proposed method is also applied to non-stationary random seismic analysis of a practical arch bridge with structural uncertainties, indicating the feasibility of the present approach for analysis of complex structures.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.443-452
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• 2018

In this paper the new intensity measures (IMs) for probabilistic seismic analysis of RC high-rise buildings with core wall structural system are proposed. The existing IMs are analysed and the new optimal ones are presented. The newly proposed IMs are based on the existing ones which: 1) comprise a wider range of frequency velocity spectrum content and 2) are defined as the integral along the velocity spectrum. In analysis characteristics of optimal IMs such as: efficiency, practicality, proficiency and sufficiency are considered. As prototype buildings, RC high-rise buildings with core wall structural system and with characteristic heights: 20-storey, 30-storey and 40-storey, are selected. The non-linear 3D models of the prototype buildings are constructed. 720 non-linear time-history analyses are conducted for 60 ground motion records with a wide range of magnitudes, distances to source and various soil types. Statistical processing of results and detailed regression analysis are performed and appropriate demand models which relate IMs to demand measures (DMs), are obtained. The conducted analysis has shown that the newly proposed IMs can efficiently predict the DMs with minimum dispersion and satisfactory practicality as compared to the other commonly used IMs (e.g., PGA and $S_a(T_1)$). The newly proposed IMs overcome difficulties in calculating of integral along the velocity spectrum and present adequate replacement for IMs which comprise a wider range of frequency velocity spectrum content.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.331-338
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• 2000

In this paper, a non-linear finite element formulation for the spatial cable-net structures is simulated and using this formulation, the characteristics of structural behaviors for the elastic catenary cable are examined In the simulating procedure for the elastic catenary cable, nodal forces and tangential stiffness matrices are derived using catenary parameters of the exact solutions by a governing differential equation of catenary cable, cable self-weights and unstressed cable length. Dynamic Relaxation Method that considers kinetic damping is used for the structure analysis and Newton Raphson Method is used to verify the accuracy of solutions. In the analysis of two dimensional cable, the results obtain from the elastic catenary elements are shown more accurate than does of truss elements and in the case of spatial cable-net structures, Dynamic Relaxation Method is more stable to be converged than Newton Raphson Method.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.101-111
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• 2023

Structural health monitoring (SHM) covers a range of damage detection strategies for buildings. In real-time, SHM provides a basis for rapid decision making to optimise the speed and economic efficiency of post-event response. Previous work introduced an SHM method based on identifying structural nonlinear hysteretic parameters and their evolution from structural force-deformation hysteresis loops in real-time. This research extends and generalises this method to investigate the impact of a wide range of flag-shaped or pinching shape nonlinear hysteretic response and its impact on the SHM accuracy. A particular focus is plastic stiffness (K_p), where accurate identification of this parameter enables accurate identification of net and total plastic deformation and plastic energy dissipated, all of which are directly related to damage and infrequently assessed in SHM. A sensitivity study using a realistic seismic case study with known ground truth values investigates the impact of hysteresis loop shape, as well as added noise, on SHM accuracy using a suite of 20 ground motions from the PEER database. Monte Carlo analysis over 22,000 simulations with different hysteresis loops and added noise resulted in absolute percentage identification error (median, (IQR)) in K_p of 1.88% (0.79, 4.94)%. Errors were larger where five events (Earthquakes #1, 6, 9, 14) have very large errors over 100% for resulted K_p as an almost entirely linear response yielded only negligible plastic response, increasing identification error. The sensitivity analysis shows accuracy is reduces to within 3% when plastic drift is induced. This method shows clear potential to provide accurate, real-time metrics of non-linear stiffness and deformation to assist rapid damage assessment and decision making, utilising algorithms significantly simpler than previous non-linear structural model-based parameter identification SHM methods.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.71 no.5
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• pp.545-552
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• 2019

The analysis and design of complex structures like sandwich-panel elements are difficult; the use of finite element method for the analysis is complicated and time consuming when non-linear effects are considered. On the other hand, artificial neural network (ANN) models can capture the non-linear effects and its application requires lesser computational demand. Two ANN models were trained, tested and validated to compute the force for a given displacement of a sandwich-type roof element; 2555 force and element deformation pairs were used for training the ANN models. For the models trained without considering the damping effect, there were two values in the input layer: maximum displacement and current displacement, and for the model considering damping, displacement from the previous step was used as an additional input. Totally, 400 ANN models were trained. Results show that there is a good agreement between the experimental and simulated data, and the models showed a good performance with a mean square error value of 4548.85. Both the ANN models could simulate the inelastic behaviour, loss of rigidity, and evolution of permanent displacements. The models could also interpolate and extrapolate, which enables them to be used as an analysis and design tool for such complex elements.

• Composites Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.30-37
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• 2005

In this paper, geometrically non-linear finite element analyses were performed to study the mechanical behavior of the material system of the envelope of stratospheric airships. The microstructure of the load-bearing plain weave layer was identified and modeled. The Updated Lagrangian formulation was employed to consider the geometric non-linearity as well as the induced structural non-linearity for the fiber tows. The stress-strain behavior was predicted and the effective elastic modulus was calculated by numerical experiments. It was found the non-linear stress-strain curves were largely different from those by linear analysis. And non-linear elastic moduli were much higher than linear elastic moduli. The difference was more distinguishable when the tow waviness ratio was smaller.