• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.84 no.1
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• pp.101-111
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• 2022

It is widely known that axially loaded fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) confined concrete presents significant and enhanced mechanical properties with reference to the unconfined concrete. Therefore, to predict the mechanical behavior of FRP-confined concrete two quantities-peak strength and ultimate strain are required. Despite the significant advances, the determination of the ultimate strain of FRP-confined concrete is one of the most challenging problems to be resolved. This is often attributed to our persistence in desiring the conventional methods as the sole technique to examine this phenomenon and the complex nature of the ultimate strain of FRP-confined concrete. To bridge the research gap, this study adopted two machine learning (ML) techniques-artificial neural network (ANN) and Gaussian process regression (GPR)-to analyze observations obtained from 627 datasets of FRP-confined concrete circular and non-circular sections under axial loading test. Besides, the techniques are also used to predict the ultimate strain of FRP-confined concrete. Seven parameters namely width/diameter of the specimens, corner radius ratio, the strength of concrete, FRP elastic modulus, FRP thickness, FRP tensile rupture strain, and the axial strain of unconfined concrete-are the input parameters used to predict the ultimate strain of FRP-confined concrete. The results of the current study highlight the merit of using AI techniques in structural engineering applications given their extraordinary ability to comprehend multidimensional phenomena of FRP-confined concrete structures with ease, low computational cost, and high performance over the existing empirical models.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.15-32
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• 2022

The comprehensive understanding of the fiber reinforced polymer behavior requires the use of advanced non-destructive testing methods due to its heterogeneous microstructure and anisotropic mechanical proprieties. In addition, the material response under load is strongly associated with manufacturing defects (e.g., voids, inclusions, fiber misalignment, debonds, improper cure and delamination). Such imperfections and microstructures induce various damage mechanisms arising at different scales before macrocracks are formed. The origin of damage phenomena can only be fully understood with the access to underlying microstructural features. This makes X-ray Computed Tomography an appropriate imaging tool to capture changes in the bulk of fibrous materials. Moreover, Digital Volume Correlation (DVC) can be used to measure kinematic fields induced by various loading histories. The correlation technique relies on image contrast induced by microstructures. Fibrous composites can be reinforced by different fiber architectures that may lead to poor natural contrast. Hence, a priori analyses need to be performed to assess the corresponding DVC measurement uncertainties. This study aimed to evaluate measurement resolutions of global and regularized DVC for glass fiber reinforced polymers with different fiber architectures. The measurement uncertainties were evaluated with respect to element size and regularization lengths. Even though FE-based DVC could not reach the recommended displacement uncertainty with low spatial resolution, regularized DVC enabled for the use of fine meshes when applying appropriate regularization.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.3
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• pp.343-354
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• 2022

An understanding of the mechanism of concrete girders repaired with CFRP plates and its influence on the dynamic parameters is presented in this paper. Dynamic parameters are governed by the relationship with the physical properties of concrete girders and CFRP plates as well as the adhesive layer between them. A brief explanation of the mechanism of the composite action of concrete girders repaired with CFRP is also given in this paper. Experimental work was carried out to validate the theory of the composite action. The results show a decrease in the modal parameters of CFRP repaired girders that were turned over during the repair procedure, which contrasts with the proven static-based results that CFRP plates increase the stiffness of repaired girders. The composite action theory has explained the results based on the tension and compression forces' growth at the adhesive layer between the CFRP plates and girder surface during the repair procedure. Other girders were prepared and repaired without turning over in order to avoid tension and compression forces at the adhesive layer. The experimental results show an increase in the dynamic parameters of CFRP repaired girders that were not turned over during the repair procedure, which aligns with the static-based results. The study concludes that the dynamic parameters are excellent indicators for the assessment of CFRP repaired concrete girders. The study also suggests that researchers should not turn over damaged concrete girders to repair them with CFRP plates if they intend to study the dynamic parameters, in order to avoid the proposed composite action effect on modal parameters.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.85 no.6
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• pp.755-764
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• 2023

The article examines the impact response of the sandwich beam furnished by a novel bilayer core as inspired by the woodpecker's head architecture under different repeatedly exerted low-velocity impact loadings by employing the finite element package, ABAQUS. The sandwich beam forms four essential parts comprising bottom and top carbon fiber reinforced polymer laminates encasing bilayer core made of laterally arched solid hot melt adhesive material and aluminum honeycomb. Impact loadings are implemented repeatedly with a steel hemisphere impactor for various impact energies, 7.28 J, 9.74 J, and 12.63 J. Essentially, the commonly concentrated stresses at the impact region are regulated away by the arched core in all considered cases thus reducing the threat of failure. The sandwich beam can resist up to 5 continual impacts at 7.28 J and 9.74 J but only up to 3 times repeated loads at 12.63 J before visible failure is noticed. In the examination of several key impact performance indicators under numerous loading cases, the proposed beam demonstrates favorably up to 1.3-11.2 higher impact resistance efficacies compared to existing designs, therefore displaying an improvement in repeated impact resistance of the new design.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.84 no.5
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• pp.605-618
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• 2022

Glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) elastic gridshells consist of long continuous GFRP tubes that form elastic deformations. In this paper, a method for the form-finding of gridshell structures is presented based on the interpretable machine learning (ML) approaches. A comparative study is conducted on several ML algorithms, including support vector regression (SVR), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), AdaBoost, XGBoost, category boosting (CatBoost), and light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM). A numerical example is presented using a standard double-hump gridshell considering two characteristics of deformation as objective functions. The combination of the grid search approach and k-fold cross-validation (CV) is implemented for fine-tuning the parameters of ML models. The results of the comparative study indicate that the LightGBM model presents the highest prediction accuracy. Finally, interpretable ML approaches, including Shapely additive explanations (SHAP), partial dependence plot (PDP), and accumulated local effects (ALE), are applied to explain the predictions of the ML model since it is essential to understand the effect of various values of input parameters on objective functions. As a result of interpretability approaches, an optimum gridshell structure is obtained and new opportunities are verified for form-finding investigation of GFRP elastic gridshells during lifting construction.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.81 no.1
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• pp.39-50
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• 2022

Layer separation (delamination) is an essential threat to fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) plates under dynamic, static, and fatigue loads. Under compressive load, the growth of delamination will lead to structural instability. The aim of this paper is to present a method using shape memory alloy (SMA) stitches to suppress the delamination growth in a FRP plate and to improve the buckling behavior of the plate with a rectangular hole. The present paper is divided into two parts. Firstly, a closed-form (CF) formulation for evaluating the buckling load of the FRP plate is presented. Secondly, the finite element method (FEM) will be employed to calculate the buckling loads of the plates which serves to validate the results obtained from the closed-form method. The novelty of this work is the development of the closed-form solution using the p-Ritz energy approach regarding the stress-dependent phase transformation of SMA to trace the equilibrium path. For the FEM, the Lagoudas constitutive model of the SMA material is implemented in FORTRAN programming language using a user material subroutines (VUMAT). The model is simulated in ABAQUS/Explicit solver due to the nature of the loading type. The cohesive zone model (CZM) is applied to simulate the delamination growth.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.86 no.5
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• pp.687-704
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• 2023

This study aims to examine the structural response of glass fibre-reinforced polymer (Glass-FRP) reinforced geopolymer electronic waste aggregate concrete (GEWC) compression elements under axial compression for sustainable development. The research includes the fabrication of nine GEWC circular compression elements with different reinforcement ratios and a 3-D nonlinear finite element model using ABAQUS. The study involves a detailed parametric analysis to examine the impact of various parameters on the behavior of GEWC compression elements. The results indicate that reducing the vertical distance of glass-FRP ties improves the ductility of GEWC compression elements, and those with eight longitudinal rebars have higher axial load-carrying capacities. The finite element predictions were in good agreement with the testing results, and the put forwarded empirical model shows higher accuracy than previous models by involving the confinement effect of lateral glass-FRP ties on the axial strength of GEWC compression elements. This research work contributes to minimizing the carbon footprint of cement manufacturing and electronic waste materials for sustainable development.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.87 no.4
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• pp.375-389
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• 2023

In many fiber concrete beams with Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP), debonding occurs between the carbon sheets and the concrete due to the low strength of the bonding resin. A total of 42 fiber concrete beams with a cross-section of 10×10 cm with a span length of 50 cm are fabricated and retrofitted with CFRP and subjected to a 4-point bending test. Graphene Oxide (GO) at 1, 2, and 3 wt% of the resin is used to improve the mechanical properties of the bonding resins, and the effect of length, width, and the number of layers of CFRP and resin material are investigated. The crack pattern, failure mode, and stress-strain curve are analyzed and compared in each case. The results showed that adding GO to polyamine resin could improve the bonding between the resin and the fiber concrete beam. Furthermore, the optimum amount of nanomaterials is equal to 2% by the weight of the resin. Using 2% nanomaterials showed that by increasing the length, width, and number of layers, the bearing and stiffness of fiber concrete beams increased significantly.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.84 no.3
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• pp.361-373
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• 2022

This paper examines the flexural performance of concrete beams reinforced with glass fibre-reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars under fatigue loading. Experiments were carried out on concrete beams of size 1500×200×100 mm reinforced with 10 mm and 13 mm diameter GFRP bars under fatigue loading. Experimental investigations revealed that fatigue loading affects both strength and serviceability properties of GFRP reinforced concrete. Experimental results indicated that (i) the concrete beams experienced increase in deflection with increase in number of cycles and failed suddenly due to snapping of rebars and (ii) the fatigue life of concrete beams drastically decreased with increase in stress level. Analytical model presented a procedure for predicting the deflection of concrete beams reinforced with GFRP bars under cyclic loading. Deflection of concrete beams was computed by considering the aspects such as stiffness degradation, force equilibrium equations and effective moment of inertia. Nonlinear finite element (FE) analysis was performed on concrete beams reinforced with GFRP bars. Appropriate constitutive relationships for concrete and GFRP bars were considered in the numerical modelling. Concrete non linearity has been accounted through concrete damage plasticity model available in ABAQUS. Deflection versus number of cycles obtained experimentally for various beams was compared with the analytical and numerical predictions. It was observed that the predicted values are comparable (less than 20% difference) with the corresponding experimental observations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.88 no.5
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• pp.419-437
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• 2023

The use of reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls (SW) as an efficient lateral load-carrying system has gained recent attention. However, creating openings in RC shear walls is unavoidable due to architectural requirements. This reduces the walls' strength and stiffness, resulting in the development of wall piers. In this study, the cyclic behavior of RC shear walls with openings, reinforced with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets in various patterns, was numerically investigated. Finite element analysis (FEA) using ABAQUS software was employed. Additionally, the retrofitting of sub-standard buildings (5, 10, and 15-story structures) designed based on the old and new versions of the Iranian Code of Practice for Seismic-Resistant Structures was evaluated. Nonlinear static analyses, specifically pushover analyses, were conducted on the structures. The best pattern of CFRP wrapping was determined and utilized for retrofitting the sub-standard structures. Various structural parameters, such as load-carrying capacity, ductility, stress contours, and tension damage contours, were compared to assess the efficiency of the retrofit solution. The results indicated that the load-carrying capacity of the sub-standard structures was lower than that of standard ones by 57%, 69%, and 67% for 5, 10, and 15-story buildings, respectively. However, the retrofit solution utilizing CFRP showed promising results, enhancing the capacity by 10-25%. The retrofitted structures demonstrated increased yield strength, ultimate strength, and ductility through CFRP wrapping and effectively prevented wall slipping.