• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제24권4호
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• pp.447-457
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• 2019

The use of Tuned mass dampers (TMD) has proved to be effective in reducing the effects of vibrations caused by wind loads and far-field seismic action. However, its effectiveness in controlling the dynamic response of structures under near-fault earthquakes is still under discussion. In this case, the uncertainty about the TMD performance arises from the short significant duration of near-fault ground motions. In this work, the TMD effectiveness for increasing the safety margin against collapse of structures subjected to near-fault earthquakes is investigated. In order to evaluate the TMD performance in the proposed scenario, the nonlinear dynamic response of two reinforced concrete (RC) frames was analyzed. TMDs with different mass values were added to these structures, and a set of near-fault records with frequency content close to the fundamental frequency of the structure was employed. Through a series of nonlinear dynamic analysis, the minimum amplitude of each seismic record that causes the structural collapse was found. By comparing this value, called collapse acceleration, for the case of the structures with and without TMD, the benefit produced by the addition of the control device was established.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제26권6호
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• pp.765-779
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• 2020

Collapse of bridges in recent earthquakes demonstrates the need to deepen the understanding of the behaviour of these structures against seismic actions. This paper presents a highly detailed numerical model of an actual bridge subjected to extreme seismic action which results in its collapse. Normally, nonlinear numerical models have high difficulties to achieve convergence when reinforced concrete is intended to be represented. The main objective of this work is to determine the efficiency of different passive control strategies to prevent the structural collapse of an existing bridge. Metallic dampers and seismic isolation by decoupling the mass were evaluated. The response is evaluated not only in terms of reduction of displacements, but also in increasing of shear force and axial force in key elements, which can be a negative characteristic of the systems studied. It can be concluded that the use of a metallic damper significantly reduces the horizontal displacements and ensures the integrity of the structure from extreme seismic actions. Moreover, the isolation of the deck, which in principle seems to be the most effective solution to protect existing bridges, proves inadequate for the case analysed due to its dynamic characteristics and its particular geometry and an unpredictable type of axial pounding in the columns. This unexpected effect on the isolation system would have been impossible to identify with simplified models.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제29권4호
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• pp.641-652
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• 2022

High-rise structures prone to large vibrations under the action of strong winds, resulting in fatigue damage of the structural components and the foundation. A novel compound damping cable system (CDCS) is proposed to suppress the excessive vibrations. CDCS uses tailored double cable system with increased tensile stiffness as the connecting device, and makes use of the relative motion between the high-rise structure and the ground to drive the damper to move back-and-forth, dissipating the vibration mechanical energy of the high-rise structure so as to decaying the excessive vibration. Firstly, a third-order differential equation for the free vibration of high-rise structure with CDCS is established, and its closed form solution is obtained by the root formulas of cubic equation (Shengjin's formulas). Secondly, the analytical solution is validated by a laboratory model experiment. Thirdly, parametric analysis is conducted to investigate how the parameters affect the vibration control performance. Finally, the dynamic responses of the high-rise structure with CDCS under harmonic and stochastic excitations are calculated and its vibration mitigation performance is further evaluated. The results show that the CDCS can provide a large equivalent additional damping ratio for the vibrating structures, thus suppressing the excessive vibration effectively. It is anticipated that the CDCS can be used as a good alternative energy dissipation system for vibration control of high-rise structures.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제29권5호
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• pp.729-746
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• 2022

In this paper, a nonlinear structural model updating methodology based on the Deep Belief Network (DBN) is proposed. Firstly, the instantaneous parameters of the vibration responses are obtained by the discrete analytical mode decomposition (DAMD) method and the Hilbert transform (HT). The instantaneous parameters are regarded as the independent variables, and the nonlinear model parameters are considered as the dependent variables. Then the DBN is utilized for approximating the nonlinear mapping relationship between them. At last, the instantaneous parameters of the measured vibration responses are fed into the well-trained DBN. Owing to the strong learning and generalization abilities of the DBN, the updated nonlinear model parameters can be directly estimated. Two nonlinear shear-type structure models under two types of excitation and various noise levels are adopted as numerical simulations to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The nonlinear properties of the structure model are simulated via the hysteretic parameters of a Bouc-Wen model and a Giuffré-Menegotto-Pinto model, respectively. Besides, the proposed approach is verified by a three-story shear-type frame with a piezoelectric friction damper (PFD). Simulated and experimental results suggest that the nonlinear model updating approach has high computational efficiency and precision.

• 한국농공학회논문집
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• 제65권1호
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• pp.61-72
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• 2023

The increase in the rearing intensity of pigs has caused deterioration in the pig house's internal environment such as temperature, humidity, ammonia gas, and so on. Traditionally, the widely used method to control the internal environment was through the manipulation of the ventilation system. However, the conventional ventilation system had a limitation to control the internal environment, prevent livestock disease, save energy, and reduce odor emission. To overcome this problem, the air-recirculated ventilation system was suggested. This system has a semi-closed loop ventilation type. For designing this system, it was essential to evaluate the ventilation rates considering the pressure loss of ducts. Therefore, in this study, pressure loss calculation and experiment were conducted for the quantitative ventilation design of a semi-closed loop system. The results of the experiment showed that the inlet through which external air flows should always be opened. In addition, it was also found that for the optimum design of the semi-closed loop ventilation system, it was appropriate to install a damper or a backflow prevention device rather than a ventilation fan.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제32권6호
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• pp.383-391
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• 2023

Energy harvesting in trams may become a prevalent source of passive energy generation due to the high density of vibrational energy, and this may help power structural health monitoring systems for the trams. This paper presents a broadband vibrational energy harvesting device design that utilizes a varied frequency from a tram vehicle using a 2 DOF vibrational system combined with electromagnetic energy conversion. This paper will demonstrate stepwise optimization processes to determine mechanical parameters for frequency tuning to adjust to the trams' operational conditions, and electromagnetic parameters for the whole system design to maximize power output. The initial optimization will determine 5 important design parameters in a 2 DOF vibrational system, namely the masses (m₁, m₂ (and spring constants (k₁, k₂, k₃). The second step will use these parameters as initial guesses for the second optimization which will maintain the ratios of these parameters and present electrical parameters to maximize the power output from this system. The obtained values indicated a successful demonstration of design optimization as the average power generated increased from 1.475 mW to 17.44 mW (around 12 times).

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제20권1호
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• pp.61-74
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• 2017

One of the most reliable and simplest tools for structural vibration control in civil engineering is Tuned Mass Damper, TMD. Provided that the frequency and damping parameters of these dampers are tuned appropriately, they can reduce the vibrations of the structure through their generated inertia forces, as they vibrate continuously. To achieve the optimal parameters of TMD, many different methods have been provided so far. In old approaches, some formulas have been offered based on simplifying models and their applied loadings while novel procedures need to model structures completely in order to obtain TMD parameters. In this paper, with regard to the nonlinear decision-making of fuzzy systems and their enough ability to cope with different unreliability, a method is proposed. Furthermore, by taking advantage of both old and new methods a fuzzy system is designed to be operational and reduce uncertainties related to models and applied loads. To design fuzzy system, it is required to gain data on structures and optimum parameters of TMDs corresponding to these structures. This information is obtained through modeling MDOF systems with various numbers of stories subjected to far and near field earthquakes. The design of the fuzzy systems is performed by three methods: look-up table, the data space grid-partitioning, and clustering. After that, rule weights of Mamdani fuzzy system using the look-up table are optimized through genetic algorithm and rule weights of Sugeno fuzzy system designed based on grid-partitioning methods and clustering data are optimized through ANFIS (Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System). By comparing these methods, it is observed that the fuzzy system technique based on data clustering has an efficient function to predict the optimal parameters of TMDs. In this method, average of errors in estimating frequency and damping ratio is close to zero. Also, standard deviation of frequency errors and damping ratio errors decrease by 78% and 4.1% respectively in comparison with the look-up table method. While, this reductions compared to the grid partitioning method are 2.2% and 1.8% respectively. In this research, TMD parameters are estimated for a 15-degree of freedom structure based on designed fuzzy system and are compared to parameters obtained from the genetic algorithm and empirical relations. The progress up to 1.9% and 2% under far-field earthquakes and 0.4% and 2.2% under near-field earthquakes is obtained in decreasing respectively roof maximum displacement and its RMS ratio through fuzzy system method compared to those obtained by empirical relations.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제13권3호
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• pp.353-374
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• 2014

Recent studies were dedicated to the realization of measurements on stay-cable samples of different geometry and static conditions as available at several facilities. The elaboration of the acquired data showed a a satisfactory efficacy of the dampers made of NiTi wires in smoothing the cable oscillations. A further attempt to investigate the applicability of the achieved results beyond the specific case-studies represented by the tested cable-stayed samples is herein pursued. Comparative studies are carried out by varying the diameter of the NiTi wire so that similar measurements can be taken also from laboratory steel cables of reduced size. Details of the preparation of the Ni-Ti wires are discussed with particular attention being paid to the suppression of the creep phenomenon. The resulting shape of the hysteretic cycle differs according to the wire diameter, which affects the order of the fitting polynomial to be used when trying to retrieve the experimental results by numerical analyses. For a NiTi wire of given diameter, an estimate of the amount of dissipated energy per cycle is given at low levels of maximum strain, which correspond to a fatigue fracture life of the order of millions of cycles. The dissipative capability is affected by both the temperature and the cycling frequency at which the tests are performed. Such effects are quantified and an ageing process is proposed in order to extend the working temperature range of the damper to cold weathers typical of the winter season in Northern Europe and Canada. A procedure for the simulation of the shape memory alloy behavior in lengthy cables by finite element analysis is eventually outlined.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제8권5호
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• pp.501-524
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• 2011

Recent studies have discovered that a conventional passive isolation system may suffer from an excessive isolator displacement when subjected to a near-fault earthquake that usually has a long-period velocity pulse waveform. Semi-active isolation using variable friction dampers (VFD), which requires a suitable control law, may provide a solution to this problem. To control the VFD in a semi-active isolation system more efficiently, this paper investigates experimentally the possible use of a control law whose control logic is similar to that of the anti-lock braking systems (ABS) widely used in the automobile industry. This ABS-type controller has the advantages of being simple and easily implemented, because it only requires the measurement of the isolation-layer velocity and does not require system modeling for gain design. Most importantly, it does not interfere with the isolation period, which usually decides the isolation efficiency. In order to verify its feasibility and effectiveness, the ABS-type controller was implemented on a variable-friction isolation system whose slip force is regulated by an embedded piezoelectric actuator, and a seismic simulation test was conducted for this isolation system. The experimental results demonstrate that, as compared to a passive isolation system with various levels of added damping, the semi-active isolation system using the ABS-type controller has the better overall performance when both the far-field and the near-fault earthquakes with different PGA levels are considered.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제26권4호
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• pp.435-449
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• 2020

To effectively extract the vast wind resource, offshore wind turbines are designed with large rotor and slender tower, which makes them vulnerable to external vibration sources such as wind and wave loads. Substantial research efforts have been devoted to mitigate the unwanted vibrations of offshore wind turbines to ensure their serviceability and safety in the normal working condition. However, most previous studies investigated the vibration control of wind turbines in one direction only, i.e., either the out-of-plane or in-plane direction. In reality, wind turbines inevitably vibrate in both directions when they are subjected to the external excitations. The studies on both the in-plane and out-of-plane vibration control of wind turbines are, however, scarce. In the present study, the NREL 5 MW wind turbine is taken as an example, a detailed three-dimensional (3D) Finite Element (FE) model of the wind turbine is developed in ABAQUS. To simultaneously control the in-plane and out-of-plane vibrations induced by the combined wind and wave loads, another carefully designed (i.e., tuned) spring and dashpot are added to the perpendicular direction of each Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) system that is used to control the vibrations of the tower and blades in one particular direction. With this simple modification, a bi-directional TMD system is formed and the vibrations in both the out-of-plane and in-plane directions are simultaneously suppressed. To examine the control effectiveness, the responses of the wind turbine without control, with separate TMD system and the proposed bi-directional TMD system are calculated and compared. Numerical results show that the bi-directional TMD system can simultaneously control the out-of-plane and in-plane vibrations of the wind turbine without changing too much of the conventional design of the control system. The bi-directional control system therefore could be a cost-effective solution to mitigate the bi-directional vibrations of offshore wind turbines.