• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.127-139
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• 2019

Residual drifts after an earthquake can incur huge repair costs and might need to replace the infrastructure because of its non-reparability. Proper functioning of bridges is also essential in the aftermath of an earthquake. In order to mitigate pounding and unseating damage of bridges subjected to earthquakes, a self-adaptive Ni-Ti shape memory alloy (SMA)-cable-based frictional sliding bearing (SMAFSB) is proposed considering self-adaptive centering, high energy dissipation, better fatigue, and corrosion resistance from SMA-cable component. The developed novel bearing is associated with the properties of modularity, replaceability, and earthquake isolation capacity, which could reduce the repair time and increase the resilience of highway bridges. To evaluate the super-elasticity of the SMA-cable, pseudo-static tests and numerical simulation on the SMA-cable specimens with a diameter of 7 mm are conducted and one dimensional (1D) constitutive hysteretic model of the SMAFSB is developed considering the effects of gap, self-centering, and high energy dissipation. Two types of the SMAFSB (i.e., movable and fixed SMAFSBs) are applied to a two-span continuous reinforced concrete (RC) bridge. The seismic vulnerabilities of the RC bridge, utilizing movable SMAFSB with the constant gap size of 60 mm and the fixed SMAFSBs with different gap sizes (e.g., 0, 30, and 60 mm), are assessed at component and system levels, respectively. It can be observed that the fixed SMAFSB with a gap of 30 mm gained the most retrofitting effect among the three cases.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.81-90
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• 2019

The shear behavior of soil-concrete interface is mainly affected by the surface roughness of the two contact surfaces. The present research emphasizes on investigating the effect of roughness of soil-concrete interface on the interface shear behavior in two-layered laboratory testing samples. In these specially prepared samples, clay silt layer with density of $2027kg/m^3$ was selected to be in contact a concrete layer for simplifying the laboratory testing. The particle size testing and direct shear tests are performed to determine the appropriate particles sizes and their shear strength properties such as cohesion and friction angle. Then, the surface undulations in form of teeth are provided on the surfaces of both concrete and soil layers in different testing carried out on these mixed specimens. The soil-concrete samples are prepared in form of cubes of 10*10*30 cm. in dimension. The undulations (inter-surface roughness) are provided in form of one tooth or two teeth having angles $15^{\circ}$ and $30^{\circ}$, respectively. Several direct shear tests were carried out under four different normal loads of 80, 150, 300 and 500 KPa with a constant displacement rate of 0.02 mm/min. These testing results show that the shear failure mechanism is affected by the tooth number, the roughness angle and the applied normal stress on the sample. The teeth are sheared from the base under low normal load while the oblique cracks may lead to a failure under a higher normal load. As the number of teeth increase the shear strength of the sample also increases. When the tooth roughness angle increases a wider portion of the tooth base will be failed which means the shear strength of the sample is increased.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.449-466
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• 2019

Cable-stayed bridges are attractive due to their beauty, reducing material consumption, less harm to the environment and so on, in comparison with other kinds of bridges. As a massive structure with long period and low damping (0.3 to 2%) under many dynamic loads, these bridges are susceptible to fatigue, serviceability disorder, damage or even collapse. Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) is a suitable controlling system to reduce the vibrations and prevent the threats in such bridges. In this paper, Multi Tuned Mass Damper (MTMD) system is added to the Ahvaz cable stayed Bridge in Iran, to reduce its seismic vibrations. First, the bridge is modeled in SAP2000 followed with result verification. Dead and live loads and the moving loads have been assigned to the bridge. Then the finite element model is developed in OpenSees, with the goal of running a nonlinear time-history analysis. Three far-field and three near-field earthquake records are imposed to the model after scaling to the PGA of 0.25 g, 0.4 g, 0.55 g and 0.7 g. Two MTMD systems, passive and active, with the number of TMDs from 1 to 8, are placed in specific points of the main span of bridge, adding a total mass ratio of 1 to 10% to the bridge. The parameters of the TMDs are optimized using Genetic Algorithm (GA). Also, the optimum force for active control is achieved by Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC). The results showed that the maximum displacement of the center of the bridge main span reduced 33% and 48% respectively by adding passive and active MTMD systems. The RMS of displacement reduced 37% and 47%, the velocity 36% and 42% and also the base shear in pylons, 27% and 47%, respectively by adding passive and active systems, in the best cases.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.479-493
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• 2019

In this paper, the interaction between notch and micro pore under uniaxial compression has been performed experimentally and numerically. Firstly calibration of PFC2D was performed using Brazilian tensile strength, uniaxial tensile strength and biaxial tensile strength. Secondly uniaxial compression test consisting internal notch and micro pore was performed experimentally and numerically. 9 models consisting notch and micro pore were built, experimentally and numerically. Dimension of these models are 10 cm*1 cm*5 cm. the length of joint is 2 cm. the angularities of joint are $30^{\circ}$, $45^{\circ}$ and $60^{\circ}$. For each joint angularity, micro pore was situated 2 cm above the lower tip of the joint, 2 cm above the middle of the joint and 2 cm above the upper of the joint, separately. Dimension of numerical models are 5.4 cm*10.8 cm. The size of the cracks was 2 cm and its orientation was $30^{\circ}$, $45^{\circ}$ and $60^{\circ}$. Diameter of pore was 1cm which situated at the upper of the notch i.e., 2 cm above the upper notch tip, 2 cm above the middle of the notch and 2 cm above the lower of the notch tip. The results show that failure pattern was affected by notch orientation and pore position while uniaxial compressive strength is affected by failure pattern.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.329-335
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• 2019

Structural fuses are made up from oriented steel plates to be used to resist seismic force with shear loading resistance capabilities. The damage and excessive inelastic deformations are concentrated in structural fuses to avoid any issues for the rest of the surrounding elements. Recently developed fuse plates are designed with engineered cutouts leaving flexural or shear links with controlled yielding features. A promising type of link is proposed to align better bending strength along the length of the link with the demand moment diagram is a butterfly-shaped link. Previously, the design methodologies are purely based on the flexural stresses, or shear stresses only, which overestimate the dampers capability for resisting against the applied loadings. This study is specifically focused on the optimized design methodologies for commonly used butterfly-shaped dampers. Numerous studies have shown that the stresses are not uniformly distributed along the length of the dampers; hence, the design methodology and the effective implementation of the steel need revisions and improvements. In this study, the effect of shear and flexural stresses on the behavior of butterfly-shaped links are computationally investigated. The mathematical models based on von-Mises yielding criteria are initially developed and the optimized design methodology is proposed based on the yielding criterion. The optimized design is refined and investigated with the aid of computational investigations in the next step. The proposed design methodology meets the needs of optimized design concepts for butterfly-shaped dampers considering the uniform stress distribution and efficient use of steel.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.495-506
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• 2019

This paper presents the results of axial pressure testing on reinforced concrete columns (RCCs) filled with confined normal concrete (NC) and high-strength concrete (HSC) using glass-fiber reinforced plastic pipes (GRP) casing as well as fiber reinforced polymer (FRP). This study aims to evaluate the behavior and mechanical properties of columns confined with GRP casing and FRP wrapping under pressure loads. The major parameters in the experiments were the type of concrete, the effect of GRP casing and FRP wrapping, as well as the number of FRP layers. 12 cylindrical RCCs (150*600) mm were prepared and divided into two groups, NC and HSC, and each group was divided into two parts. In each part, one column was without FRP strengthening layer, a column was wrapped with one FRP layer and another column with two FRP layers. All columns were tested under concentrated compression load. The results of the study showed that the utilization of FRP wrapping and GRP casing improved compression capacity and ductility of RCCs. The addition of one and two layers-FRP wrapping increased compression capacity in the NC group to an average of 18.5% and 26.5% and to an average of 10.2% and 24.8% in the HSC group. Meanwhile, the utilization of GRP casing increased the compression capacity of the columns by 4 times in the NC group and 3.38 times in the HSC group. The results indicated that although both FRP wrapping and GRP casing result in confinement, the GRP casing resulted in increased compression capacity and ductility of the RCCs due to higher confinement. Furthermore, the confinement effect was higher on columns made with NC.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.669-681
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• 2019

Bridge collapses may deliver a huge impact on our society in a very negative way. Out of many reasons why bridges collapse, poor maintenance is becoming a main contributing factor to many recent collapses. Furthermore, the aging of bridges is able to make the situation much worse. In order to prevent this unwanted event, it is indispensable to conduct continuous bridge monitoring and timely maintenance. Visual inspection is the most widely used method, but it is heavily dependent on the experience of the inspectors. It is also time-consuming, labor-intensive, costly, disruptive, and even unsafe for the inspectors. In order to address its limitations, in recent years increasing interests have been paid to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which is expected to make the inspection process safer, faster and more cost-effective. In addition, it can cover the area where it is too hard to reach by inspectors. However, this strategy is still in a primitive stage because there are many things to be addressed for real implementation. In this paper, a typical procedure of bridge inspection using UAVs consisting of three phases (i.e., pre-inspection, inspection, and post-inspection phases) and the detailed tasks by phase are described. Also, three major challenges, which are related to a UAV's flight, image data acquisition, and damage identification, respectively, are identified from a practical perspective (e.g., localization of a UAV under the bridge, high-quality image capture, etc.) and their possible solutions are discussed by examining recently developed or currently developing techniques such as the graph-based localization algorithm, and the image quality assessment and enhancement strategy. In particular, deep learning based algorithms such as R-CNN and Mask R-CNN for classifying, localizing and quantifying several damage types (e.g., cracks, corrosion, spalling, efflorescence, etc.) in an automatic manner are discussed. This strategy is based on a huge amount of image data obtained from unmanned inspection equipment consisting of the UAV and imaging devices (vision and IR cameras).

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.565-577
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• 2019

One of the most effective countermeasures for mitigating cable vibration is to install mechanical dampers near the anchorage of the cable. Most of the dampers used in the field are so-called passive dampers where their parameters cannot be changed once designed. The parameters of passive dampers are usually determined based on the optimal damper force obtained from the universal design curve for linear dampers, which will provide a maximum additional damping for the cable. As the optimal damper force is chosen based on a predetermined principal vibration mode, passive dampers will be most effective if cable undergoes single-mode vibration where the vibration mode is the same as the principal mode used in the design. However, in the actual engineering practice, multi-mode vibrations are often observed for cables. Therefore, it is desirable to have dampers that can suppress different modes of cable vibrations simultaneously. In this paper, MR dampers are proposed for controlling multi-mode cable vibrations, because of its ability to change parameters and its adaptability of active control without inquiring large power resources. Although the highly nonlinear feature of the MR material leads to a relatively complex representation of its mathematical model, effective control strategies can still be derived for suppressing multi-mode cable vibrations based on nonlinear modelling, as proposed in this paper. Firstly, the nonlinear Bouc-wen model is employed to accurately portray the salient characteristics of the MR damper. Then, the desired optimal damper force is determined from the universal design curve of friction dampers. Finally, the input voltage (current) of MR damper corresponding to the desired optimal damper force is calculated from the nonlinear Bouc-wen model of the damper using a piecewise linear interpolation scheme. Numerical simulations are carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm for mitigating multi-mode cable vibrations induced by different external excitations.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.681-692
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• 2020

Conventional Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters (CPEH) have been extensively studied for maximizing their electrical output through material selection, geometric and structural optimization, and adoption of efficient interface circuits. In this paper, the performance of Stepped Piezoelectric Energy Harvester (SPEH) under harmonic base excitation is studied analytically, numerically and experimentally. The motivation is to compare the energy harvesting performance of CPEH and SPEHs with the same characteristics (resonant frequency). The results of this study challenge the notion of achieving higher voltage and power output through incorporation of geometric discontinuities such as step sections in the harvester beams. A CPEH consists of substrate material with a patch of piezoelectric material bonded over it and a tip mass at the free end to tune the resonant frequency. A SPEH is designed by introducing a step section near the root of substrate beam to induce higher dynamic strain for maximizing the electrical output. The incorporation of step section reduces the stiffness and consequently, a lower tip mass is used with SPEH to match the resonant frequency to that of CPEH. Moreover, the electromechanical coupling coefficient, forcing function and damping are significantly influenced because of the inclusion of step section, which consequently affects harvester's output. Three different configurations of SPEHs characterized by the same resonant frequency as that of CPEH are designed and analyzed using linear electromechanical model and their performances are compared. The variation of strain on the harvester beams is obtained using finite element analysis. The prototypes of CPEH and SPEHs are fabricated and experimentally tested. It is shown that the power output from SPEHs is lower than the CPEH. When the prototypes with resonant frequencies in the range of 56-56.5 Hz are tested at 1 m/s2, three SPEHs generate power output of 482 μW, 424 μW and 228 μW when compared with 674 μW from CPEH. It is concluded that the advantage of increasing dynamic strain using step section is negated by increase in damping and decrease in forcing function. However, SPEHs show slightly better performance in terms of specific power and thus making them suitable for practical scenarios where the ratio of power to system mass is critical.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.327-332
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• 2022

In building envelope, transparent components play an important role. The structural glazing systems are the weak element of the casing in terms of mechanical resistance, thermal and acoustic insulation. In the present work, new structural glass panels with granular aerogel in interspace were investigated from different points of view. In particular, the mechanical characterization was carried out in order to assess the resistance to bending of the single glazing pane. To this end, a special instrument system was built to define an alternative configuration of the coaxial double ring test, able to predict the fracture strength of glass large samples (400 × 400 mm) without overpressure. The thermal and lighting performance of an innovative double-glazing façade with granular aerogel was evaluated. An experimental campaign at pilot scale was developed: it is composed of two boxes of about 1.60 × 2 m² and 2 m high together with an external weather station. The rooms, identical in terms of size, construction materials, and orientation, are equipped with a two-wing window in the south wall surface: the first one has a standard glazing solution (double glazing with air in interspace), the second room is equipped with the innovative double-glazing system with aerogel. The indoor mean air temperature and the surface temperature of the glass panes were monitored together with the illuminance data for the lighting characterization. Finally, a brief energy characterization of the performance of the material was carried out by means of dynamic simulation models when the proposed solution is applied to real case studies.