• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.399-414
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• 1997

This paper presents an investigation into the seismic response characteristics of a proposed ligh-weight pedestrian cable-stayed bridge made entirely from Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastics(GFRP). The study employs three dimensional finite element models to study and compare the dynamic characteristics and the seismic response of the GFRP bridge to a conventional Steel-Concrete (SC) cable-stayed bridge alternative. The two bridges were subjected to three synthetic earthquakes that differ in the frequency content characteristics. The performance of the GFRP bridge was compared to that of the SC bridge by normalizing the live load and the seismic internal forces with respect to the dead load internal forces. The normalized seismically induced internal forces were compared to the normalized live load internal forces for each design alternative. The study shows that the design alternatives have different dynamic characteristics. The light GFRP alternative has more flexible deck motion in the lateral direction than the heavier SC alternative. While the SC alternative has more vertical deck modes than the GFRP alternative, it has less lateral deck modes than the GFRP alternative in the studied frequency range. The GFRP towers are more flexible in the lateral direction than the SC towers. The GFRP bridge tower attracted less normalized base shear force than the SC bridge towers. However, earthquakes, with peak acceleration of only 0.1 g, and with a variety of frequency content could induce high enough seismic internal forces at the tower bases of the GFRP cable-stayed bridge to govern the structural design of such bridge. Careful seismic analysis, design, and detailing of the tower connections are required to achieve satisfactory seismic performance of GFRP long span bridges.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.361-374
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• 1996

In general, a cooling tower has two major noise sources, one is the fan and the other is the falling water. The fan noise is produced by passage of its blades through the air and radiates from the fan stack. Noises from the falling water are caused by splashing and dropping of water cascading over the internal filler of the cooling tower and into the basin and radiate from the louvered face. In this paper, the noise measurements and its frequency analysis are carried out for the locations facing the louvered side and near the fan stack referring the related code and standards in order to study the noise characteristics of the induced-draft cooling tower, especially for the buildings. As a result, it is found that for every doubling of distance from the noise source the noise level decreases by 2~4dBA in the near field with reflect surfaces and decreases by about 6dBA also in the far field without reflect surfaces. As a supplement to the noise measurements, a computer program with simple algorithm is developed in order to estimate the noise level at a distance from the cooling tower, so that the user could apply and modify it for the particular boundary conditions easily.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.397-408
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• 2018

In a recent tragic fire incident, the Plasco Tower collapsed after an intense outburst of fire lasting for three and a half hours and claiming the lives of 16 firefighters and 6 civilians. This paper will present continuing collaborative work between Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Queen's University in Canada to model the progressive collapse of the tower. The fire started at the 10th floor and was observed to have travelled along the floor horizontally and through the staircase and windows vertically. Plasco Tower was steel structure and all the steel sections were fabricated by welding standard European channel or angle profiles and no fire protection was applied. Four internal columns carried the loads transferred by the primary beams, and box columns were constructed along the perimeter of the building as a braced tube for resisting seismic loading. OpenSees fibre-based sections and displacement-based beam-column elements are used to model the frames, while shell elements are used for the reinforced concrete floor slabs. The thermal properties and elevated temperature mechanical properties are as recommended in the Eurocodes. The results in this preliminarily analysis are based on rough estimations of the structure's configuration. The ongoing work looks at modeling the Plasco Tower based on the most accurate findings from reviewing many photographs and collected data.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.223-240
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• 2006

Taking into account the geometrical and material nonlinearities, an ultimate behavior of reinforced concrete cooling tower shell in hyperbolic configuration is presented. The design wind pressures suggested in the guidelines of the US (ACI) and Germany (VGB), with or without the effect of internal suction, are employed in the analysis to examine the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of each design wind pressure. The geometrical nonlinearity is incorporated by the Green-Lagrange strain tensor. The nonlinear features of concrete, such as the nonlinear stress-strain relation in compression, the tensile cracking with the smeared crack model, an effect of tension stiffening, are taken into account. The biaxial stress state in concrete is represented by an improved work-hardening plasticity model. From the perspective of quality of wind pressures, the two guidelines are determined as highly correlated each other. Through the extensive analysis on the Niederaussem cooling tower in Germany, not only the ultimate load is determined but also the mechanism of failure, distribution of cracks, damage processes, stress redistributions, and mean crack width are examined.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.1115-1144
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• 2015

Current climate conditions along with advances in technology make further design and verification methods for structural strength and reliability of wind turbine towers imperative. Along with the growing interest for "green" energy, the wind energy sector has been developed tremendously the past decades. To this end, the improvement of wind turbine towers in terms of structural detailing and performance result in more efficient, durable and robust structures that facilitate their wider application, thus leading to energy harvesting increase. The wind tower industry is set to expand to greater heights than before and tapered steel towers with a circular cross-section are widely used as more capable of carrying heavier loads. The present study focuses on the improvement of the structural response of steel wind turbine towers, by means of internal stiffening. A thorough investigation of the contribution of stiffening rings to the overall structural behavior of the tower is being carried out. These stiffening rings are placed along the tower height to reduce local buckling phenomena, thus increasing the buckling strength of steel wind energy towers and leading the structure to a behavior closer to the one provided by the beam theory. Additionally to ring stiffeners, vertical stiffening schemes are studied to eliminate the presence of short wavelength buckles due to bending. For the purposes of this research, finite element analysis is applied in order to describe and predict in an accurate way the structural response of a model tower stiffened by internal stiffeners. Moreover, a parametric study is being performed in order to investigate the effect of the stiffeners' number to the functionality of the aforementioned stiffening systems and the improved structural behavior of the overall wind converter.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.101-108
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to establish a design method of tower service lift for offshore wind power system, as well as to conduct structure analysis of the service lift system. The service lift system will be built in the internal area of tower of the offshore wind power system. Design and structure analysis for the tower service lift system are conducted to clarify the stability and reliability of the system. Main objective of the design is to secure sufficient capability of transportation of workers and equipment with satisfactory performance within the designed tolerance limit. Total deformation and equivalent stress of the lift system by external load are examined using the results of structure analysis.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.4
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• pp.509-519
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• 2017

Wind field in mountainous regions demonstrates unique distribution characteristic as compared with the wind field of the flat area, wind load and wind effect are the key considerations in structural design of television towers situated in mountainous regions. The television tower to be constructed is located at the top of Xiushan Mountain in Nanjing, China. In order to investigate the impact of terrain factors of hilltops on wind loads, firstly a wind tunnel test was performed for the mountainous area within 800m from the television tower. Then the tower basal forces such as bending moments and shear strength were obtained based on high frequency force balance (HFFB) test. Based on the experiments, the improved method for determining the load combinations was applied to extract the response distribution patterns of foundation internal force and peak acceleration of the tower top, then the equivalent static wind loads were computed under different wind angles, load conditions and equivalent goals. The impact of terrain factors, damping ratio and equivalent goals on the wind load distribution of a television tower was discussed. Finally the equivalent static wind loads of the television tower under the 5 most adverse wind angles and 5 most adverse load conditions were computed. The experimental method, computations and research findings provide important references for the anti-wind design of high-rise structure built on hilltops.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2008

A distillation tower is one of the important facilities which separates and refines a crude oil stream according to certain boiling points. Its operation efficiency can affect the productivity of a refinery substantially. The objective of this study is to elucidate some operational information on the internal conditions of a distillation tower from a measurement of density profile by using a sealed gamma-ray source and a radiation detector. Gamma radiation counts were measured by a BGO detector positioned diametrically outside the tower-wall, opposite to the gamma source(Co-60) as the detector and the source were lowered concurrently. From the results, structural abnormality of the trays was not found inside the tower. Considering the flow distribution patterns, however, a vapor phase was dominantly formed at the upper part of the tower and a liquid phase at the lower part. From the gamma scanning of the distillation tower, it is anticipated that the gamma absorption technique can be used as an important tool for confirming the structural soundness of trays and investigating flow distribution in refinery facilities.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.481-498
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• 2011

During the past decade, many electrical transmission tower structures have failed during downburst events. This study is a part of a research program aimed to understand the behaviour of transmission lines under such localized wind events. The present study focuses on assessing the behaviour of self supported transmission line towers under downburst loading. A parametric study is performed to determine the critical downburst configurations causing maximum axial forces for various members of a tower. The sensitivity of the internal forces developing in the tower's members to changes in the downburst size and location was studied. The structural behaviour associated with the critical downburst configurations is described and compared to the behaviour under 'normal' wind loads.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.12 no.3 s.36
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• pp.219-226
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• 2005

When a ferroelectric film has an inhomogeneous distribution of charged defects, a voltage shift in the polarization curve is induced by the internal field generated in the film. The direction and the magnitude of voltage shift in the P-V hysteresis curves obtained by the Sawyer-Tower method are different from those obtained by the virtual ground method. In this study, the asymmetric behavior in the P-V hysteresis curves of inhomogeneous ferroelectric films was investigated with a physical model and the polarization curves obtained by the Sawyer-Tower and the virtual ground methods are compared.