• Wind and Structures
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• 제20권6호
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• pp.763-791
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• 2015

"Wind and Ports" is a European project that has been carried out since 2009 to handle wind forecast in port areas through an integrated system made up of an extensive in-situ wind monitoring network, the numerical simulation of wind fields, the statistical analysis of wind climate, and algorithms for medium-term (1-3 days) and short term (0.5-2 hours) wind forecasting. The in-situ wind monitoring network, currently made up of 22 ultrasonic anemometers, provides a unique opportunity for detecting high resolution thunderstorm records and studying their dominant characteristics relevant to wind engineering with special concern for wind actions on structures. In such a framework, the wind velocity of thunderstorms is firstly decomposed into the sum of a slowly-varying mean part plus a residual fluctuation dealt with as a non-stationary random process. The fluctuation, in turn, is expressed as the product of its slowly-varying standard deviation by a reduced turbulence component dealt with as a rapidly-varying stationary Gaussian random process with zero mean and unit standard deviation. The extraction of the mean part of the wind velocity is carried out through a moving average filter, and the effect of the moving average period on the statistical properties of the decomposed signals is evaluated. Among other aspects, special attention is given to the thunderstorm duration, the turbulence intensity, the power spectral density and the integral length scale. Some noteworthy wind velocity ratios that play a crucial role in the thunderstorm loading and response of structures are also analyzed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제63권6호
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• pp.809-824
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• 2017

The accurate evaluation of wind characteristics and wind-induced structural responses during a typhoon is of significant importance for bridge design and safety assessment. This paper presents an expectation maximization (EM) algorithm-based angular-linear approach for probabilistic modeling of field-measured wind characteristics. The proposed method has been applied to model the wind speed and direction data during typhoons recorded by the structural health monitoring (SHM) system instrumented on the arch Jiubao Bridge located in Hangzhou, China. In the summer of 2015, three typhoons, i.e., Typhoon Chan-hom, Typhoon Soudelor and Typhoon Goni, made landfall in the east of China and then struck the Jiubao Bridge. By analyzing the wind monitoring data such as the wind speed and direction measured by three anemometers during typhoons, the wind characteristics during typhoons are derived, including the average wind speed and direction, turbulence intensity, gust factor, turbulence integral scale, and power spectral density (PSD). An EM algorithm-based angular-linear modeling approach is proposed for modeling the joint distribution of the wind speed and direction. For the marginal distribution of the wind speed, the finite mixture of two-parameter Weibull distribution is employed, and the finite mixture of von Mises distribution is used to represent the wind direction. The parameters of each distribution model are estimated by use of the EM algorithm, and the optimal model is determined by the values of $R^2$ statistic and the Akaike's information criterion (AIC). The results indicate that the stochastic properties of the wind field around the bridge site during typhoons are effectively characterized by the proposed EM algorithm-based angular-linear modeling approach. The formulated joint distribution of the wind speed and direction can serve as a solid foundation for the purpose of accurately evaluating the typhoon-induced fatigue damage of long-span bridges.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제21권5호
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• pp.591-600
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• 2018

The probabilistic characterization of wind field characteristics is a significant task for fatigue reliability assessment of long-span railway bridges in wind-prone regions. In consideration of the effect of wind direction, the stochastic properties of wind field should be represented by a bivariate statistical model of wind speed and direction. This paper presents the construction of the bivariate model of wind speed and direction at the site of a railway arch bridge by use of the long-term structural health monitoring (SHM) data. The wind characteristics are derived by analyzing the real-time wind monitoring data, such as the mean wind speed and direction, turbulence intensity, turbulence integral scale, and power spectral density. A sequential quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm-based finite mixture modeling method is proposed to formulate the joint distribution model of wind speed and direction. For the probability density function (PDF) of wind speed, a double-parameter Weibull distribution function is utilized, and a von Mises distribution function is applied to represent the PDF of wind direction. The SQP algorithm with multi-start points is used to estimate the parameters in the bivariate model, namely Weibull-von Mises mixture model. One-year wind monitoring data are selected to validate the effectiveness of the proposed modeling method. The optimal model is jointly evaluated by the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) and coefficient of determination, $R^2$. The obtained results indicate that the proposed SQP algorithm-based finite mixture modeling method can effectively establish the bivariate model of wind speed and direction. The established bivariate model of wind speed and direction will facilitate the wind-induced fatigue reliability assessment of long-span bridges.

• Wind and Structures
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• 제31권3호
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• pp.269-285
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• 2020

The statistical characteristics of typhoon wind speed records tend to have a considerable time-varying trend; thus, the stationary wind model may not be appropriate to estimate the wind characteristics of typhoon events. Several nonstationary wind speed models have been proposed by pioneers to characterize wind characteristics more accurately, but comparative studies on the applicability of the different wind models are still lacking. In this study, three landfall typhoons, Ampil, Jongdari, and Rumbia, recorded by ultrasonic anemometers atop the Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC), are used for the comparative analysis of stationary and nonstationary wind characteristics. The time-varying mean is extracted with the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) method, and the time-varying standard deviation is calculated by the autoregressive moving average generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARMA-GARCH) model. After extracting the time-varying trend, the longitudinal wind characteristics, e.g., the probability distribution, power spectral density (PSD), turbulence integral scale, turbulence intensity, gust factor, and peak factor, are comparatively analyzed based on the stationary wind speed model, time-varying mean wind speed model and time-varying standard deviation wind speed model. The comparative analysis of the different wind models emphasizes the significance of the nonstationary considerations in typhoon events. The time-varying standard deviation model can better identify the similarities among the different typhoons and appropriately describe the nonstationary wind characteristics of the typhoons.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제10권6호
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• pp.545-559
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• 2000

A Wind and Structural Health Monitoring System (WASHMS) has been installed in the Tsing Ma suspension Bridge in Hong Kong with one of the objectives being the verification of analytical processes used in wind-resistant design. On 2 August 1997, Typhoon Victor just crossed over the Bridge and the WASHMS timely recorded both wind and structural response. The measurement data are analysed in this paper to obtain the mean wind speed, mean wind direction, mean wind inclination, turbulence intensity, integral scale, gust factor, wind spectrum, and the acceleration response and natural frequency of the Bridge. It is found that some features of wind structure and bridge response are difficult to be considered in the currently used analytical process for predicting buffeting response of long suspension bridges, for the Bridge is surrounded by a complex topography and the wind direction of Typhoon Victor changes during its crossing. It seems to be necessary to improve the prediction model so that a reasonable comparison can be performed between the measurement and prediction for long suspension bridges in typhoon prone regions.

• 한국지진공학회논문집
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• 제24권5호
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• pp.219-232
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• 2020

The slip-weakening model developed by Ohnaka and Yamashita is extended over the breakdown zone by equating the scaling relationships for the breakdown zone and the whole rupture area. For the extension, the study uses the relationship between rupture velocity and radiation efficiency, which was derived in the theory of linear elastic fracture mechanics, and the definition of f_max given in the specific barrier model proposed by Papageorgiou and Aki. The results clearly show that the extended scaling relationship is governed by the ratio of rupture velocity to S wave velocity, and the velocity ratio can be determined by the ratio of characteristic frequencies of a Fourier amplitude spectrum, which are corner frequency, f_c, and source-controlled cut-off frequency, f_max, or vice versa. The derived relationship is tested by using the characteristic frequencies extracted from previous studies of more than 130 shallow crustal events (focal depth less than 25 km, M_W 3.0~7.5) that occurred in Japan. Under the assumption of a dynamic similarity, the rupture velocity estimated from f_max/f_c and the modified integral timescale give quite similar scale-dependence of the rupture area to that given by Kanamori and Anderson. Also, the results for large earthquakes show good agreement to the values from a kinematic inversion in previous studies. The test results also indicate the unavailability of the spectral self-similarity proposed by Aki because of the scale-dependent rupture velocity and the rupture velocity-dependent f_max/f_c; however, the results do support the local similarity asserted by Ohnaka. It is also remarkable that the relationship between the rupture velocity and f_max/f_c is quite similar to Kolmogorov's hypothesis on a similarity in the theory of isotropic turbulence.

• Wind and Structures
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• 제37권6호
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• pp.399-412
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• 2023

Previous studies have shown that the integrated transfer function (ITF) is independent of turbulence characteristics and can be effectively applied to predict the buffeting response of elongated structures, assuming that the strip hypothesis is valid. However, existing research has not effectively identified the ITF through segment model vibration tests, and the influence of the 3D effect on the accuracy of the strip hypothesis and the characteristics of the ITF in wind tunnel tests has not been quantitatively studied. A segment model vibration measurement device that can change a test model's span-width ratio was designed in this study. An airfoil section and a streamlined box girder section structure were taken as the background, and their ITFs were effectively identified under different L/B (L denotes the turbulent integral scale and B denotes the structural width) and model span-width ratios. The influence laws of the 3D effect on the accuracy of the strip hypothesis and ITF identification in wind tunnel tests were systematically investigated. The results showed that L/B and the structural span-width ratio are two significant controlling factors that affect the accuracy of the strip hypothesis and ITF identification. The research provides an effective experimental method for accurately predicting the buffeting response of elongated structures based on ITFs identified through segment model vibration tests.