International Journal of Structural Stability and Dynamics

Presented herein is an experiment that aims to investigate the applicability of the wavelet transform to damage detection of a beam–spring structure. By burning out the string that is connected to the cantilever beam, high-frequency oscillations are excited in the beam–spring system, and there results an abrupt change or impulse in the discrete-wavelet-transformed signal. In this way, the discrete wavelet transform can be used to recognize the damage at the moment it occurs. In the second stage of damage detection, the shift of frequencies and damping ratios is identified by the continuous wavelet transform so as to ensure that the abrupt change or impulse in the signal from the discrete wavelet transform is a result of the damage and not the noise. For the random forced vibration, the random decrement technique is used on the original signal to obtain the free decaying responses, and then the continuous wavelet transform is applied to identify the system parameters. Some developed p version elements are used for the parametric studies on the first stage of health monitoring and to find the damage location. The results show that the two-stage method is successful in damage detection. Since the method is simple and computationally efficient, it is a good candidate for on-line health monitoring and damage detection of structures.

A postbuckling analysis is presented for a shear-deformable anisotropic laminated cylindrical shell of finite length subjected to axial compression. The material of each layer of the shell is assumed to be linearly elastic, anisotropic and fiber-reinforced. The governing equations are based on a higher order shear-deformable shell theory with the von Kármán–Donnell type of kinematic nonlinearity and including the extension/twist, extension/flexural and flexural/twist couplings. The nonlinear prebuckling deformations and initial geometric imperfections of the shell are both taken into account. A singular perturbation technique is employed to determine the buckling loads and postbuckling equilibrium paths. The numerical illustrations concern the postbuckling response of perfect and imperfect, moderately thick, anisotropic laminated cylindrical shells with different values of shell parameters and stacking sequence. The results confirm that there exists a compressive stress along with an associate shear stress and twisting when the anisotropic shell is subjected to axial compression. The postbuckling equilibrium path is unstable for the moderately thick cylindrical shell under axial compression and the shell structure is imperfection-sensitive.

This paper presents a method for nonlinear dynamic analysis of frames with material and geometric nonlinearities which is based on the semirigid technique. The plastic hinge that accounts for the material nonlinearity is modeled as a pseudo-semirigid connection with nonlinear hysteretic moment-curvature characteristics at the element ends. The stiffness matrix of a frame element with material and geometric nonlinearities is expressed as the sum of products of the standard stiffness matrix and the geometric stiffness matrix of the element, with their corresponding correction matrices based on the plasticity factors developed from the section flexural stiffness at the plastic hinge locations. The combined stress yield condition is used for the force state determination of plastic hinges, and force equilibrium iterations and geometry updating for frames are carried out in every time step. When the key parameters of a structure are updated in a time step, the time step is split up into substeps to ensure accuracy while keeping the computations to a reasonable amount. The plastic rotation history can be calculated directly or in an approximate indirect way. The method is computationally efficient and it needs no additional connection elements, which makes it convenient for incorporation into existing linear dynamic analysis programs. Besides, the method can handle accurately and efficiently the dynamic analysis of nonlinear frames using relatively large time steps in conjunction with time step subdivision to cope with key parameter changes. A portal frame is used to verify the correctness of the proposed method. A more complicated five-story frame is used to illustrate the applicability and performance of the proposed method.

Presented herein are four different methods for the optimum design of structures subject to multiple natural frequency constraints. During the optimization process the optimum cross-sectional dimensions of elements are determined. These methods are robust and efficient in terms of the number of eigenvalue analyses required, as well as the overall computational time for the optimum design. A new third order approximate function is presented for the structural response quantities, as functions of the cross-sectional properties, and four different methods for the optimum design are defined based on this approximate function. The main features of the proposed function are that only the diagonal terms of higher order derivative matrices are employed, and these derivatives are established by the available first order derivatives. The first order exact derivatives are obtained from a sensitivity analysis at the previous design points. We show that this approximate function creates high quality approximations of the structural responses, such as the frequencies. Examples are presented and the efficiency and quality of the proposed methods are discussed and compared.

A seismic fragility analysis of structures is essential to prediction of the building behavior that is likely to occur during earthquakes. Normally, the probability of failure of a structure over a specified period of time is obtained through a convolution of the fragility curve with the seismic hazard curve for the structure site. The fragility models and damage states probabilities serve as a basis for improving the structural codes and performance-based design. Thus, there is a need for relatively simple procedures for evaluating fragility data for decision-making. In this study, the peak story drifts of a building structure during earthquakes are used as an indicator of structural demands. An analytical solution for evaluating the statistical characteristics of peak story drifts of frame structures during earthquakes is proposed. Based on it, an approximate approach to constructing the seismic fragility curves for various states of damage for frame structures is developed.

Presented herein is a formulation for the buckling of a cylindrical shell subjected to external loads using an infinitesimal shell element defined in a convenient coordinate system. The governing equation in terms of the radial deflection is derived for the element by adopting an operator. The eighth order partial differential equation derived can be applied for cylindrical shells with various boundary conditions. For illustration, simply supported cylindrical shells subjected to axial compressive forces are studied using either a one-variable or a two-variable shape function. The critical stresses obtained for the buckling of cylindrical shells are compared with those by the finite element program SAP2000. The critical stress of the cylindrical shell is similar to that of the column, in that the critical stress decreases as the thickness ratio (the ratio of R/h) or the slenderness ratio increases. Good agreement has been obtained for most of the comparative cases, while the finite element results appear to be slightly higher for some cases.

This paper investigates the prebuckling dynamics of transversely isotropic thin cylinder shells in the context of propagation and reflection of axial stress waves. By constructing the Hamiltonian system of the governing equation, the symplectic eigenvalues and eigenfunctions are obtained directly and rationally without the need for any trial shape functions, such as the classical semi-inverse method. The critical loads and buckling models are reduced to the problem of eigenvalues and eigensolutions, in which zero-eigenvalue solutions and nonzero-eigenvalue solutions correspond to axisymmetric buckling and nonaxisymmetric buckling, respectively. Numerical results reveal that energy is concentrated at the unconstrained free ends of the shell and the buckling modes have bigger bell-mouthed shapes at these positions.

Railway sleepers in a track system are usually subjected to a wide range of loading conditions. A critical type of loading condition that causes cracking in the railway concrete sleepers is the dynamic transient wheel force. The transient wheel forces are often due to wheel or rail abnormalities. This paper presents a dynamic finite element model of a railway concrete sleeper in a track system, aimed at raising the consideration of dynamic effects in sleeper design. The railway concrete sleeper is modeled using the beam-on-elastic-foundation theory. Since in the actual tracks the ballast underneath does not provide any tensile resistance, the finite beam elements employed in this investigation take into account the bending and shear deformations, together with the tensionless nature of the elastic support. This paper places emphasis on the effect of the transient periods on the flexural responses of railway sleepers in track systems. Using the robust finite element software STRAND7, the finite element model of the railway concrete sleeper was previously established and validated against experimental data by the authors. The numerical analyses present the ratio between the dynamic and the static bending moment resultants, the dynamic magnification factor, of the railway concrete sleeper under different sinusoidal pulse durations.

Uniform I-beam elements are not suitable for simulating the torsional behavior of web-tapered I-beams since they fail to account for the torsional effect associated with web-tapering. To resolve this problem, an iterative approach is presented for computing the linear torsional response of web-tapered I-beams using an existing uniform I-beam element. An iterative procedure includes three phases: predictor, corrector, and error-checking. In this paper, the predictor is a solution of the structural displacements using the conventional uniform I-beam elements, and the corrector is concerned with recovery of internal forces, in which the element forces are computed in an analytical way, taking into account the torsional effect of a twisted I-beam considering web-tapering. The applicability and accuracy of the iterative approach presented herein are confirmed by comparing the computed responses for a torsionally loaded I-beam with varied web-tapering to the exact solutions.