Sharif Digital Repository

Thin-walled cylindrical steel silos are susceptible to instability under wind pressure when they are empty or only partially filled. This paper investigates numerically the wind buckling behavior of a real steel corrugated silo with 8.02 m diameter and 17.62 m height, strengthened by open-section vertical stiffeners. Accordingly, comprehensive 3D finite element models were used and detailed linear and non-linear buckling analyses were conducted. The effects of sinusoidal corrugated sheet profile dimensions on this issue were specially explored. Wind load vertical and circumferential distributions were adopted from Eurocode. Two proposed circumferential pressure distributions for an isolated... 

Thin-walled cylindrical steel silos are one of the key structures for storage of materials in many industries and agricultural sectors. They are susceptible to instability under wind pressure when they are empty or partially filled. This paper investigates numerically the wind buckling behavior of three sample steel silos with stepped walls composed of isotropic rolled shells. Wind load vertical and circumferential distributions were adopted from Eurocodes. Two proposed circumferential pressure distributions for an isolated silo and a silo in a group with a closed roof were taken into consideration. Moreover, the effect of additional inward pressure, proposed by Eurocode, on buckling... 

This paper investigates a hybrid structural control system using tuned liquid dampers (TLDs) and lead-rubber bearing (LRB) systems for mitigating earthquake-induced vibrations. Furthermore, a new approach for taking into account the uncertainties associated with the steel shear buildings is proposed. In the proposed approach, the probabilistic distributions of the stiffness and yield properties of stories of a set of reference steel moment frame structures are derived through Monte-Carlo sampling. The approach is applied to steel shear buildings isolated with LRB systems. The base isolation systems are designed for different target base displacements by minimizing a relative performance... 

Torsional aeroelastic analysis of a turbomachinery cascade comprised of three-layered sandwich blades embedded with Magnetorheological Elastomer (MRE) core layer is carried out in this paper. The MRE material is used as a constrained damping layer between two elastic skins in order to investigate its effects on the aeroelastic stability of a blade cascade. To formulate the structural dynamic of the blades, torsional theory of rectangular laminated plates is used and the unsteady Whitehead's aerodynamic theory is employed to model the aerodynamic loadings. Assumed modes method and the Lagrange's equations are used to derive the governing equations of motion of the coupled aeroelastic system.... 

A novel integrated aeroelastic model of flapping wings (FWs) undergoing a prescribed rigid body motion is presented. In this respect, the FW nonlinear structural dynamics is enhanced via a newly proposed modification of implicit condensation and expansion (MICE) method that better considers the structural nonlinear effects. In addition, the unsteady aerodynamic model is also an extension of the widely utilized modified strip theory (MST) in which the flexibility effects are accounted for (MST-Flex). The integrated utility of the proposed generalized MICE and MST-Flex is demonstrated to be more realistic for elastic FW flight simulation applications. The prescribed rigid body motion is... 

The effect of inertial forces on the Structural Dynamics (SD) behaviour of Elastic Flapping Wings (EFWs) is investigated. In this regard, an analytical modal-based SD solution of EFW undergoing a prescribed rigid body motion is initially derived. The formulated initial-value problem is solved analytically to study the EFW structural responses, and sensitivity with respect to EFWs' key parameters. As a case study, a rectangular wing undergoing a prescribed sinusoidal motion is simulated. The analytical solution is derived for the first time and helps towards a conceptual understanding of the overall EFW's SD behaviour and its analysis required in their designs. Specifically, the EFW transient... 

Strain gauge balances (SGBs) are efficient and accurate means of static force measurement. However, due to their inherent elastic characteristics, they lack desired performance when used in dynamic loading conditions. In this paper, a novel technique is presented that remedies their inherent weakness in measuring dynamic periodic forces. The proposed method produces a correction factor to compensate the measured loading in dynamic situations. For this purpose, first an analytical investigation is performed to determine the structural dynamic behavior of a typical SGB system via the modal approach. This analytical investigation leads to identification of the structural interference effects... 

A new 'universal' structural joint with multiple applications was devised. Its application as a 'beam-to-column joint' was already investigated experimentally, and proven to be promising. The results were reported in previous OMAE conferences and elsewhere. Another fruitful application conceived for this joint is in the context of joining (diagonal) braces to the frame members of a structure. In particular, in chevron (inverted V) bracing systems, where the dominating exchanged forces between the combined diagonal braces and the horizontal brace (beam) are 'shear,' the use of the devised joint as a joining member can substantially improve the overall behaviour of the structure under dynamic... 

This paper presents a new self-powered hybrid electromagnetic damper that can mitigate vibration of a structure. The damper is able to switch between a power-regenerative passive mode and a semi-active mode depending on the power demand and capacity. The energy harvested in the passive mode due to suppression of vibration is employed to power up the sensing and electronic components necessary for the semi-active control. This provides a hybrid control capability that is autonomous in terms of its power requirement. The device mechanism and the circuitry that can realize this self-powered electromagnetic damper are described in this paper. The parameters that determine the device feasible... 

It is generally accepted that active control systems provide better structural performance when compared to their passive counterparts. On the other hand, the design of active control systems based on linear control theory is highly dependent on the structural properties. For this reason, their performance is expected to be affected more severely by variations in structural properties compared to those of passive systems. These variations can occur due to nonlinear structural behavior, or even before that due to uncertainties in the estimation of these properties and in numerical modeling. The present work is an investigation of the dependency of various control systems used for supplemental... 

Wind and ocean waves highly influence the performance and functionality of structures, requiring an efficient control element. The structural behavior of one of the most recent structural control elements, namely shape memory alloys (SMA)-based control element, under cyclic loadings of oceans waves, has been investigated. Shape memory alloys are one of the attractive smart materials with the ability to return to the initial shape after experiencing large deformation. Experimental tests have been conducted to study the effects of cyclic loads on several specimens of the SMA wires. The SMA wires are being used in the SMA-based structural control system to dissipate the energy of external... 

In order to study the interaction of sloshing and structural vibrations of baffled tanks, a reduced order model based on modal analysis of structure model and boundary element method for fluids motion is developed. For this purpose, the governing equations of elastic structure and incompressible flow are used to derive simple models to simulate both fields. Using the modal analysis technique, the structural motions are applied to the fluid model and on the other hand by using boundary element method, the fluid loads are applied to the structural model. Based on this formulation, a code is developed which is applicable to an arbitrary elastic tank with arbitrary arrangement of baffles. The... 

The stability and integrity of structures under indeterminant external loadings, particularly earthquakes, is a vital issue for the design and safe operation of marine and offshore structures. Over the past decades, many structural control systems, such as viscous-based systems, have been developed and embedded in marine and offshore structures, particularly oil platforms to maintain the stability and mitigate the seismic hazards. Rapid improvement in intelligent materials, including shape memory alloys (SMAs) and Magnetorheological fluid (MRF), have led to the design and development of efficient structural control elements. The present work aims to establish a framework for the structural... 

In this study, cell-centered (CC) and cell-vertex (CV) finite volume (FV) approaches are applied and assessed for the simulation of two-dimensional structural dynamics on arbitrary quadrilateral grids. For the calculation of boundary nodes displacement in the CC FV approach, three methods are employed. The first method is a simple linear regression of displacement of boundary nodes from the displacement of interior cell centers. In the second method, an extrapolation technique is applied for this purpose and, in the third method; the line boundary cell technique is incorporated into the solution algorithm in an explicit manner. To study the effects of grid irregularity on the results of CC... 

Dynamic environmental loads, such as winds and waves, make the stability of offshore structures at high risk, requiring reliable yet efficient control elements to ensure the stability of such structures under lateral loads. Among the variety of control elements that have been developed to enhance the stability of a structure, shape memory alloy (SMA)-based control elements are promising as they are low-cost, easy to embed into the main control element, and do not need an external power supply. However, cyclic loads may highly influence the performance and functionality of SMA-based elements. The present work investigates the effects of pre-straining SMA components in energy dissipation... 

Reaction thrusters (RTs) are used as an alternative to momentum exchange devices when disturbance torques exceed the control authority of momentum exchange devices. The reaction control system (RCS) can employ some rocket thrusters to provide attitude control during the thrusting or coast phase. Within the control loop, the RCS's target could be either achieving and keeping a certain attitude or controlling the rate of an attitude change. In the coast phase, some tasks such as preacceleration, settling of liquid propellant, damping of structural vibrations, providing a velocity increment to separate stages and payloads, and carrying out orbital and nonorbital maneuvers may be included in its... 

Structural and dynamic properties of ions confined in nanoslits are crucial to understand the fundamental mechanism underlying a wide range of chemical and biological phenomena. K + and Cl - show similar ion mobilities in a bulk aqueous solution, whereas they exhibit a remarkable difference when transporting through an angstrom-scale channel. Our molecular dynamics simulations uncover that such discrepancy originates from the subtle differences in their hydration structures and preferable locations across the channel. Opposite charge causes different water dipolar orientations around ions, mediating the distance and tribological interactions between hydrated ions and channel's walls.... 

Using a combination of the pole placement and online empirical mode decomposition (EMD) methods, a new algorithm is proposed for adaptive active control of structural vibration. The EMD method is a time-frequency domain analysis method that can be used for nonstationary and nonlinear problems. Combining the EMD method and Hilbert transform, which is called Hilbert-Huang transform, achieves a method that can be implemented to extract instantaneous properties of signals such as structural response dominant instantaneous frequencies. In the proposed algorithm, these estimated instantaneous properties are utilized to improve the pole-placement method as an adaptive active control technique. The... 

Long-span bridges usually experience different input excitations at their ground supports that emanate from differences in wave arrival times, and soil conditions, as well as loss of coherency in arriving waves. These spatial variations can drastically influence the dynamic response; hence, this phenomenon must be considered in any vibration-based identification method. There are numerous Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) identification techniques that may be applied to data recorded at long-span bridges that experience spatial variations in their input motions. However, inertial soil-structure interaction effects severely reduce the accuracy of these techniques because the actual Foundation... 

In the presence of modeling errors, the mainstream Bayesian methods seldom give a realistic account of uncertainties as they commonly underestimate the inherent variability of parameters. This problem is not due to any misconceptions in the Bayesian framework since it is robust with respect to the modeling assumptions and the observed data. Rather, this issue has deep roots in users’ inability to develop an appropriate class of probabilistic models. This paper bridges this significant gap, introducing a novel Bayesian hierarchical setting, which breaks time-history vibration responses into several segments so as to capture and identify the variability of inferred parameters over the...