BUCKLING ASSESSMENT OF IMPERFECT CYLINDRICAL SHELLS UNDER AXIAL LOADS USING A GEP TECHNIQUE

Determination of buckling behavior of shell structures has long been identified as a challenging task. This is largely because the buckling behavior is masked by local large deformations, which occur once the critical load is reached. This research proposes a novel technique to accurately predict the buckling load of imperfect cylindrical shells using gene expression programming (GEP), which is an evolutionary artificial intelligence method. An existing experimental data bank was employed for training and testing the program, and the obtained buckling load of shell structures were accordingly verified. From the results, it is concluded that GEP is a promising and reliable method to determine the buckling load of shell structures subjected to axial compression

Multi-Story Buildings Equipped with Innovative Structural Seismic Shear Fuse Systems

Infrastructures could be designed and constructed to resist seismic lateral loads without experiencing a significant amount of damage concentrations in specific area. Having sufficient strength and stiffness to reduce the structural vulnerabilities against serious damages under seismic loading, requires structural elements to have adequate ductility and energy dissipating capability, which could be provided with the use structural dampers. These elements are typically replaceable, and designed to yield and protect the surrounding members from damages, and then be accessible after a major event. In this study, butterfly-shaped links with linearly varying width between larger ends and a smaller middle section are used for redesigning the prototype structures due to substantial ductility and stable energy dissipation capability. The effect of implementation of innovative seismic dampers in multi-story structures is investigated by analyzing multi-story prototype structures with structural seismic shear dampers, and subsequently compared with simple conventional linking beams. The results of the nonlinear response history analysis are summarized for 44 ground motions under maximum considered earthquake (MCE) and designed based earthquake (DBE) hazard levels. It is shown that implementation of the butterfly-shaped dampers in buildings with similar stiffness and strength leads to higher dissipated energy and less pinched curves compared to typical eccentrically braced frame systems. It is determined that the general stiffness and strength of the system with the butterfly-shaped link is close to conventional models; however, the demands on the surrounding boundary elements are lower than the corresponding conventional model, which could be beneficent for improving the seismic performance of the structural systems

Optimization of the Curved Metal Damper to Improve Structural Energy Dissipation Capacity

Structural curved metal dampers are implemented in various applications to mitigate the damages at a specific area efficiently. A stable and saturated hysteretic behavior for the in-plane direction is dependent on the shape of a curved-shaped damper. However, it has been experimentally shown that the hysteretic behavior in the conventional curved-shaped damper is unstable, mainly as a result of bi-directional deformations. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct shape optimization for curved dampers to enhance their hysteretic behavior and energy dissipation capability. In this study, the finite element (FE) model built in ABAQUS, is utilized to obtain optimal shape for the curved-shaped damper. The effectiveness of the model is checked by comparisons of the FE model and experimental results. The parameters for the optimization include the curved length and shape of the damper, and the improved approach is conducted by investigating the curved sections. In addition, the design parameters are represented by B-spline curves (to ensure enhanced system performance), regression analysis is implemented to derive optimization formulations considering energy dissipation, constitutive material model, and cumulative plastic strain. Results determine that the energy dissipation capacity of the curved steel damper could be improved by 32% using shape optimization techniques compared to the conventional dampers. Ultimately, the study proposes simple optimal shapes for further implementations in practical design

Innovative Structural Fuse Systems for Various Prototype Applications

To resist the imposed lateral forces on the structures, hysteric dampers are developed from steel plates and strategically implemented within various structural applications. Structural shear dampers have recently been used to alleviate damage, while remaining members remain intact and undamaged. The practical use of the innovative dampers in structural applications is investigated in this study. For this purpose, the design methodology for a set of innovative shear dampers is initially elaborated, for which the dampers are designed considering the governing shear and flexural ductile limit states, while the brittle buckling limit state is prevented. Subsequently, the finite element modeling methodology is verified and compared to laboratory tests for computationally analyzing various shapes of the shear damper in structural applications. Three major general prototype structures are established, and shear dampers are designed to be incorporated in prototype applications. For each of the proposed applications, at least six different shapes of shear dampers are designed and subsequently compared with conventional systems. The results determined that the use of innovative shear dampers could effectively reduce demand forces on the boundary elements by more than 40% on average, while the strength and the stiffness alter within margin of difference less than 5%

Effects of Infill Plate’s Interconnection and Boundary Element Stiffness on Steel Plate Shear Walls’ Seismic Performance

Steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) are among the most desirable load-bearing systems, which have been used wildly in various structures. Recently, designers have tended to SPSWs with only beam connections showing several problems. In the present research, several SPSWs with various types of connection conditions between infill plate and boundary elements, and various stiffness of boundary elements have been studied. The result illustrates that by having the full connection between infill plate and boundary elements, at least a 33% interconnected infill plate to columns could eliminate the significant loss of fundamental factors in SPSWs connected to beam only. Furthermore, increasing the stiffness of columns has more effect on the performance of SPSWs in comparison with beams

Incremental Dynamic Analysis for Estimating Seismic Performance of Multi-Story Buildings with Butterfly-Shaped Structural Dampers

Structural strength and stiffness were previously investigated to sufficiently improve the lateral load resistance against major events. Many buildings require appropriate design to effectively withstand the lateral seismic loads and reduce the corresponding damages. Design methodologies and structural elements were recently introduced to improve the energy dissipation capability and limit the high force demands under seismic loadings. The new systems are designed to protect the structural integrity and concentrate the inelasticity in a specific area, while the remaining parts are kept undamaged and intact. This study introduces a new structural system with dampers having strategic cutouts, leaving butterfly-shaped shear dampers for dominating the yielding mechanism over other brittle limit states. The new system is designed for re-establishing the conventional eccentrically braced frame system with simple linking beams. The system with strategic cutouts is subsequently used and compared with the eccentrically braced frames (EBF) system for seismic performance investigation and incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), using the OpenSees program, which is used to indicate the collapse behavior under forty-four selected ground motions. Results show that the butterfly-shaped multi-story buildings, compared to the corresponding conventional systems, are capable of enhancing the system resistance against lateral seismic loads by postponing the collapse state to the larger drift ratio values

Improved Homotopy Perturbation Method for Geometrically Nonlinear Analysis of Space Trusses

The objective of this study is to explore a noble application of the improved homotopy perturbation procedure bases in structural engineering by applying it to the geometrically nonlinear analysis of the space trusses. The improved perturbation algorithm is proposed to refine the classical methods in numerical computing techniques such as the Newton–Raphson method. A linear of sub-problems is generated by transferring the nonlinear problem with perturbation quantities and then approximated by summation of the solutions related to several sub-problems. In this study, a nonlinear load control procedure is generated and implemented for structures. Several numerical examples of known trusses are given to show the applicability of the proposed perturbation procedure without considering the passing limit points. The results reveal that perturbation modeling methodology for investigating the structural performance of various applications has high accuracy and low computational cost of convergence analysis, compared with the Newton–Raphson method

Evaluation of Seismic Vulnerability of Hospitals in the Tehran Metropolitan Area

The Tehran metropolitan area is extremely vulnerable to earthquakes due to the location of its active faults and its dense population. Assessing the probable damage of a high magnitude earthquake on buildings and facilities relies on a precise structural survey, which has an empirical basis depending on historic ground motions. The probability of damage and failure in discrete limits based on different ground motions is estimated by fragility curves. Using the most matching fragility curves for buildings in Tehran, the vulnerability of the hospitals in the capital, as one of the most critical structures in crisis management of disasters, was investigated in this study. Subsequently, the existing fragility curves, developed for Tehran and the other seismic prone countries such as Japan and the United States, were compared considering the typology of Tehran’s hospitals. Finally, the possible damages for each hospital were calculated based on the most conservative fragility curve and the most pessimistic scenario, which were used to evaluate the seismic vulnerability of hospitals and health care systems for different damage states. After zoning the damage of therapeutic areas of Tehran, it was observed that at least 2% to 10% damage occurred in all hospitals of Tehran, and none of the healthcare centers would remain structurally undamaged after a strong earthquake with the moment magnitude of 7 or more. In addition, the healthcare buildings could be prone to significant structural damage, especially in southern parts, which necessitates proactive management plans for Tehran metropolitan area