• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2017

The base force element method (BFEM) is a new finite element method. In this paper, a degenerated 4-mid-node plane element from concave polygonal element of BFEM was proposed. The performance of this quadrilateral element with 4 mid-edge nodes in the BFEM on complementary energy principle is studied. Four examples of linear elastic analysis for plane frame structure are presented. The influence of aspect ratio of the element is analyzed. The feasibility of the 4 mid-edge node element model of BFEM on complementary energy principles researched for plane frame problems. The results using the BFEM are compared with corresponding analytical solutions and those obtained from the standard displacement finite element method. It is revealed that the BFEM has better performance compared to the displacement model in the case of large aspect ratio.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.105-122
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• 2001

A new three-dimensional 13-node hexahedral element with rotational degrees of freedom, which is designated as MR-H13 element, is presented. The proposed element is established by adding five nodes to one of the six faces of basic 8-node hexahedral element. The new element can be effectively used in the connection between the refined mesh and the coarser mesh. The derivation of the current element in this paper is based on the variational principles in which the rotation and skew-symmetric stress are introduced as independent variables. Numerical examples show that the performance of the new element is satisfactory.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.207-231
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• 1999

A versatile 4-node shell element which is useful for the analysis of arbitrary shell structures is presented. The element is developed by flat shell approach, i.e., by combining a membrane element with a Mindlin plate element. The proposed element has six degrees of freedom per node and permits an easy connection to other types of finite elements. In the plate bending part, an improved Mindlin plate has been established by the combined use of the addition of non-conforming displacement modes (N) and the substitute shear strain fields (S). In the membrane part, the nonconforming displacement modes are also added to the displacement fields to improve the behavior of membrane element with drilling degrees of freedom and the modified numerical integration (M) is used to overcome the membrane locking problem. Thus the element is designated as NMS-4F. The rigid link correction technique is adopted to consider the effect of out-of-plane warping. The shell element proposed herein passes the patch tests, does not show any spurious mechanism and does not produce shear and membrane locking phenomena. It is shown that the element produces reliable solutions even for the distorted meshes through the analysis of benchmark problems.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.415-424
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• 1996

This paper presents a newly suggested calculation method in which an arbitrary quadrilateral element with curved sides is transformed to a normal rectangular one by mapping of coordinates, then the two-dimensional spline is adopted to approach the displacement function of this element. Finally the solution can be obtained by the least-energy principle. Thereby, the application field of Spline Finite Element Method will be extended.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.695-713
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• 2008

The aim of this contribution is to present a new link/beam finite element suitable for electrothermo-structural analysis of uni-axially graded materials. Continuous polynomial variation of geometry and material properties will be considered. The element matrix and relations for solution of Joule's heat (and its distribution to the element nodes) have been established in the sense of a sequence method of a coupled problem solution. The expression for the solution of nodal forces caused by a continuously distributed temperature field has also been derived. The theoretical part of this contribution is completed by numerical validation, which proves the high accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed element. The results of the performed experiments are compared with those obtained using the more expensive multiphysical link element and solid element of the FEM program Ansys. The proposed finite element could be used not only in the multiphysical analysis of the current paths and actuators but also in analysis of other 1D construction parts made of composite or uni-axially graded materials.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.223-239
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• 2023

Geometric nonlinear performance simulation and analysis of complex modern buildings and industrial products require high-performance shell elements. Balancing multiple aspects of performance in the one geometric nonlinear analysis element remains challenging. We present a new shell element, flat shell DKMGQ-CR (Co-rotational Discrete Kirchhoff-Mindlin Generalized Conforming Quadrilateral), for linear and geometric nonlinear analysis of both thick and thin shells. The DKMGQ-CR shell element was developed by combining the advantages of high-performance membrane and plate elements in a unified coordinate system and introducing the co-rotational formulation to adapt to large deformation analysis. The effectiveness of linear and geometric nonlinear analysis by DKMGQ-CR is verified through the tests of several classical numerical benchmarks. The computational results show that the proposed new element adapts to mesh distortion and effectively alleviates shear and membrane locking problems in linear and geometric nonlinear analysis. Furthermore, the DKMGQ-CR demonstrates high performance in analyzing thick and thin shells. The proposed element DKMGQ-CR is expected to provide an accurate, efficient, and convenient tool for the geometric nonlinear analysis of shells.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.325-340
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• 2001

This paper addresses an efficient modification method that eliminates the undesirable effects of strains due to various non-conforming modes so that the non-conforming element can pass the patch test unconditionally. The scheme is incorporated in the element formulation to establish new types of non-conforming hexahedral elements designated as NHx and NVHx for the regular element and variable node element, respectively. Non-conforming displacement modes are selectively added to the ordinary (conforming) element displacement assumptions to improve the bending behavior of the distorted solid element. To verify the validation of proposed direct modification method and the improvement of element behavior, several numerical tests are carried out. Test results show that the proposed method is effective and its applications to non-conforming solid elements guarantee for the element to pass the patch test.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.889-901
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• 2021

The tension of cables and motion response significantly affect safety of an immersed tunnel element in the immersion process. To investigate those, a hydrodynamic scale-model test was carried out and the model experiments was conducted under wind, current and wave loads simultaneously. The immersion standby (the process that the position of the immersed tunnel element should be located before the immersion process) and immersion process conditions have been conducted and illustrated. At the immersion standby conditions, the maximum force of the cables and motion is much larger at the side of incoming wind, wave and current, the maximum force of Element-6 (6 cables directly tie on the element) is larger than for Pontoon-8 (8 cables tie on pontoon of the element), and the flexible connection can reduce the maximum force of the mooring cables and motion of element (i.e. sway is expecting to decrease approximate 40%). The maximum force of the mooring cables increases with the increase of current speed, wave height, and water depth. The motion of immersed tunnel element increases with increase of wave height and water depth, and the current speed had little effect on it. At the immersion process condition, the maximum force of the cables decrease with the increase of immersion depth, and dramatically increase with the increase of wave height (i.e. the tension of cable F4 of pontoons at wave height of 1.5 m (83.3t) is approximately four times that at wave height of 0.8 m). The current speed has no much effect on the maximum force of the cables. The weight has little effect on the maximum force of the mooring cables, and the maximum force of hoisting cables increase with the increase of weight. The maximum value of six-freedom motion amplitude of the immersed tunnel element decreases with the increase of immersion depth, increase with the increase of current speed and wave height (i.e. the roll motion at wave height of 1.5 m is two times that at wave height of 0.8 m). The weight has little effect on the maximum motion amplitude of the immersed tunnel element. The results are significant for the immersion safety of element in engineering practical construction process.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.100-108
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• 2019

In this paper, a new stacked element pressure sensor has proposed for heartbeat and respiration measurement. This device can be directly attached to an individual's chest; heartbeat and respiration are detected by the pulsatile vibration and deformation of the chest. A key feature of the device is the simultaneous measurement of heart rate and respiration. The structure of the sensor consists of two stacked elements, in which one element includes one polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) thin film bonded on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. In addition, for the measurement and signal processing, the electric circuit and the filter are simply constructed with an OP-amp, resistance, and a capacitor. One element (element1, PDMS) maximizes the respiration signal; the other (element2, PVDF) is used to measure heartbeat. Element1 and element2 had sensitivity of 0.163V/N and 0.209V/N, respectively, and element2 showed improved characteristics compared with element1 in response to force. Thus, element1 and element2 were optimized for measuring respiration heart rate, respectively. Through mechanical and vivo human tests, this sensor shows the great potential to optimize the signals of heartbeat and respiration compared with commercial devices. Moreover, the proposed sensor is flexible, light weight, and low cost. All of these characteristics illustrate an effective piezoelectric pressure sensor for heartbeat and respiration measurements.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.3
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• pp.353-361
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• 2022

Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics (LEFM) has been developed by applying stress analysis to determine the stress intensity factor (SIF, K). The finite element method (FEM) is widely used as a standard tool for evaluating the SIF for various crack configurations. The prediction accuracy can be achieved by applying an adaptive Delaunay triangulation combined with a FEM. The solution can be solved using either direct or iterative solvers. This work adopts the element-by-element preconditioned conjugate gradient (EBE-PCG) iterative solver into an adaptive FEM to solve the solution to heal problem size constraints that exist when direct solution techniques are applied. It can avoid the formation of a global stiffness matrix of a finite element model. Several numerical experiments reveal that the present method is simple, fast, and efficient compared to conventional sparse direct solvers. The optimum convergence criterion for two-dimensional LEFM analysis is studied. In this paper, four sample problems of a two-edge cracked plate, a center cracked plate, a single-edge cracked plate, and a compact tension specimen is used to evaluate the accuracy of the prediction of the SIF values. Finally, the efficiency of the present iterative solver is summarized by comparing the computational time for all cases.