• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.209-225
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• 2015

Compared to ambient vibration testing, impact testing has the merit to extract not only structural modal parameters but also structural flexibility. Therefore, structural deflections under any static load can be predicted from the identified results of the impact test data. In this article, a signal processing procedure for structural flexibility identification is first presented. Especially, practical issues in applying the proposed procedure for structural flexibility identification are investigated, which include sensitivity analyses of three pre-defined parameters required in the data pre-processing stage to investigate how they affect the accuracy of the identified structural flexibility. Finally, multiple-reference impact test data of a three-span reinforced concrete T-beam bridge are simulated by the FE analysis, and they are used as a benchmark structure to investigate the practical issues in the proposed signal processing procedure for structural flexibility identification.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.231-244
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• 2013

An efficient method is proposed here to identify multiple damage cases in structural systems using the concepts of flexibility matrix and strain energy of a structure. The flexibility matrix of the structure is accurately estimated from the first few mode shapes and natural frequencies. Then, the change of strain energy of a structural element, due to damage, evaluated by the columnar coefficients of the flexibility matrix is used to construct a damage indicator. This new indicator is named here as flexibility strain energy based index (FSEBI). In order to assess the performance of the proposed method for structural damage detection, two benchmark structures having a number of damage scenarios are considered. Numerical results demonstrate that the method can accurately locate the structural damage induced. It is also revealed that the magnitudes of the FSEBI depend on the damage severity.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.71 no.4
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• pp.391-405
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• 2019

Compared to the ambient vibration test mainly identifying the structural modal parameters, such as frequency, damping and mode shapes, the impact testing, which benefits from measuring both impacting forces and structural responses, has the merit to identify not only the structural modal parameters but also more detailed structural parameters, in particular flexibility. However, in traditional impact tests, an impacting hammer or artificial excitation device is employed, which restricts the efficiency of tests on various bridge structures. To resolve this problem, we propose a new method whereby a moving vehicle is taken as a continuous exciter and develop a corresponding flexibility identification theory, in which the continuous wheel forces induced by the moving vehicle is considered as structural input and the acceleration response of the bridge as the output, thus a structural flexibility matrix can be identified and then structural deflections of the bridge under arbitrary static loads can be predicted. The proposed method is more convenient, time-saving and cost-effective compared with traditional impact tests. However, because the proposed test produces a spatially continuous force while classical impact forces are spatially discrete, a new flexibility identification theory is required, and a novel structural identification method involving with equivalent load distribution, the enhanced Frequency Response Function (eFRFs) construction and modal scaling factor identification is proposed to make use of the continuous excitation force to identify the basic modal parameters as well as the structural flexibility. Laboratory and numerical examples are given, which validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Furthermore, parametric analysis including road roughness, vehicle speed, vehicle weight, vehicle's stiffness and damping are conducted and the results obtained demonstrate that the developed method has strong robustness except that the relative error increases with the increase of measurement noise.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.1215-1237
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• 2015

The majority of connections in moment resisting frames are considered as being fully-rigid. Consequently, the real behavior of the connection, which has some level of flexibility, is ignored. This may result in inaccurate predictions of structural response. This study investigates the influence of flexibility of the extended end-plate connections in the steel moment frames. This is done at two levels. First, the actual micro-behavior of extended end-plate moment connections is explored with respect to joint flexibility. Then, the macro-behavior of frames with end-plate moment connections is investigated using modal, nonlinear static pushover and incremental dynamic analyses. In all models, the P-Delta effects along with material and geometrical nonlinearities were included in the analyses. Results revealed considerable differences between the behavior of the structural frame with connections modeled as fully-rigid versus those when flexibility was incorporated, specifically difference occurred in the natural periods, strength, and maximum inter-story drift angle.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.138-146
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• 1996

The presence of a damage, such as a crack, in a structure increases the flexibility and damping in the structure. Most of methods to detect damage or damage location uses stiffness matrix of the structural system. The modification of stiffness matrix, however, has complicated procedures to identify structural. system in the basis of finite element model and has too many degree of freedom to calculate. Identification of changes of flexibility of structure can offer damage information immediately and simple procedure can employ real time continuous monitoring system. To identify changes of the flexibility, vibration mode shapes and natural frequencies are usually used. In this paper, a procedure for damage location in continuous girder bridges using vibration data is described. The effectiveness and sensitivity of the presented method to measurement errors in mode shapes and natural frequencies are investigated using analytical results from finite element models. It is shown that the errors in the first mode shape and first natural frequency demonstrate much larger influence than those in the higher mode shapes and modal frequencies.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.4
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• pp.445-454
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• 2020

Structural damage identification (SDI) is a crucial step in structural health monitoring. However, some of the existing SDI methods cannot provide enough identification accuracy and efficiency in practice. A novel whale optimization algorithm (WOA) based method is proposed for SDI by weighting modal data and flexibility assurance criterion in this study. At first, the SDI problem is mathematically converted into a constrained optimization problem. Unlike traditional objective function defined using frequencies and mode shapes, a new objective function on the SDI problem is formulated by weighting both modal data and flexibility assurance criterion. Then, the WOA method, due to its good performance of fast convergence and global searching ability, is adopted to provide an accurate solution to the SDI problem, different predator mechanisms are formulated and their probability thresholds are selected. Finally, the performance of the proposed method is assessed by numerical simulations on a simply-supported beam and a 31-bar truss structures. For the given multiple structural damage conditions under environmental noises, the WOA-based SDI method can effectively locate structural damages and accurately estimate severities of damages. Compared with other optimization methods, such as particle swarm optimization and dragonfly algorithm, the proposed WOA-based method outperforms in accuracy and efficiency, which can provide a more effective and potential tool for the SDI problem.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.85-100
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• 2020

Recently, 3D printing technology, which is suitable for small-volume production of many varieties, has become considered a key manufacturing technology in the 4th industrial revolution. However, the nature of 3D printing technology means it is not yet able to be applied to traditional textiles due to Fabric Flexibility. The aim of this study is to investigate Textile Structural Design by finding the optimal yarn thickness for Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D printed structures on geogrid dobby woven fabric that gives the optimal flexibility and tensile strength in the final product. The test results for tensile load strength of the 3D printed test samples, using 1.0mm, 0.8mm, 0.6mm and 0.4mm yarn thicknesses, showed that all were found to be above 250N, this higher than the tensile strength of 180N that is recommended for textile products. Based on these results, the four dobby structural patterns with 3D printing produced had four yarn thicknesses: 1.0mm, 0.8mm, 0.6mm, and 0.4mm. The thinner the yarn, the more flexible the fabric; as such the optimal conditions to produce SLS-based 3D printed textiles with suitable strength and flexibility used a thickness of yarn in the range of 0.4mm to 0.6mm.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.169-188
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• 2015

There are two types of nonlinear analysis methods for building frameworks depending on the method of modeling the plastification of members including lumped plasticity and distributed plasticity. The lumped plasticity method assumes that plasticity is concentrated at a zero-length plastic hinge section at the ends of the elements. The distributed plasticity method discretizes the structural members into many line segments, and further subdivides the cross-section of each segment into a number of finite elements. When a reinforced concrete member experiences inelastic deformations, cracks tend to spread form the joint interface resulting in a curvature distribution. The program IDARC includes a spread plasticity formulation to capture the variation of the section flexibility, and combine them to determine the element stiffness matrix. In this formulation, the flexibility distribution in the structural elements is assumed to be the linear. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of linear flexibility distribution assumed in the spread inelasticity model. For this purpose, nonlinear analysis of two reinforced concrete frames is carried out and the linear flexibility models used in the elements are compared with the real ones. It is shown that the linear flexibility distribution is incorrect assumption in cases of significant gravity load effects and can be lead to incorrect nonlinear responses in some situations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.643-667
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• 2010

The classical flexibility difference method detects damage by observing the difference of conventional deflection flexibility matrices between pre- and post-damaged states of a structure. This method is not able to identify multiple damage scenarios, and its criteria to identify damage depend upon the boundary conditions of structures. The key point behind the inability and dependence is revealed in this study. A more feasible flexibility for damage detection, the Angle-between-String-and-Horizon (ASH) flexibility, is proposed. The physical meaning of the new flexibility is given, and synthesis of the new flexibility matrix by modal frequencies and translational mode shapes is formulated. The damage indicators are extracted from the difference of ASH flexibility matrices between the pre- and post-damaged structures. One feature of the ASH flexibility is that the components in the ASH flexibility matrix are associated with elements instead of Nodes or DOFs. Therefore, the damage indicators based on the ASH flexibility are mapped to structural elements directly, and thus they can pinpoint the damaged elements, which is appealing to damage detection for complex structures. In addition, the change in the ASH flexibility caused by damage is not affected by boundary conditions, which simplifies the criteria to identify damage. Moreover, the proposed method can determine relatively the damage severity. Because the proposed damage indicator of an element mainly reflects the deflection change within the element itself, which significantly reduces the influence of the damage in one element on the damage indicators of other damaged elements, the proposed method can identify multiple damage locations. The viability of the proposed approach has been demonstrated by numerical examples and experimental tests on a cantilever beam and a simply supported beam.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.53-59
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• 2013

Chip mounter which is used to pick chips from the pre-specified position and place them on the target location of PCB is an essential device in semiconductor and LCD industries. Quick and high precision positioning is the key technology needed to increase productivity of chip mounters. As increasing acceleration and deceleration of placing motion, structural vibration induced from inertial reactive force and flexibility of mounter structure becomes a serious problem degrading positioning accuracy. Motivated from these, this paper proposed a new control design algorithm which combines a mounter structure acceleration feedforward compensation and an extended sliding mode control for fine positioning and suppression of structural vibration, simultaneously. The feasibility of the proposed control design was verified along with some simulation results.