Resumo em Inglês:

Recent research works demonstrated that the interaction between the loads and the carrying structure's boundary which is related to the inertia of the load is an influential factor on the dynamic response of the structure. Although effects of the inertia in moving loads were considered in many works, very few papers can be found on the inertial effects of the stationary loads on structures. In this paper, an elastodynamic formulation was employed to investigate the dynamic response of a homogeneous isotropic elastic half-space under an inertial strip foundation subjected to a time-harmonic force. Fourier integral transformation was used to solve the system of Poisson-type partial differential equation considering the boundary conditions and the inertial effects. Steepest descent method was employed to obtain the approximate far-field displacements and stresses. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the methodology and typical results.

Resumo em Inglês:

In the present paper, a variationally consistent exponential shear deformation theory taking into account transverse shear deformation effect is presented for the flexural analysis of thick orthotropic plates. The inplane displacement field uses exponential function in terms of thickness coordinate to include the shear deformation effect. The transverse shear stress can be obtained directly from the constitutive relations satisfying the shear stress free surface conditions on the top and bottom surfaces of the plate, hence the theory does not require shear correction factor. Governing equations and boundary conditions of the theory are obtained using the principle of virtual work. Results obtained for static flexure of simply supported orthotropic plates are compared with those of other refined theories and elasticity solution wherever applicable. The results obtained by present theory are in excellent agreement with those of exact results and other higher order theories. Thus the efficacy of the present refined theory is established.

Resumo em Inglês:

Ant colony optimization (ACO) is a class of heuristic algorithms proposed to solve optimization problems. The idea was inspired by the behavior of real ants, related to their ability to find the shortest path between the nest and the food source. ACO has been applied successfully to different kinds of problems. So, this manuscript describes the development and application of an ACO algorithm to find the optimal stacking sequence of laminated composite plates. The developed ACO algorithm was evaluated on four examples for symmetric and balanced lay-up. The results of the first three cases, in which the classical lamination theory was used to obtain the structural response of rectangular plates, were compared to those obtained from the literature using genetic algorithms (GA) and other ACO algorithm. The fourth example investigates the maximization of fundamental frequencies of rectangular plates with central holes, where the structural response was obtained by finite element analysis, showing that this optimization technique may be successfully applied to a broad class of stacking sequence problems for laminated composites.

Resumo em Inglês:

Steel and composite (steel-concrete) highway bridges are currently subjected to dynamic actions of variable magnitude due to convoy of vehicles crossing on the deck pavement. These dynamic actions can generate the nucleation of fractures or even their propagation on the bridge deck structure. Proper consideration of all of the aspects mentioned pointed our team to develop an analysis methodology with emphasis to evaluate the stresses through a dynamic analysis of highway bridge decks including the action of vehicles. The design codes recommend the application of the curves S-N associated to the Miner's damage rule to evaluate the fatigue and service life of steel and composite (steel-concrete) bridges. In this work, the developed computational model adopted the usual mesh refinement techniques present in finite element method simulations implemented in the ANSYS program. The investigated highway bridge is constituted by four longitudinal composite girders and a concrete deck, spanning 40.0m by 13.5m. The analysis methodology and procedures presented in the design codes were applied to evaluate the fatigue of the bridge determining the service life of the structure. The main conclusions of this investigation focused on alerting structural engineers to the possible distortions, associated to the steel and composite bridge's service life when subjected to vehicle's dynamic actions.

Resumo em Inglês:

A study on the finite element (FE) analysis of laminated composite plates is described in this paper. In order to investigate structural behavior of laminated composite plates, a four-node laminated plate element is newly developed by using a higher order shear deformation theory (HSDT). In particular, assumed natural strains are introduced in the present FE formulation to alleviate the locking phenomenon. Several numerical examples are carried out and its results are then compared with the existing reference solutions. It is found to be that the proposed FE is very effective to remove the locking phenomenon and produces reliable numerical solutions for most laminated composite plate structures.

Resumo em Inglês:

The present work introduces the boundary element method applied to the bending analysis of functionally graded plates. It is assumed that material properties are graded through the thickness direction of the plate according to a power law distribution. The neutral surface position for such plate is determined and the classical plate theory based on the exact neutral surface position is employed to extract the equilibrium equations. A direct approach based on the Green's identity is used to formulate boundary element method. By introducing a novel approach, domain integrals which arise from distributed transverse loads are transformed into boundary integrals. In case studies, three geometrical shapes including, rectangular, circular and elliptic for functionally graded plates with/without hole are considered. Comparative studies are first carried out to evaluate the sufficiency of the proposed method for bending analysis of isotropic and functionally graded plates subjected to the transverse loads. Then, a series parametric study is performed to examine the influences of the power of functionally graded material, boundary conditions and geometrical parameters on the deformation and stress of functionally graded plates.

Resumo em Inglês:

Relative humidity of environment affects creep and shrinkage behaviour of a concrete member of composite tall buildings. These buildings are more prone to redistribution of forces as adjacent steel columns and RCC shear walls have quite different characteristics. In this paper, study is carried out to evaluate the effect of relative humidity of environment for a composite building using analytical prediction model, CEB-FIP updated 1999 as the facility of short term testing may not be always available and thus, prediction of creep and shrinkage of concrete at any time by extrapolation is not possible. An accurate procedure, Consistent Procedure, CP available in literature is modified by incorporating analytical prediction model CEB-FIP updated 1999. It has been shown that differential deflections in a composite frame shear wall system are significantly affected by relative humidity. It has been further reported that although, the steel columns have only elastic deformation for the chosen composite frame systems, there is significant increase in design forces when relative humidity decreases.

Resumo em Inglês:

This paper reports an investigation of a new kind of material and its acoustical performance. The main component of this porous absorber is the ground tyre rubber (GTR) with different particle sizes, from the shredding of tyres of heavy vehicles, mixed with different proportion of polyurethane resin. Acoustical properties were assessed according to ISO 10534 - 2: 1998. The data obtained show porous absorbers having a high sound absorption performance with low thicknesses and compared to some of the current models for the prediction of their absorptive properties. The use of this model constitutes a good tool in order to design a new sound absorber to solve two environmental problems, noise and environmental pollution.

Resumo em Inglês:

Light weight and long span composite floors are common place in modern construction. A critical consequence of this application is undesired vibration which may cause excessive discomfort to occupants. This work investigates the composite floor vibration behavior of an existing building based on a comprehensive study of high modal dynamic responses, the range of which has been absent in previous studies and major analytical templates, of different panels under the influence of loads induced by human motion. The resulting fundamental natural frequency and vibration modes are first validated with respect to experimental and numerical evidences from literature. Departing from close correlation established in comparison, this study explores in detail the effects of intensity of passive live load as additional stationary mass due to crowd jumping as well as considering human structure interaction. From observation, a new approach in the simulation of passive live load through the consideration of human structure interaction and human body characteristics is proposed. It is concluded that higher vibration modes are essential to determine the minimum required modes and mass participation ratio in the case of vertical vibration. The results indicate the need to consider 30 modes of vibration to obtain all possible important excitations and thereby making third harmonic of load frequency available to excite the critical modes. In addition, presence of different intensities of passive live load on the composite floor showed completely different behavior in each particular panel associated with load location of panel and passive live load intensity. Furthermore, implementing human body characteristics in simulation causes an obvious increase in modal damping and hence better practicality and economical presentation can be achieved in structural dynamic behavior.

Resumo em Inglês:

The dynamic response of cylindrical sandwich shells with aluminum foam cores subjected to air blast loading was investigated numerically in this paper. According to KNR theory, the nonlinear compressibility of the air and finite shock conditions were taken into account in the finite element model. Numerical simulation results show that the compression strain, which plays a key role on energy absorption, increases approximately linearly with normalized impulse, and reduces with increasing relative density or the ratio of face-sheet thickness and core thickness. An increase of the impulse will delay the equalization of top and bottom face-sheet velocities of sandwich shell, but there is a maximum value in the studied bound. A limited study of weight optimization was carried out for sandwich shells with respect to the respective geometric parameters, including face-sheet thickness, core thickness and core relative density. These numerical results are of worth to theoretical prediction and engineering application of cellular metal sandwich structures.