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Applied Sciences
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Advances in Engineering Structural Systems
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Advances in Engineering Structural Systems

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Civil Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2023) | Viewed by 8566

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Mingfeng Huang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of Structural Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Interests: wind engineering; structural dynamics; computational fluid dynamics; structural optimization; structural reliability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Haiwei Xu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Interests: wind engineering; CFD simulation; vibration suppression
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Modern engineering structural systems tend to exceed all normal standards of size, complexity and technology. These large-scale complex or unique structures are inherently vulnerable to extreme climatic hazards which are exacerbated by climate change. New performance-based design methodologies against multi-hazards, innovative inspection and monitoring technologies enhanced by AI have been emerged and applied through the development of these projects across their life-cycle processes, e.g., design, construction and operation, to ensure their high reliability and resilience under extreme environmental conditions. This special collection aims to highlight the development of performance-based analysis and design methodologies and to understand the mechanics and dynamics of existing and new engineering structural systems under extreme natural hazards. This call is an invitation to broader structural engineering communities to contribute with their innovative and latest research findings related to this topic. Theoretical, computational and experimental studies are welcome, as well as comprehensive review and survey papers.

Prof. Dr. Mingfeng Huang
Dr. Haiwei Xu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • performance-based design
  • multi-hazard resistant design
  • structural mechanics and dynamics
  • extreme environment
  • structural reliability and resilience
  • AI aided inspection and construction

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

24 pages, 31723 KiB  
Article
An Automated Design Method for Plane Trusses Based on User Preference Information
by Xianzhong Zhao, Tao Zhang and Weifang Xiao
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(3), 1543; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app13031543 - 25 Jan 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1218
Abstract
Structural design is a complicated decision-making process involving multiple qualitative and quantitative factors. Currently, most automated design methods consider only quantitative objectives and constraints, ignoring the qualitative design information that is difficult define mathematically, such as the user preference for structural shapes. This [...] Read more.
Structural design is a complicated decision-making process involving multiple qualitative and quantitative factors. Currently, most automated design methods consider only quantitative objectives and constraints, ignoring the qualitative design information that is difficult define mathematically, such as the user preference for structural shapes. This limits the functionality and efficiency of such design methods. In this study, a design method named STSA-P is proposed for plane trusses to incorporate user preference into the automatic design process. Two main problems are addressed, i.e., how to quantify user preference information and how to coordinate it with other quantitative design objectives. A prediction model of user preference is developed for the first problem by generating the data set and selecting an appropriate machine learning (ML) algorithm. Specifically, a set of truss features quantitatively representing the structural shapes are identified for the truss sample population. Furthermore, an interactive system is developed for collecting user evaluation information as data labels. Strategies for reducing user fatigue are also considered during the evaluation process. A set of numerical experiments are conducted to select the suitable ML algorithm. Regarding the second problem, the physical programming method is modified to construct a new aggregate function which effectively coordinates user preference with other design objectives. A cost function is designed by considering the design constraints. On this basis, the prediction model is incorporated into the Structural Topology and Shape Annealing (STSA) method to form the STSA-P method. Two students are invited to perform a design case using the STSA-P method. It is demonstrated that the results verify the practicality and validity of the proposed method. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Engineering Structural Systems)
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28 pages, 18358 KiB  
Article
Seismic Effect of Marine Corrosion and CFRP Reinforcement on Wind Turbine Tower
by Daoyong Wang, Bo Song, Shuo Diao, Chao Wang and Chenhu Lu
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(19), 10136; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app121910136 - 09 Oct 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1453
Abstract
The offshore wind turbine tower, which has been in the marine corrosive environment for a long time, often buckles and collapses under the earthquake records. In order to study the influence of marine corrosion and CFRP reinforcement on the seismic performance of wind [...] Read more.
The offshore wind turbine tower, which has been in the marine corrosive environment for a long time, often buckles and collapses under the earthquake records. In order to study the influence of marine corrosion and CFRP reinforcement on the seismic performance of wind turbine tower structures, the horizontal displacement, horizontal acceleration and acceleration change rate of wind turbine towers are studied through numerical simulation and shaking table tests. The results show that the influence of earthquake type on the dynamic response of the wind turbine tower is different. The response values of acceleration and displacement under far-field earthquakes are larger than those of other earthquake types. The increase in PGA has a greater impact on the structural response range in the near-field earthquake. Corrosion defects not only increase the sensitivity of the wind turbine tower structure to seismic response but also have different effects on the location and development of structural plastic hinges. For the structure without corrosion defects, the plastic hinge appears at the connection between the tower and the foundation, while in the corrosion structure, the plastic hinge appears in the corrosion area. Corrosion defects increase the nonlinear development of structures, especially under far-field earthquakes. CFRP reinforcement can effectively reduce the displacement effect of the top of the structure and enhance the seismic performance of the corroded wind turbine tower. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Engineering Structural Systems)
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18 pages, 2179 KiB  
Article
Probabilistic Joint Importance-Based Retrofit Strategy for Seismic Risk Mitigation of Transportation Networks
by Kezhi Liu, Changhai Zhai and Xianghai Meng
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(18), 9307; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12189307 - 16 Sep 2022
Viewed by 1265
Abstract
Seismic mitigation of transportation systems has become a worldwide challenge, because identifying an optimal retrofit strategy entails significant computational efforts, especially for large-scale networks with numerous candidate strategies and time-consuming risk assessment processes. An efficient joint importance-based methodology is proposed in this paper [...] Read more.
Seismic mitigation of transportation systems has become a worldwide challenge, because identifying an optimal retrofit strategy entails significant computational efforts, especially for large-scale networks with numerous candidate strategies and time-consuming risk assessment processes. An efficient joint importance-based methodology is proposed in this paper to address the challenge. The proposed method selects the component set (e.g., bridges) that is most decisive to the network seismic risk based on only one set of stochastic samples but takes into account the uncertainty of multiple damage states and the interactive effect between different components. The reliability and stability of the proposed method are verified on a hypothetical transportation network under different conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Engineering Structural Systems)
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20 pages, 5560 KiB  
Article
A Reinforcement Learning Method for Layout Design of Planar and Spatial Trusses using Kernel Regression
by Ruifeng Luo, Yifan Wang, Zhiyuan Liu, Weifang Xiao and Xianzhong Zhao
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(16), 8227; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12168227 - 17 Aug 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1601
Abstract
Truss layout design aims to find the optimal layout, considering node locations, connection topology between nodes, and cross-sectional areas of connecting bars. The design process of trusses can be represented as a reinforcement learning problem by formulating the optimization task into a Markov [...] Read more.
Truss layout design aims to find the optimal layout, considering node locations, connection topology between nodes, and cross-sectional areas of connecting bars. The design process of trusses can be represented as a reinforcement learning problem by formulating the optimization task into a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The optimization variables such as node positions need to be transformed into discrete actions in this MDP; however, the common method is to uniformly discretize the design domain by generating a set of candidate actions, which brings dimension explosion problems in spatial truss design. In this paper, a reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed to deal with continuous action spaces in truss layout design problems by using kernel regression. It is a nonparametric regression way to sample the continuous action space and generalize the information about action value between sampled actions and unexplored parts of the action space. As the number of searches increases, the algorithm can gradually increase the candidate action set by appending actions of high confidence value from the continuous action space. The value correlation between actions is mapped by the Gaussian function and Euclidean distance. In this sampling strategy, a modified Confidence Upper Bound formula is proposed to evaluate the heuristics of sampled actions, including both 2D and 3D cases. The proposed algorithm was tested in various layout design problems of planar and spatial trusses. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm has a good performance in finding the truss layout with minimum weight. This implies the validity and efficiency of the established algorithm. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Engineering Structural Systems)
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19 pages, 6160 KiB  
Article
Typhoon-Induced Fragility Analysis of Transmission Tower in Ningbo Area Considering the Effect of Long-Term Corrosion
by Qiang Li, Hongtao Jia, Qing Qiu, Yongzhu Lu, Jun Zhang, Jianghong Mao, Weijie Fan and Mingfeng Huang
Appl. Sci. 2022, 12(9), 4774; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app12094774 - 09 May 2022
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 1901
Abstract
The purpose of this paper was to investigate the influence of long-term corrosion on the deterioration of wind resistance of a steel transmission tower during its service life. An analytical model for predicting the long-term corrosion depth of carbon steel was established, and [...] Read more.
The purpose of this paper was to investigate the influence of long-term corrosion on the deterioration of wind resistance of a steel transmission tower during its service life. An analytical model for predicting the long-term corrosion depth of carbon steel was established, and the corrosion depth of carbon steel in the Ningbo area was predicted based on the local atmospheric environment data. With the help of typhoon full-track simulation and wind field simulation technology, a joint probability distribution model of multidirectional extreme wind speeds was constructed using the t-Copula function to determine the typhoon climate of the transmission tower site. Finite element models of the ZM4 cathead transmission tower under 30/60/90 corrosion years were then established, respectively, according to the predicted corrosion depth of carbon steel in Ningbo. Three damage modes, i.e., minor damage, moderate damage and severe damage, corresponding to the transmission tower under wind loads, were defined, and pushover analyses were used to determine the limit values of each damage mode so as to obtain the typhoon-induced fragility curves of the transmission tower within 30/60/90 corrosion years. The results show that the increase in corrosion age leads to a deterioration in the nominal mechanical properties of the transmission tower components, making the damage probability to the transmission tower increase. Under the typhoon wind loads of a 50-year return period in the most unfavorable wind direction in Ningbo, the probability of moderate damage of the tower is within 10% and the probability of minor damage is controlled between 10% and 40%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Engineering Structural Systems)
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