0000000000261109

AUTHOR

G. Fileccia Scimemi

Mixed mode failure analysis of bonded joints with rate dependent interface models

The recent developments in joining technologies and the increasing use of composites materials in structural design justify the wide interest of structural mechanics researchers in bonded joints. Joints often represent the weakness zone of the structure and appropriate and rigorous mechanical models are required in order to describe deformation, durability and failure. The present work is devoted to the theoretical formulation and numerical implementation of an interface model suitable to simulate the time-dependent behaviour of bonded joints. The interface laws are formulated in the framework of viscoplasticity for generalized standard materials and describe the softening response of the j…

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Finite element method on fractional visco-elastic frames

Viscoelastic behavior is defined by fractional operators.Quasi static FEM analysis of frames with fractional constitutive law is performed.FEM solution is decoupled into a set of fractional Kelvin Voigt elements.Proposed approach could be easily integrated in existing FEM codes. In this study the Finite Element Method (FEM) on viscoelastic frames is presented. It is assumed that the Creep function of the constituent material is of power law type, as a consequence the local constitutive law is ruled by fractional operators. The Euler Bernoulli beam and the FEM for the frames are introduced. It is shown that the whole system is ruled by a set of coupled fractional differential equations. In q…

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Interface model for the nonlinear analysis of blocky structures of ancient Greek temples

The presence of singularity surfaces with reference to the displacement field is a characteristic of a number of structural systems. Strong discontinuities are present in old masonry structures where dry joints connect the blocks or the mortar ageing suggests to neglect the adhesion properties. These structures cannot be considered a continuum but rather an assembly of blocks. These discontinuous structures could be modelled as an assembly of blocks interacting trough frictional joints whose mechanical behaviour is described by appropriate interface laws. In the present work an interface model present in literature is adopted, the double asperity model, which has been implemented in a stand…

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α-stable distributions for better performance of ACO in detecting damage on not well spaced frequency systems

Abstract In this paper, the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm is modified through α -stable Levy variables and applied to the identification of incipient damage in structural components. The main feature of the proposed optimization is an improved ability, which derives from the heavy tails of the stable random variable, to escape from local minima. This aspect is relevant since the objective function used for damage detection may have many local minima which render very challenging the search of the global minimum corresponding to the damage parameter. As the optimization is performed on the structural response and does not require the extraction of modal components, the method is pa…

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Backcalculation of airport pavement moduli and thickness using the Lévy Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

Interpretation of NDTdata is crucial in any Airport Pavement Management System (APMS), in order to implement strategies to maintain airport pavementssince they allow to estimate their remaining life and related maintenance needs and activities. In this paper, the AntColony Optimization algorithmwasused for backcalculation of pavement moduli from surface deflection data. The algorithm’s performances are illustrated and improvement in prediction quality is demonstrated both in terms of goodness of fitness and computational effort. Moreover, it is proved that the proposed algorithm is also able to predict layer thicknesses, taking into account their variation too.

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Damage identification by a modified Ant Colony Optimization for not well spaced frequency systems

Recently, it has been shown , that a damage detection strategy based on a proper functional calculated on the analytical signal of the structural dynamical response, consents to identify very low damage level. In this regard, they stressed the efficiency of Hilbert Transform to obtain the analytical response representation that shows more sensitivity for predicting damage with respect to the simple signal response. Then, a damage identification procedure based on the minimization of the difference between theoretical and measured data was proposed with satisfactory results. Unfortunately, this procedure, since the need of use of band pass filter around the natural frequency of the system, f…

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Interface Models for the Analysis of Time-Dependent Effects in Masonry Structures

The present paper is devoted to the theoretical formulation and numerical implementation of an interface model suitable to simulate the behavior of cementitious joints at long term. The interface laws are formulated in the framework of viscoplasticity for non standard materials in order to simulate the time-dependent softening response which occurs along the decohesion process in presence of shear and tension tractions. The interface model parameters identification is discussed on the base of experimental data reported in the literature. The optimization problem related to the parameters evaluation is approached by a heuristic algorithm. Finally some examples show the capabilities of the pr…

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