Search results for " scienza delle costruzioni"

Bending test for capturing the fractional visco-elastic parameters: theoretical and experimental investigation on giant reeds

2014

In this paper attention is devoted on searching a proper model for characterizing the behavior of giant reeds. To aim at this, firstly, meticulous experimental tests have been performed in the Laboratory of structural materials of University of Palermo. Further, the novel aspect of this paper is that of using an advanced Euler-Bernoulli model to fit experimental data of bending tests. Such a model of continuum beam takes into account different constitutive laws of visco-elasticity, being real materials visco-elastic.

Low stiffness variation in structural systems: identification and localization

2008

When a very low damage occurs, the undamaged structural response totally overlaps the damaged one either in time domain or in frequency domain; on the other hand, by considering some characteristics of the analytical signal, such as the phase, it has been possible to develop a damage identification procedure that allows the identification and localization of damage even if the structure experiences multiple damages at the same time. This procedure is also robust with respect to the presence of measuring noise. In order to assess the validity of the proposed damage identification procedure, numerical applications on single degree of freedom and 2 DOF and 4 DOF are presented using data record…

Durability evaluations on the bridge over the Ruwais lagoon at Jeddah

2008

The bridge over the Ruwais Lagoon at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has been built in the first half of 80s within a large-scale program project concerning the "corniche", a seafront boulevard running more than 30 Km from its northern to its southern end.

Special Issue on “Frontier Biomechanical Challenges in Cardiovascular Physiopathology”

2017

This special issue collects a number of original contributions, which were presented and discussed during the thematic Symposium organized by the Italian Chapter of the European Society of Biomechanics (ESB) in collaboration with the Mediterranean Institute for Transplantation and Advanced Specialized Therapies (ISMETT – IRCCS), the Fondazione RiMED and the University of Palermo. The Symposium focused on recent advances in cardiovascular biomechanics, and the promise they hold for clinical therapeutic strategies and future research.

An extension of the fractional model for construction of asphalt binder master curve

2015

Knowledge and prediction of viscoelastic behaviour of asphalt binder is of great interest in order to design asphalt mixtures for civil construction of road and airports with good performances. The capability of a fractional model – requiring a very limited number of parameters – to describe and predict the linear viscoelastic behaviour of asphalt binder subjected to sinusoidal oscillations is investigated. Experimental data of complex modulus, |G*|, and phase angle, δ, are used to validate the proposed constitutive model. Based on the proposed extension of a fractional model, complex modulus isotherms for a range of frequencies can be created simply starting from isochronals at frequency v…

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

2016

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.

Effect of surface finish on the mechanical behaviour of Dacron© 360 woven

2013

Abstract In the present paper some experimental analyses of Dacron© 360 woven with and without surface treatment are presented to evaluate the effect of this treatment on the constitutive behaviour. This woven, widely adopted in sail manufacturing, is obtained by weaving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) yarn and it shows some peculiar features due to the manufacturing process. The experimental tensile tests, clearly show the orthotropy behaviour of the material. The effect of the treatment results in a stiffer behaviour especially along the warp and bias direction and in an increment of ultimate strength in all directions.

Restraining approach for the spurious kinematic modes in hybrid equilibrium element

2013

The present paper proposes a rigorous approach for the elimination of spurious kinematic modes in hybrid equilibrium elements, for three well known mesh patches. The approach is based on the identification of the dependent equations in the set of inter-element and boundary equilibrium equations of the sides involved in the spurious kinematic mode. Then the kinematic variables related to the dependent equations are reciprocally constrained and, by application of master slave elimination method, the set of inter-element equilibrium equations is reduced to full rank. The elastic solutions produced by means of the proposed approach verify the homogeneous, the inter-element and the boundary equi…

A Computational Two-Scale Approach to Nonlinear Analysis of Etherogeneous Composite Structures

2010

Fractional Spectral Moments for Digital Simulation of Multivariate Wind Velocity Fields

2012

In this paper, a method for the digital simulation of wind velocity fields by Fractional Spectral Moment function is proposed. It is shown that by constructing a digital filter whose coefficients are the fractional spectral moments, it is possible to simulate samples of the target process as superposition of Riesz fractional derivatives of a Gaussian white noise processes. The key of this simulation technique is the generalized Taylor expansion proposed by the authors. The method is extended to multivariate processes and practical issues on the implementation of the method are reported.