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Applied Mechanics Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Applied Mechanics

Material Property Heterogeneity In Dimensional Lumber And Its Relationship To Mass Timber Performance, Fiona O'Donnell Jun 2021

Material Property Heterogeneity In Dimensional Lumber And Its Relationship To Mass Timber Performance, Fiona O'Donnell

Doctoral Dissertations

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, buildings account for 38% of the United States' carbon dioxide emissions, providing architects and structural engineers a unique opportunity to mitigate a significant factor driving climate change by implementing innovative and sustainable technology in infrastructure design. Wood and mass timber products are becoming an increasingly popular alternative building material due to their economic and environmental benefits. The natural growth of wood leads to highly heterogeneous material properties. Defects such as checks, knots, and localized slope of grain contribute to some of this variation; however, wood properties vary significantly even in clear wood. Using mass …


Harnessing The Mechanics Of Thin-Walled Metallic Structures: From Plate-Lattice Materials To Cold-Formed Steel Shear Walls, Fani Derveni Jun 2021

Harnessing The Mechanics Of Thin-Walled Metallic Structures: From Plate-Lattice Materials To Cold-Formed Steel Shear Walls, Fani Derveni

Doctoral Dissertations

Thin-walled structures have received a lot of interest during the last years due to their light weight, cost efficiency, and ease in fabrication and transportation, along with their high strength and stiffness. This dissertation focuses on the mechanical performance of thin-walled metallic structures from cold-formed steel shear walls and connections (PART I) to plate-lattice architected materials (PART II) via computational, experimental, and probabilistic methods. Cold-formed steel (CFS) shear walls subjected to seismic loads is the focus of PART I of this dissertation. An innovative three-dimensional shell finite element model of oriented strand board (OSB) sheathed CFS shear walls is introduced …


Mechanical Performance Of Structural Systems With Missing Members: From Buildings To Architected Materials, Panagiotis Pantidis Jul 2019

Mechanical Performance Of Structural Systems With Missing Members: From Buildings To Architected Materials, Panagiotis Pantidis

Doctoral Dissertations

Structural systems are potentially subjected to damage initiating scenarios throughout the course of their service time. Depending on the nature and extent of the damaging event, they may experience significant reduction or even complete loss of their mechanical performance. This dissertation delves into the mechanics of structural systems under the notion of missing members from their domain, investigating types of structural systems: a) multi-story steel framed buildings, and b) materials with a truss-lattice microstructure. Part I of the dissertation investigates the performance of multi-story steel framed buildings under a column removal scenario, developing an analytical framework for their quasi-static robustness …


Modeling Deformation Behavior And Strength Characteristics Of Sand-Silt Mixtures: A Micromechanical Approach, Mehrashk Meidani Mar 2018

Modeling Deformation Behavior And Strength Characteristics Of Sand-Silt Mixtures: A Micromechanical Approach, Mehrashk Meidani

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of six chapters. In the first chapter the motivation of this research, which was modeling the deformation behavior and strength characteristics of soils under internal erosion, is briefly explained. In the second chapter a micromechanis-based stress-strain model developed for prediction of sand-silt mixtures behavior is presented. The components of the micromechanics-based model are described and undrained behavior of six different types of sand-silt mixtures is predicted for several samples with different fines contents. The need for a more comprehensive compression model for sand-silt mixtures is identified at the end of this chapter. This desired compression model …


Value Of Flow Measurement Accuracy In Hydropower Plants With Short Converging Intakes, Mark Herbert Christian Aug 2017

Value Of Flow Measurement Accuracy In Hydropower Plants With Short Converging Intakes, Mark Herbert Christian

Doctoral Dissertations

This report documents research undertaken to determine the value of flow measurement accuracy in hydropower plants with short converging intakes. The motivation was to provide a suite of tools and best practices to streamline flow measurement sensor modeling in any type of hydropower plant. The Lower Granite Lock and Dam hydroplant was leveraged in development of the analysis tool. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of Lower Granite Unit 4 provided necessary information about the hydraulic structures distribution through the unit. Two different CFD models were created. The first was done using the as-built plans; the second was created through modifications …