Structural Engineering Commons^™

Dynamic Vulnerability Assessment Of Highway And Railway Bridges, Mehdi Mohseni

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Dynamic loads can cause severe damage to bridges, and lead to malfunction of transportation networks. A comprehensive understanding of the nature of the dynamic loads and the structural response of bridges can prevent undesired failures while keeping the cost-safety balance. Dissimilar to the static behavior, the dynamic response of bridges depends on several structural parameters such as material properties, damping and mode shapes. Furthermore, dynamic load characteristics can significantly change the structural response. In most cases, complexity and involvement of numerous parameters require the designer to investigate the bridge response via a massive numerical study.

This dissertation targets three main …

Improved Reliability Determination When Testing Cold-Formed Steel Components, V. M. Zeinoddini, B. W. Schafer

CCFSS Proceedings of International Specialty Conference on Cold-Formed Steel Structures (1971 - 2018)

The objectives of this paper are to (a) determine the sensitivity of the reliability calculations in Chapter F of the AISI Specification (AISI-S100-07) to controlling load combinations and loading ratios, and (b) develop a more robust alternative for the use of Chapter F. To complete this study the bias factors and variances for all loading conditions are established. In addition, a range of practical load ratios is agreed upon. Parametric studies are performed to explore load case and load ratio dependency for use in the determination of the resistance factor, Φ; specifically, the pre-factor term CΦ and the load variance …

Probabilistic Analysis Of Offshore Wind Turbine Soil-Structure Interaction, Wystan Carswell

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

A literature review of current design and analysis methods for offshore wind turbine (OWT) foundations is presented, focusing primarily on the monopile foundation. Laterally loaded monopile foundations are typically designed using the American Petroleum Institute (API) p-y method for offshore oil platforms, which presents several issues when extended to OWTs, mostly with respect to the large pile diameters required and the effect of cyclic loading from wind and waves. Although remedies have been proposed, none have been incorporated into current design standards. Foundations must be uniquely designed for each wind farm due to extreme dependence on site characteristics. The uncertainty …