Sharif Digital Repository

The purpose of this study is to define a piecewise fatigue damage model (PFDM) for the prediction of damage in composite laminates under cyclic loading based on the continuum damage mechanics (CDM) model. Assuming that damage in fiber-reinforced plastic structures accumulates nonlinearly, a piecewise degradation growth function is defined and coupled with CDM and micromechanics approaches. The model divides the damage behavior of fiber, matrix, and fiber/matrix debonding at the ply scale, into three different stages. For generality, a fully multi-stage damage formulation on a single-ply level is employed. The unknown parameters of the PFDM are estimated according to obtained experimental... 

Predicting the failure probability of composite laminates under fatigue loading has many uncertainties, such as material properties, loading, boundary conditions, etc. In this paper, the failure probability of pin-loaded composite laminates is investigated. For this purpose, the continuum damage mechanics (CDM) theory has been combined with Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) as a physics of failure tool to predict the failure of composite laminates in different directions (fibers, matrix, and shear) to calculate the probability of failure of the composite laminates under fatigue loading. Therefore, the failure function will be formed using the CDM theory and random variables identified. Finally,... 

Employing dampers to control wave-induced and seismic vibrations of offshore jacket platforms is an attractive method in order to mitigate fatigue and seismic damage. However, adjustable parameters of a damper are designed by considering only one type of environmental loads; either normal-condition load or extreme-condition load. So, it is important to investigate effectiveness of damping system, for both of two main categories of environmental loads. Also it is ideal for the system to have an acceptable performance in both normal and extreme conditions. The idea investigated in the current study is to use a friction damper device (FDD) and a tuned mass damper (TMD) simultaneously in... 

Offshore jacket platforms are exposed to environmental loads such as wind, wave, current, and earthquake throughout the lifetime of operation. Due to dynamic and periodic nature and fatigue phenomenon in the structure, wave forces are the most important loads among others. There are diverse methods to explore the fatigue life of jackets, including deterministic, spectral, and time domain analysis. Among these methods, spectral method is a reliable method, which considers the random nature of sea waves in fatigue analysis. In the current study, a spectral method is introduced for assessment and rehabilitation of jacket platform structure. To this end, a computer program has been developed,... 

Offshore jacket platforms are exposed to environmental loads such as wind, wave, current, and earthquake throughout the lifetime of operation. Due to dynamic and periodic nature and fatigue phenomenon in the structure, wave forces are the most important loads among others. There are diverse methods to explore the fatigue life of jackets, including deterministic, spectral, and time domain analysis. Among these methods, spectral method is a reliable method, which considers the random nature of sea waves in fatigue analysis. In the current study, a spectral method is introduced for assessment and rehabilitation of jacket platform structure. To this end, a computer program has been developed,... 

Wind turbine blade life prediction is the most important parameter to estimate the power generation cost. Due to the price and importance of wind blade, many experimental and theoretical methods were developed to estimate damages and blade life. A novel multiaxial fatigue damage model is suggested for the life prediction of a wind turbine blade. Fatigue reduction of fiber and interfiber characteristics are separately treated and simulated in this research. Damage behavior is considered in lamina level and then extended to laminate; hence, this model can be used for multidirectional laminated composites. The procedure of fatigue-induced degradation is implemented in an ABAQUS user material... 

Wind turbine blade life prediction is the most important parameter to estimate the power generation cost. Due to the price and importance of wind blade, many experimental and theoretical methods were developed to estimate damages and blade life. A novel multiaxial fatigue damage model is suggested for the life prediction of a wind turbine blade. Fatigue reduction of fiber and interfiber characteristics are separately treated and simulated in this research. Damage behavior is considered in lamina level and then extended to laminate; hence, this model can be used for multidirectional laminated composites. The procedure of fatigue-induced degradation is implemented in an ABAQUS user material... 

This paper attempts to describe the fatigue response of a foam the core sandwich composite with unsymmetrical carbon/glass face sheets under tension-tension cyclic loading. The laminate is a critical element of the structure of a light full composite airplane which was determined through the stress analyses for numerous load cases. The face sheets, over a PVC foam the core, consist of two similar woven E-glass fibers following unidirectional carbon fibers with epoxy resin. Extensive fatigue data were generated for the S-N diagram of this laminate. Based on the static FEM analyses, two designs for the configuration of foam to solid laminate bonding zone have been investigated. Hence, the... 

Various damage indexes have been introduced in recent years incorporating different parameters for estimating structural damage. Amongst these indexes, Plastic Ductility and Drift have been the center of attention of standards and building codes, like FEMA-356, because of their straightforward physical interpretation and ease of calculation. In this paper, several steel moment frames have been considered and their responses have been evaluated under a set of scaled earthquakes. A group of various damage indexes, which included cumulative and non cumulative, cyclic fatigue based, deformation based and modal parameter based, has been considered and the damage to structures has been evaluated... 

Road roughness-induced vibrations are the main source of fatigue damage accumulation in vehicles. Hence, road surface profile modeling and simulation are of high importance when it comes to vehicle fatigue damage assessment. This research focuses on uncovering the statistical distributions that describe the characteristics of road loads that affect fatigue damage accumulation. Particle filtering is deployed to estimate the log-volatility of the road surface profile by assuming a random walk behavior for the hidden log-volatility. The skew-normal distribution with three parameters is fitted to the estimated log-volatility. The inferred parameters are used for synthesizing artificial road... 

This article presents a multi-scale progressive micro-mechanical fatigue model. The model employs fundamental equation of the kinetic theory of fracture to calculate damage parameters of both fiber and matrix during cyclic loading. In order to adapt the equation, required material coefficients of the constituents can be achieved from fatigue test results of longitudinal and transverse unidirectional composites, only. Sharing stress capacities of fiber and matrix are determined using a modified progressive micro-mechanical bridging model in the presence of damage. The damage parameters in the constituents are calculated employing two different equivalent scalars. However, during sinusoidal... 

In the present paper, a steering knuckle of a passenger car that serves as a highly critical component from the safety point of view, is considered to evaluate accuracy some of categories of the multiaxial fatigue criteria, through comparing their predictions with the experimental results. This component is subjected to the highest road- and steering-induced random and non-proportional loads that are exerted on several points of the component. The mechanical properties and fatigue strengths are determined experimentally and the fatigue life assessment tests are performed by the authors. Quantometric analyses and scanning electron microscope (SEM) have been employed to detect the failure... 

Recently, bonded composite patch repair, because of its significant advantages over traditional methods, has been highly accepted in several industries, particularly in aerospace applications. In this paper, a multi-scale finite element algorithm is proposed to simulate crack growth of repaired plates under fatigue load by considering the effects of composite micro-scale properties. The algorithm is verified through conducting an experimental set up and the proposed model is in reasonable agreement with experiments. The influences of different fiber volume fractions (VF), number of layers and fiber orientation of composite patch on the fatigue responses of adhesively bonded patch are... 

A procedure based on the linear amplitude sweep (LAS) test has been developed to determine the optimum rejuvenator content for restoring the properties of aged asphalt binders. The LAS test was employed to assess the damage tolerance, fatigue resistance, and fracture behavior of rejuvenated aged binders. In case of fracture analysis, a crack-based indicator to govern the stable crack propagation was defined to characterize fracture resistance of asphalt binders. While rejuvenators improved all of these properties, higher contents were required to restore the cracking behavior of the original binder. The linear relationship between the integrated damage-fatigue-fracture indicator and... 

A three-dimensional (3D) finite element model (FEM) is developed to predict the progressive fatigue damage with provision for stochastic distribution of material properties. Fatigue damage model for low and high cycle fatigue considering plastic deformation is implemented in the FEM and the results are presented for Al 6061-T6, Al 7075-T6, Ti 6Al-4V and SS 316. Comparisons of the numerical and experimental results of stress-life reveal the validity of the approach. Also presented is the result of an investigation showing the effect of element types, element size, variation of material properties, and initial flaws on the randomness of fatigue life. The present fatigue damage simulation... 

Today, structural Health monitoring is a major concern in the engineering community. Multisite fatigue damage, hidden cracks and corrosion in hard-to-reach locations are among the major flaws encountered in today's extensive diagnosis and/or prognosis of aircraft structures. Ultrasonic waves, lamb waves are particularly advantageous because of their propagation at large distances with little damp in thin-wall structures. In this paper a new rectangular shape array of embedded piezoelectric sensors is developed to detect some damages in large planar structures. An artificial neural network is trained to identify the damage state and its location. Output signals of each sensor due to various... 

Structural systems will normally fail as a consequence of a chain of different components failure es. In this paper, fatigue reliability of fixed offshore platforms is investigated by analyzing different failure scenarios. In order to evaluate the occurrence probability of a special scenario, it is divided into a finite number of sub-scenarios. All combinations of time sequences are generated for a given sequence of failures, using a specially developed program. In order to calculate the occurrence probability of each scenario, a massive reliability analysis should be done for each of corresponding sub-scenarios. A large number of sub-scenarios should be analyzed, therefore implementing time... 

In this article, a novel energy-based lifetime prediction model has been presented for uncoated and coated aluminum alloys, subjected to thermal and mechanical fatigue loadings. For this objective, isothermal and thermo-mechanical fatigue tests were performed on the A356.0 alloy, with and without thermal barrier coating systems. This model, which was based on the plastic strain energy, had three correction factors including temperature, strain and mean stress effects. The predicted lifetime showed a proper agreement with experimental data. By the present model, higher accuracy was obtained in comparison to other existed approaches. Besides, the present model had lower number of material... 

Because damage identification results based on the Lamb waves propagation approach can be influenced by varying environmental and operational conditions, development of a robust monitoring system with no need of the prior measured data of the structure has gained much attention recently. The instantaneous baseline damage detection technique is one of the promising methods that overcome the mentioned obstacles. For this, the material properties, electromechanical characteristics, and the geometric features must be identical. Also, sensor distances in similar paths and the geometric dimensions of the transducers must be the same. So, implementing the instantaneous baseline damage...