Experimental investigation and analytically modeling of hysteretic behavior of rigid bus-flexible connectors of 220 kV electrical substations

This paper describes the quasi-static testing and analytical modelling of the hysteretic behavior of aluminum alloy rigid bus-flexible connectors of 220 kV electrical substations.The main objective of the study is to experimentally investigate the hysteretic behavior of six different types of rigid bus-flexible connectors 220 kV electrical substations when subjected to cyclic loading.Another objective is to theoretically study the flexibility and effectiveness of a previously proposed analytical model in fitting the experimental hysteresis loops of the tested rigid bus-flexible connectors.The experimental investigation indicates that the tested rigid bus-flexible connectors exhibit highly asymmetric hysteresis behavior along with tension stiffening effect.The theoretical study demonstrates that the generalized Bouc-Wen model has high flexibility and is effective in fitting the experimental hysteresis resisting force-displacement curves of the six tested rigid bus-flexible connectors.

Discrete element method study of hysteretic behavior and deformation characteristics of rockfill material under cyclic loading

Granular geomaterials under different loading conditions manifest various behaviors,such as hysteresis.Understanding their hysteretic behavior and deformation characteristics is the basis for establishing a constitutive relation with excellent performance in deformation prediction.The deformation characteristics of crushable particle materials are analyzed through a series of cyclic loading tests conducted by numerical simulation.The hysteretic behavior is investigated from a particle scale.The increase in particles with contacts less than two may be responsible for the residual strain,and the particle breakage further promotes particle rearrangement and volume contraction.Both the accumulation of plastic strain and the resilient modulus are found to be related to confining pressures,stress levels,cyclic loading amplitudes,and the number of cycles.The plastic strain accumulation can be written as a function of the number of cycles and an evolution function of resilient modulus is proposed.

Finite element analysis of an all-steel buckling-restrained brace

Typical all-steel buckling-restrained braces(BRBs)usually exhibit obvious local buckling,which is attributed to the lack of longitudinal restraint to the rectangle core plate.To address this issue,all-steel BRBs are proposed,in which two T-shaped steel plates are adopted as the minor restraint elements to restrain the core plate instead of infilled concrete or mortar.In order to investigate the factors that characterize the hysterical responses of this device,different finite element(FE)models are developed for the specific context.The FE models are developed based on nonlinear finite element software,which incorporate continuum(shell or brick)elements,large displacement,and deformation formulations.In these FE models,two different steel constitutive models are adopted to precisely reproduce the cyclic response of the BRB component.Meanwhile,comparisons between the numerical and experimental results are conducted to validate the effectiveness and accuracy of the robust FE model.The agreements between experimental observations and numerical predictions demonstrate that the FE method could be utilized for in depth parametric analysis.Furthermore,BRBs with detailed configurations can provide excellent hysteretic behavior and seismic performance through the optimal design process.

Characteristics of In-Situ Soil Water Hysteresis Observed through Multiple-Years Monitoring

A soil water retention curve (SWRC) is an essential soil physical property for analyzing transport and retention of water in a soil layer. A SWRC is often described as a single-valued function that relates the soil water potential ψ to volumetric water content θ of the soil. However, an in-situ ψ − θ relation should show soil water hysteresis, though this fact is often neglected in analyses of field soil water regimes while long-term in-situ soil water hysteresis is not well characterized. This study aimed at probing and characterizing in-situ ψ − θ relations. The developments of large hysteresis in the in-situ ψ − θ relations were observed only a few times during the study period of 82 months. Any of the large hysteretic behaviors in the ψ − θ relations began with an unusually strong continual reduction in ψ. The completion of a hysteresis loop required a recorded maximum rainfall. Because the study field had very small chances to meet such strong rainfall events, it took multiple years to restore the fraction of soil water depleted by the unusually strong continual reduction in ψ. While wetting-drying cycles had occurred within a certain domain of ψ, hysteretic behaviors tended to be so small that the in-situ ψ − θ relation can be approximated as a single-valued function of θ(ψ). These observed patterns of the in-situ ψ − θ relations were characterized by kinds of difference in dθ/dψ between a drying process and a wetting process at a given ψ. Thus, more amounts of experimental facts about wetting SWRCs in parallel with drying SWRCs should be needed for correct modelling, analyzing, and predicting soil water regimes in fields. It is also necessary to increase our understandings about the long-term trends of occurrences of extreme weather conditions associated with possible change in climate.