DSAS:A new macromolecular substructure solution program based on the modified phase-retrieval algorithm

Considering the pivotal role of single-wavelength anomalous diffraction(SAD) in macromolecular crystallography,our objective was to introduce DSAS,a novel program designed for efficient anomalous scattering substructure determination.DSAS stands out with its core components:a modified phase-retrieval algorithm and automated parameter tuning.The software boasts an intuitive graphical user interface(GUI),facilitating seamless input of essential data and real-time monitoring.Extensive testing on DSAS has involved diverse datasets,encompassing proteins,nucleic acids,and various anomalous scatters such as sulfur(S),selenium(Se),metals,and halogens.The results confirm DSAS’s exceptional performance in accurately determining heavy atom positions,making it a highly effective tool in the field.

Study on Evacuation Strategy of Commercial High-Rise Building under Fire Based on FDS and Pathfinder

With the development of economy and society and the growth of population,the high-rise and multi-function of commercial buildings have become an international trend.But it also poses huge fire hazards.Most of the existing studies’research objects are predominantly high-rise residential buildings,without considering the impact of different functional zones(Standard floor,entertainment zone,office zone,equipment room and so on)and personnel distribution of commercial buildings evacuation.And the influence of using elevators to carry evacuees on the refuge floor on personnel evacuation is rarely studied.In this work,the fire scenario of the Yangtze River InternationalConferenceCenter,a high-rise commercial building,is simulated with the Pyrosim programto get the necessary parameters under various fire scenarios and to calculate the available evacuation time TASET.At the same time,according to the complex functional zone of the commercial high-rise building and the distribution of people in different time periods,a reasonable evacuation strategy is developed and simulated by Pathfinder software.The results indicate that unorganized evacuation will lead individuals to take the erroneous evacuation route,resulting in a vast region of congestion;comprehensive consideration of the time staggering and the reasonable distribution of evacuation routes can significantly improve evacuation efficiency,and the TRSET of night and working hours is 36.6%–55.3%and 49.9%–79.6%of unorganized evacuation,respectively.For the night fire,60%of the people use elevator-refuge floor to evacuate is the optimal strategy;for the fire during working hours,half of the people on standard floors use the elevator to evacuate and people on multifunctional floors evacuate in four batches is the best plan.The results of this study can provide viable solutions and a foundation for analyzing the fire evacuation and safety of big commercial high-rise buildings.

A Stroke-Limitation AMD Control System with Variable Gain and Limited Area for High-Rise Buildings

Collisions between a moving mass and an anti-collision device increase structural responses and threaten structural safety.An active mass damper(AMD)with stroke limitations is often used to avoid collisions.However,a strokelimited AMD control system with a fixed limited area shortens the available AMD stroke and leads to significant control power.To solve this problem,the design approach with variable gain and limited area(VGLA)is proposed in this study.First,the boundary of variable-limited areas is calculated based on the real-time status of the moving mass.The variable gain(VG)expression at the variable limited area is deduced by considering the saturation of AMD stroke.Then,numerical simulations of a stroke-limited AMD control system with VGLA are conducted on a high-rise building structure.These numerical simulations show that the proposed approach has superior strokelimitation performance compared with a stroke-limited AMD control system with a fixed limited area.Finally,the proposed approach is validated through experiments on a four-story steel frame.

Stability and accuracy of central difference method for real-time dynamic substructure testing considering mass participation coefficient

For real-time dynamic substructure testing(RTDST),the influence of the inertia force of fluid specimens on the stability and accuracy of the integration algorithms has never been investigated.Therefore,this study proposes to investigate the stability and accuracy of the central difference method(CDM)for RTDST considering the specimen mass participation coefficient.First,the theory of the CDM for RTDST is presented.Next,the stability and accuracy of the CDM for RTDST considering the specimen mass participation coefficient are investigated.Finally,numerical simulations and experimental tests are conducted for verifying the effectiveness of the method.The study indicates that the stability of the algorithm is affected by the mass participation coefficient of the specimen,and the stability limit first increases and then decreases as the mass participation coefficient increases.In most cases,the mass participation coefficient will increase the stability limit of the algorithm,but in specific circumstances,the algorithm may lose its stability.The stability and accuracy of the CDM considering the mass participation coefficient are verified by numerical simulations and experimental tests on a three-story frame structure with a tuned liquid damper.

A novel control strategy for reproducing the floor motions of high-rise buildings by earthquake-simulating shake tables

To enable the experimental assessment of the seismic performance of full-scale nonstructural elements with multiple engineering parameters(EDPs),a three-layer testbed named Nonstructural Element Simulator on Shake Table(NEST)has been developed.The testbed consists of three consecutive floors of steel structure.The bottom two floors provide a space to accommodate a full-scale room.To fully explore the flexibility of NEST,we propose a novel control strategy to generate the required shake table input time histories for the testbed to track the target floor motions of the buildings of interest with high accuracy.The control strategy contains two parts:an inverse dynamic compensation via simulation of feedback control systems(IDCS)algorithm and an offline iteration procedure based on a refined nonlinear numerical model of the testbed.The key aspects of the control strategy were introduced in this paper.Experimental tests were conducted to simulate the seismic responses of a full-scale office room on the 21^(st)floor of a 42-story high-rise building.The test results show that the proposed control strategy can reproduce the target floor motions of the building of interest with less than 20%errors within the specified frequency range.

An efficient method for train-track-substructure dynamic interaction analysis by implicit-explicit integration and multi-time-step solution

In this work,a method is put forward to obtain the dynamic solution efficiently and accurately for a large-scale train-track-substructure(TTS)system.It is called implicit-explicit integration and multi-time-step solution method(abbreviated as mI-nE-MTS method).The TTS system is divided into train-track subsystem and substruc-ture subsystem.Considering that the root cause of low effi-ciency of obtaining TTS solution lies in solving the alge-braic equation of the substructures,the high-efficient Zhai method,an explicit integration scheme,can be introduced to avoid matrix inversion process.The train-track system is solved by implicitly Park method.Moreover,it is known that the requirement of time step size differs for different sub-systems,integration methods and structural frequency response characteristics.A multi-time-step solution is pro-posed,in which time step size for the train-track subsystem and the substructure subsystem can be arbitrarily chosen once satisfying stability and precision demand,namely the time spent for m implicit integral steps is equal to n explicit integral steps,i.e.,mI=nE as mentioned above.The numeri-cal examples show the accuracy,efficiency,and engineering practicality of the proposed method.

A Study on Factors Influencing Cost Overrun in High-rise Building Construction across India

Cost overrun is a common problem in construction projects worldwide.Most Indian construction projects,particularly those involving high-rise buildings,have had severe cost overruns.For managers,architects,engineers,and contractors,completing building projects within the specified cost budget has become the most important and hard assignment.Since it is common for high-rise building projects to go over budget,the aim of this study is to find out the causes of cost overruns and provide effective measures.The study found 70 cost overrun factors based on a comprehensive literature review and expert opinions.A Google form questionnaire was distributed to 150 construction professionals across India.After following up,101 of the 150 responses were received.A five-point Likert scale was used and the acquired data was analyzed and ranked using the Relative Importance Index(RII)technique.According to the findings of RII,the top ten critical factors influencing cost overruns were frequent change orders during construction by the owner,delay in construction,escalation of material prices,market inflation or deflation,rework,frequent changes in design,inaccurate evaluation of the project timeline,unforeseen ground condition,inaccurate quantity take-off,and delay in progressive payment by the owner.Spearman’s rank correlation test revealed that there is a very significant relationship between the rankings of factors provided by the owner,the consultant,and the contractor.In addition,a factor analysis tool in the SPSS software was also used to categorize the seventy factors into sixteen core components.The top ten critical factors were presented to subject matter experts,and their suggestions were being compiled.These results are expected to help construction professionals minimize cost overruns,improve cost control measures,and initiate future research.

Analysis of the Performances of a New Type of Alumina Nanocomposite Structural Material Designed for the Thermal Insulation of High-Rise Buildings

The sol-gel method is used to prepare a new nano-alumina aerogel structure and the thermal properties of this nanomaterial are investigated comprehensively using electron microscope scanning,thermal analysis,X-ray and infrared spectrometer analysis methods.It is found that the composite aerogel alumina material has a multi-level porous nano-network structure.When employed for the thermal insulation of high-rise buildings,the alumina nanocomposite aerogel material can lead to effective energy savings in winter.However,it has almost no energy-saving effect on buildings where energy is consumed for cooling in summer.

Seismic loss assessment of RC high-rise buildings designed according to Eurocode 8

A probabilistic seismic loss assessment of RC high-rise(RCHR)buildings designed according to Eurocode 8 and located in the Southern Euro-Mediterranean zone is presented herein.The loss assessment methodology is based on a comprehensive simulation approach which takes into account ground motion(GM)uncertainty,and the random effects in seismic demand,as well as in predicting the damage states(DSs).The methodology is implemented on three RCHR buildings of 20-story,30-story and 40-story with a core wall structural system.The loss functions described by a cumulative lognormal probability distribution are obtained for two intensity levels for a large set of simulations(NLTHAs)based on 60 GM records with a wide range of magnitude(M),distance to source(R)and different site soil conditions(SS).The losses expressed in percent of building replacement cost for RCHR buildings are obtained.In the estimation of losses,both structural(S)and nonstructural(NS)damage for four DSs are considered.The effect of different GM characteristics(M,R and SS)on the obtained losses are investigated.Finally,the estimated performance of the RCHR buildings are checked to ensure that they fulfill limit state requirements according to Eurocode 8.

Discussion on Construction Technology and Welding Deformation of High-Rise Steel Frame Structure

Because of urbanization,land resources in China’s cities has become increasingly scarce.Therefore,modern buildings are becoming taller,making high-rise steel frame structures the new favorite of the construction industry.However,the construction of high-rise steel frame structures requires advanced technology.If the construction technology is effectively implemented and the welding techniques of the construction personnel align with the requirements for high-rise steel frame structures,it can help mitigate deformations in the steel structure,thus preserving the overall construction quality of high-rise steel frame structures.To enhance the applicability of steel frame structures in high-rise buildings,this paper focuses on analyzing the optimization path for the construction process of high-rise steel frame structures.It introduces a tailored approach to control welding-induced deformations in steel frame structures,aiming to make a valuable contribution to the advancement of China’s construction industry.

A symmetric substructuring method for analyzing the natural frequencies of conical origami structures

Conical origami structures are characterized by their substantial out-of-plane stiffness and energy-absorptioncapacity.Previous investigations have commonly focused on the static characteristics of these lightweight struc-tures.However,the efficient analysis of the natural vibrations of these structures is pivotal for designing conicalorigami structures with programmable stiffness and mass.In this paper,we propose a novel method to analyzethe natural vibrations of such structures by combining a symmetric substructuring method(SSM)and a gener-alized eigenvalue analysis.SSM exploits the inherent symmetry of the structure to decompose it into a finiteset of repetitive substructures.In doing so,we reduce the dimensions of matrices and improve computationalefficiency by adopting the stiffness and mass matrices of the substructures in the generalized eigenvalue analysis.Finite element simulations of pin-jointed models are used to validate the computational results of the proposedapproach.Moreover,the parametric analysis of the structures demonstrates the influences of the number of seg-ments along the circumference and the radius of the cone on the structural mass and natural frequencies of thestructures.Furthermore,we present a comparison between six-fold and four-fold conical origami structures anddiscuss the influence of various geometric parameters on their natural frequencies.This study provides a strategyfor efficiently analyzing the natural vibration of symmetric origami structures and has the potential to contributeto the efficient design and customization of origami metastructures with programmable stiffness.

Generalized polynomial chaos expansion by reanalysis using static condensation based on substructuring

This paper presents a new computational method for forward uncertainty quantification(UQ)analyses on large-scale structural systems in the presence of arbitrary and dependent random inputs.The method consists of a generalized polynomial chaos expansion(GPCE)for statistical moment and reliability analyses associated with the stochastic output and a static reanalysis method to generate the input-output data set.In the reanalysis,we employ substructuring for a structure to isolate its local regions that vary due to random inputs.This allows for avoiding repeated computations of invariant substructures while generating the input-output data set.Combining substructuring with static condensation further improves the computational efficiency of the reanalysis without losing accuracy.Consequently,the GPCE with the static reanalysis method can achieve significant computational saving,thus mitigating the curse of dimensionality to some degree for UQ under high-dimensional inputs.The numerical results obtained from a simple structure indicate that the proposed method for UQ produces accurate solutions more efficiently than the GPCE using full finite element analyses(FEAs).We also demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of the proposed method by executing UQ for a large-scale wing-box structure under ten-dimensional(all-dependent)random inputs.

Seismic wave input method for three-dimensional soil-structure dynamic interaction analysis based on the substructure of artificial boundaries

The method of inputting the seismic wave determines the accuracy of the simulation of soil-structure dynamic interaction. The wave method is a commonly used approach for seismic wave input, which converts the incident wave into equivalent loads on the cutoff boundaries. The wave method has high precision, but the implementation is complicated, especially for three-dimensional models. By deducing another form of equivalent input seismic loads in the fi nite element model, a new seismic wave input method is proposed. In the new method, by imposing the displacements of the free wave fi eld on the nodes of the substructure composed of elements that contain artifi cial boundaries, the equivalent input seismic loads are obtained through dynamic analysis of the substructure. Subsequently, the equivalent input seismic loads are imposed on the artifi cial boundary nodes to complete the seismic wave input and perform seismic analysis of the soil-structure dynamic interaction model. Compared with the wave method, the new method is simplifi ed by avoiding the complex processes of calculating the equivalent input seismic loads. The validity of the new method is verifi ed by the dynamic analysis numerical examples of the homogeneous and layered half space under vertical and oblique incident seismic waves.

Simulation of large-scale numerical substructure in real-time dynamic hybrid testing

A solution scheme is proposed in this paper for an existing RTDHT system to simulate large-scale finite element （FE） numerical substructures. The analysis of the FE numerical substructure is split into response analysis and signal generation tasks, and executed in two different target computers in real-time. One target computer implements the response analysis task, wherein a large time-step is used to solve the FE substructure, and another target computer implements the signal generation task, wherein an interpolation program is used to generate control signals in a small time-step to meet the input demand of the controller. By using this strategy, the scale of the FE numerical substructure simulation may be increased significantly. The proposed scheme is initially verified by two FE numerical substructure models with 98 and 1240 degrees of freedom （DOFs）. Thereafter, RTDHTs of a single frame-foundation structure are implemented where the foundation, considered as the numerical substructure, is simulated by the FE model with 1240 DOFs. Good agreements between the results of the RTDHT and those from the FE analysis in ABAQUS are obtained.

EFFECT OF SUBSTRUCTURE AND RESIDUAL STRESS IN STRENGTHENED LAYER ON FATIGUE STRENGTH OF STAINLESS OR LOW CARBON STEEL

In the strengthened layer of stainless steel after shot peening,there are a great amount of deformation microtwins which may act as structural strengthening factor and prevent the gradual relaxation of surface residual stress during fatigue,so as to keep its rather high level of bending fatigue strength.However,in the strengthened surface layer of low carbon steel, dislocation cell structure is so unstalbe during fatigue that its surface residual stress relaxation cannot be retarded.Therefore,the bending fatigue strength of the low carbon steel can not be improred by shot peening.

VARIATION OF SUBSTRUCTURES OF PEARLITIC HEAT RESISTANT STEEL AFTER HIGH TEMPERATURE AGING

The observations of dislocations, substructures and other microstructural details were conducted mainly by means of transmission electron microscope (TEM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) for 12CrlMoV pearlitic heat-resistant steel. It is shown that during the high temperature long-term aging, the disordered and jumbled phase-transformed dislocations caused by normalized cooling are recovered and rearranged into cell substructures, and then the dislocation density is reduced gradually. Finally a low density linear dislocation configuration and a stabler dislocation network are formed and ferritic grains grow considerably.

Comparative analysis on dynamic behavior of two HMA railway substructures

A numerical analysis using a finite element program was performed on three structures： hot mix asphalt （HMA） reinforced trackbed （RACS-1）, HMA directly supported trackbed （RACS-2）, and traditional Portland Cement Concrete （PCC） slab track （SlabTrack）. Although the comprehensive dynamic responses of RACS-1 were similar with SlabTrack, HMA layer can positively affect the stress distributions. In particular, the horizontal stresses indicate that the resilience of RACS-1 was improved relative to SlabTrack. In addition, HMA reinforced substructure has the capacity to recover the residual vertical deformation. The effective depth for weakening dynamic loadings is mainly from 0 to 2 m, this being especially true at 0.5 m. The results from the analysis show that HMA is a suitable material for the railway substructure to enhance resilient performance, improve the stress distribution, weaken dynamic loading, and lower the vibration, especially at the effective depth of 2 m. The HMA constructed at the top of the stone subbase layer allows the vertical modulus a smooth transition. In terms of the comprehensive dynamic behaviors, RACS-1 is better than SlabTrack, while the results for RACS-2 are inconclusive and require further research.

Quantitative investigation on collapse margin of steel high-rise buildings subjected to extremely severe earthquakes

Reponses of structures subjected to severe earthquakes sometimes significantly surpass what was considered in the design.It is important to investigate the failure mechanism and collapse margin of structures beyond design,especially for high-rise buildings.In this study,steel high-rise buildings using either square concrete-filled-tube（CFT） columns or steel tube columns are designed.A detailed three-dimensional（3 D） structural model is developed to analyze the seismic behavior of a steel high-rise towards a complete collapse.The effectiveness is verified by both component tests and a full-scale shaking table test.The collapse margin,which is defined as the ratio of PGA between the collapse level to the design major earthquake level（Level 2）,is quantified by a series of numerical simulations using incremental dynamic analyses（IDA）.The baseline building using CFT columns collapsed with a weak first story mechanism and presented a collapse margin ranging from 10 to 20.The significant variation in the collapse margin was caused by the different characteristics of the input ground motions.The building using equivalent steel columns collapsed earlier due to the significant shortening of the locally buckled columns,exhibiting only 57% of the collapse margin of the baseline building.The influence of reducing the height of the first story was quite significant.The shortened first story not only enlarged the collapse margin by 20%,but also changed the collapse mode.

EIGENPROBLEM OF SUBSTRUCTURE CHAIN AND THE EXPANSION SOLUTION

In this paper,a new method for dealing with substructure chain is presented.Here,a substructure chain means a structure consisting of a number of identical substructures connected in series.This method is parallel to the expansion method in the structural analysis according to the transverse section.The method of shift invariance and that of initial parameter and transfer matrix,their mutual-relation and com- bined use,as well as the analysis of the eigenproblem on the transverse section,and the expansion method based on the eigenvectors are described in this paper.

Flexible substructure online hybrid test system using conventional testing devices

This paper presents a substructure online hybrid test system that is extensible for geographically distributed tests. This system consists of a set of devices conventionally used for cyclic tests to load the tested substructures onto the target displacement or the target force. Due to their robustness and portability, individual sets of conventional loading devices can be transported and reconfigured to realize physical loading in geographically remote laboratories. Another appealing feature is the flexible displacement-force mixed control that is particularly suitable for specimens having large disparities in stiffness during various performance stages. To conduct a substructure online hybrid test, an extensible framework is developed, which is equipped with a generalized interface to encapsulate each substructure. Multiple tested substructures and analyzed substructures using various structural program codes can be accommodated within the single framework, simply interfaced with the boundary displacements and forces. A coordinator program is developed to keep the boundaries among all substructures compatible and equilibrated. An Interuet-based data exchange scheme is also devised to transfer data among computers equipped with different software environments. A series of online hybrid tests are introduced, and the portability, flexibility, and extensibility of the online hybrid test system are demonstrated.