Flavio Stochino's blog

I am glad to to share a new paper published on Applied Sciences. An optimization method, based on Simulated Annealing, is developed for the design of reinforced concrete slab.

Find out more at: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/9/15/3161

Many of modern life activities involve the risk of fire, explosions, and impacts. In addition, natural extreme events are becoming more and more common. us, robustness, the ability to avoid disproportionate collapse due to an initial damage, and resilience, the ability to adapt to and recover from the effects of changing external conditions, represent two important characteristics of current structures and infrastructures.

New Paper: "Numerical insights on the structural assessment of historical masonry stellar vaults: the case of Santa Maria del Monte in Cagliari" Enjoy this free version of the paper!

https://rdcu.be/bpvX0

The catastrophic consequences observed after extreme events (flooding, earthquakes, vehicle impact, explosions, and fire) in transport and energy networks, as well as commercial and residential buildings, have significantly changed the public perception of risk regarding structures and infrastructure. Materials and structures are pushed to the limit in these conditions and given the fact that it is not always possible to provide an elastic response damage development must be considered and robustness becomes a precious characteristic.

Aging infrastructures represent a current engineering challenge. Huge budgets are necessary to keep their functionality and the lack of a proper and timely maintenance entails an increasing deterioration and therefore higher repair costs. Therefore, assessing the reliability of infrastructures becomes mandatory, with particular attention to the ones still in service even when their life limit has exceeded.

Design means to analyze, compare, manage and connect a large amount of data in order to develop, expand and materialize the starting idea, which was born to solve the initial problem. In this process, the engineer is the bridge of connection between the creative moment and its real implementation.

Dear all,

the International Journal of Structural Glass and Advanced Materials Research (IJSGAMR) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal which covers all aspects of theoretical and practical research of materials science.

In this paper, a simplified analytic model for the dynamic behaviour of railway catenary wire is presented. The model is discussed and validated with the help of numerical results obtained by a finite element code, for the case of a typical Italian railway installation. The simplified model is convenient from the computational point of view and is useful for sensitivity analysis. Some parametric studies have been developed by considering as free parameters the velocity and the distance of the train pantographs and looking at their effect on catenary dynamics.

Fibre-reinforced plates and shells are finding an increasing interest in engineering applications; in most cases dynamic phenomena need to be taken into account. Consequently, effective and robust computational tools are sought in order to provide reliable results for the analysis of such structural models. In this paper the mixed assumed-strain laminated plate element, previously used for static analyses, has been extended to the dynamic realm. This model is derived within the framework of the so-called First-order Shear Deformation Theory (FSDT).

 The 64 m diameter Sardinia Radio Telescope (SRT), located near Cagliari (Italy), is the world’s second largest fully steerable radio telescope with an active surface. Among its peculiarities is the capability of modifying the configuration of the primary mirror surface by means of electromechanical actuators. This capability enables, within a fixed range, balancing of the deformation caused by external loads.

The current development of the isogeometric approach in various fields of mechanics is explained by the high-accuracy results which can be achieved at a reduced computational cost by codes based on non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS). In the case of strongly curved beams the simple diagonal de Saint-Venant’s constitutive model can lead to significant errors as it has been reported in the classic literature. Other models such as Winkler’s have been proposed and seem more suitable for these kinds of structures.

What is the importance of strain rate on structural response under blast load?

This and other issues are discussed in the recent paper from Stochino F. and Carta G.:

“SDOF models for reinforced concrete beams under impulsive loads accounting for strain rate effects”, DOI: 10.1016/j.nucengdes.2014.05.022, Nuclear Engineering and Design 276, (2014), 74-86.