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Glass material is largely used for load-bearing components in buildings. For this reason, standardized calculation methods can be used in support of safe structural design in common loading and boundary conditions. Differing from earlier literature efforts, the present study elaborates on the load-bearing capacity, failure time and fire endurance of ordinary glass elements under fire exposure and sustained mechanical loads, with evidence of major trends in terms of loading condition and cross-sectional layout. Traditional verification approaches for glass in cold conditions (i.e. stress peak check) and fire endurance of load-bearing members (i.e. deflection and deflection rate limits) are assessed based on parametric numerical simulations.

The mechanical performance of structural glass elements in fire still represents an open challenge for design and vulnerability assessment. Often, special fire-resisting glass solutions are used for limited practical applications only, and ordinary soda-lime silica glass prevails in design applications for load-bearing members. Moreover, conventional recommendations and testing protocols in use for load-bearing members composed of traditional constructional materials are not already addressed for glass members. This paper elaborates on the fire endurance and failure detection methods for structural glass beams that are subjected to standard ISO time–temperature for fire exposure and in-plane bending mechanical loads. Fire endurance assessment methods are discussed with the support of Finite Element (FE) numerical analyses.

Based on extended parametric FE analyses, multiple loading, geometrical and thermo-mechanical configurations are taken into account for the analysis of simple glass elements under in-plane bending setup and fire exposure. The comparative results show that – in most of cases – thermal effects due to fire exposure have major effects on the actual load-bearing capacity of these members. Moreover, the conventional stress peak verification approach needs specific elaborations, compared to traditional calculations carried out in cold conditions.

The presented numerical results confirm that the fire endurance analysis of ordinary structural glass elements is a rather complex issue, due to combination of multiple aspects and influencing parameters. Besides, FE simulations can provide useful support for a local and global analysis of major degradation and damage phenomena, and thus support the definition of simple and realistic verification procedures for fire exposed glass members.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summarization and review of the present author's main investigations on failure modes of reticular metal foams under different loadings in engineering applications.

With the octahedral structure model proposed by the present authors themselves, the fundamentally mechanical relations have been systematically studied for reticular metal foams with open cells in their previous works. On this basis, such model theory is continually used to investigate the failure mode of this kind of porous materials under compression, bending, torsion and shearing, which are common loading forms in engineering applications.

The pore-strut of metal foams under different compressive loadings will fail in the tensile breaking mode when it is brittle. While it is ductile, it will tend to the shearing failure mode when the shearing strength is half or nearly half of the tensile strength for the corresponding dense material and to the tensile breaking mode when the shearing strength is higher than half of the tensile strength to a certain value. The failure modes of such porous materials under bending, torsional and shearing loads are also similarly related to their material species.

This paper presents a distinctive method to conveniently analyze and estimate the failure mode of metal foams under different loadings in engineering applications.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the behavior of compressive residual stress induced by laser peening under external loading on an age‐hardened high‐strength aluminum alloy A2024‐T3, a low‐carbon austenitic stainless steel SUS316L (Type 316L) and a nickel‐based alloy NCF600 (Alloy 600).

The surface residual stress was measured intermittently by X‐ray diffraction during cyclic uniaxial loading.

The compressive residual stress due to laser peening significantly decreased during the first few cycles at stress ratio of 0.1 with the maximum loading stress exceeding the 0.2 per cent yield stress. No remarkable decrease was observed afterward until the end of the loading cycles.

Under symmetric loading at the stress ratio of −1 to A2024‐T3, a major decrease took place in the compression side of the first loading cycle. The surface residual stresses remained in compression within all the extent of the present experiments, even if the maximum loading stress exceeded the yield stress of the materials.

Despite recognizing the significance of risk-based frameworks in fire safety engineering, the usual approach in structural fire design is largely member/component level, wherein effect of uncertainties influencing the fire resistance of structures are not explicitly considered. In this context, a probabilistic framework is presented to investigate the vulnerability of a reinforced concrete (RC) members and structure under fire loading scenario.

The RC structures exposed to fire are modeled in a finite element (FE) platform incorporating material and geometric nonlinearity, in which the transient thermo-mechanical analysis is carried out by suitably incorporating the temperature variation of thermal and mechanical properties of both concrete and steel rebar. The stochasticity in the system is considered in structural resistance, thermal and fire model parameters, and the subsequent fragility curves are developed considering threshold limit state of deflection.

The fire resistance of RC structure is reported to be significantly lower in comparison to the RC members, thereby illustrating the current prescriptive design approaches based on studies of structural member behavior to be crucial from a safety and reliability point of view.

The framework developed for the vulnerability assessment of RC structures under fire hazard through FE analysis can be effectively used to estimate the structural fire resistance for other similar structure to enhance safety and reliability of structures under such extreme threats.

The paper proposes a novel methodology for vulnerability assessment of three-dimensional RC structures under fire hazard through FE analysis and provides comparison of the structural fragility with fragility developed for structural members. Moreover, the research emphasizes to assume 3D behavior of the structure rather than the approximate 2D behavior.

Concrete arch structures are commonly constructed for various civil engineering applications. Despite their frequent use, there is a lack of research on the response and performance of concrete arches when subjected to fire loading. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the response and in-plane failure modes of shallow circular concrete arches subjected to mechanical and fire loading.

This study is conducted through the development of a three-dimensional finite element (FE) model in ANSYS. The FE model is verified by comparison to a non-discretisation numerical model derived herein and the reduced modulus buckling theory, both used for the non-linear inelastic analysis of shallow concrete arches subjected to uniformly distributed radial loading and uniform temperature field. Both anti-symmetric and symmetric buckling modes are examined, with analysis of the former requiring geometric imperfection obtained by an eigenvalue buckling analysis.

The FE results show that anti-symmetric bifurcation buckling is the dominant failure mode in shallow concrete arches under mechanical and fire loading. Additionally, parametric studies are presented which illustrate the influence of various parameters on fire resistance time.

Fire response of concrete arches has not been reported in the open literature. The authors have previously investigated the stability of shallow concrete arches subjected to mechanical and uniform thermal loading. It was found that temperature greatly reduced the buckling loads of concrete arches. However, this study was limited to the simplifying assumptions made which include elastic material behaviour and uniform temperature loading. The present study provides a realistic insight into the fire response and stability of shallow concrete arches. The findings herein may be adopted in the fire design of shallow concrete arches.

This study provides an analysis of patch repair for cracked aircraft structures. Delamination is a type of damage that affects the patch's behavior. The purpose of this study is to assess the influence of delamination on repair performance.

An analytical and numerical study using the finite element method was conducted for a cracked plate repaired with a patch containing a pre-existing delamination defect. The method for defining the contact pair surfaces and modeling the delamination interaction within the patch interface is specified using the virtual crack closure technique (VCCT) approach.

The efficiency of the repair is measured in terms of the J-integral. The effects of delamination initiation, mechanical loading, crack length and patch stacking sequences are presented. It is noted that in mode I, delamination propagation is only significant at node A. The numerical results are in good agreement with those of the analytical solution found in the literature. It is observed that the patch's behavior is strongly dependent on loading, crack size and stacking sequences in terms of reducing the structure's lifespan, especially in the presence of delamination.

The numerical modeling presented by the VCCT approach is highly valuable for studying delamination evolution. The influence of loading, crack size and stacking sequences on repair performance is discussed in this work.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the major reliability issues of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) under mechanical and environmental loading conditions. Furthermore, a comprehensive study on the nonlinear behavior of silicon MEMS devices is presented and different aspects of this phenomenon are discussed.

Regarding the reliability investigations, the most important failure aspects affecting the proper operation of the MEMS components with focus on those caused by environmental and mechanical loads are reviewed. These studies include failures due to fatigue loads, mechanical vibration, mechanical shock, humidity, temperature and particulate contamination. In addition, the influence of squeeze film air damping on the dynamic response of MEMS devices is briefly discussed. A further subject of this paper is discussion of studies on the nonlinearity of silicon MEMS. For this purpose, after a description of the basic principles of nonlinearity, the consequences of nonlinear phenomena such as frequency shift, hysteresis and harmonic generation and their effects on the device performance are reviewed. Special attention is paid to the mode coupling effect between the resonant modes as a result of energy transfer because of the nonlinearity of silicon. For a better understanding of these effects, the nonlinear behavior of silicon is demonstrated by using the example of Si cantilever beams.

It is shown that environmental and mechanical loads can influence on proper operation of the MEMS components and lead to early fracture. In addition, it is demonstrated that nonlinearity modifies dynamic response and leads to new phenomena such as frequency shift and mode coupling. Finally, some ideas are given as possible future areas of research works.

This is a review paper and aimed to review the latest manuscripts published in the field of reliability and nonlinearity of the MEMS structures.

The paper aims to highlight the computational implementation of a nonlinear piezoelectric constitutive model and its application in determining the impact of misalignment between initial poling direction and applied electrical field, and mechanical boundary conditions on actuator performance.

The numerical analysis is based on an existing three‐dimensional model, where the original rate‐independent evolution equations are replaced by their rate‐dependent counterparts to facilitate implementation, which is performed in a partial differential equation solver. The execution of the model is verified through several benchmark constitutive responses.

The analysis shows that small angles of poling and loading axes misalignment such as may occur in fabrication (less than 5^○) have minor impact on piezoelectric performance regardless of the type of imposed mechanical boundary conditions. On the other hand, larger angles of misalignment can have a significant impact, the feasibility of which in actuator design remains to be seen. Furthermore, it is shown that the linear response range of these actuators can be expanded by increased levels of mechanical constraint at the cost of maximum actuation stroke regardless of the degree of misalignment.

The misalignment, which occurs accidentally, but can also be introduced purposefully during the fabrication process when poled material is cut into specimen form, may exhibit desirable performance features for actuator design when combined with appropriate mechanical constraints.

In this paper, a lifetime estimation model for the solder joint is proposed which is capable of considering both severe and running mechanical shocks which is the real case in electric converters in the automotive and aerospace applications. This paper aims to asses the reliability of the solder joint under mixed exposure of mechanical loads.

Mechanical failure process may put at risk the perfect performance of any kinds of electronic systems regardless of the applications they are prepared for. Observation of solder joint health in an electronic assembly under simultaneous exposure of severe and running shocks is an open problem. Three commonly used soldering compositions are considered while the electronic assembly is exposed to three well-known driving cycles.

The results show that the best performance is achieved using SAC405 soldering alloy in comparison with Sn63Pb37 and SAC387 solder alloy. Consideration of mixed exposure to the mechanical loads leads to much more accurate lifetime estimation of the solder joint in the electronic assemblies.

The originality of the paper is confirmed.

The paper aims to present a design and numerical verification procedure of a composite casing of a microstrip antenna for an aerospace satellite.

The casing for the microstrip antenna was designed in a form of a laminate shell with variable number of layers of reinforcing fabric. The material properties, both static and dynamic, were determined experimentally and then exported to an environment of numerical analyses. The numerical modal analysis allows optimizing the geometry and lay-up of the casing in such a way that a number of modal shapes occurring in the operational frequency band was significantly reduced, several modal shapes with high displacement in flanges of the casing were eliminated and the values of natural frequencies were increased. A final model of the composite casing was subjected to two types of analyses which simulate typical operation conditions during spacecraft mission. These analyses contained thermomechanical quasi-static analyses with 12 loadcases and thermomechanical shock analyses with 9 loadcases, which simulate various mechanical and temperature conditions.

Results of the performed analyses were compared with safety margins determined by following requirements to spacecraft vehicles. The obtained results confirm the design feasibility, which allow considering the proposed design during manufacturing of a prototype in further studies.

Moreover, the presented results can be considered as a design methodology guideline, which can be helpful for engineers working in the aerospace industry.

The originality of the paper lies in the proposed design and verification procedure of composite elements subjected to operational loading during a spacecraft mission.