Turbulence in the wake generated by wind flow over buildings or obstacles may produce complex flow patterns in downstream areas. Examples include the recirculating flow and wind deficit areas behind an airport terminal building and their potential impacts on the aircraft landing on nearby runways. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the wind flow over an airport terminal building was performed in this study of the effect of the building wake on landing aircraft. Under normal meteorological conditions, the studied airport terminal building causes limited effects on landing aircraft because most of the aircraft have already landed before entering the turbulent wake region. By simulating the approach of a tropical cyclone, additional CFD sensitivity tests were performed to study the impacts of building wake under extreme meteorological conditions. It was found that, in a narrow range of prevalent wind directions with wind speeds larger than a certain threshold value, a substantial drop in wind speed (>3.6 m/s) along the glide path of aircraft was observed in the building wake. Our CFD results also showed that under the most critical situation, a drop in wind speed as large as 6.4 m/s occurred right at the touchdown point of landing aircraft on the runway, an effect which may have a significant impact on aircraft operations. This study indicated that a comprehensive analysis of the potential impacts of building wake on aircraft operations should be carried out for airport terminals and associated buildings in airfields to ensure safe aviation operation under all meteorological conditions and to facilitate implementation of precautionary measures.

Dynamic response analysis of damper connected adjacent multi-story structures with uncertain parameters is carried out. A formula of the multi degree of freedom (MDOF) for the structure-damper system with stochastic parameters is derived. The uncertainties of mass and stiffness are taken into consideration firstly. The ground acceleration is represented by Kanai-Tajimi filtered non-stationary process. The mean square random responses of structural displacement and story drift are chosen as the optimization objective. The variations of mean square responses of top floor displacements and bottom story drifts in neighboring structures with the damper stiffness and damping coefficient are analyzed in detail. Through the parametric study, the acquiring optimum parameters of damper are regarded as numerical results. Then, a reducing order model of the MDOF system for adjacent structures with mean parameters is presented. The explicit expressions for determining optimal parameters of Kelvin model-defined damper which is used to connect adjacent single degree of freedom (SDOF) structures subjected to a white-noise excitation are employed to achieve the appropriate damper parameters, which are called theory results. Through a comparative study, it can be found that the theory values of damper parameters are consistent with the results based on extensive parametric studies. The analytical results can be obtained by using the first natural frequencies and the total mass of the adjacent deterministic structures with mean parameters. The analytical formulas can be used to find appropriate parameters of damper between adjacent structures for engineering applications. The performance of damper is investigated on the basis of mitigations of mean square random responses of inter-story drifts, displacements and accelerations in adjacent structures. The numerical results demonstrate the robustness of coupled building control strategies.

The elastic modulus of asphalt concrete (AC) is an important material parameter for pavement design. The prediction and determination of elastic modulus, however, largely depends on laboratory tests which cannot reflect explicitly the influence of the microstructure of AC. To this end, a micromechanical model based on stepping scheme is adopted. Consideration is given to the influence of interfacial debonding and interlocking effect between the aggregates and asphalt mastic using the concept of effective bonding. Tests on asphalt mixture with various microstructures are conducted to verify the proposed approach. It is shown that the prediction is generally in agreement with experimental results. Parameters affecting the elastic modulus of AC are also discussed in light of the proposed method.

The filling construction of permeable geosynthetic tubes is considered. First, an analytical approach is developed to determine the internal pressure, tension and shape of the cross section of a geosynthetic tube based on its volume. An analytical solution for the drainage rate of the tube is then derived. The course of the filling construction is divided into several time intervals and the volume of the tube after each interval is obtained from the equilibrium of flow calculated from the drainage rate and filling rate. The validity of our analytical approach is tested by comparing our results with previously published experimental result. The results of this comparison indicate that our method is applicable for simulating the filling construction of permeable geosynthetic tubes.

The aim of this study was to design and construct an improved response surface method (RSM) based on weighted regression for the anti-slide reliability analysis of concrete gravity dam. The limitation and lacuna of the traditional RSM were briefly analyzed. Firstly, based on small experimental points, research was devoted to an improved RSM with singular value decomposition techniques. Then, the method was used on the basis of weighted regression and deviation coefficient correction to reduce iteration times and experimental points and improve the calculation method of checking point. Finally, a test example was given to verify this method. Compared with other conventional algorithms, this method has some strong advantages: this algorithm not only saves the arithmetic operations but also greatly enhances the calculation efficiency and the storage efficiency.

With von Mises yield criterion, the loading range of Net Section Collapse (NSC) Criteria is extended from combined tension and bending loadings to combined bending, torsion and internal pressure loadings. A new theoretical analyzing method of plastic limit load for pressure pipe with incomplete welding defects based on the extended NSC Criteria is presented and the correlative formulas are deduced, the influences of pipe curvature, circumferential length and depth of incomplete welding defects on the plastic limit load of pressure pipe are considered as well in this method. Meanwhile, according to the orthogonal experimental design method, the plastic limit loads are calculated by the finite element method and compared with the theoretical values. The results show that the expressions of plastic limit load of pressure pipe with incomplete welding defects under bending, torsion and internal pressure based on extended NSC criteria are reliable. The study provides an important theoretical basis for the establishment of safety assessment measure towards pressure pipe with incomplete welding defects.

The aim of this research is to characterize the development of fatigue damage by means of stress-strain hysteresis. Experiments were conducted on 14 specimens made of cold-finished unannealed AISI 1018 steel. Results demonstrate that the mechanical hysteresis loop areas, when plotted as a function of the number of loading cycles, show significant variations and demonstrate the three principal stages concerning the progress of the fatigue failure—initial accommodation, accretion of damage and terminal failure. These three stages of fatigue are marked by the transitions at cycles N₂ and N₃. Experimental results show that although fatigue life N_f ranges from 2644 cycles to 108 992 cycles, the ratios of N₂/N_f and N₃/N_f tend to be stable: N₂/N_f=10.7%, N₃/N_f=91.3%.

Satellite attitude information is essential for pico-satellite applications requiring light-weight, low-power, and fast-computation characteristics. The objective of this study is to provide a magnetometer-only attitude estimation method for a low-altitude Earth orbit, bias momentum pico-satellite. Based on two assumptions, the spacecraft spherical symmetry and damping of body rates, a linear kinematics model of a bias momentum satellite’s pitch axis is derived, and the linear estimation algorithm is developed. The algorithm combines the linear Kalman filter (KF) with the classic three-axis attitude determination method (TRIAD). KF is used to estimate satellite’s pitch axis orientation, while TRIAD is used to obtain information concerning the satellite’s three-axis attitude. Simulation tests confirmed that the algorithm is suited to the time-varying model errors resulting from both assumptions. The estimate result keeps tracking satellite attitude motion during all damping, stable, and free rotating control stages. Compared with nonlinear algorithms, such as extended Kalman filer (EKF) and square root unscented Kalman filer (SRUKF), the algorithm presented here has an almost equal performance in terms of convergence time and estimation accuracy, while the consumption of computing resources is much lower.