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The steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) have been proven effective in reinforced concrete frames (RCFs) as a lateral force‐resistant structure. Despite of advancements, accurately predicting the ultimate shear capacity of RCFs with SPSWs remains challenging using current simplified models. Additionally, the flexural capacity design procedure for the boundary elements (beams and columns) in previous studies of RCF‐SPSWs involved intricate iterative procedures, hindering its widespread implementation. To address the two issues, this paper investigates the pushover responses and the plate‐frame interaction (PFI) of an RCF‐SPSWs system using theoretical and numerical methods. There are three main contributions. First, a theoretical model of ultimate shear capacity for RCF‐SPSWs is proposed, which can also be used to predict shear contributions of boundary frames in RCF‐SPSWs. Calculation errors for ultimate shear capacity of RCF‐SPSWs and shear contribution from the boundary frame are only 3.7% and 6.7% respectively, which are reduced dramatically compared with the traditional model. A simplified schematic diagram for the global collapse mechanism (uniform distribution of plastic hinges within a structure) of RCF‐SPSWs is developed to facilitate the calculation of internal work and reaction forces. Secondly, a flexural capacity design method for the boundary elements to avoid in‐span plastic hinges is proposed. The proposed method enables the achievement of direct estimation of the flexural demands that could trigger a global collapse mechanism, all without intricate iterative procedures. The applicability of current assumptions for the design of steel boundary frame in RCF‐SPSWs system is discussed, and engineering suggestions are provided to ensure safer and more economic designs. Comparison results confirmed the applicability of the proposed design method, which can be adopted to achieve the global collapse mechanism for RCF‐SPSW system. Thirdly, impacts of yielding panel actions on the flexural capacity of boundary elements of RCF‐SPSWs are clarified. Comparison results demonstrated that adding SPSWs to an RCF alters the axial force on boundary elements and significantly impacts the flexural capacity. A design suggestion is made to emphasize the importance of avoiding the balanced failure of boundary elements. The proposed theoretical model can be used to economize the cross‐section of boundary elements in RCF‐SPSWs system under seismic loads due to accurate prediction of their shear contribution; the proposed flexural capacity design method can achieve a global collapse mechanism, and thus the structural safety and energy dissipation capacity are improved; moreover, the building design efficiency is also improved due to avoidance of intricate iterative procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) are commonly used passive control devices in practical engineering applications. However, motion‐limiting stoppers are usually installed to control the excessive TMD displacement due to the building space limitation, resulting in piecewise nonlinearity and detuning of TMD. This paper studies the influence of elastic motion‐limiting stoppers on the optimal design of TMDs through a piecewise stiffness TMD (PSTMD) model. Performance of a PSTMD with classical design is first investigated and proven to be ineffective. To optimize the PSTMD parameters, the motion of PSTMD is decoupled from the controlled structure, and the frequency response equation of PSTMD is obtained analytically through the averaging method. Subsequently, the solution of the optimal design frequency for PSTMD is transformed into the solution of the jump frequency in the frequency response equation. With the optimal frequency of PSTMDs, the optimal damping and control performance of PSTMDs are discussed and analyzed compared with classical linear design, which fully showcases the effectiveness of the novel design method. Finally, the effectiveness of the novel design method is verified using a nine‐story benchmark frame structure, and the results demonstrate that the control performance of the optimal PSTMD can be improved by nearly 10%$10\%$ under specific seismic excitation, compared to the PSTMD with classical linear method. In summary, the novel design method can effectively take into account the influence of piecewise nonlinearity caused by elastic motion‐limiting stoppers and improve the optimal control performance of TMD in a more realistic engineering environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concrete crack detection is a crucial task for the safety and durability of engineering structures. Extensive research has been conducted on deep-learning methods employing horizontal bounding boxes (HBBs) for crack detection. However, due to the inherently random distribution of concrete cracks, HBB-based methods often produce excessive overlaps and encompass extensive background regions, obstructing the effective interpretation and adaptation of the detection results. To address this issue and achieve efficient utilization of bounding box space for detecting cracks at any orientation, a rotated bounding box (RBB)-based method, that is, Rotated Faster R-CNN with a post processing strategy (RFR-P), was proposed. To realize this method, an RBB-based crack annotation strategy was introduced to standardize the annotation baseline for the evolutionarily established RBB-based crack detection dataset. Then, an RBB-based post-processing strategy was inventively developed to quantify the patterns of cracks with their corresponding rotation angles encompassing longitudinal cracks, transverse cracks, and diagonal cracks. Subsequently, experimental results showed that the RFR-P method provides more reasonable and elaborate detection results in terms of crack distribution patterns when compared to HBB-based methods. Based on the comprehensive consideration of evaluation metrics and detected results, it can be concluded that the RFR-P is aptly designed for detecting cracks at any rotation angle with relatively high accuracy. Finally, an RBB-based concrete crack detection platform was established to automatically detect in situ concrete bridge cracks for real-world applications. The proposed RFR-P model introduces a new perspective on crack detection methods and offers practical references for structural condition evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the influence of waves and ocean currents, the mesh panels of trash nets at nuclear power plants exhibit a curved shape. The combined action of waves and currents creates a Doppler effect that significantly influences the hydrodynamic response of these nets. This paper used OpenFOAM to establish a porous media macroscopic computational fluid dynamics model for analyzing the forces on curved trash nets. Wave–current combined conditions were simulated by introducing a uniform current in the direction of wave propagation. Forces on the nets under wave–current combined conditions were analyzed and compared with forces under separate uniform current and wave conditions. The results indicate that wave run-up on the nets is more significant under wave–current combined conditions than under wave action alone. The dimensionless horizontal force decreases more rapidly with increasing wave steepness (kA) and wave number (kd) under combined conditions than with linear superposition. Specifically, the rate of increase in dimensionless horizontal force with current speed, at the same blockage ratio, is about twice that of linear superposition. Additionally, the tension in the main cable of the nets is 17% higher under combined conditions than with linear superposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]