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In the present paper, nonlinear behavior of mass concrete simulated by smeared crack model is combined with Endurance Time Analysis (ETA) method for studying seismic response of arch dams. ETA is a time-history based dynamic pushover procedure in which special predesigned intensifying acceleration functions are used for analysis and estimation of structural responses in various performance levels by just a single analysis. For this purpose 203m DEZ arch dam is selected as case study and the finite element model of dam-reservoir-foundation system is excited in various performance levels. It was found that ETA provides reasonable responses in comparison with Time-History Analysis (THA) at equivalent target time. In addition, ETAleads to acceptable estimation of crack profiles within dam body and can reduce the total time of analyses, meaningfully. Generally, it was concluded that ETA can be considered as an alternative of THA in nonlinear analysis of arch dams.

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Offshore pipelines are an effective tool for transportation of oil and gas which are usually assembled by the use of girth welds. Since flaws may naturally exist at such welds, fracture assessment of girth welded offshore pipelines is substantial. Current fracture assessment procedures like BS 7910 consider identical material properties for the weld and the base metals. However the strength difference between weld and base materials has significant effect on fracture assessment results. This effect is magnified greatly for pipelines which are operated in deep waters and are subjected to large plastic loads. In this paper 3D nonlinear elastic-plastic finite element analyses using the ABAQUS software are performed in order to investigate the effect of weld mismatching at various crack geometries on fracture assessment of pipeline’s girth weld. It is noteworthy that such a quantitative study on the effect of weld mismatching condition at different crack geometries on ECA analysis has not been performed so far. Based on simulation performed, a new optimized formula is proposed for fracture analysis of girth welded pipeline with surface cracks considering the effect of weld mismatching conditions at plastic strains. The results show that comparison of proposed formula results with those available experimental data reveals a great agreement. Furthermore, it is observed that the effect of strength difference between the base and the weld materials is insignificant for short cracks whereas mismatching plays a more dominating role in long cracks. Also, with increasing the crack heights the effect of weld mismatching raises meaningfully. In addition, ECA analysis results with and without weld mismatching effect are compared.

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Structural damage detection is a field that has attracted a great interest in the scientific community in recent years. Most of these studies use dynamic analysis data of the beams as a diagnostic tool for damage. In this paper, a massless rotational spring was used to represent the cracked sections of beams and the natural frequencies and mode shape were obtained. For calculation of rotational spring stiffness equivalent of uncracked and cracked sections, finite element models and experimental test were used. The damage identification problem was addressed with two optimization techniques of different philosophers: ECBO, PSO and SQP methods. The objective functions used in the optimization process are based on the dynamic analysis data such as natural frequencies and mode shapes. This data was obtained by developing a software that performs the dynamic analysis of structures using the Finite Element Method (FEM). Comparison between the detected cracks using optimization method and real beam shows an acceptable agreement.