Interfacial fatigue debonding retardation in wrapped composite joints: Experimental and numerical study

Debonding crack propagation at the composite-to-steel interface has been found to be an important failure mechanism for wrapped composite joints under static and fatigue loads. Friction at the interface behind the crack tip may deviate fatigue debonding of the joints from the linear-fracture-mechanics behaviour. This paper presents static and...

Modelling Skin-Stringer Separation in a Post-Buckled Composite Stiffened Panel through Single Stringer Specimens

The collapse of composite stiffened panels in compression is complex and involves the interactions of many different failure modes. However, when the panel is allowed to enter the post-buckling regime, skin-stringer separation due to the interaction of the post-buckling deformations with the skin-stringer interface is often the critical failure...

Development of a Computationally Efficient Modelling Framework for Type IV Pressure Vessels

The combination of a relatively recent emissions scandal and the ever growing incentive to provide sustainable transportation solutions, led to the fact that the transition to electrically propelled land-based vehicles is more prominent than ever. All prominent European car-makers announced diverse fully and partially electric product portfolios...

Wheel-rail impact at an insulated rail joint in an embedded rail system

With dynamic behaviour different from that of traditional discretely supported tracks, continuously supported embedded rail systems (ERSs) have been increasingly used in railway bridges, level crossings, trams, and high-speed lines. However, studies on ERSs have been limited, and none of them have addressed the wheel-rail impact-induced dynamic...

A CFD approach for the flotation analysis of pipelines in liquefied sand (Une approche CFD pour l’étude de la flottation des pipelines dans les sables liquéfiés)

Submarine buried pipelines may often interact with shallow layers of loose sand that are particularly prone to liquefaction. When liquefaction is triggered by environmental loading and/or mechanical vibrations, the soil tends to behave as a viscous solid-fluid mixture and the pipeline to undergo either flotation or sinking. While a few...

Wheel-Rail Interaction: Enhanced explicit finite element modelling, verification and validation

Nowadays, wheel-rail (W/R) interfaces are suffering from the practical problems (e.g. wear, rolling contact defects) with the increase of train speed and traffic density. For accurate prediction of wear and/or growth of rolling contact defects, rapid determination of detailed contact responses (i.e. contact stresses & strains) using...

3D FEM approach for laterally loaded monopile design

Over the past 5 years, a substantial research effort aimed at optimising the design of offshore wind turbines has led to significant reductions in the projected cost of developing offshore wind. Optimising the geotechnical design of these structures, through modern analysis techniques such as 3D Finite Element Modelling (FEM), has played a...

Finite element modelling and model updating of small scale composite propellers

The application of composite materials in marine propellers is a relatively recent innovation. Methods have been presented to analyse the hydro-elastic behaviour of these type of propellers and in some studies these methods have been validated as well. Differences between measured and predicted responses are typically explained from...

Three-dimensional finite element analysis of offshore jack-up structures accounting for non-linear soil-structure interaction

Jack-up structures are widely used in the offshore industry. Not only in the field of oil and gas, but also in the installation for offshore wind turbines. These jack-up structures typically consist of three trusswork legs, where the foundation is formed by inverted conical cones that are penetrated into the soil, called spudcans. The spudcans...

Global Fatigue Life Modelling of Steel Half-pipes Bolted Connections

A steel hybrid structural solution for onshore wind turbine towers was proposed in the European project SHOWTIME. This solution is used in the lattice structure for the lower portion of the tower. Recently, a procedure for fatigue life estimation of steel half-pipes bolted connections applied in global structural models using multiaxial Smith...