This book provides a critical assessment of current knowledge and indicates new challenges which are brought about at present times by fighting man-made and natural hazards in transient analysis of structures. The latter concerns both permanently fixed structures, such as those built to protect people and/or sensitive storage material; or special structures, like bridges and tunnels; and moving structures such as trains, planes, ships or cars.

The effect of combined extreme transient loadings on a structure is not well understood—whether the source is man-made, such as an explosion and fire, or natural, such as an earthquake or extreme wind loading. A critical assessment of current knowledge is timely (with Fukushima-like disasters or terrorist threats). The central issue in all these problems is structural integrity, along with their transient nature, their unexpectedness, and often the uncertainty behind their cause. No single traditional scientific discipline provides complete answers, rather, a number of tools need to be brought together: nonlinear dynamics, probability theory, some understanding of the physical nature of the problem, as well as modeling and computational techniques for representing inelastic behavior mechanisms. Nonlinear Dynamics of Structures Under Extreme Transient Loads covers model building for different engineering structures and provides detailed presentations of extreme loading conditions. A number of illustrations are given quantifying; a plane crash or explosion induced impact loading, the effects of strong earthquake motion, and the impact and long-duration effects of strong stormy winds—along with a relevant framework for using modern computational tools. The book considers the levels of reserve in existing structures, and ways of reducing the negative impact of high-risk situations by employing sounder design procedures.

1.1. SAFETY OF CIVIL STRUCTURES Society expects that the failure of civil structures is extremely rare and relies on the care and expertise of the professionals involved in the design, construction and maintenance of structures. This is in particular true for public technical systems such as transportation or energy supply systems and structures such as bridges. Structural safety may be defined as follows: “Adequate safety with respect to a hazard is ensured provided that the hazard is kept under control by appropriate measures or the risk is limited to an acceptable value. Absolute safety is not achievable.” It is thus not the structure as such that is designated safe but rather the people, goods and the environment in its surroundings. The continued use of existing structures is of great importance because the built environment is a huge economic and political asset, growing larger every year. Nowadays evaluation of the safety of existing structures is a major engineering task, and structural engineers are increasingly called upon to devise ways for extending the life of structures whilst observing tight cost constraints. Also, existing structures are expected to resist against accidental actions although they were not designed for. Engineers may apply specific methods for evaluation in order to preserve structures and to reduce a client’s expenditure. The ultimate goal is to limit construction intervention to a minimum, a goal that is clearly in agreement with the principles of sustainable development.

This book offers a recipe for constructing the numerical models for representing the complex nonlinear behavior of structures and their components, represented as deformable solid bodies. Its appeal extends to those interested in linear problems of mechanics.

This newly updated volume of the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science (ECSS) presents several mathematical models that describe this physical phenomenon, including the famous non-linear equation Korteweg-de-Vries (KdV) that represents the canonical form of solitons. Also, there exists a class of nonlinear partial differential equations that led to solitons, e.g., Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP), Klein-Gordon (KG), Sine-Gordon (SG), Non-Linear Schrödinger (NLS), Korteweg-de-Vries Burger’s (KdVB), etc. Different linear mathematical methods can be used to solve these models analytically, such as the Inverse Scattering Transformation (IST), Adomian Decomposition Method, Variational Iteration Method (VIM), Homotopy Analysis Method (HAM) and Homotopy Perturbation Method (HPM). Other non-analytic methods use the computational techniques available in such popular mathematical packages as Mathematica, Maple, and MATLAB. The main purpose of this volume is to provide physicists, engineers, and their students with the proper methods and tools to solve the soliton equations, and to discover the new possibilities of using solitons in multi-disciplinary areas ranging from telecommunications to biology, cosmology, and oceanographic studies.

This book presents a novel approach to the classical scientific discipline of Structural Engineering, which is inspired by numerous current applications from domains of Civil, Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering. The main goal of this book is to help with making the best choice between accuracy and efficiency, when it comes to building the most suitable structural models by practising engineers using modern computational tools available in commercial software products (SAP, FEAP, ANSYS ...) for which we have carried out many developments that have been become the main reference in the field. Any development of this kind is not a mere modification of discrete approximation, but a thorough treatment with a sound theoretical formulation based upon Hu-Washizu variational principle with independent rotation field, its corresponding regularization and finally the most appropriate finite element interpolation that can match those used for structural elements. Proposed approach allows us to provide a unified discrete approximation of complex structural assemblies and greatly simplify the modeling task for structural engineers. Thus, in conclusion, this book can also be perceived as the theoretical manual for using modern computer models successfully by practising engineers.

Hybrid Simulation: Theory, Implementation and Applications deals with a rapidly evolving technology combining computer simulation (typically finite element) and physical laboratory testing of two complementary substructures. It is a multidisciplinary technology which relies heavily on control theory, computer science, numerical techniques and finds applications in aerospace, civil, and mechanical engineering.

The Bled workshops have traditionally produced reference documents providing visions for the future development of earthquake engineering as foreseen by leading researchers in the field. The participants of the 2011 workshop built on the tradition of these events initiated by Professors Fajfar and Krawinkler to honor their important research contributions and have now produced a book providing answers to crucial questions in today’s earthquake engineering: “What visible changes in the design practice have been brought about by performance-based seismic engineering? What are the critical needs for future advances? What actions should be taken to respond to those needs?” The key answer is that research interests should go beyond the narrow technical aspects and that the seismic resilience of society as a whole should become an essential part of the planning and design process. The book aims to provide essential guidelines for researchers, professionals and students in the field of earthquake engineering. It will also be of particular interest for all those working at insurance companies, governmental, civil protection and emergency management agencies that are responsible for assessing and planning community resilience. The introductory chapter of the book is based on the keynote presentation given at the workshop by the late Professor Helmut Krawinkler. As such, the book includes Helmut’s last and priceless address to the engineering community, together with his vision and advice for the future development of performance-based design, earthquake engineering and seismic risk management.

The book focuses on the use of inelastic analysis methods for the seismic assessment and design of bridges, for which the work carried out so far, albeit interesting and useful, is nevertheless clearly less than that for buildings. Although some valuable literature on the subject is currently available, the most advanced inelastic analysis methods that emerged during the last decade are currently found only in the specialised research-oriented literature, such as technical journals and conference proceedings. Hence the key objective of this book is two-fold, first to present all important methods belonging to the aforementioned category in a uniform and sufficient for their understanding and implementation length, and to provide also a critical perspective on them by including selected case-studies wherein more than one methods are applied to a specific bridge and by offering some critical comments on the limitations of the individual methods and on their relative efficiency. The book should be a valuable tool for both researchers and practicing engineers dealing with seismic design and assessment of bridges, by both making the methods and the analytical tools available for their implementation, and by assisting them to select the method that best suits the individual bridge projects that each engineer and/or researcher faces.

In the recent decade, there has been a growing interest in the numerical treatment of high-dimensional problems. It is well known that classical numerical discretization schemes fail in more than three or four dimensions due to the curse of dimensionality. The technique of sparse grids helps overcome this problem to some extent under suitable regularity assumptions. This discretization approach is obtained from a multi-scale basis by a tensor product construction and subsequent truncation of the resulting multiresolution series expansion. This volume of LNCSE is a collection of the papers from the proceedings of the workshop on sparse grids and its applications held in Bonn in May 2011. The selected articles present recent advances in the mathematical understanding and analysis of sparse grid discretization. Aspects arising from applications are given particular attention.