<p>Establishing permanent and sustainable human settlements outside Earth presents numerous challenges. The Resilient Extra-Terrestrial Habitat Institute (RETHi) has been established to advance the fundamental knowledge needed to enable and design resilient habitats in deep space, that will adapt, absorb, and rapidly recover from expected and unexpected disruptions without fundamental changes in function or sacrifices in safety.</p> <p>Future extra-terrestrial habitats will rely on several subsystems working synergistically to ensure adequate power supply, life support to crew members, manage extreme environmental conditions, and monitor the health status of the equipment. To study extra-terrestrial habitats, a combination of modeling approaches and experimental validations is necessary, but deep-space conditions cannot be entirely reproduced in a laboratory setting (e.g., micro-gravity effects). To this end, real-time multi-physics cyber-physical testing is a novel approach of simulating and evaluating complex system-of-systems (SoS) that has been applied to investigate the behavior of extra-terrestrial habitats under different scenarios (e.g., meteorite strikes). One of the most critical components which determines the success of the cyber-physical testbed is the transfer system serving as an interface between the physical and cyber substructures.</p> <p>Through this work, a dedicated thermal transfer system has been designed and constructed to provide realistic thermal boundary conditions to the physical habitat according to the real-time simulation results from cyber substructure of the habitat. The extreme temperatures to be found at the interface between the external protective layer of the habitat (cyber) and the interior structural elements (physical) are emulated by means of a cryogenic chiller and an array of cooled panels that cover a dome-style structure. Moreover, the overall architecture of the cyber-physical testbed, the partitioning of the virtual and physical environments, and interface schemes were also established. The experimental results obtained from the thermal transfer system prototype setup were analyzed and interpreted to generate meaningful recommendations for future development and application of the full-sized testbed.</p>

Hybrid testing is an emerging technique for system emulation that uses a transfer system composed of actuators and sensors to couple physical tests of a critical component or substructure to a numerical simulation of the remainder of a system and its complete operating environment. The realisation of modern real-time hybrid tests for multi-body contact-impact problems often proves infeasible due to (i) hardware with bandwidth limitations and (ii) the unavailability of control schemes that provide satisfactory force and position tracking in the presence of sharp non-linearities or discontinuities. Where this is the case, the possibility of employing a pseudo-dynamic technique remains, enabling tests to be conducted on an enlarged time scale thus relaxing bothbandwidth and response time constraints and providing inherent loop stability. Exploiting the pseudo-dynamic technique, this thesis presents the development of Robotic Pseudo-Dynamic Testing (RPsDT), a dedicated method that specifically targets the realisation of hybrid tests for multi-body contact-impact problems using commercial off- the shelve (COTS) industrial robotic manipulators. The RPsDT method is evaluated in on-ground studies of air-to-air refuelling (AAR) maneuvers with probe-hose-drogue systems where the critical contact and coupling phase is tested pseudo-dynamicallywith full-scale refuelling hardware while the flight regime is emulated in simulation. It is shown that the RPsDT method can faithfully reproduce the dominant contact impact phenomena between probe and drogue while minor discrepancies result from the absence of rate-dependant damping in the force feedback measurements. In combination with full-speed robot controlled contact tests, reliable estimates for impact forces, strain distributions and drogue responses to off-centre hits are obtained providing extensive improvements over current predictive capabilities for the in-flight behaviour of refuelling hardware and it is concluded that the technique shows great promise for industrial applications.

Η ενίσχυση πλαισίων οπλισμένου σκυροδέματος με εμφάτνωση από οπλισμένο σκυρόδεμα αποτελεί μια συχνά χρησιμοποιούμενη και αποτελεσματική μέθοδο για την αύξηση της αντοχής και της δυσκαμψίας. Η πειραματική έρευνα μέχρι στιγμής δεν καλύπτει επαρκώς το πεδίο της ενίσχυσης πλαισίων με φάτνωμα από οπλισμένο σκυρόδεμα και αυτό γιατί έχει διεξαχθεί σε μονώροφα και διώροφα πλαίσια, με πάχος φατνώματος αρκετά μικρότερο από το πλάτος των μελών του υφιστάμενου πλαισίου. Αυτό αποτυπώνεται και στο γεγονός ότι ο Ευρωκώδικας 8 – Μέρος 3 δεν αναφέρεται καθόλου στην προσθήκη εμφατνωμένων τοιχωμάτων. Ο Κανονισμός Επεμβάσεων (Καν.Επε) αναφέρεται στη διαστασιολόγηση των τοιχωμάτων αυτών μόνο σε όρους δυνάμεων και δεν παρέχει μέσα για τον υπολογισμό των χαρακτηριστικών τους παραμορφώσεων και της δυσκαμψίας τους. Σκοπός της παρούσας μελέτης είναι η διερεύνηση της απόκρισης πολυώροφων πλαισίων από οπλισμένο σκυρόδεμα, ενισχυόμενων με εμφατνούμενα τοιχώματα. Πραγματοποιήθηκαν υβριδικές δοκιμές σε τρία 4-όροφα πλαίσια οπλισμένου σκυροδέματος ενισχυμένα με φάτνωμα οπλισμένου σκυροδέματος κλίμακας 1:¾. Παράμετροι διερεύνησης αποτελούν τόσο ο οπλισμός του φατνώματος όσο και η σύνδεση του με το περιβάλλον πλαίσιο, για αυτό τον λόγο εξετάζονται δύο τρόποι σύνδεσης του πλαισίου με το φάτνωμα. Από τα πειραματικά αποτελέσματα προκύπτει ότι η σύνδεση για αμφότερους τους τύπους που εξετάστηκαν οδηγεί σε μονολιθική συμπεριφορά του φατνώματος με τα μέλη του περιβάλλοντος πλαισίου. Για την πιστοποίηση των συμπερασμάτων ακολούθησε εκτεταμένη προσπάθεια εκτέλεσης μη-γραμμικών δυναμικών αναλύσεων της απόκρισης των δοκιμίων χρησιμοποιώντας προσομοιώματα αυξανόμενου βαθμού λεπτομέρειας. Η σύγκριση των πειραμάτικών αποτελεσμάτων με εκείνα τον αναλύσεων έδειξαν ικανοποιητική σύγκλιση. Τέλος, με βάση τα παραπάνω προκύπτει ότι οι ιδιότητες του σύνθετου τοιχώματος μπορούν να υπολογιστούν με όσα ισχύουν κατά Καν.Επε. για μονολιθικό τοίχωμα, εφόσον υιοθετηθούν κατάλληλες παραδοχές. / The construction of reinforced concrete infills is a very effective method for retrofitting multi – storey reinforced concrete buildings. The experimental research to date has conducted only at one or two storey specimens with infill thickness considerably smaller than the width of the members of the existing frame. Because of this lack of knowledge, Eurocode 8 - Part 3 does not cover this technique. The Greek code for Structural Interventions (Kan.Epe.) refers to the dimensioning of these walls only in terms of forces and does not provide means for calculating deformation at yielding and ultimate. The purpose of this study is to investigate the response of multi-storey reinforced concrete frames, retrofitted with reinforced concrete infill walls. Three 4-storey reinforced concrete frames infilled with reinforced concrete were tested at 75%-scale via the hybrid testing method. Parameters of investigation are both the reinforcement of the infill and the connection between the surrounding frame and the infill. Two types of connection were examined. The experimental results show that both connection options lead to a close to monolithic behavior of the specimens and to a favourable flexure-controlled energy absorbing mechanism. From the experimental results deformations characteristics at yielding and ultimate were calculated. The magnitude of these deformations are in good agreement with those predicted for a monolithic wall according to Eurocode 8 and Kan.Epe, if one takes into account the reduced fixed end rotation of the wall at the base of each floor due to the epoxy–grouting of the dowels into the frame members. To verify these conclusions nonlinear dynamic analyses were performed with increasing level of detailing. The comparison of experimental results with those of the analysis showed satisfactory convergence.

Pour valider expérimentalement les modèles de fissuration et d'endommagement du béton, pour identifier leurs paramètres et pour mieux caractériser le comportement du béton lors de la propagation des fissures en mode mixte, des nouveaux essais multiaxiaux sont développés. Inspiré de travaux de Nooru-Mohamed (1992) et Winkler (2001), des essais riches et discriminants sont réalisés à l'aide de techniques expérimentales modernes. Le chargement est appliqué en utilisant une machine d'essai à 6 degrés de liberté asservie par un système de pilotage 3D. Pendant tout le déroulement d’essai, l'état de fissuration est analysé par corrélation d'images numériques, ainsi que les conditions limites cinématiques. Avec le dispositif expérimental proposé plusieurs histoires de chargement sont analysées : des chargements multiaxiaux proportionnels et non-proportionnelles, avec et sans refermeture de fissure. Les résultats expérimentaux sont confrontés à des simulations numériques réalisées avec des modèles d'endommagement non-locaux (i.e., à gradient) et avec un modèle de la mécanique linéaire de la rupture couplé avec une technique X-FEM. Le travail souligne l'importance de l'utilisation de conditions aux limites précises, estimées à partir de mesures de champ pour effectuer des simulations numériques qui reproduisent au mieux les résultats expérimentaux. En outre, il est démontré que la réorientation et la bifurcation de la fissure sont essentielles afin de créer des essais de propagation de fissures vraiment discriminants. Basé sur ces résultats expérimentaux, un nouveau type d’essai est finalement proposé. Cet essai hybride consiste à résoudre un problème inverse pour définir les conditions aux limites qui imposeront un trajet de fissuration voulu. Cette nouvelle technique permet une exploration plus complète du comportement mécanique complexe du béton en un seul essai. / To experimentally validate concrete damage and fracture models, identify their parameters and better characterize the concrete behaviour during mixed-mode crack propagation, multiaxial tests are developed. Inspired by former works of Nooru-Mohamed (1992) and Winkler (2001), rich and discriminating tests are performed by using state of the art techniques, where the experimental boundary conditions are directly measured during crack propagation. The loadings are applied using a hexapod testing machine controlled by a 3D displacement system and the cracking state is analysed via digital image correlation.With the proposed experimental setup several loading histories are analysed: proportional multiaxial loading histories and non-proportional ones, with and without crack closure and friction. The experimental results are confronted with numerical simulations performed with nonlocal (i.e., gradient) damage models and with a linear elastic fracture model coupled with the X-FEM framework. The present work underlines the importance of using accurate boundary conditions, estimated from full field measurements, to perform numerical simulations that reproduce the experimental results. Moreover it is shown that crack reorientation and crack branching is vital to create discriminant crack propagation tests.Based on these experimental results a innovative hybrid test is proposed, where the boundary conditions leading to a given crack path are found by solving an inversed problem. This new discriminating concrete fracture test is able to fully investigate its complex mechanical behaviour within a single run.

Fires following earthquake (FFE) have historically produced enormous post-earthquake damage and losses in terms of lives, buildings and economic costs, like the San Francisco earthquake (1906), the Kobe earthquake (1995), the Turkey earthquake (2011), the Tohoku earthquake (2011) and the Christchurch earthquakes (2011). The structural fire performance can worsen significantly because the fire acts on a structure damaged by the seismic event. On these premises, the purpose of this work is the investigation of the experimental and numerical response of structural and non-structural components of steel structures subjected to fire following earthquake (FFE) to increase the knowledge and provide a robust framework for hybrid fire testing and hybrid fire following earthquake testing. A partitioned algorithm to test a real case study with substructuring techniques was developed. The framework is developed in MATLAB and it is also based on the implementation of nonlinear finite elements to model the effects of earthquake forces and post-earthquake effects such as fire and thermal loads on structures. These elements should be able to capture geometrical and mechanical non-linearities to deal with large displacements. Two numerical validation procedures of the partitioned algorithm simulating two virtual hybrid fire testing and one virtual hybrid seismic testing were carried out. Two sets of experimental tests in two different laboratories were performed to provide valuable data for the calibration and comparison of numerical finite element case studies reproducing the conditions used in the tests. Another goal of this thesis is to develop a fire following earthquake numerical framework based on a modified version of the OpenSees software and several scripts developed in MATLAB to perform probabilistic analyses of structures subjected to FFE. A new material class, namely SteelFFEThermal, was implemented to simulate the steel behaviour subjected to FFE events.