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During an earthquake, unanchored equipment within a nuclear power plant facility can slide and interact with safety-critical systems and components. Previous studies on sliding have largely focused on the response due to unidirectional excitation, as computing the response of unanchored components in three dimensions can be complex and computationally expensive. As such, several prediction equations and a standardized approximate method as outlined in ASCE 4-16 have been developed to estimate the peak sliding displacement. This study investigates the effect of bidirectional horizontal interaction and the influence of vertical excitation on the sliding response of an unanchored object when the x, y, and z, components of earthquake excitation are applied simultaneously. The study also evaluates the approximate method detailed in ASCE 4-16. A suite of 40 floor acceleration histories obtained from response history analysis of a representative nuclear power plant facility are used as input for the sliding model. A wide range of friction coefficients is selected for analysis and the nonlinear sliding response of components is determined through the use of a Bouc-Wen type hysteretic model. Computed responses under uni-, bi- and tri-directional excitation reveal that the effect of bidirectional interaction and vertical excitation is greatest for sites with high shaking intensity. It is also concluded that the ASCE 4-16 approximate method is significantly overconservative in all cases. Additionally, the study expands the concept of multi-component excitation to intensity measures. Twelve intensity measures are selected and evaluated. It is found that most efficient intensity measures vary in efficiency depending on the coefficient of friction, and that the top intensity measures are not significantly affected by incorporating multiple components of excitation. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / Earthquakes can pose a huge risk to nuclear facilities. Unanchored objects within the facility may collide and interact with safety-critical equipment. Previous research on sliding behaviour lacks information on the response of an object subjected to earthquake excitation in both the horizontal plane and vertical direction simultaneously. Several prediction equations and an approximate method have been developed to estimate the sliding response as it becomes computationally expensive to solve. This research investigates the influence of simulatenous multi-component excitation on the sliding behaviour and evaluates the current standardized approximate method of estimating sliding displacement. Recommendations are given based on the friction coefficient between the object and the base. The research also explores which characteristics of earthquake ground motion (e.g. acceleration, velocity, energy) are most indicative of sliding behaviour.

The main focus of this study is on the active and semi-active control of civil engineering structures subjected to seismic excitations. Among different candidate control strategies, the sliding mode control approach emerges as a convenient alternative, because of its superb robustness under parametric and input uncertainties. The analytical developments and numerical results presented in this dissertation are directed to investigate the feasibility of application of the sliding mode control approach to civil structures. In the first part of this study, a unified treatment of active and semi-active sliding mode controllers for civil structures is presented. A systematic procedure, based on a special state transformation, is also presented to obtain the regular form of the state equations which facilitates the design of the control system. The conditions under which this can be achieved in the general case of control redundancy are also defined. The importance of the regular form resides in the fact that it allows to separate the design process in two basic steps: (a) selection of a target sliding surface and (b) determination of the corresponding control actions. Several controllers are proposed and extensive numerical results are presented to investigate the performance of both active and semi-active schemes, examining in particular the feasibility of application to real size civil structures. These numerical studies show that the selection of the sliding surface constitutes a crucial step in the implementation of an efficient control design. To improve this design process, a generalized sliding surface definition is used which is based on the incorporation of two auxiliary dynamical systems. Numerical simulations show that this definition renders a controller design which is more flexible, facilitating its tuning to meet different performance specifications. This study also considers the situation in which not all the state information is available for control purposes. In practical situations, only a subset of the physical variables, such as displacements and velocities, can be directly measured. A general approach is formulated to eliminate the explicit effect of the unmeasured states on the design of the sliding surface and the associated controller. This approach, based on a modified regular form transformation, permits the utilization of arbitrary combinations of measured and unmeasured states. The resulting sliding surface design problem is discussed within the framework of the classical optimal output feedback theory, and an efficient algorithm is proposed to solve the corresponding matrix nonlinear equations. A continuous active controller is proposed based only on bounding values of the unmeasured states and the input ground motion. Both active and semi-active schemes are evaluated by numerical simulations, which show the applicability and performance of the proposed approach. / Ph. D.

Great interest exists in adding long fibers into polymeric fluids due to the increase in properties associated with the composite, as compared to the neat resin. These properties, however, are dependent on the fiber orientations generated during processing, such as injection molding. In an effort to optimize industrial processing, optimize mold design, and maximize desired properties of the final part, it is highly desirable to predict long fiber orientation as a function of processing conditions. The purpose of this research is to use rheology as a fundamental means of understanding the transient orientation behavior of concentrated long glass (> 1mm) fiber suspensions. Specifically, this research explores the method of using rheology as a means of obtaining stress tensor and orientation model parameters needed to accurately predict the transient fiber orientation of long glass fiber reinforced polypropylene, in a well-defined simple shear flow, with the hopes of extending the knowledge gained from these fundamental experiments for the use of simulating processing flows, such as injection molding. Two fiber orientation models were investigated to predict the transient orientation of the long glass fiber systems explored. One model, the Folgar-Tucker model, has been particularly useful for predicting fiber orientation in short glass fiber systems and was used in this paper to assess its performance with long glass fibers. A second orientation model, one that accounts for the semi-flexibility of fibers, was extended to describe non-dilute suspension and coupled with an augmented stress tensor that accounts for fiber bending. Stress tensor and orientation model parameters were determined (in all cases) by best fitting these coupled equations to measured stress data obtained using a sliding plate rheometer. Results showed the semi-flexible orientation model and stress tensor combination, overall, provided improved rheological results as compared to the Folgar-Tucker model when coupled with the stress tensor of Lipscomb (1988). Furthermore, it was found that both stress tensors required empirical modification to accurately fit the measured data. Both orientation models provided encouraging results when predicting the transient fiber orientation in a sliding plate rheometer, for all initial fiber orientations explored. Additionally, both orientation models provided encouraging results when the model parameters, determined from the rheological study, were used for the purpose of predicting fiber orientation in an injection molded center-gated disk. / Ph. D.