This book deals with recent advances relating to design, assessment and repair of structures subjected to repeated loading. Written by researchers from around the world this book will be of interest to those concerned with structural engineering.

This book describes the mechanical response of butt, lap and doubler joints. The findings apply to shear connections in civil, aerospace, and other mechanical structures subjected to repeated loading. The findings are intended for engineers and NDE practitioners concerned with the design of new, as well as inspection and maintenance of existing shear joints. Fatigue strengths of the joints are derived using conventional, material S-N data and the joint stress concentration factor. Structural Shear Joints treats the different modes of load transmission: the bearing, clamped, and adhesive modes, joint geometry: fastener spacing and number of fastener rows, and fastener geometry: standard and countersunk heads and self-piercing and interference fasteners. It contains analyses that relate global features with the local conditions that govern contact fatigue damage such as the contact pressures, interface slips and the intensity and locations of stress concentrations. The role of fretting wear is discussed. The estimates of joint fatigue strength are compared with a selection of fatigue strength measurements for aluminum and steel joints. In many cases, the method offers valid estimates and preliminary designs of joints meeting given fatigue strength requirements. The book incorporates the results of over 150 recent and detailed, 2D and 3D finite element analyses of aluminum and steel connections. It includes handbook-type summaries of the results of the finite element calculations, as well as modeling details such as finite element meshes, material models, boundary conditions and validation procedures to assist design engineers with computations. A simplified methodology for modeling joints that contain adhesive is also provided. Useful for all engineers concerned with structural fatigue, the book address

This book deals with the safety assessment of structures and structural components, possibly operating beyond the elastic limits under variable repeated thermo-mechanical loads. Examples of such situations can be found both in mechanical and civil engineering (e.g. transportation technologies, pressure vessels, pipelines, offshore platforms, dams, pavements and buildings in seismic zones). So-called "direct” methods are focused, based on the shakedown theorems and their specialisation to limit theorems. These methods are receiving increased attention for the prediction of structural failure because they provide the information that is essential in practice (e.g. safety factor and collapse mechanisms) by more economical procedures than step-by-step inelastic analysis; also, they only need a minimum of information on the evolution of loads as functions of time. The addressed audience are primarily engineers and scientists active in Structural Engineering and Safety and Reliability Analysis.

This book is devoted to the high-cycle fatigue behaviour of metal components, thus covering essential needs of current industrial design. The new developments included in the book rely on the use of the mesoscopic scale approach in metal fatigue and allow the specific handling of such difficult fatigue problems as multiaxial, non-proportional loading conditions.

The U.S.-Japan Joint Seminar on Stability and Ductility of Steel Structures under Cyclic Loading was held in Osaka, Japan on July 1-3, 1991. This three-day seminar was devoted to five main topics: 1) materials properties and plasticity models, which featured experimental investigations of the material properties of structural steels and plasticity models of the material characteristics under dynamic and cyclic loading conditions; 2) experimental observations, which featured experimental studies of cyclic buckling behavior of steel structural members and frames subjected to dynamic and cyclic loading conditions; 3) analytical modeling, which discussed analytical modeling of the cyclic buckling behavior of steel structural members and frames; 4) design implementation, which emphasized earthquake engineering design of steel structures against cyclic buckling; and 5) future research needs, in which future analytical and experimental research needs on the behavior and design of steel structures subjected to dynamic and cyclic loading conditions were identified. This book contains 30 contributed papers presented at the seminar.

The primary objective of the Asia-Pacific Conference on Engineering Plasticity and Its Applications (AEPA) is to provide a free forum for exchanging ideas and introducing the latest research findings in the field of engineering plasticity. This conference is unique among the related conferences in that it provides a forum for all fields of plasticity so that multi-disciplinary research works are encouraged. This proceedings volume consists of papers presented at AEPA2008, and covers the following categories in all fields of engineering plasticity: constitutive modeling; damage, fracture, fatigue and failure; dynamic loading and crash dynamics; engineering applications and case studies; experimental and numerical techniques; molecular dynamics; nano, meso, micro and crystal plasticity; phase transformations; plastic instability and strain localization; plasticity in advanced materials; plasticity in materials processing technology; plasticity in tribology; porous, cellular and composite materials; structural plasticity; superplasticity; and time-dependent deformation. Ranging from nanoscale to macroscale applications of engineering plasticity, this book touches upon fields as diverse as mechanical engineering, materials science, physics, chemistry and civil engineering.