Yu Liu

• Doctor of Engineering
• The University of Sheffield

This paper presents the structural behaviour of a novel inflatable manipulation arm, which consists of inflatable coated fabric tubes and bellows-type joints. In order to minimise the actuation moment, a rotational joint with creases, analogous to a spacesuit elbow, has been introduced. The biaxial tensile and shear tests have been carried out to e...

Connections are the most vulnerable parts of a structure under fire conditions. A novel steel connection with high axial and rotational ductility has been proposed with the objective to improve the performance of steel-framed buildings in fire. Analytical model has been developed to determine the axial displacement of the top and bottom flanges of...

Connections are vital to the survival of steel and composite framed structures in fire. To prevent brittle failure of connections at elevated temperatures, a novel connection with high ductility has been proposed previously. In this paper, the fire performance of this ductile connection in composite frames is investigated. In order to consider the...

Purpose In order to improve the robustness of bare-steel and composite structures in fire, a novel axially and rotationally ductile connection has been proposed in this paper. Design/methodology/approach The component-based models of the bare-steel ductile connection and composite ductile connection have been proposed and incorporated into the sof...

The component‐based model of a novel ductile connection has been incorporated into the software Vulcan in order to facilitate global frame analysis within a performance‐based structural fire engineering design process. This paper reports on the validation and verification of the model, as well as the applications of the model in order to investigat...

The component-based model of a novel ductile connection has been incorporated into the software Vulcan in order to facilitate global frame analysis within a performance-based structural fire engineering design process. This paper reports on the validation and verification of the model, as well as the applications of the model in order to investigat...

The paper presents the investigation of microstructures and tensile damage evolution of plain weave SiC fibre reinforced SiC matrix (SiC/SiC) composites using X-ray computed tomography (CT). A miniature high-precision in situ X-ray CT test fixture has been developed to conduct micro X-ray CT in-situ tensile tests. Through the image reconstruction o...

A novel axially and rotationally ductile connection has previously been proposed by the authors to prevent brittle failures of connections in fire. The study is now extended to investigation of the fire performance of the ductile connection in composite structures, particularly using a 3-dimensional model to consider the contribution of out-of-plan...

To enhance the robustness of steel-framed structures in fire, a novel, axially ductile connection has previously been proposed. In this paper its performance is investigated when it is used to connect composite beams to steel columns in composite steel-concrete construction. The ductile connection is designed to satisfy the ductility demands of the...

In order to improve the performance of connections and enhance the robustness of structures in fire, a novel, axially ductile connection has been proposed. The component-based models of bare-steel ductile connection and composite ductile connection have been proposed, and incorporated into the software Vulcan to facilitate global frame analysis. Th...

The component-based model of a novel connection, which is designed to accommodate the high ductility demand of long-span steel beams in fire conditions, has been incorporated into the finite element software Vulcan. A single beam with the novel connections connecting it to rigid supports at both ends is first used to verify that the component-based...

To enhance the robustness of connections in fire, the improved design version of a novel ductile connection has been proposed. Performance of the improved design version of novel connection has been compared with that of the previous design version using a sub-frame model. The comparison results show that the improved version of novel connection fu...

The ductility of connections is a key property in preventing the brittle failure and subsequent progressive collapse of steel-framed structures in fire conditions. Conventional connection types have insufficient ductility to accommodate the deformations generated by the connected beams as their temperatures rise, or to withstand the forces to which...

In fire conditions the provision of connection ductility is key to the prevention of brittle failure and progressive collapse of steel and steel-concrete composite framed structures. This paper describes the development and testing of a novel connection concept intended to provide appropriate ductility enhancement compared to that of conventional c...

ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene) cushion integrated flexible photovoltaics (PV) is an extension of building integrated photovoltaics into membrane structures, which could be near zero-energy, sustainable and environmental-friendly buildings. This paper focused on a two-layer ETFE cushion integrated flexible photovoltaics with experimental study...

This paper presented the development of a novel flexible inflatable Manipulation arm. Both straight beams and rotational joints are made of air-inflated membrane units. In order to minimize the actuation moment, a rotational joint with creases, analogous to spacesuit elbow, was developed. Besides, a tendon driven system was also developed to actuat...