0000000000174700
AUTHOR
Nicola Moraci
Experimental study of a naturally weathered stiff clay
Studying the shear strength of a naturally weathered clay is important to understand rain-induced slope failures in weathered soils. However, experimental studies on naturally weathered soils are limited. The paper focuses on the laboratory experimental investigation carried out to analyse the shear strength of a naturally weathered stiff clay that can be found in unsaturated conditions in situ. This has an important practical relevance in the evaluation of the stability conditions of natural slopes at clay outcrops. Different experimental techniques of suction measurement were used to obtain the soil-water retention curve of the clay over a wide range of suctions. Scanning electronic micr…
Experimental Tests and FEM Model for SFRC Beams under Flexural and Shear Loads
The complete load-vs-displacement curves obtained by four-point-bending tests on Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) beams are predicted by using a nonlinear finite element code based on the Modified Compression Field Theory (MCFT) and the Disturbed Stress Field Model (DSFM) suitably adapted for SFRC elements. The effect of fibers on the shear-flexure response is taken into account, mainly incorporating tensile stress-strain analytical relationship for SFRC. The numerical results show the effectiveness of the model for prediction of the behavior of the tested specimens reinforced with light amount of stirrups or with fibers only. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.
Some comments on the experimental behavior of FRC beams in flexure
In the present paper the experimental results, recently obtained by the authors, regarding the monotonic and the cyclic flexural response of normal and high-strength concrete beams reinforced with steel bars and discontinuous fibers, are shown. From the experimental results, all referred to low values of shear-to-depth ratios, it emerges clearly that the shear failure is brittle especially under cyclic actions highlighting the role of the fibers in the flexural behavior of the beams. The cyclic action produces a significant decay in the stiffness and in the strength capacity of the beams, and the addition of fibers reduces these negative effects. Form theoretical point of view good agreemen…
Influence Of Lateral Load Distributions On Pushover Analysis Effectiveness
The effectiveness of two simple load distributions for pushover analysis recently proposed by the authors is investigated through a comparative study, involving static and dynamic analyses of seismic response of eccentrically braced frames. It is shown that in the upper floors only multimodal pushover procedures provide results close to the dynamic profile, while the proposed load patterns are always conservative in the lower floors. They over-estimate the seismic response less than the uniform distribution, representing a reliable alternative to the uniform or more sophisticated adaptive procedures proposed by seismic codes. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.