Search results for "Forced"
showing 10 items of 500 documents
Glass-basalt/epoxy hybrid composites for marine applications
2011
Abstract The aim of this work is to evaluate the influence of uniaxial basalt fabric layers on the mechanical performances of a glass mat/epoxy composite used for marine applications. Polymer composites, reinforced by glass mat (GFRP), and hybrid ones, reinforced by glass mat and unidirectional basalt fabric, have been produced by vacuum bagging technique. Three points bending and tensile tests have been carried out in order to evaluate the effect of number and position of basalt layers on the mechanical properties of the investigated structures. The experimental tests have showed that the presence of two external layers of basalt involves the highest increase in mechanical properties of hy…
Stiffness and strength of composite truss beam to R.C. column connection in MRFs
2015
Abstract The results of experimental and numerical investigations on the cyclic behavior of composite truss beam to reinforced concrete column connection of moment resisting frames are reported. The beams are constituted by a steel truss and end zone added rebar embedded within a concrete block cast in place, so that, after curing, the steel truss and the added rebar work together with the concrete matrix as reinforcement of the composite beam. Particularly, three specimens of two-span continuous beams were tested under monotonic and cyclic actions as three point bending test. With the goal to investigate about the behavior of the end zone of the beam integrated into a moment resisting fram…
Performance of Steel Fibrous Reinforced Concrete Corbels Subjected to Vertical and Horizontal Loads
2009
A softened strut-and-tie macromodel able to reproduce the flexural behavior of corbels in plain and fibrous concrete and with the presence of steel bars, including softening of compressed struts and yielding of main and secondary steel bars, is presented in this paper. The main focus of the proposed model is the determination of the load-deflection curves of corbels subjected to the coupled effects of vertical and horizontal forces bearing in mind the influence of the type of concrete (normal or high strength), of the fiber percentage and of the arrangement and percentage of the main and secondary (horizontal stirrup) steel bars. A validation of the proposed model is made therefore with ref…
Convolution-based ensemble learning algorithms to estimate the bond strength of the corroded reinforced concrete
2022
Reinforced concrete bond strength deterioration is one of the most serious problems in the construction industry. It is one of the most common factors impacting structural deterioration and the major cause of premature decadence of reinforced concrete structures. Therefore, developing an accurate model with the lowest variance and high reliability for the bond strength of corroded reinforced concrete is very important. The current work evaluates the efficiency of convolution-based ensemble learning algorithms. To address these issues, convolution-based ensemble learning models are developed using a database collected from the previous experimental studies of relative bond strength for corro…
Steel-concrete bond in lightweight fiber reinforced concrete under monotonic and cyclic actions
2005
Experimental results of the local bond stress-slip relationship of reinforcing bars embedded in lightweight fiber reinforced concrete with expanded clay aggregates are presented. The effect of the following parameters were investigated: - dimension of specimens; - anchorage length; - percentages of hooked steel fibers; - geometrical ratio of transverse reinforcement; - confinement external transverse pressure. Prismatic specimens with deformed steel bars embedded for a fixed length equal to five and eight equivalent diameters were tested under both monotonic and cyclic reversal imposed displacements at the tip of the bars, in controlled displacement tests. The influence of the above mention…
A HYBRID VEM/BEM NUMERICAL TECHNIQUE FOR SIMULATING DAMAGE IN COMPOSITE MATERIALS
2021
Composite materials are nowadays widely used in the aerospace sector both for primary and secondary structures for their high mechanical properties and the ability to model them according to project needs. Therefore, accurately predicting material behaviour when subjected to operating loads is extremely important in making the design process more efficient. For this purpose, computational approaches based on continuum damage mechanics have been largely used to study the progressive loss of material integrity due to the propagation and coalescence of microscopic defects. In this contribution, a recently developed hybrid computational technique, which combines the Virtual Element Method (VEM)…
Coupling BEM and VEM for the Analysis of Composite Materials with Damage
2021
Numerical tools which are able to predict and explain the initiation and propagation of damage at the microscopic level in heterogeneous materials are of high interest for the analysis and design of modern materials. In this contribution, we report the application of a recently developed numerical scheme based on the coupling between the Virtual Element Method (VEM) and the Boundary Element Method (BEM) within the framework of continuum damage mechanics (CDM) to analyze the progressive loss of material integrity in heterogeneous materials with complex microstructures. VEM is a novel numerical technique that, allowing the use of general polygonal mesh elements, assures conspicuous simplific…
Case-studies of corroded reinforced concrete bridges in Southern Italy
2020
On Italian roads, a lot of reinforced concrete bridges were built in the 1950’s and 1960’s for short spans, before the advent of prefabricated structures. Many of these bridges, sited on principal or secondary roadways, show the effects of corrosion of reinforcements and high levels of damage, leading to the likelihood of achievement of the Ultimate Limit State, below the required performances of serviceability, especially in the case of Gerber saddles having strongly corroded reinforcements. Different case studies of bridges sited in Southern Italy (Sicily) are shown, allowing engineers to classify the main effects of damage in corroded structures with the Gerber static scheme (cantilever …
Simplified technique for constitutive analysis of SFRC
2014
Steel fibre reinforced concrete (SFRC) has become widespread material in areas such as underground shotcrete structures and industrial floors. However, due to the absence of material models of SFRC reliable for numerical analysis, application fields of this material are still limited. Due to interaction of concrete with fibres, a cracked section is able to carry a significant portion of tensile stresses, called the residual stresses. In present practices, residual stresses used for strength, deflection and crack width analysis are quantified by means of standard tests. However, interpretation of these test results is based on approximation using empirically deduced relationships, adequacy o…
Spirometric criteria to diagnose airway obstruction in the elderly: fixed ratio vs. lower limit of normal.
2015
COPD is the most common chronic lung disease. It becomes more prevalent with increasing age but remains under-diagnosed in the elderly. A heated debate concerns the most suitable way to diagnose airway obstruction in this age group. Most COPD guidelines recommend to use a FEV1/FVC of 0.70 as threshold to define an obstructive ventilatory defect. While the use of a 0.70 ratio may be simple, it may result in under-diagnosis of airflow obstruction in young people and over-diagnosis in the elderly due to an age-related decline in pulmonary volumes, especially in FEV1. This might lead to unnecessary use of medications and increased risk of adverse effects. A proposed strategy for reducing the mi…