Time lag in measuring pore humidity in concrete by a gage in finite cavity

Measurements of the relative humidity of water vapor in concrete are important for understanding, predicting and controlling the shrinkage and creep of concrete, as well as other processes such as the ASR. A sufficient time is required for the pore water to diffuse into (or out of) the gage cavity. To determine this time, the nonlinear partial differential equation of diffusion of moisture through concrete is solved numerically. The cavity is simplified as spherical and its volume is considered to be far smaller than the volume of surrounding concrete, which permits assuming spherical symmetry of the pore humidity field. The body of the surrounding concrete is assumed to be so large that the water escape into (or intake from) the cavity does not change the pore humidity in concrete appreciably. For the current measurement practice, the humidity difference between the concrete pores and the cavity is found to drop below the inevitable error of the gage after the lapse of about 24 h, and an acceptable error of about 1% is achieved in about 10 h. It is shown that extrapolation by a decaying power function of time can shorten this time to 2 h. A further shortening could be achieved by reducing the volume of the cavity, although any contact of the gage with the concrete must be avoided.     

Microplane Model M4 for Concrete. I: Formulation with Work-Conjugate Deviatoric Stress

The first part of this two-part study presents a new improved microplane constitutive model for concrete, representing the fourth version in the line of microplane models developed at Northwestern University. The constitutive law is characterized as a relation between the normal, volumetric, deviatoric, and shear stresses and strains on planes of various orientations, called the microplanes. The strain components on the microplanes are the projections of the continuum strain tensor, and the continuum stresses are obtained from the microplane stress components according to the principle of virtual work. The improvements include (1) a work-conjugate volumetric deviatoric split—the main improvement, facilitating physical interpretation of stress components; (2) additional horizontal boundaries (yield limits) for the normal and deviatoric microplane stress components, making it possible to control the curvature at the peaks of stress-strain curves; (3) an improved nonlinear frictional yield surface with plasticity asymptote; (4) a simpler and more effective fitting procedure with sequential identification of material parameters; (5) a method to control the steepness and tail length of postpeak softening; and (6) damage modeling with a reduction of unloading stiffness and crack-closing boundary. The second part of this study, by Caner and Ba?ant, will present an algorithm for implementing the model in structural analysis programs and provide experimental verification and calibration by test data.     

Compatibilization efficiency of styrene‐butadiene block copolymers as a function of their block number

Effect of block number in linear styrene‐butadiene (SB) block copolymers (BCs) on their compatibilization efficiency in blending polystyrene (PS) with polybutadiene (PB) was studied. Di‐, tri‐, or pentablocks of SB copolymers as well as their combinations were blended with the mentioned homopolymers; supramolecular structure determined by small angle X‐ray scattering method (SAXS), morphology using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) combined with image analysis (IA), and stress transfer characteristics of the blends were chosen as criteria of compatibilization efficiency of the copolymers used. It was proved that the addition of SB BCs led to remarkably finer phase structure and substantially higher toughness of PS/PB blends. Triblock copolymer showed to be the compatibilizer with higher efficiency than diblock, pentablock, and the di/triblock copolymer mixture. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

Changes in the NPL orifice conductance on a transition from molecular gas flow to transitional flow

The conductance of an NPL orifice in the molecular regime is constant and can be exactly calculated from the geometric dimensions. For smaller Knudsen numbers the conductance increases and correction functions are employed to reduce the uncertainty in this range of pressures. The conductance is also constant in the viscous regime during flow into a vacuum and can also be calculated. A suitable function has been chosen with one free parameter, which is constant for both very low and sufficiently high pressures and the parameter was determined on the basis of the experimentally measured course of the conductance at the borderline between molecular and transitional flow. The function fits the experimental data very well and can be used to calculate the conductance of the orifice up to Knudsen number ≈1.     

Live TV subtitling through respeaking with remote cutting-edge technology

Multimedia Tools and Applications - This article presents an original system for live TV subtitling using respeaking and automatic speech recognition. Unlike several commercially available live...     

Choice of standard fracture test for concrete and its statistical evaluation

The main characteristics of the cohesive (or fictitious) crack model, which is now generally accepted as the best simple fracture model for concrete, are (aside from tensile strength) the fracture energies G _F and G _f corresponding to the areas under the complete softening stress-separation curve and under the initial tangent of this curve. Although these are two independent fracture characteristics which both should be measured, the basic (level I) standard test is supposed to measure only one. First, it is argued that the level I test should measure G _f, for statistical reasons and because of relevance to prediction of maximum loads of structures. Second, various methods for measuring G _f (or the corresponding fracture toughness), including the size effect method, the Jenq-Shah method (TPFM), and the Guinea et al. method, are discussed. The last is clearly the most robust and optimal because: (1) it is based on the exact solution of the bilinear cohesive crack model and (2) necessitates nothing more than measurement of the maximum loads of notched specimens of one size, supplemented by tensile strength measurements. Since the identification of material fracture parameters from test data involves two random variables, f_t (tensile strength) and G _f, statistical regression should be applied. But regression is not feasible in the original Guinea et al.'s method. The present study proposes an improved version of Guinea et al.'s method which reduces the statistical problem to linear regression thanks to exploiting the systematic trend of size effect. This is made possible by noting that, according to the cohesive (or fictitious) crack model, the zero-size limit _N0 of nominal strength _N of a notched specimen is independent of F _f and thus can be easily calculated from the measured f_t. Then, the values of _N0 obtained from the measured f_t values, together with the measured _N-values of notched specimens, are used in statistical regression based on the exact size effect curve calculated in advance from the cohesive crack model for the chosen specimen geometry. This has several advantages: (1) the linear regression is the most robust statistical approach; (2) the difficult question of statistical correlation between measured f_t and the nominal strength of notched specimens is bypassed, by virtue of knowing the size effect trend; (3) the resulting coefficient of variation of mean G _f is very different and much more realistic than in the original version; (4) the coefficient of variation of the deviations of individual data from the regression line is very different from the coefficient of variation of individual notched test data and represents a much more realistic measure of scatter; and (5) possible accuracy improvements through the testing of notched specimens with different notch lengths and the same size, or notched specimens of different sizes, are in the regression setting straightforward. For engineering purposes where high accuracy is not needed, the simplest approach is the previously proposed zero-brittleness method, which can be regarded as a simplification of Guinea et al.' method. Finally, the errors of TPFM due to random variability of unloading-reloading properties from one concrete to another are quantitatively estimated.     

Improved prediction model for time-dependent deformations of concrete: Part 1-Shrinkage

This paper is the first in a series of papers that present a new prediction model for creep and shrinkage of concrete, called for brevity the BP−KX model. This model represents an update and improvement of the BP model published in this journal in 1978–79. The improvement is possible because further experimental data became available in the literature and at the same time knowledge of physical concepts and mechanisms has improved. This first paper presents a prediction model for the mean (overall) shrinkage strain in cross-sections of long members, which takes into account the influence of environmental humidity, the effective thickness of the member, the effect of cross-section shape, the effect of age at the start of drying, and the effect of temperature. The proposed basic form of the shrinkage formulae is fustified by nonlinear diffusion theory for the movement of moisture through concrete. Extensive comparisons with important test data from the literature, altogether 23 data sets, reveal that the predictions are better than with the previous models. Statistics of prediction are also given. The main error of prediction arises from the estimation of the shrinkage parameters from concrete strength and composition. If limited short-time shrinkage data are available, the predictions can be greatly improved.

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Resume Ce rapport est le premier d’une série présentant un nouveau modèle de prédiction du fluage et du retrait du béton dénommé, pour abréger, modèle BKP. Ce modèle représente une mise à jour et une amélioration du modèle BP décrit dans ce journal en 1978/79. Des données expérimentales ultérieures disponibles dans la littérature, en même temps qu’une meilleure connaissance des concepts et mécanismes physiques, ont permis ce progrès. Ce premier rapport présente un modèle de prédiction pour une contrainte de retrait moyenne dans les sections transversales de longs éléments, qui prend en compte l’influence de l’humidité ambiante, l’épaisseur effective de l’élément, l’influence de la forme de la section, de l’age au début du séchage et de la température. On justifie l’expression de base des formules de retrait par la théorie de la diffusion non linéaire pour la circulation de l’humidité dans le béton. De vastes comparaisons avec d’importantes données d’essai prises dans la littérature-en tout 23 séries d’essai-ont montré que les prédictions étaient meilleures qu’avec les modèles précédents. On donne aussi des statistiques de prédiction. L’erreur de prédiction principale provient de l’évaluation des paramètres de retrait à partir de la composition et de la résistance du béton. Si l’on dispose de données de retrait limité, les prédictions peuvent être considérablement améliorées.

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Deceased 1989.     

Quantum-chemical model evaluations of thermodynamics and kinetics of oxygen atom additions to narrow nanotubes

This paper reports a computational study of oxygen additions to narrow nanotubes, a problem frequently studied with fullerenes. In fact, fullerene oxides were the first observed fullerene derivatives, and they have naturally attracted the attention of both experiment and theory. C60O had represented a long-standing case of experiment-theory disagreement, and there has been a similar problem with C60O2. The disagreement has been explained by kinetic rather than thermodynamic control. In this paper a similar computational approach is applied to narrow nanotubes. Recently, very narrow nanotubes have been observed with a diameter of 5 A and even with a diameter of 4 A. It has been supposed that the narrow nanotubes are closed by fragments of small fullerenes like C36 or C20. In this report we perform calculations for oxygen additions to such model nanotubes capped by fragments of D2d C36, D4d C32, and Ih C20 fullerenic cages (though the computational models have to be rather short). The three models have the following carbon contents: C84, C80, and C80. Both thermodynamic enthalpy changes and kinetic activation barriers for oxygen addition to six selected bonds are computed and analyzed. The lowest isomer (thermodynamically the most stable) is never of the 6/6 type, that is, the enthalpically favored structures are produced by oxygen additions to the nanotube tips. Interestingly enough, the lowest energy isomer has, for the D2d C36 and D4d C32 cases, the lowest kinetic activation barrier as well.     

Cohesive Crack with Rate-Dependent Opening and Viscoelasticity: I. Mathematical Model and Scaling

The time dependence of fracture has two sources: (1) the viscoelasticity of material behavior in the bulk of the structure, and (2) the rate process of the breakage of bonds in the fracture process zone which causes the softening law for the crack opening to be rate-dependent. The objective of this study is to clarify the differences between these two influences and their role in the size effect on the nominal strength of stucture. Previously developed theories of time-dependent cohesive crack growth in a viscoelastic material with or without aging are extended to a general compliance formulation of the cohesive crack model applicable to structures such as concrete structures, in which the fracture process zone (cohesive zone) is large, i.e., cannot be neglected in comparison to the structure dimensions. To deal with a large process zone interacting with the structure boundaries, a boundary integral formulation of the cohesive crack model in terms of the compliance functions for loads applied anywhere on the crack surfaces is introduced. Since an unopened cohesive crack (crack of zero width) transmits stresses and is equivalent to no crack at all, it is assumed that at the outset there exists such a crack, extending along the entire future crack path (which must be known). Thus it is unnecessary to deal mathematically with a moving crack tip, which keeps the formulation simple because the compliance functions for the surface points of such an imagined preexisting unopened crack do not change as the actual front of the opened part of the cohesive crack advances. First the compliance formulation of the cohesive crack model is generalized for aging viscoelastic material behavior, using the elastic-viscoelastic analog (correspondence principle). The formulation is then enriched by a rate-dependent softening law based on the activation energy theory for the rate process of bond ruptures on the atomic level, which was recently proposed and validated for concrete but is also applicable to polymers, rocks and ceramics, and can be applied to ice if the nonlinear creep of ice is approximated by linear viscoelasticity. Some implications for the characteristic length, scaling and size effect are also discussed. The problems of numerical algorithm, size effect, roles of the different sources of time dependence and rate effect, and experimental verification are left for a subsequent companion paper. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.