Durability of GFRP Bars’ Bond to Concrete under Different Loading and Environmental Conditions

In the last decade, noncorrodible fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcing bars have been increasingly used as the main reinforcement for concrete structures in harsh environments. Also, owing to their lower cost compared with other types of FRP bars, glass-FRP (GFRP) bars are more attractive to the construction industry, especially for implementation in bridge deck slabs. In North America, bridge deck slabs are exposed to severe environmental conditions, such as freeze-thaw action, in addition to traffic fatigue loads. Although the bond strength of GFRP bars has been proved to be satisfactory, their durability performance under the dual effects of fatigue-type loading and freeze-thaw action is still not well understood. Few experimental test data are available on the bond characteristics of FRP bars in concrete elements under different loading and environmental conditions. This research investigates the individual and combined effects of freeze-thaw cycles along with sustained axial load and fatigue loading on the bond characteristics of GFRP bars embedded in concrete. An FRP-reinforced concrete specimen was developed to apply axial-tension fatigue or sustained loads to GFRP bars within a concrete environment. A total of thirty-six test specimens was constructed and tested. The test parameters included bar diameter, concrete cover thickness, loading scheme, and environmental conditioning. After conditioning, each specimen was sectioned into two halves for pullout testing. Test results showed that fatigue load cycles resulted in approximately 50% loss in the bond strength of sand-coated GFRP bars to concrete, while freeze-thaw cycles enhanced their bond to concrete by approximately 40%. Larger concrete covers were found more important in cases of larger bar sizes simultaneously subjected to fatigue load and freeze-thaw cycles.     

Effect of Transverse Reinforcement on the Flexural Behavior of Continuous Concrete Beams Reinforced with FRP

Continuous concrete beams are structural elements commonly used in structures that might be exposed to extreme weather conditions and the application of deicing salts, such as bridge overpasses and parking garages. In such structures, reinforcing continuous concrete beams with the noncorrodible fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) bars is beneficial to avoid steel corrosion. However, the linear-elastic behavior of FRP materials makes the ability of continuous beams to redistribute loads and moments questionable. A total of seven full-scale continuous concrete beams were tested to failure. Six beams were reinforced with glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) longitudinal bars, whereas one was reinforced with steel as control. The specimens have rectangular cross section of 200×300??mm and are continuous over two spans of 2,800?mm each. Both steel and GFRP stirrups were used as transverse reinforcement. The material, spacing, and amount of transverse reinforcement were the primary investigated parameters in this study. In addition, the experimental results were compared with the code equations to calculate the ultimate capacity. The experimental results showed that moment redistribution in FRP-reinforced continuous concrete beams is possible and is improved by increasing the amount of transverse reinforcement. Also, beams reinforced with GFRP stirrups illustrated similar performance compared with their steel-reinforced counterparts.     

Designing and Testing of Concrete Bridge Decks Reinforced with Glass FRP Bars

In addition to their high strength and light weight, fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite reinforcing bars offer corrosion resistance, making them a promising alternative to traditional steel reinforcing bars in concrete bridge decks. FRP reinforcement has been used in several bridge decks recently constructed in North America. The Morristown Bridge, which is located in Vermont, United States, is a single span steel girder bridge with integral abutments spanning 43.90 m. The deck is a 230 mm thick concrete continuous slab over girders spaced at 2.36 m. The entire concrete deck slab was reinforced with glass FRP (GFRP) bars in two identical layers at the top and the bottom. The bridge is well instrumented at critical locations for internal temperature and strain data collection with fiber-optic sensors. The bridge was tested for service performance using standard truck loads. The construction procedure and field test results under actual service conditions revealed that GFRP rebar provides very good and promising performance.     

Design of Miniature UWB-Based Antenna by Employing a Tri-Sectional SIR Feeder

A novel ultra-wideband (UWB)-based microstrip antenna is presented in this work by using a slotted patch resonator, a tri-sectional stepped impedance resonator (SIR) feeder, as well as a reduced ground plane. The whole structure was realized on an FR4 substrate. The impact of incorporating several cases of ground planes on the input reflection has been thoroughly investigated under the same tri-sectional SIR feeder and by employing a slotted patch radiator. Since the complete ground plane presents an inadequate frequency response, by reducing the ground plane, the induced UWB responses are apparent while the antenna exhibits higher impedance bandwidth. The impact of both the uniform impedance resonator (UIR) as well as the SIR feeder on the input reflection has also been examined by following the same adopted reduced ground technique and using a slotted patch radiator. As a result, the UIR feeder exhibits a dual-band frequency response, when a wide notched band is incorporated in the range from 4.5–6.5 GHz. The dual-band response of the bi-sectional SIR feeder is still apparent with a narrower notched band in the frequency range from 4–5 GHz. As far as the tri-sectional SIR feeder is concerned, the UWB response is discernible without recording the existence of a notched band. Additionally, the antenna displays a higher impedance bandwidth compared with the previously reported steps. Our proposed antenna configuration is designed with highly compact dimensions and an overall size of 14 × 27.2 mm². Moreover, it operates under the impedance bandwidth of 2.86–10.31 GHz that can be leveraged for numerous applications where wireless systems are used. Our approach presents several advantages compared with the other reported UWB-based antennas in the literature, whereas the measured S₁₁ pattern is in good agreement with the simulated one.     

Construction and Testing of an Innovative Concrete Bridge Deck Totally Reinforced with Glass FRP Bars: Val-Alain Bridge on Highway 20 East

The Val-Alain Bridge, located in the Municipality of Val-Alain on Highway 20 East, crosses over Henri River in Québec, Canada. The bridge is a slab-on-girder type with a skew angle of 20° over a single span of 49.89?m and a total width of 12.57?m. The bridge has four simply supported steel girders spaced at 3,145?mm. The deck slab is a 225-mm-thick concrete slab, with semi-integral abutments, continuous over the steel girders with an overhang of 1,570?mm on each side. The concrete deck slab and the bridge barriers were reinforced with glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) reinforcing bars utilizing high-performance concrete. The Val-Alain Bridge is the Canada’s first concrete bridge deck totally reinforced with GFRP reinforcing bars. Using such nonmetallic reinforcement in combination with high-performance concrete leads to an expected service life of more than 75?years. The bridge is well instrumented with electrical resistance strain gauges and fiber-optic sensors at critical locations to record internal strain data. Also, the bridge was tested for service performance using calibrated truckloads. Design concepts, construction details, and results of the first series of live load field tests are presented.     

Intelligent forecaster of concentrations (PM2.5, PM10, NO2, CO,O3, SO2) caused air pollution (IFCsAP)

Neural Computing and Applications - Upgrading health reality is the responsibility of all, it is necessary to think about the design of a smart system based on modern technologies to reduce the...     

Bending and creep buckling response of viscoelastic functionally graded beam-columns

The viscoelastic creep response of flexural beams and beam-columns made with functionally graded materials is numerically investigated. The paper highlights the challenges associated with the modeling and analysis of such structures, and presents a nonlinear theoretical model for their bending and creep buckling analysis. The model accounts for the viscoelasticity of the materials using differential-type constitutive relations that are based on the linear Boltzmann’s principle of superposition. The model is general in terms of its ability to deal with any material volume faction distribution through the depth of the beam, and with different linear viscoelastic laws, boundary conditions, and loading schemes. The governing equations are solved through time stepping numerical integration, which yields an exponential algorithm following the expansion of the relaxation function into a Dirichlet series. A numerical study that examines the capabilities of the model and quantifies the creep response of functionally graded beam-columns is presented, with special focus on the stresses and strains redistribution over time and on the creep buckling response. The results show that the creep response of such structures can be strongly nonlinear due to the variation of the viscoelastic properties through the depth, along with unique phenomena that are not observed in homogenous structures.     

Construction and performance characteristics of a metformin electrode based on the metformin phosphotungstate ion-associate

A new metformin (Mf) ion selective PVC membrane electrode based on the ion-associate of Mf with phosphotungstic acid was prepared. The electrode exhibited a mean calibration graph slope of 58 mV Mf concentration decade^?1, at 25°C, within the concentration range 2·0 × 10^?5?1·0 × 10^?2 M MfCl. The change of pH within the range 4·0–11·0 did not affect the electrode performance. The standard electrode potentials were determined at different temperatures and used to calculate the isothermal coefficient of the electrode (0.000352 V°C^?1). The electrode showed a very good selectivity for Mf with respect to a large number of inorganic and organic cations. The standard addition method and potentiometric titration were applied to determine Mf in pure solutions and in metformin-containing tablets.     

Krill herd algorithm based on cuckoo search for solving engineering optimization problems

This paper presents a hybrid krill herd (CSKH) approach to solve structural optimization problems. CSKH improved the Krill herd algorithm (KH) by combining KU/KA operator originated from cuckoo search algorithm (CS) with KH. In CSKH, a greedy selection scheme is used and often overtakes the original KH and CS. In addition, in order to further enhance the assessment of CSKH, a fraction of the worst krill is thrown away and substituted with newly randomly generated ones by KA operator at the end of each generation. The CSKH is applied to five real engineering problems to verify its performance. The experimental results have proven that CSKH algorithm is well capable of solving constrained engineering design problems more efficiently and effectively than the basic CS and KH algorithm.

     

Analyzing the Simple Ranking and Selection Process for Constrained Evolutionary Optimization

Many optimization problems that involve practical applications have functional constraints,and some of these constraints are active,meaning that they prevent any solution from improving the objective function value to the one that is better than any solution lying beyond the constraint limits.Therefore,the optimal solution usually lies on the boundary of the feasible region.In order to converge faster when solving such problems,a new ranking and selection scheme is introduced which exploits this feature ...