Seismic Retrofit of Hollow Rectangular Bridge Columns

The seismic performance of rectangular hollow bridge columns is a significant issue of the high-speed rail project in Taiwan. The flexural ductility and shear capacity of such columns with the configuration of lateral reinforcement used in Taiwan have been studied recently. This paper reports that hollow rectangular bridge columns retrofitted with fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) sheets were tested under a constant axial load and a cyclically reversed horizontal load to investigate their seismic behavior, including flexural ductility, dissipated energy, and shear capacity. An analytical model was also developed to predict the moment-curvature curve of sections and the load-displacement relationship of columns. Based on the test results, the seismic behavior of such columns will be presented. The test results were also compared to the proposed analytical model. It was found that the ductility factors of the tested piers are in the range from 3.4 to 6.3, and the proposed analytical model can predict the load-displacement relationship of such columns with acceptable accuracy. All in all, FRP sheets can effectively improve both the ductility factor and shear capacity of hollow rectangular bridge columns.     

脱层材料与槽接式挫屈束制支撑的性能研究

挫屈束制支撑耐震性能优劣与否与脱层材料性能有密切关系,首先提出了一种估算脱层不完全因子的方法,利用4组分别使用不同脱层材料的挫屈束制支撑进行构件试验;研究结果表明以黏性橡胶作为脱层材料具有可靠性、经济性与优良的施工性。特别介绍了地震工程研究中心近期所研发的槽接式挫屈束制支撑,并通过3组实尺寸构件试验验证了其耐震性能;测试构件包含一组长度为12.5m,最大抗压强度超过16800kN,核心消能段应变量达3.5%的构件。试验结果表明,新研发的槽接式挫屈束制支撑经济效益极高,迟滞消能行为良好稳定,具有优良的耐震性能,各组试体于试验停止前所累积的总非线性变形量皆超过400倍斜撑屈曲位移量;研究亦显示,非线性结构分析软件PISA3D可准确预测其受力与变形反应。     

Dynamic centrifuge tests on isolation mechanism of tunnels subjected to seismic shaking

Isolation layer is one of the countermeasures to enhance seismic safety of tunnels. Its behavior under earthquake is affected by many factors such as shape of the tunnel, stiffness of the isolation layer and the characteristics of the input motion. However, current knowledge on the effects of these parameters on the seismic behavior of isolation layer is limited to lack of experimental data. This paper focuses on the mechanism of isolation layer, especially the efficacy of input motion frequencies on the seismic behavior of a square tunnel with isolation layer around its outer surface. Dynamic centrifuge tests were carried out on model tunnels which took isolation layer as seismic countermeasure using input motion of sinusoidal waves of different frequencies. Actual records of ground motions, magnified to approximate 15 g peak acceleration, formed the basis of the excitations to verify the actual efficacy. Due to the difference between model material (aluminum alloy) and prototype material (concrete), the similar flexural deformation law and the similar axial deformation law could not be satisfied simultaneously. Given the fact that cross-sectional moments were one of the main factors that influenced the safety of tunnels under dynamic loadings, the similar flexural deformation law was accepted in model preparation. The results show that the bending strains of tunnel with isolation layer around its outer surface are lower than those of tunnel without isolation layer, which indicates that isolation layer has positive effect on moment reduction, especially at corners. Increasing of the input motion frequency decreases the dynamic cross-sectional bending moments. In addition, isolation layer has little influence on frequency contents of acceleration response of tunnel. This study has clarified the mechanism of isolation layer on shock absorption, which is proved to be an effective method to improve the safety of tunnel against earthquake.     

Deformation and failure of a tunnel in the restraining bend of a strike–slip fault zone: an example from Hengshan Mountain,Shanxi Province,China

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - The Yanmenguan Tunnel runs through Hengshan Mountain in Shanxi Province, China. The mountain is mainly composed of metamorphic rock cut by a...     

An expert judgement approach to determining the physical vulnerability of roads to debris flow

The physical vulnerability of roads to debris flow may be expressed through fragility functions that relate flow volume to damage probabilities. Fragility relationships are essential components of quantitative risk assessments as they allow for the estimation of risk within a consequence-based framework. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that fragility curves have been produced in order to provide the conditional probability for a road to be in, or to exceed, a certain damage state for a given debris flow volume. Preliminary assessments were undertaken by means of a detailed questionnaire. A total of 47 returns were received from experts in 17 countries: 32 % academia, 51 % the commercial sector and 17 % governments. Fragility curves have been defined for three damage states (limited damage, serious damage and destroyed) for each of low-speed and high-speed roads in order to cover the typical characteristics of roads vulnerable to debris flow. The probability of any given damage state being reached or exceeded by a debris flow of a given volume (10–100,000 m³) was derived from the mean of the responses received. Inevitably there was a degree of scatter in the results, and the treatment of such variation, or ‘experimental errors’, was crucial to understanding the data and developing the fragility curves. Fragility curves are quantitative expressions of vulnerability. The method adopted is based upon qualitative, expert judgment of quantitative probabilities. In addition to an assessment of the probabilities of given damage states being exceeded, respondents to the questionnaire were polled as to their level of experience and confidence in their ability to provide a valid and coherent set of answers to the questions posed. The development of the fragility curves and their validation are described in the paper.     

Experimental characterization of the small strain shear modulus of soft clay stabilized with cement and nano-SiO2 using bender element tests

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - The accurate and efficient modification of the static and dynamic properties of problematic soils is a primary concern in geotechnical...     

From evaluation to learning: Some aspects of designing a cyber-university

Research is described on a system for web-assisted education and how it is used to deliver on-line drill questions, automatically suited to individual students. The system can store and display all of the various pieces of information used in a class-room (slides, examples, handouts, drill items) and give individualized drills to participating students. The system is built on the basic theme that it is for learning rather than evaluation.Experimental results shown here imply that both the item database and the item allocation methods are important and examples are given on how these need to be tuned for each course. Different item allocation methods are discussed and a method is proposed for comparing several such schemes. It is shown that students improve their knowledge while using the system. Classical statistical models which do not include learning, but are designed for mere evaluation, are therefore not applicable.A corollary of the openness and emphasis on learning is that the student is permitted to continue requesting drill items until the system reports a grade which is satisfactory to the student. An obvious resulting challenge is how such a grade should be computed so as to reflect actual knowledge at the time of computation, entice the student to continue and simultaneously be a clear indication for the student. To name a few methods, a grade can in principle be computed based on all available answers on a topic, on the last few answers or on answers up to a given number of attempts, but all of these have obvious problems.     

Temperature control system for laser heating: Application for minute asteroidal materials

A temperature control system for a laser heating has been developed to extract noble gases from minute material samples recovered from the asteroid Itokawa by the Hayabusa spacecraft. An ultra-fine thermocouple was produced from 3% Re–W and 26% Re–W wires 25 μm in diameter, and its electromotive force was calibrated. A temperature control program was originally produced using LabVIEW 2011 in which proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control was not adopted as an algorithm of the program. Particle samples smaller than 60 μm in diameter were set in conical depressions in a sample holder made of fused silica and irradiated by a slightly defocused Nd-YAG laser. The temperature of the samples was recorded by the thermocouple that passed through a small hole 50 μm in diameter because the sample and the thermocouple always came into contact during laser heating. The program controlled the temperature of the tiny samples appropriately. The average temperature during heating was slightly lower than the setting temperature and the standard deviation and the maximum overshoot were lower than 2.5% and 6.0% of the setting temperature, respectively. The performance of the temperature control system is high enough to conduct the stepwise heating experiment for minute extraterrestrial material samples.     

Topology optimization of stiffened plate/shell structures based on adaptive morphogenesis algorithm

This article proposes an adaptive morphogenesis algorithm to design stiffened plate/shell structures in a growth manner. The idea of this work is inspired by researches in leaf venation which indicates that the adaptive growth of leaf vein provides the relatively large structure with an effective reinforcement. This excellent performance is regarded as the contribution of two primary morphological features: branching and hierarchy. To apply the growth mechanism of leaf venation into stiffened plate/shell structures, a mathematical model describing the growth process is established. Based on this, the adaptive morphogenesis algorithm is developed to make stiffeners “grow” step by step. Besides, the “stiffness transforming operation”, a numerical treatment, is introduced to enable stiffeners to grow along arbitrary directions in the FEM model, which guarantees the design more optimized than previous methods. To obtain a further verification of the proposed method, a comparison between the proposed method and three typical methods is implemented. This comparison shows that the proposed method endows the designed object with a more excellent performance than others. Therefore, the proposed method is competent in the stiffened plate/shell structure design.     

Stability analysis of closely star-battened member of transmission tower

Stability of the closely star-battened member of a power transmission tower were researched in this paper, a theoretical analysis was conducted for the buckling mode of the closely star-battened member by different plate batten arrangements. The analytical method of the buckling capacity on the closely star-battened member was proposed here considering an arrangement type of the plate batten and they are compared with the results of a full-scale test. The conclusions are follows: the flexuraltorsional buckling did not happened for the closely star-battened member; the flexural buckling need to be calculated only after the strength reduction factor was considered; the stability-bearing capacity of the closely star-battened member of the line-shape type batten is slightly less than that of the cross-shape type batten; the stability-bearing capacity of the closely star-battened member can be improved when the number of bolts in the plate batten increases in a suitable extent; and the stability-bearing capacity calculated and test results agree well with each other when the stability-bearing capacity analytical method of the closely star-battened member was used to analyze the full-scale test tower. The experimental results show the calculation method is reasonable.