Development of FRP Short-Span Deployable Bridge—Experimental Results

For military and civilian applications, there exists a need for lightweight, inexpensive, short-span bridges that can be easily transported and erected with minimal equipment. Owing to its favorable properties, fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) has been shown to be feasible for the construction of such bridges. Investigations into the behavior of a short-span bridge structural concept, adapted to the material properties of commercially available glass FRP (GFRP) pultruded products, are presented. A 4.8-m span prototype was built from GFRP sections, bonded throughout to form a tapered box beam, with a width of 1.2?m and a height at midspan of approximately 0.5?m. The box beam represents a single trackway of a double-trackway bridge, whose trackways could be connected by light structural elements. The quasi-static and dynamic behavior of the prototype box beam was investigated in ambient laboratory and field conditions to assess the design and construction techniques used, with a view to designing a full-scale 10-m GFRP bridge. Laboratory testing of the prototype box beam used single and pairs of patch loads to simulate wheel loading. These tests confirmed that the box beam had sufficient stiffness and strength to function effectively as a single trackway of a small span bridge. Field testing of the structure was undertaken using a Bison vehicle (13,000?kg), driven at varying speeds over the structure to establish its response to realistic vehicle loads and the effects of their movement across the span.     

Mechanisms in oxide-carbide ceramic BOK 60 grinding

The paper presents an experimental study of micro-cutting intended to aid the optimization of the grinding process of the oxide–carbide ceramic BOK 60. The necessity for investigating the mechanisms occurring between the abrasive material and the ceramic is imposed by the fact that grinding is the dominant technology used to achieve the required quality of the workpiece surface finish. The investigations were carried out to determine the normal and tangential cutting forces, the critical penetration depth, and the crack generation angle on the workpiece surface as a function of the grain penetration speed and depth. The micro-cutting process was performed with a single diamond cone-shaped grain at varying depths of cut. It was found that the critical grain penetration depth separating ductile flow from brittle fracturing ranges from 3 to 5?μm, while radial cracks on the ceramic’s surface are distributed at an angle from 35° to 75°, measured relative to the direction of the diamond grain’s motion.     

Reconfigurable robotic machining system controlled and programmed in a machine tool manner

Industrial robots represent a promising cost-effective and flexible alternative for some machining applications. This paper describes the concept of reconfigurable robot multi-axis machining systems for machining the complex parts of light materials with lower tolerances having freeform surfaces. For the basic configuration of a five-axis robotic machining system, the robot modeling approach is shown in detail as well as the prototype of developed control system with programming in G-code. The experimental robotic machining system has been verified by successful machining of several test work pieces.     

Load Configuration and Lateral Distribution of NATO Wheeled Military Trucks for Steel I-Girder Bridges

This paper presents the lateral load distribution of various North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) wheeled military trucks on a simple-span steel I-girder bridge (L = 36?m). The military trucks are classified into the military load classification (MLC) system. The MLC trucks demonstrate different load configurations when compared to the standard HS20 truck in terms of wheel-line spacing, number of axles, and weight. A calibrated three-dimensional finite-element analysis is conducted to examine the MLC load effects. The applicability of the AASHTO LRFD provisions is evaluated using 72 different load models. The wheel-line spacing and weight of the MLC trucks cause different flexural behavior and load distributions of the bridge when compared to those of HS20. The current AASHTO LRFD approach to determine live load distribution factors may be reasonably applicable to the MLC trucks, including approximately 20% of conservative predictions.     

Ion bombardment induced topography evolution on low index crystal surfaces of Cu and Pb

(100), (110) and (111) oriented single crystal surfaces of Cu and Pb have been bombarded with inert gas ions, self ions, ions of the other substrate species and Bi in the energy range 50–150 keV and in the fluence range 10¹⁵–10¹⁸ ions cm². The evolving surface topography was observed by scanning electron microscopy. This topography was observed to be strongly influenced by ion species and surface orientation but the habit of the topography was delineated at low fluences and the features increased in size and density with increasing fluence with some mutation to the more stable of the features. As an example Bi and Pb bombardment of (100) Cu leads to little topographic evolution, (110) Cu develops a system of parallel ridges with (100) facets and (111) Cu develops a prismatic surface, each prism possessing (100) facets. These, and the more general, results cannot be explained by surface erosion by sputtering theory alone (this predicts surface stability of the lowest sputtering yield orientation (110), nor by surface free energy density minimisation criteria (this predicts stability of (111) surfaces). It is proposed that the observed topography is most strongly related to the crystallographic form of precipitates of implanted species.