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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Finite Element Analysis Of Frp Debonding Failure At The Tip Of Flexural/Shear Crack In Concrete Beam, Tayyebeh Mohammadi, Baolin Wan, Kent Harries Dec 2013

Finite Element Analysis Of Frp Debonding Failure At The Tip Of Flexural/Shear Crack In Concrete Beam, Tayyebeh Mohammadi, Baolin Wan, Kent Harries

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

One of the most common failure modes of strengthened RC beams with externally bonded FRP is intermediate crack (IC) debonding of FRP initiated at the tip of flexural/shear cracks. This study presents a method, using extended finite element method (XFEM), to model IC debonding in an FRP-strengthened concrete beam. In XFEM, as soon as a damage initiation criterion is reached in an element, additional degrees of element freedom are added to model crack initiation. Crack propagation is then modeled using fracture energy criterion. This method can be used to simulate debonding failure along an arbitrary, solution-dependent path without the requirement …


Reliability-Based Design Optimization Of Concrete Flexural Members Reinforced With Ductile Frp Bars, Bashar Behnam, Christopher D. Eamon Jun 2013

Reliability-Based Design Optimization Of Concrete Flexural Members Reinforced With Ductile Frp Bars, Bashar Behnam, Christopher D. Eamon

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

In recent years, ductile hybrid FRP (DHFRP) bars have been developed for use as tensile reinforcement. However, initial material costs regain high, and it is difficult to simultaneously meet strength, stiffness, ductility, and reliability demands. In this study, a reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) is conducted to determine minimum cost DHFRP bar configurations while enforcing essential constraints. Applications for bridge decks and building beams are considered, with 2, 3, and 4-material bars. It was found that optimal bar configuration has little variation for the different applications, and that overall optimized bar cost decreased as the number of bar materials increased.


Time-Variant Performance Assessment And Improvement Of Existing Bridges, Miao Xia Jan 2013

Time-Variant Performance Assessment And Improvement Of Existing Bridges, Miao Xia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The serviceability and safety of buildings and bridges are expected to be maintained within a reasonable safety level throughout their lifetimes. However, the increase of the applied loads and degradation of structural performances reduce the safety of these structures over time. Therefore, the performance assessment of existing bridges with reliability theories is a worldwide problem in civil infrastructure systems. Theoretically, the bridge reliability, usually expressed by a reliability index, is quantified by comparing the structural capacity (R) with the load effects (Q), using the predefined limit state functions. A limit state function is a mathematical description of a boundary between …