Engineering Commons^™

Three-Dimensional Structural Analysis Of Temple 16 And Rosalila At Copan Ruinas, Luis Tuarez

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Temple 16 is an ancient Maya structure located at the heart of the Copán Ruinas Acropolis in Western Honduras. Temple 16 contains several earlier structures within it that were built on top of each other throughout Copán’s history. One of these earlier structures, Rosalila, is one of the most culturally significant structures within the Acropolis due to its preservation. An intricate series of archeological tunnels have been excavated throughout Temple 16 to allow for its study. However, significant cracking has been observed within Rosalila and several tunnels have experienced partial collapse. This not only poses a life safety issue for …

Design Of Wythe Connectors For Concentrated Out-Of-Plane Loading Of Insulated Walls, Ammar Al-Maabreh, Fray F. Pozo, Marc Maguire

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Partially composite concrete insulated wall panels must be designed to handle different types of loading, including out-of-plane concentrated loads. Currently, there is a lack of information that describes and helps engineers analyze the mechanics of axial load transfer for insulated wall panels for concentrated out-of-plane loads that may occur from lifting, handling, or floor/roof reactions. Such loading generates axial and shear forces in the wythe connectors, making it important to choose the type and quantity of connectors in the design process. This paper aims to develop a better understanding of out-of-plane point load mechanics on concrete sandwich wall panels. A …

Improved Methodologies In Modeling And Predicting Failure In Aashto M-180 Guardrail Steel Using Finite Element Analysis - Phase I, Brandt M. Humphrey

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Steel guardrail systems have historic and widespread applications throughout the nation’s highways and roadways. However, catastrophic system failure can occur if the guardrail element ruptures, thus allowing an errant vehicle to pass uncontrolled through the system and potentially allow fractured ends to pierce the occupant compartment. To aid in the analysis and design of guardrail systems, further efforts are needed to develop and implement more reliable material failure criteria to predict and model guardrail steel rupture under all vehicle impact loading scenarios within impact simulation finite element method (FEM) software, such as LS-DYNA.

This Phase I study accomplished a number …