Engineering Commons^™

Aversion And Warning Factors For Assessing Existing Reinforced Concrete Structures, Marcie Van Weerdhuizen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In a world of aging infrastructure, sustainability initiatives require additional investment in the assessment of existing reinforced concrete structures. Reliability-based assessment should minimize costs by reducing conservatism, while ensuring levels of safety equivalent to those for new designs. Current Canadian and US provisions assign target reliability levels for structural assessment based on criteria including occupancy type, expected failure behaviour, and the effect of element failure on the overall structural integrity. These criteria are defined using discrete and qualitative parameter values. It is shown that the true structural conditions can be better represented by verifying the applicability and completeness of these …

Partial Material Strength Reduction Factors For Aci 318, Tong Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The strength reduction factors, phi, defined in ACI 318-14 for different structural actions and elements lead to inconsistent results. This study proposes partial material strength reduction factors for concrete, phi_c, and reinforcing steel, phi_s, that yield similar design strengths and more consistent reliability indices. Three structural actions are investigated: moment; shear; and, combined moment and axial force. The first-order, second-moment method is used to compute reliability indices for moment and shear, and Monte Carlo simulation is used for combined moment and axial force. The statistical parameters assumed for the professional factor for shear strength significantly impact …

Behavior Of Fire-Exposed Rc Frames Before And After Jacketing, M. Monir M. Ajan Alhadid

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Analysis and design of fire-exposed Reinforced Concrete (RC) frames before and after jacketing with concrete layers are commonly performed using prescriptive methods that rely on the concept of fire rating. These methods were developed based on empirical results on individual RC members subjected to certain fire conditions. In typical fire scenarios, the residual capacity, stiffness and thermal deformations affects not only the local performance of each fire-exposed member, but also the load redistribution and global behavior of the entire frame. In terms of fire safety, the philosophy of the new building codes considers objective-based design as an alternative of the …

Behaviour Of Reinforced Concrete And Composite Conical Tanks Under Hydrostatic And Seismic Loadings, Ahmed Elansary

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Conical liquid storage tanks are widely used to store different liquids and to provide water supply at cities and municipalities. However, no comprehensive guidelines currently exist in the codes of practice for the structural analysis and design of such tanks. The walls of a conical tank can be made of steel, reinforced concrete, or a combination of the two materials in a composite type of construction in which steel and concrete walls are connected using steel studs. The research conducted in this thesis provides a comprehensive understanding of the structural behaviour of reinforced concrete and composite conical tanks under hydrostatic …

Shear Capacity Of Reinforced Concrete Beams At Elevated Temperatures, Mohamed Diab

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Fire safety is an important design aspect that ensures structural integrity of a Reinforced Concrete (RC) building during fire events. As new codes are moving from prescriptive methods to performance-based methods, design engineers are in need of rational design tools to assess the capacity of RC elements during a fire event. Previous research work focused on the flexural and axial capacities of concrete elements exposed to fire. Research addressing the shear capacity of concrete elements exposed to fire is limited in the literature.

An analytical method to predict the shear capacity of RC beams exposed to elevated temperatures is proposed. …

Second-Order Analysis Of Cable-Stayed Bridge Deck Slabs, Zachary Mcneil

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Current provisions in CSA S6-06 “Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code” for computing second-order effects in slender concrete beam-columns were derived for columns in buildings, where these effects can often be neglected, so their applicability to extremely slender cable-stayed bridge decks warrants investigation. The research reported in this thesis first reviews the provisions in CSA S6-06, as well as eight equations proposed by others, for computing the flexural rigidity, EI, of slender concrete beam-columns. Methods for quantifying the rotational restraint provided at deck slab supports by steel or concrete floorbeams are presented and validated: steel floorbeams provide negligible restraint but …