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Full-Text Articles in Civil Engineering

Robust Model Development For Evaluation Of Existing Structures, Saurabh Prabhu Dec 2015

Robust Model Development For Evaluation Of Existing Structures, Saurabh Prabhu

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In the context of scientific computing, validation aims to determine the worthiness of a model in supporting critical decision making. This determination must occur given the imperfections in the mathematical representation resulting from the unavoidable idealizations of physics phenomena. Uncertainty in parameter values furthers the validation problems due to the inevitable lack of information about material properties, boundary conditions, loads, etc. which must be taken into account in making predictions about structural response. The determination of worthiness then becomes assessing whether an unavoidably imperfect mathematical model, subjected to poorly known input parameters, can predict sufficiently well in its intended purpose. …


Investigation Into Mechanisms And Mitigation Of Alkali-Silica Reaction In Sustainable Portland Cement Concrete Containing Recycled Glass Materials, Kaveh Afshinnia Dec 2015

Investigation Into Mechanisms And Mitigation Of Alkali-Silica Reaction In Sustainable Portland Cement Concrete Containing Recycled Glass Materials, Kaveh Afshinnia

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A significant portion of recycled glass from municipal waste streams is not found to be suitable for reuse as cullet in the production of new glass containers, and as a result it is disposed in landfills. One of the appropriate ways to reduce the disposal of waste glass in landfills is by using it in portland cement concrete as an aggregate material and/or supplementary cementitious material to replace portion of portland cement. The high silica content of the soda glass (approximately 70%) can potentially behave as a pozzolanic material when finely ground, which may enhance the mechanical and durability properties …


Practical Robust Geotechnical Design- Methodology And Applications, Sara Khoshnevisan Dec 2015

Practical Robust Geotechnical Design- Methodology And Applications, Sara Khoshnevisan

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This dissertation advances the robust geotechnical design methodology by offering improvements, which makes it more efficient and practical for the design of geotechnical systems. Robust geotechnical design (RGD) methodology seeks an optimal design, which is insensitive to, or robust against, the variation in the uncertain input parameters (called “noise factors”) by only adjusting the easy to control parameters (called “design parameters”). The main goal of robust design is to consider safety, cost and robustness simultaneously. Because the cost and the robustness are conflicting objectives, the multi-objective optimization that considers these two objectives while enforcing the safety constraint yields not a …


Proportioning And Properties Of Ultra-High Performance Concrete Mixtures For Application In Shear Keys Of Precast Concrete Bridges, Zhengqi Li Dec 2015

Proportioning And Properties Of Ultra-High Performance Concrete Mixtures For Application In Shear Keys Of Precast Concrete Bridges, Zhengqi Li

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Ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is defined as a cementitious based composite material with compressive strengths above 150 MPa, pre-and post-cracking tensile strengths above 5 MPa, and enhanced durability. To achieve desired properties, UHPC is typically produced with low water-cementitious materials (w/cm) ratio (i.e. w/cm < 0.25), high cementitious materials content (i.e. >1000 kg/m3), high quality aggregate, high dosage of high-range water reducing admixture (HRWRA) and reinforcing fibers. UHPC has distinct advantages in applications where narrow formwork and dense reinforcement are inevitable, high compressive strength concrete material is required and the surrounding environment is aggressive. The construction of shear keys in precast bridges is one of the important …


Decision Environments To Encourage More Sustainable Infrastructure Outcomes, Earl Shealy May 2015

Decision Environments To Encourage More Sustainable Infrastructure Outcomes, Earl Shealy

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Physical infrastructure (i.e. roads, pipelines, airports, dams, landfills, and water treatment systems) contributes directly to sustainability outcomes such as energy and water use and climate changing emissions. The infrastructure built today will likely impact future generations for many years. Planning, design and development decisions about infrastructure are critical to the future performance of these systems. Such decisions about infrastructure are complex with multiple variables, alternative options, and design stages. To manage decisions that exceed cognitive capacity to consider all options, decision makers often create mental shortcuts (heuristics), and accompanied errors (biases). The potential cognitive biases when dealing with complex decisions …


Hazard Quantification And Loss Estimation For Combined Hurricane Wind And Flood, Bin Pei May 2015

Hazard Quantification And Loss Estimation For Combined Hurricane Wind And Flood, Bin Pei

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This research work focused on developing and evaluating the methodologies proposed for hazard quantification and loss estimation of the combined hurricane wind and flood. The overall research was divided into three studies. A methodology to quantify the joint occurrence probability of hurricane wind and flood was first introduced in Study I. A procedure to select ensembles of hazard-consistent full-track hurricane scenarios (i.e. with similar return periods) was proposed next in Study II. Finally in Study III, a new hurricane mitigation framework was developed using the agent-based modeling (ABM) technology to evaluate the effectiveness of incentive programs under both hurricane wind …