Engineering Commons^™

Behavior Of High Strength Concrete And Slender Reinforced Concrete Columns With And Without Steel Fibers, Lin Showmay Hsu

Dissertations

A series of compression tests are conducted on 3 in. by 6 in. cylindrical specimens using a modified testing method that give the complete stress-strain behavior for both plain and fibrous high strength concretes with or without tie confinements. The volume fractions of fiber in the concrete are 0%, 0.5%, 0.75%, and 1.0%, respectively. Empirical equations are proposed herein to represent the complete stress-strain relationships of high strength and high strength fibrous concretes with compressive strength exceeding 10,000 psi. Various parameters are studied and their relationships are experimentally determined. The comparison between the experimental and analytical results shows to have …

The Influence Of Pore Fluids On Shear Strength And Stress-Strain Behavior Of Granular Soils, Prasanna Ratnaweera

Dissertations

When a dry granular soil is subjected to an external load, the stresses are transferred through mineral to mineral contacts. The shear strength of such a soil is governed by its contact properties. Presence of a thin layer of fluid between mineral to mineral contacts in a saturated soil will alter its contact properties. Therefore any change in the physical properties of pore fluid can logically be reasoned to influence the deformation characteristics of granular soils.

To investigate the influence of pore fluid viscosity on shear strength and stress-strain behavior of a soil, a series of consolidated drained triaxial tests …

A Modified Approach To Flood Prediction In Urban Watersheds, Joseph Ofungwu

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a better method for dealing with the problems of flood prediction in Urban Watersheds. It has long been realized that urbanization activity such as increased imperviousness, drainage improvements, etc. increases runoff volumes. Therefore, traditional flood prediction methods using the Log Pearson III distribution underestimate flood frequencies when applied to urban watersheds without modification.

In attempt to compensate for the effects of urbanization on streamflow, previous workers usually employed regional analysis techniques involving a number of different watersheds at various degrees of urbanization. Results obtained by this approach leave room for improvement primarily …