A novel demountable shear connector for precast steel-concrete composite bridges is presented. The connector uses high-strength steel bolts, which are fastened to the top flange of the steel beam with the aid of a special locking nut configuration that prevents bolts from slipping within their holes. Moreover, the connector promotes accelerated construction and overcomes the typical construction tolerance issues of precast structures. Most importantly, the connector allows bridge disassembly. Therefore, it can address different bridge deterioration scenarios with minimum disturbance to traffic flow including the following: (1) precast deck panels can be rapidly uplifted and replaced; (2) connectors can be rapidly removed and replaced; and (

Key-frame selection plays an important role in facial expression recognition systems. It helps in selecting the most representative frames that capture the different poses of the face. The effect of the number of selected keyframes has been studied in this paper to find its impact on the final accuracy of the emotion recognition system. Dynamic and static information is employed to select the most effective key-frames of the facial video with a short response time. Firstly, the absolute difference between the successive frames is used to reduce the number of frames and select the candidate ones which then contribute to the clustering process. The static-based information of the reduced sets of frames is then given to the fuzzy C-Means algor

This manuscript studied the effect of U-CFRP wrapped sheet anchorage on the flexural performance of unbonded post-tensioned PC members subjected to partial strand damage and strengthened using CFRP Near-Surface Mounting techniques. The program includes six girders as a control girder, a girder with strand damage of 14.2%, and four girders strengthened by CFRP laminates using the NSM technique with and without U-CFRP wrapped sheet anchorages. The testing results show that the strand damage of 14.2% has reduced the flexural strength of the girder by 5.71%. The NSM-CFRP laminate has a significant effect on flexural strength by 17.4%. On the other hand, the application of end U-CFRP wrapped sheet anchorages improves flexural

Reinforced concrete (RC) beams containing a longitudinal cavity have become an innovative development and advantage for economic purposes of light-weight members without largely affecting their resistance against the applied loads. This type of openings can also be used for maintenance purposes and usage space of communication lines, pipelines, etc. RC beams are primarily loaded in the plane of the members, which are two-dimensional in a plane stress state and the dominant structural behaviours include bending, shear, or combination of both. In the present study, six numerical models of RC beams with and without openings were simulated by using commercial finite element software ANSYS to evaluate the structural behaviours of those b

In this study, three strengthening techniques, near-surface mounted NSM-CRFP, NSM-CFRP with externally bonding EB-CFRP, and hybrid CFRP with circularization were studied to increase the seismic performance of existing RC slender columns under lateral loads. Experimentally, 1:3 scale RC models were studied and subjected to both lateral static load and seismic excitation. In the dynamic test, a model was subjected to El Centro 1940 NS earthquake excitation by using a shaking table. According to the test results, the strengthening techniques showed a significant increase in load carrying capacity, of about 86.6%, and 46.6%, for circularization and NSM-CFRP respectively, of the reference unstrengthened columns. On the other hand, column

Columns subjected to pure axial load rarely exist in practice. Reinforced concrete columns are usually subjected to combination of axial and lateral actions and  deformations, caused by  spatially‐complex loading patterns as during earthquakes causes lateral deflection that in turn affects the horizontal stiffness. In this study, a numerical model was developed in threedimensional nonlinear finite element and then validated against experimental results reported in the literatures,
to investigate the behavior of conventionally RC columns subjected to axial load and  . lateral reversal cyclic loading. To achieve this goal, numerical analysis was conducted by using finite element program ABAQUS/Explicit. The variables co

Impact strength of self-compacted concrete is a field of interest, mostly when the concrete is produced from sustainable materials. This research's main objective is to clarify the ability to use two types of Portland limestone cement (Karasta and Tasluja) in self compacted concrete under impact loading, further to the economic and environmental benefits of the limestone cement. The impact loading was applied by a low-speed test, using the drop ball on concrete. Moreover, the study reveals the resistance of the grids reinforced concrete to impact loading by using polymer grid, and steel grid reinforced concrete slabs. Mixes reinforced by steel mesh had the highest results, indicating that the steel mesh was more robust because it had