Near surface mounted (NSM) carbon fibers reinforced polymer (CFRP) reinforcement is one of the techniques for reinforcing masonry structures and is considered to provide significant advantages. This paper is composed of two parts. The first part presents the experimental study of brick masonry walls reinforced with NSM CFRP strips under combined shear-compression loads. Masonry walls have been tested under vertical compression, with different bed joint orientations 90° and 45° relative to the loading direction. Different reinforcement orientations were used including vertical, horizontal, and a combination of both sides of the wall. The second part of this paper comprises a numerical analysis of unreinforced brick masonry (URM) walls using the detailed micro-modelling approach (DMM) by means of ABAQUS software. In this analysis, the non-linearity behavior of brick and mortar was simulated using the concrete damaged plasticity (CDP) constitutive laws. The results proved that the application of the NSM-CFRP strips on the masonry wall influences significantly strength, ductility, and post-peak behavior, as well as changing the failure modes. The adopted DMM model provides a good interface to predict the post peak behavior and failure mode of unreinforced brick masonry walls.
This study expands the state of the art in studies that assess torsional retrofit of reinforced concrete (RC) multi-cell box girders with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips. The torsional behavior of non-damaged and pre-damaged RC multi-cell box girder specimens externally retrofitted by CFRP strips was investigated through a series of laboratory experiments. It was found that retrofitting the pre-damaged specimens with CFRP strips increased the ultimate torsional capacity by more than 50% as compared to the un-damaged specimens subjected to equivalent retrofitting. This indicated that the retrofit has been less effective for the girder specimen that did not develop distortion beforehand as a result of pre-loading. From
... Show MoreIn order to understand the effect of (length of pile / diameter of pile) ratio on the load carrying capacity and settlement reduction behavior of piled raft resting on loose sand, laboratory model tests were conducted on small-scale models. The parameters studied were the effect of pile length and the number of piles. The load settlement behavior obtained from the tests has been validated by using 3-D finite element in ABAQUS program, was adopted to understand the load carrying response of piled raft and settlement reduction. The results of experimental work show that the increase in (Lp/dp) ratio led to increase in load carrying capacity by piled raft from (19.75 to 29.35%), (14.18 to 28.87%) and (0 to 16.49%) , the maximum load carried
... Show MoreIn order to understand the effect of (length of pile / diameter of pile) ratio on the load carrying capacity and settlement reduction behavior of piled raft resting on loose sand, laboratory model tests were conducted on small-scale models. The parameters studied were the effect of pile length and the number of piles. The load settlement behavior obtained from the tests has been validated by using 3-D finite element in ABAQUS program, was adopted to understand the load carrying response of piled raft and settlement reduction. The results of experimental work show that the increase in (Lp/dp) ratio led to increase in load carrying capacity by piled raft from (19.75 to 29.35%), (14.18 to 28.87%) and (0 to 16.49%) , the maximum load carr
... Show MoreThis paper investigates the experimental response of composite reinforced concrete with GFRP and steel I-sections under limited cycles of repeated load. The practical work included testing four beams. A reference beam, two composite beams with pultruded GFRP I-sections, and a composite beam with a steel I-beam were subjected to repeated loading. The repeated loading test started by loading gradually up to a maximum of 75% of the ultimate static failure load for five loading and unloading cycles. After that, the specimens were reloaded gradually until failure. All test specimens were tested under a three-point load. Experimental results showed that the ductility index increased for the composite beams relative to the reference specim
... Show MoreThis paper investigates the experimental response of composite reinforced concrete with GFRP and steel I-sections under limited cycles of repeated load. The practical work included testing four beams. A reference beam, two composite beams with pultruded GFRP I-sections, and a composite beam with a steel I-beam were subjected to repeated loading. The repeated loading test started by loading gradually up to a maximum of 75% of the ultimate static failure load for five loading and unloading cycles. After that, the specimens were reloaded gradually until failure. All test specimens were tested under a three-point load. Experimental results showed that the ductility index increased for the composite beams relative to the refe
... Show MoreThe study is devoted to both static and earthquake response analysis of retaining structures acted upon by lateral earth pressure. Two main approaches were implemented in the analysis, namely, the Mononobe-Okabe analytical method and the numerical Finite element procedure as provided in the ready software ABAQUS with explicit dynamic method. A basic case study considered in the present work is the bridge approach retaining walls as a part of AL-Jadiriya bridge intersection to obtain the effects of the backfill and the ground water on the retaining wall response including displacement of the retaining structure in addition to the behavior of the fill material. Parametric studies were carried out to evaluate the effects of several factors
... Show MoreThis paper demonstrates an experimental and numerical study aimed at comparing the influence of openings of different configurations on the flexural behavior of reinforced concrete gable roof beams. The experimental program consisted of testing six simply supported gable beams subjected to mid-point concentrated load. The variable which has been investigated in this work was opening's configuration (quadrilateral or circular) with the same upper and lower chords depth. The results indicate improvement in the beams’ flexural behavior when circular openings were used compared with that of quadrilateral openings, represented by an increase in ultimate load capacity and a decrease in deflection at the service limit. Also, there was an
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