To accommodate utilities in buildings, different sizes of openings are provided in the web of reinforced concrete deep beams, which cause reductions in the beam strength and stiffness. This paper aims to investigate experimentally and numerically the effectiveness of using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips, as a strengthening technique, to externally strengthen reinforced concrete continuous deep beams (RCCDBs) with large openings. The experimental work included testing three RCCDBs under five-point bending. A reference specimen was prepared without openings to explore the reductions in strength and stiffness after providing large openings. Openings were created symmetrically at the center of spans of the other specimens to represent 40% of the overall beam depth. Moreover, finite elements (FE) analysis was validated using the experimental results to conduct a parametric study on RCCDBs strengthened with CFRP strips. The results confirmed reductions in the ultimate load by 21% and 7% for the un-strengthened and strengthened specimens, respectively, due to the large openings. Although the large openings caused reductions in capacities, the CFRP strips limited the deterioration by enhancing the specimen capacity by 17% relative to the un-strengthened one.
Flexible pipes, such as GRP pipes, serve as effective underground infrastructure especially as sewer pipeline. This study is an attempt for understanding the effects of bedding types on the behavior of large diameter GRP flexible sewer pipes using three dimensional finite element approaches. Theoretical and numerical analyses were performed using both BS EN 1295-1 approach and finite element method (ABAQUS software). The effects of different parameters are studied such as, depth of backfill, bedding compaction, and backfill compaction. Due to compaction, an increase in the bedding compaction modulus (E’1) results in a reduction of both stresses and displacements of the pipe, especially, for well compacted ba
... Show MoreCarbon fibre reinforced polymers are widely used to strengthen steel structural elements. These structural elements are normally subjected to static, dynamic and fatigue loadings during their life-time. A number of studies have focused on the characteristics of CFRP sheets bonded to steel members under static, dynamic and fatigue loadings. However, there is a gap in understanding the bonding behaviour between CFRP laminates and steel members under impact loading. This paper shows the effect of different load rates from quasi-static to 300 × 103 mm/min on this bond. Two types of CFRP laminate, CFK 150/2000 and CFK 200/2000, were used to strengthen steel joints using Araldite 420 epoxy. The results show a significant bond strength enhancemen
... Show MoreNew polymer blend with enhanced properties was prepared from (80 %) epoxy resin (Ep), (20%) unsaturated polyester resin (UPE) as a matrix material. The as-obtained polymer blend was further reinforced by adding Sand particles of particle size (53 μm) with various weight fraction (5, 10, 15, 20 %). Thermal conductivity and sorption measurements are performed in order to determine diffusion coefficient in different chemical solutions (NaOH, HCl) with concentration (0.3N) after immersion for specific period of time (30 days). The obtained results demonstrate that the addition of sand powder to (80%EP/20%UPE) blend leads to an increase of thermal conductivity, with an optimum/minimum diffusion coefficient in (HCl)/(NaOH), respectively.
In the present investigation two different types of fiber reinforced polymer composites were prepared by hand lay-up method using three different parameters (curing temperature, pressing load and fiber volume fraction). These composites were prepared from the polyester resin as the matrix material reinforced with glass fibers as first group of samples and mat Kevlar fibers as the second group, both with different volume fractions (4%, 8%, and 12%) of fibers. They were then tested by tensile strength and impact strength. The main objective in this study is to use Taguchi method for predicting the better parameters that give the better tensile and impact strength to the composites, and then preparing composites at
... Show MoreTwo dimensional meso-scale concrete modeling was used in finite element analysis of plain concrete beam subjected to bending. The plane stress 4-noded quadrilateral elements were utilized to model coarse aggregate, cement mortar. The effect of aggregate fraction distribution, and pores percent of the total area – resulting from air voids entrapped in concrete during placement on the behavior of plain concrete beam in flexural was detected. Aggregate size fractions were randomly distributed across the profile area of the beam. Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) was employed to treat the discontinuities problems result from double phases of concrete and cracking that faced during the finite element analysis of concrete beam. Crac
... Show MoreWarm asphalt mixture (WMA) and reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) are the most memorable sustainable materials in world of asphalt concrete pavements . This research aims to study the warm asphalt mixture for different types of filler materials such as ordinary cement and limestone dust. Beside, this research focused on the test of emulsified asphalt properties by evaluating the performance of warm asphalt mixture by Marshall Stability properties as well as moisture sensitivity. The results of this experiment provided many important points. First, The cationic emulsified asphalt is suitable with RAP aggregate for production warm asphalt mixtures .Second, The effective mixing procedure for warm asphalt mixtures consists hea
... Show MoreThis paper studies the behavior of axially loaded RC columns which are confined with carbon fiber reinforced polymers’ sheet (CFRP) and steel jackets (SJ). The study is based on twelve axially loaded RC columns tested up to failure. It is divided into three schemes based on its strengthening type; each scheme has four columns. The main parameters in this study were the compressive strength of the concrete and steel reinforcement ratio. Furthermore, the results of the experimental test showed a substantial enhancement in the column's load-carrying capacity. When compared to the original columns, the CFRP sheet had a significant effect on improving the ductility of the column by increasing the axial deformation by about 59.2 to 95.7
... Show MoreAverage interstellar extinction curves for Galaxy and Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) over the range of wavelengths (1100 A0 – 3200 A0) were obtained from observations via IUE satellite. The two extinctions of our galaxy and LMC are normalized to Av=0 and E (B-V)=1, to meat standard criteria. It is found that the differences between the two extinction curves appeared obviously at the middle and far ultraviolet regions due to the presence of different populations of small grains, which have very little contribution at longer wavelengths. Using new IUE-Reduction techniques lead to more accurate result.
I mpact strength for Epoxy/Polyurethane, Blends and their composites with two
layers of Glass fibers (0-90) are calculated.
The impact strength of the blends and composites decrease with increasing weight
by weisht percentage of polyurethane . This result is attributed to the high elasticity
of PU , and to the immiscibility between the polymer blends as well as the fiber
delaminates
A three-stage learning algorithm for deep multilayer perceptron (DMLP) with effective weight initialisation based on sparse auto-encoder is proposed in this paper, which aims to overcome difficulties in training deep neural networks with limited training data in high-dimensional feature space. At the first stage, unsupervised learning is adopted using sparse auto-encoder to obtain the initial weights of the feature extraction layers of the DMLP. At the second stage, error back-propagation is used to train the DMLP by fixing the weights obtained at the first stage for its feature extraction layers. At the third stage, all the weights of the DMLP obtained at the second stage are refined by error back-propagation. Network structures an
... Show More