• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.649-657
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• 2019

Recently, an advanced video deflectometer based on the principle of off-axis digital image correlation was presented and advocated for remote and real-time deflection monitoring of large engineering structures. In engineering practice, measurement accuracy is one of the most important technical indicators of the video deflectometer. However, it has been observed in many outdoor experiments that data drift often presents in the measured deflection-time curves, which is caused by the instability of imaging system and the unavoidable influences of ambient interferences (e.g., ambient light changes, ambient temperature variations as well as ambient vibrations) in non-laboratory conditions. The non-ideal unstable imaging conditions seriously deteriorate the measurement accuracy of the video deflectometer. In this work, to perform high-accuracy deflection monitoring, potential sources for the drift error are analyzed, and a drift error model is established by considering these error sources. Based on this model, a simple, easy-to-implement yet effective reference point compensation method is proposed for real-time removal of the drift error in measured deflections. The practicality and effectiveness of the proposed method are demonstrated by in-situ deflection monitoring of railway and highway bridges.

• The Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.25-28
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• 2016

In this paper we expand on the notion of "integration" in terms of the variety of ways in which it would manifest itself in business education. Our main argument is that "integration" is multidimensional and has been manifest in pedagogy, research and service dimensions of university programs for a long time. However, assessments of "integration" efforts have been spotty thus far and only recently are being formalized. We present several examples in business curriculum and with increased focus on formal assessments of "integration" efforts, business education will become more pragmatic. The goal of this paper is to unpack the broad construct of "integration," and discuss its historical and current manifestations in business education. Ultimately, we conclude that while the process of integrative thinking is well underway for a long time in business education, the assessment of outcomes of integrative thinking is just taking root through formal ETS tests. We believe that integrative thinking in business education is an ultimate indicator of the effectiveness of the business curriculum, as students skilled in this area will be best prepared for the real-life jobs in the market place.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.283-300
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• 2015

Visual condition inspections remain paramount to assessing the current deterioration status of a bridge and assigning remediation or maintenance tasks so as to ensure the ongoing serviceability of the structure. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing backlog of maintenance activities. Existing research reveals that this is attributable to the labour-intensive, subjective and disruptive nature of the current bridge inspection method. Current processes ultimately require lane closures, traffic guidance schemes and inspection equipment. This not only increases the whole-of-life costs of the bridge, but also increases the risk to the travelling public as issues affecting the structural integrity may go unaddressed. As a tool for bridge condition inspections, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or, drones, offer considerable potential, allowing a bridge to be visually assessed without the need for inspectors to walk across the deck or utilise under-bridge inspection units. With current inspection processes placing additional strain on the existing bridge maintenance resources, the technology has the potential to significantly reduce the overall inspection costs and disruption caused to the travelling public. In addition to this, the use of automated aerial image capture enables engineers to better understand a situation through the 3D spatial context offered by UAV systems. However, the use of UAV for bridge inspection involves a number of critical issues to be resolved, including stability and accuracy of control, and safety to people. SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) is a technique that could be used by a UAV to build a map of the bridge underneath, while simultaneously determining its location on the constructed map. While there are considerable economic and risk-related benefits created through introducing entirely new ways of inspecting bridges and visualising information, there also remain hindrances to the wider deployment of UAVs. This study is to provide a context for use of UAVs for conducting visual bridge inspections, in addition to addressing the obstacles that are required to be overcome in order for the technology to be integrated into current practice.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.175-193
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• 2023

Stainless steel-concrete composite beam has become an attractive structural form for offshore bridges and iconic high-rise buildings, owing to the superior corrosion resistance and excellent ductility of stainless steel material. In a composite beam, stainless steel shear connectors play an important role by establishing the interconnection between stainless steel beam and concrete slab. To enable the best use of high strength stainless steel shear connectors in composite beams, high strength concrete is recommended. To date, the application of stainless steel shear connectors in composite beams is still very limited due to the lack of research and proper design recommendations. In this paper, a total of seven pushout specimens were tested to investigate the load-slip behaviour of stainless steel shear connectors. A thorough discussion has been made on the differences between stainless steel bolted connectors and welded studs, in terms of the failure modes, load-slip behaviour and ultimate shear resistance. In parallel with the experimental programme, a finite element model was developed in ABAQUS to simulate the behaviour of stainless steel shear connectors, with which the effects of shear connector strength, concrete strength and embedded connector height to diameter ratio (h/d) were evaluated. The obtained experimental and numerical results were analysed and compared with existing codes of practice, including AS/NZS 2327, EN 1994-1-1 and ANSI/AISC 360-16. The comparison results indicated that the current codes need to be improved for the design of high strength stainless steel shear connectors. On this basis, modified design approaches were proposed to predict the shear capacity of stainless steel bolted connectors and welded studs in the composite beams.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.197-211
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• 2018

The study presents the earthquake performance of the Bosphorus Bridge under multi-point earthquake excitation considering the spatially varying site-specific earthquake motions. The elaborate FE model of the bridge is firstly established depending on the new considerations of the used FEM software specifications, such as cable-sag effect, rigid link and gap elements. The modal analysis showed that singular modes of the deck and the tower were relatively effective in the dynamic behavior of the bridge due to higher total mass participation mass ratio of 80%. The parameters and requirements to be considered in simulation process are determined to generate the spatially varying site-specific ground motions. Total number of twelve simulated ground motions are defined for the multi-support earthquake analysis (Mp-sup). In order to easily implement multi-point earthquake excitation to the bridge, the practice-oriented procedure is summarized. The results demonstrated that the Mp-sup led to high increase in sectional forces of the critical components of the bridge, especially tower base section and tensile force of the main and back stay cables. A close relationship between the dynamic response and the behavior of the bridge under the Mp-sup was also obtained. Consequently, the outcomes from this study underscored the importance of the utilization of the multi-point earthquake analysis and the necessity of considering specifically generated earthquake motions for suspension bridges.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.411-433
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• 2013

Due to its easy operation and wide applicability, the ambient vibration method is commonly adopted to determine the cable force by first identifying the cable frequencies from the vibration signals. With given vibration length and flexural rigidity, an analytical or empirical formula is then used with these cable frequencies to calculate the cable force. It is, however, usually difficult to decide the two required parameters, especially the vibration length due to uncertain boundary constraints. To tackle this problem, a new concept of combining the modal frequencies and mode shape ratios is fully explored in this study for developing an accurate method merely based on ambient vibration measurements. A simply supported beam model with an axial tension is adopted and the effective vibration length of cable is then independently determined based on the mode shape ratios identified from the synchronized measurements. With the effective vibration length obtained and the identified modal frequencies, the cable force and flexural rigidity can then be solved using simple linear regression techniques. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method is extensively verified with demonstrative numerical examples and actual applications to different cable-stayed bridges. Furthermore, several important issues in engineering practice such as the number of sensors and selection of modes are also thoroughly investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.2 no.3 s.6
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• pp.101-108
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• 2002

There exist many construction joints in segmentally constructed bridge girders. It is required coupling of tendons or overlapping of tendons to introduce continuous prestress through several spans of bridges. Even though tendon coupling method is easier to use in practice, some cracking problems around construction joints have been reported and complicated stress states around construction joints in PSC girders is not clearly investigated. The purpose of this paper is to investigate in detail the complicated longitudinal stress distributions around the construction joints in prestressed concrete girders with tendon couplers. To this end, a comprehensive experimental program has been set up and a series of specimens have been tested to identify the effects of tendon coupling and segmental construction of bridge sections. The present study indicates that the longitudinal stress distributions of PSC girders with tendon couplers are quite different from those of PSC girders without tendon couplers. The longitudinal compressive stresses introduced by prestressing are greatly reduced around coupled joints according to tendon coupling ratios.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.685-693
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• 2012

The yield strength of shear reinforcement is restricted in the present design codes. In this study, the possibility of the yield strength increase in shear reinforcement is evaluated according to ACI318-08, EC2-02 and CSA-04 by comparing the experimental and calculated results. Three cases were used to analyze the shear strength of the beam. One had no limitation in the yield strength of shear reinforcement, another had restriction on the yield strength of shear reinforcement, and the other had a restriction on the yield strength of shear reinforcement and the shear reinforcement ratio. The study results showed that the case with unlimited shear reinforcement yield strength predicted the test result better than other two cases. Even though the rebar yield strength higher than the strength required in present code was applied to existing shear design equation, the result was reasonable. Therefore, the design equation seemed to be appropriate even if the high-strength shear reinforcement is used in practice based on the existing shear design method.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.5129-5152
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• 2016

Multi-view super-resolution (MVSR) aims to estimate a high-resolution (HR) image from a set of low-resolution (LR) images that are captured from different viewpoints (typically by different cameras). MVSR is usually applied in camera array imaging. Given that MVSR is an ill-posed problem and is typically computationally costly, we super-resolve multi-view LR images of the original scene via image fusion (IF) and blind deblurring (BD). First, we reformulate the MVSR problem into two easier problems: an IF problem and a BD problem. We further solve the IF problem on the premise of calculating the depth map of the desired image ahead, and then solve the BD problem, in which the optimization problems with respect to the desired image and with respect to the unknown blur are efficiently addressed by the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Our approach bridges the gap between MVSR and BD, taking advantages of existing BD methods to address MVSR. Thus, this approach is appropriate for camera array imaging because the blur kernel is typically unknown in practice. Corresponding experimental results using real and synthetic images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.285-299
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• 2020

Long term structural health monitoring has gained wide attention among civil engineers in recent years due to the scale and severity of infrastructure deterioration. Establishing effective damage indicators and proposing enhanced monitoring methods are of great interests to the engineering practices. In the case of bridge health monitoring, long term structural vibration measurement has been acknowledged to be quite useful and utilized in the planning of maintenance works. Previous researches are majorly concentrated on linear time series models for the measurement, whereas nonlinear dependences among the measurement are not carefully considered. In this paper, a new bridge health monitoring method is proposed based on the use of long term vibration measurement. A combination of the fundamental ARMA model and copula theory is investigated for the first time in detecting bridge structural damages. The concept is applied to a real engineering practice in Japan. The efficiency and accuracy of the copula based damage indicator is analyzed and compared in different window sizes. The performance of the copula based indicator is discussed based on the damage detection rate between the intact structural condition and the damaged structural condition.