• Computers and Concrete
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.49-65
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• 2015

It is hard to guarantee the strict synchronization of all the jacking-up points in the integral jacking of a large-span continuous box girder bridge. This paper took the Hengliaojing Bridge as background, which need jacking up as an object with 295m length and more than 10,000tons weight, adopted 3D software to calculate the unsynchronized jacking-up working conditions, and studied the relationships between the unsynchronized vertical difference and the girder's deformation behaviour. The aim is to verify the maximum value of the unsynchronized vertical difference, and guide the construction and ensure safety. The monitoring system with its contents is introduced corresponding to the analysis. The results of the deck relative elevations prove that it is difficult to avoid the deck torsional deformation for jacking different; especially the side span shows more deformations for its smaller stiffness. The maximum difference is smaller than the limited value with acceptable stresses in the sections. The jacking heights of the pier in each construction step are controlled regularly according to the design. The shifting of the whole bridge in longitudinal direction is smaller than in transverse direction. The several beginning steps are the key to adjust their support reactions. This study is one parts of the fundamental research for the code "Technical specification for bridge jacking-up and reposition of China". The whole synchronous jacking project of the main bridge set a world record by the World Record Association for the whole bridge jacking project with the longest span of the world.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.563-581
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• 2011

The signal-based acoustic emission (AE) characterization of concrete fracture process utilizing home-programmed AE monitoring system was performed for three kinds of static loading tests (Cubic-splitting, Direct-shear and Pull-out). Each test was carried out to induce a distinct fracture mode of concrete. Apart from monitoring and recording the corresponding fracture process of concrete, various methods were utilized to distinguish the characteristics of detected AE waveform to interpret the information of fracture behavior of AE sources (i.e. micro-cracks of concrete). Further, more signal-based characters of AE in different stages were analyzed and compared in this study. This research focused on the relationship between AE signal characteristics and fracture processes of concrete. Thereafter, the mode of concrete fracture could be represented in terms of AE signal characteristics. By using cement-based piezoelectric composite sensors, the AE signals could be detected and collected with better sensitivity and minimized waveform distortion, which made the characterization of AE during concrete fracture process feasible. The continuous wavelet analysis technique was employed to analyze the wave-front of AE and figure out the frequency region of the P-wave & S-wave. Defined RA (rising amplitude), AF (average frequency) and P-wave & S-wave importance index were also introduced to study the characters of AE from concrete fracture. It was found that the characters of AE signals detected during monitoring could be used as an indication of the cracking behavior of concrete.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.647-675
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• 2011

Our ability to predict hydration behavior is becoming increasingly relevant to the concrete community as modelers begin to link material performance to the dynamics of material properties and chemistry. At early ages, the properties of concrete are changing rapidly due to chemical transformations that affect mechanical, thermal and transport responses of the composite. At later ages, the resulting, nano-, micro-, meso- and macroscopic structure generated by hydration will control the life-cycle performance of the material in the field. Ultimately, creep, shrinkage, chemical and physical durability, and all manner of mechanical response are linked to hydration. As a way to enable the modeling community to better understand hydration, a review of hydration models is presented offering insights into their mathematical origins and relationships one-to-the-other. The quest for a universal model begins in the 1920's and continues to the present, and is marked by a number of critical milestones. Unfortunately, the origins and physical interpretation of many of the most commonly used models have been lost in their overuse and the trail of citations that vaguely lead to the original manuscripts. To help restore some organization, models were sorted into four categories based primarily on their mathematical and theoretical basis: (1) mass continuity-based, (2) nucleation-based, (3) particle ensembles, and (4) complex multi-physical and simulation environments. This review provides a concise catalogue of models and in most cases enough detail to derive their mathematical form. Furthermore, classes of models are unified by linking them to their theoretical origins, thereby making their derivations and physical interpretations more transparent. Models are also used to fit experimental data so that their characteristics and ability to predict hydration calorimetry curves can be compared. A sort of evolutionary tree showing the progression of models is given along with some insights into the nature of future work yet needed to develop the next generation of cement hydration models.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.347-364
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• 2010

Since its invention in the $19^{th}$ century, Reinforced Concrete (RC) has been widely used in the construction of a lot of different structures, as buildings, bridges, nuclear central plants, or even ships. The details of the mechanical response for this kind of structures depends directly upon the material behavior of each component: concrete and steel, as well as their interaction through the bond-slip, which makes a rigorous engineering analysis of RC structures quite complicated. Consequently, the practical calculation of RC structures is done by adopting a lot of simplifications and hypotheses validated in the elastic range. Nevertheless, as soon as any RC structural element is working in the inelastic range, it is possible to obtain the numerical prediction of its realistic behavior only through the use of non linear analysis. The aim of this work is to develop a new kind of Finite Element: the "Enhanced Solid Element (ESE)" which takes into account the complex composition of reinforced concrete, being able to handle each dissipative material behavior and their different deformations, and on the other hand, conserving a simplified shape for engineering applications. Based on the recent XFEM developments, we introduce the concept of nodal enrichment to represent kinematics of steel rebars as well as bonding. This enrichment allows to reproduce the strain incompatibility between concrete and steel that occurs because of the bond degradation and slip. This formulation was tested with a couple of simple examples and compared to the results obtained from other standard formulations.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.411-421
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• 2014

A central pullout test was conducted to investigate the bonding properties between high strength rebar and reactive powder concrete (RPC), which covered ultimate pullout load, ultimate bonding stress, free end initial slip, free end slip at peak load, and load-slip curve characteristics. The effects of varying rebar buried length, thickness of protective layer and diameter of rebars on the bonding properties were studied, and how to determine the minimum thickness of protective layer and critical anchorage length was suggested according the test results. The results prove that: 1) Ultimate pull out load and free end initial slip load increases with increase in buried length, while ultimate bonding stress and slip corresponding to the peak load reduces. When buried length is increased from 3d to 4d(d is the diameter of rebar), after peak load, the load-slip curve descending segment declines faster, but later the load rises again exceeding the first peak load. When buried length reaches 5d, rebar pull fracture occurs. 2) As thickness of protective layer increases, the ultimate pull out load, ultimate bond stress, free end initial slip load and the slip corresponding to the peak load increase, and the descending section of the curve becomes gentle. The recommended minimum thickness of protective layer for plate type members should be the greater value between d and 10 mm, and for beams or columns the greater value between d and 15 mm. 3) Increasing the diameter of HRB500 rebars leads to a gentle slope in the descending segment of the pullout curve. 4) The bonding properties between high strength steel HRB500 and RPC is very good. The suggested buried length for test determining bonding strength between high strength rebars and RPC is 4d and a formula to calculate the critical anchorage length is established. The relationships between ultimate bonding stress and thickness of protective layer or the buried length was obtained.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.49-70
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• 2014

Steel fiber-reinforced concrete (SFRC) is known as one of the efficient modern composites that can greatly enhance the material performance of cracked concrete in tension. Such improved tensile resistance mechanism at crack interfaces in SFRC members can be heavily influenced by methodologies of treatments of crack direction. While most existing studies have focused on developing the numerical analysis model with the rotating-angle theory, there are only few studies on finite element analysis models with the fixed-angle model approach. According to many existing experimental studies, the direction of principal stress rotated after the formation of initial fixed-cracks, but it was also observed that new cracks with completely different angles relative to the initial crack direction very rarely occurred. Therefore, this study introduced the direct tension force transfer model (DTFTM), in which tensile resistance of the fibers at the crack interface can be easily estimated, to the nonlinear finite element analysis algorithm with the fixed-angle theory, and the proposed model was also verified by comparing the analysis results to the SFRC shear panel test results. The secant modulus method adopted in this study for iterative calculations in nonlinear finite element analysis showed highly stable and fast convergence capability when it was applied to the fixed-angle theory. The deviation angle between the principal stress direction and the fixed-crack direction significantly increased as the tensile stresses in the steel fibers at crack interfaces increased, which implies that the deviation angle is very important in the estimation of the shear behavior of SFRC members.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.127-143
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• 2014

LOCA (Loss Of Coolant Accident) is one of the most important utmost accidents for Prestressed Concrete Containment Vessel (PCCV) due to its coupled effect of high temperature and inner pressure. In this paper, heat conduction analysis is used to obtain the LOCA temperature distribution of PCCV. Then the elastic internal force of PCCV under LOCA temperature is analyzed by using both simplified theoretical method and FEM (finite element methods) method. Considering the coupled effect of LOCA temperature, a nonlinear elasto-plasitic analysis is conducted for PCCV under utmost internal pressure considering three failure criteria. Results show that the LOCA temperature distribution is strongly nonlinear along the shell thickness at the early time; the moment result of simplified analysis is well coincident with the one of numerical analysis at weak constraint area; while in the strong constrained area, the value of moments and membrane forces fluctuate dramatically; the simplified and numerical analysis both show that the maximum moment occurs at 6hrs after LOCA.; the strain of PCCV under LOCA temperature is larger than the one of no temperature under elasto-plastic analysis; the LOCA temperature of 6hrs has the greatest influence on the ultimate bearing capacity with 8.43% decrease for failure criteria 1 and 2.65% decrease for failure criteria 3.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.21-37
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• 2013

High-performance concrete (HPC) usually has higher paste and lower coarse aggregate volumes than normal concrete. The lower aggregate content of HPC can affect the shear capacity of concrete members due to the formation of smooth fractured surfaces and the subsequent development of weak interface shear transfer. Therefore, an experimental investigation was conducted to study the shear strength and cracking behavior of full-scale reinforced beams made with low-cement-content high-performance concrete (LcHPC) as well as conventional HPC. A total of fourteen flexural reinforced concrete (RC) beams without shear reinforcements were tested under a two-point load until shear failure occurred. The primary design variables included the cement content, the shear span to effective depth ratio (a/d), and the tensile steel ratio (${\rho}_w$). The results indicate that LcHPC beams show comparable behaviors in crack and ultimate shear strength as compared with conventional HPC beams. Overall, the shear strength of LcHPC beams was found to be larger than that of corresponding HPC beams, particularly for an a/d value of 1.5. In addition, the crack and ultimate shear strength increased as a/d decreased or ${\rho}_w$ increased for both LcHPC beams and HPC beams. This investigation established that LcHPC is recommendable for structural concrete applications.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.785-802
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• 2013

Ready-mixed soil material, known as a kind of controlled low-strength material, is a new way of soil cement combination. It can be used as backfill materials. In this paper, artificial neural network and nonlinear regression approach were applied to predict the compressive strength of ready-mixed soil material containing Portland cement, slag, sand, and soil in mixture. The data used for analyzing were obtained from our testing program. In the experiment, we carried out a mix design with three proportions of sand to soil (e.g., 6:4, 5:5, and 4:6). In addition, blast furnace slag partially replaced cement to improve workability, whereas the water-to-binder ratio was fixed. Testing was conducted on samples to estimate its engineering properties as per ASTM such as flowability, strength, and pulse velocity. Based on testing data, the empirical pulse velocity-strength correlation was established by regression method. Next, three topologies of neural network were developed to predict the strength, namely ANN-I, ANN-II, and ANN-III. The first two models are back-propagation feed-forward networks, and the other one is radial basis neural network. The results show that the compressive strength of ready-mixed soil material can be well-predicted from neural networks. Among all currently proposed neural network models, the ANN-I gives the best prediction because it is closest to the actual strength. Moreover, considering combination of pulse velocity and other factors, viz. curing time, and material contents in mixture, the proposed neural networks offer better evaluation than interpolated from pulse velocity only.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.803-818
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• 2013

In this study, analytical and experimental modal analyses of a scaled bridge model are carried out to extract the dynamic characteristics such as natural frequency, mode shapes and damping ratios. For this purpose, a scaled bridge model is constructed in laboratory conditions. Three dimensional finite element model of the bridge is constituted and dynamic characteristics are determined, analytically. To identify the dynamic characteristics experimentally; Experimental Modal Analyses (ambient and forced vibration tests) are conducted to the bridge model. In the ambient vibration tests, natural excitations are provided and the response of the bridge model is measured. Sensitivity accelerometers are placed to collect signals from the measurements. The signals collected from the tests are processed by Operational Modal Analysis; and the dynamic characteristics of the bridge model are estimated using Enhanced Frequency Domain Decomposition and Stochastic Subspace Identification methods. In the forced vibration tests, excitation of the bridge model is induced by an impact hammer and the frequency response functions are obtained. From the finite element analyses, a total of 8 natural frequencies are attained between 28.33 and 313.5 Hz. Considering the first eight mode shapes, these modes can be classified into longitudinal, transverse and vertical modes. It is seen that the dynamic characteristics obtained from the ambient and forced vibration tests are close to each other. It can be stated that the both of Enhanced Frequency Domain Decomposition and Stochastic Subspace Identification methods are very useful to identify the dynamic characteristics of the bridge model. The first eight natural frequencies are obtained from experimental measurements between 25.00-299.5 Hz. In addition, the dynamic characteristics obtained from the finite element analyses have a good correlation with experimental frequencies and mode shapes. The MAC values obtained between 90-100% and 80-100% using experimental results and experimental-analytical results, respectively.