• Advances in Computational Design
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• 제2권4호
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• pp.257-271
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• 2017

There are many plain concrete arch bridges in Iran that have been used as railway bridges for more than seventy years. Owe to the fact that these bridges have not been designed seismically, and even may be loaded under high-speed trains, evaluation of fundamental frequencies of the bridges against earthquake and high-speed train vibrations is necessary for considering dynamics effects. To evaluate complex behavior of these bridges, results of field tests are useful. Since it is not possible to perform field tests for all arch bridges, these structures should be simulated correctly by computers for structural assessment. Several parameters are employed to describe the bridges, such as number of spans, length of spans, geometrical and material properties. In this study, results of field tests are used for modal analysis and adapted for 64 three dimensional finite element models with various physical parameters. Computer simulations show length of spans has important effect on fundamental frequencies of plain concrete arch bridge and modal deformations of bridges is in longitudinal and transverse directions. Also, these results demonstrate that fundamental frequencies of bridges decrease after increasing span length and number of spans. Plus, some relations based in the number of spans (n) and span length (l) are proposed for calculation of fundamental frequencies of plain concrete arch bridge.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제19권1호
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• pp.111-129
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• 2015

This paper first presents an experimental study of twelve specimens for their creep performance, including nine concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) columns and three plain concrete columns, subjected to three levels of sustained axial loads for 1710 days. Then, the creep strain curves are predicted from the existing creep models including the ACI 209 model, the MC 78 model, and the MC 90 model, and further a fitted creep model is obtained by experimental data. Finally, the creep effects of a CFST arch bridge are analyzed to compare the accuracy of the existing creep models. The experimental results show that the creep strains in CFST specimens are far less than in the plain concrete specimens and still increase after two years. The ACI 209 model outperforms the MC 78 model and the MC 90 model when predicting the creep behavior of the CFST specimens. Analysis results indicate that the creep effects in the CFST arch bridge are significant. The deflections and stresses calculated by the ACI 209 model are the closest to the fitted model in the three existing models, demonstrating that the ACI 209 model can be used for creep analysis of CFST arch bridges and can meet the engineering accuracy requirement when lack of experimental data.