• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.75-92
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• 2024

High Strength steel reinforced Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) Beam is a new type of beams which has evident advantages than the conventional concrete beams. However, there is limited research on the shear bearing capacity of high-strength steel reinforced RPC structures, and there is a lack of theoretical support for structural design. In order to promote the application of high-strength steel reinforced RPC structures in engineering, it is necessary to select a shear model and derive applicable calculation methods. By considering the shear span ratio, steel fiber volume ratio, longitudinal reinforcement ratio, stirrup ratio, section shape, horizontal web reinforcement ratio, stirrup configuration angle and other variables in the shear test of 32 high-strength steel reinforced RPC beams, the applicability of three theoretical methods to the shear bearing capacity of high-strength steel reinforced RPC beams was explored. The plasticity theory adopts the RPC200 biaxial failure criterion, establishes an equilibrium equation based on the principle of virtual work, and derives the calculation formula for the shear bearing capacity of high-strength steel reinforced RPC beams; Based on the Strut and Tie Theory, considering the softening phenomenon of RPC, a failure criterion is established, and the balance equation and deformation coordination condition of the combined force are combined to derive the calculation formula for the shear bearing capacity of high-strength reinforced RPC beams; Based on the Rankine theory and Rankine failure criterion, taking into account the influence of size effects, a calculation formula for the shear bearing capacity of high-strength reinforced RPC beams is derived. Experimental data is used for verification, and the results are in good agreement with a small coefficient of variation.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.707-720
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• 2022

In the present work, bending and free vibration analyses of multilayered functionally graded (FG) graphene platelet (GPL) and fiber-reinforced hybrid composite beams are carried out using the parabolic function based shear deformation theory. Parabolic variation of transverse shear stress across the thickness of beam and transverse shear stress-free conditions at top and bottom surfaces of the beam are considered, and the proposed formulation incorporates a transverse displacement field. The present theory works only with four unknowns and is computationally efficient. Hamilton's principle has been employed for deriving the governing equations. Analytical solutions are obtained for both the bending and free vibration problems in the present work considering different variations of GPLs and fibers distribution, namely, FG-X, FG-U, FG-Λ, and FG-O for beams having simply-supported boundary condition. First, the matrix is assumed to be strengthened using GPLs, and then the fibers are embedded. Multiscale modeling for material properties of functionally graded graphene platelet/fiber hybrid composites (FG-GPL/FHRC) is performed using Halpin-Tsai micromechanical model. The study reveals that the distributions of GPLs and fibers have significant impacts on the stresses, deflections, and natural frequencies of the beam. The number of layers and shape factors widely affect the behavior of FG-GPL-FHRC beams. The multilayered FG-GPL-FHRC beams turn out to be a good approximation to the FG beams without exhibiting the stress-channeling effects.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.291-295
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• 2010

The onset, severity, and ultimate outcome of malaria infection are influenced by parasite-expressed virulence factors and individual host responses to these determinants, In both humans and mice, liver injury is involved after parasite entry, which persists until the erythrocyte stage after infection with the fatal strain Plasmodium falciparum (Pf), Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has strong anti-apoptotic effects in various kinds of cells, and also has diverse metabolic functions. In this work, Pf-subtilisin-like protease 2 (Pf-Sub2) 5' untranslated region (UTR) was analyzed and its transcriptional activity was estimated by luciferase expression. Fourteen TATA boxes were observed but only one Oct-1 and c-Myb were done. In addition, host HGF interaction with Pf-Sub2 was evaluated by co-transfection of HGF- and Pf-Sub2-cloned vector. Interestingly, -1,422/+12 UTR exhibited the strongest luciferase activity but -329 to + 12 UTR did not exhibit luciferase activity. Moreover, as compared with the control of unexpressed HGF, the HGF protein suppressed luciferase expression driven by the 5' untranslated region of the Pf-Sub2 promoter. Taken together, it is suggested that HGF controls and interacts with the promoter region of the Pf-Sub2 gene.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.34-41
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• 2022

Recently, digital technology and computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) environment have changed the clinician treatment method in the fabrication of dentures. The denture manufacturing method with CAD/CAM technology simplifies the treatment and laboratory process to reduce the occurrence of errors and provides clinical efficiency and convenience. In this case, complete dentures were fabricated using stereolithography (SLA)-based 3D printing in patient with mandibular deviation. Recording base were produced in a digital model obtained with an intraoral scanner, and after recording a jaw relation in the occlusal rim, a definitive impression was obtained with polyvinyl siloxane impression material. In addition, facial scan data with occlusal rim was obtained so that it can be used as a reference in determination of the occlusal plane and in arrangement of artificial teeth during laboratory work. Artificial teeth were arranged through a CAD program, and a gingival festooning was performed. The definitive dentures were printed by SLA-based 3D printer using a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved liquid photocurable resin. The denture showed adequate retention, support and stability, and results were satisfied functionally and aesthetically.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.925-946
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• 2015

This paper presents a new cost-effective hybrid GFRP-Concrete deck system that the GFRP panel serves as both tensile reinforcement and stay-in-place form. In order to understand the fatigue behavior of such hybrid deck, fatigue test on a full-scale specimen under sagging moment was conducted, and a series of static tests were also carried out after certain repeated loading cycles. The fatigue test results indicated that such hybrid deck has a good fatigue performance even after 3.1 million repeated loading cycles. A three-dimensional finite element model of the hybrid deck was established based on experimental work. The results from finite element analyses are in good agreement with those from the tests. In addition, flexural fatigue analysis considering the reduction in flexural stiffness and modulus under cyclic loading was carried out. The predicted flexural strength agreed well with the analytical strength from finite element simulation, and the calculated fatigue failure cycle was consistent with the result based on related S-N curve and finite element analyses. However, the flexural fatigue analytical results tended to be conservative compared to the tested results in safety side. The presented overall investigation may provide reference for the design and construction of such hybrid deck system.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.366-369
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• 2017

This work presents a detailed study of several parameters on the spray coating method for fabricating a flexible cantilever. Conventionally, spin coating method have been widely used in the microelectromechanical system (MEMS) fabrication process. However, the major drawback of this method is the difficulties in protecting various topography with photoresist film, particularly when the device is manufactured in high aspect ratio. It is also a challenging process to form a small pattern in the etched area. On the other hand, the commercial spray coating systems are not advantageous from an economic perspective and the technique is also providing less efficient. In order to solve these issues, we have developed a manual spray coating system which can be efficiently used by combining the accessories available in the laboratory. The developed spray coating system consists of a spin-coater, motorized stage, a spray gun with the capable of controlling centrifugal force, injection amount, injection angle, and spray range. The major advantage of the proposed spray coating system is its reasonable fabrication cost. Secondly, the system can be easily disassembled after finishing the coating experiment. Owing to the mentioned advantages, we sincerely believe that the proposed spray coating system can be effectively used in many related applications.

• 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.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1246-1262
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• 2021

Recent studies have demonstrated the strong ability of deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to significantly boost the performance in single image super-resolution (SISR). The key concern is how to efficiently recover and utilize diverse information frequencies across multiple network layers, which is crucial to satisfying super-resolution image reconstructions. Hence, previous work made great efforts to potently incorporate hierarchical frequencies through various sophisticated architectures. Nevertheless, economical SISR also requires a capable structure design to balance between restoration accuracy and computational complexity, which is still a challenge for existing techniques. In this paper, we tackle this problem by proposing a competent architecture called Enhanced U-Net Network (EUN), which can yield ready-to-use features in miscellaneous frequencies and combine them comprehensively. In particular, the proposed building block for EUN is enhanced from U-Net, which can extract abundant information via multiple skip concatenations. The network configuration allows the pipeline to propagate information from lower layers to higher ones. Meanwhile, the block itself is committed to growing quite deep in layers, which empowers different types of information to spring from a single block. Furthermore, due to its strong advantage in distilling effective information, promising results are guaranteed with comparatively fewer filters. Comprehensive experiments manifest our model can achieve favorable performance over that of state-of-the-art methods, especially in terms of computational efficiency.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.179-193
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• 2023

This study explores an alternative to the existing centralized process for data anomaly detection in modern Internet of Things (IoT)-based structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. An edge intelligence framework is proposed for the early detection and classification of various data anomalies facilitating quality enhancement of acquired data before transmitting to a central system. State-of-the-art deep neural network pruning techniques are investigated and compared aiming to significantly reduce the network size so that it can run efficiently on resource-constrained edge devices such as wireless smart sensors. Further, depthwise separable convolution (DSC) is invoked, the integration of which with advanced structural pruning methods exhibited superior compression capability. Last but not least, quantization-aware training (QAT) is adopted for faster processing and lower memory and power consumption. The proposed edge intelligence framework will eventually lead to reduced network overload and latency. This will enable intelligent self-adaptation strategies to be employed to timely deal with a faulty sensor, minimizing the wasteful use of power, memory, and other resources in wireless smart sensors, increasing efficiency, and reducing maintenance costs for modern smart SHM systems. This study presents a theoretical foundation for the proposed framework, the validation of which through actual field trials is a scope for future work.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2003

This paper summarizes the results of the fatigue test of four composite bridge decks in extreme temperatures (-30$^{\circ}C$ and 50$^{\circ}C$ ). The work was performed as part of a research program to evaluate and install multiple FRP bridge deck systems in Dayton, Ohio. A two-span continuous concrete deck was also built on three steel girders for the benchmark tests. Simulated wheel loads were applied simultaneously at two points by two servo-controlled hydraulic actuators specially designed and fabricated to perform under extreme temperatures. Each deck was initially subjected to one million wheel load cycles at low temperature and another one million cycles at high temperature. The results presented in this paper correspond to the fatigue response of each deck for four million load cycles at low temperature and another four million cycles at high temperature. Thus, the deck was subjected to a total of ten million cycles. Quasi-static load-deflection and load-strain responses were determined at predetermined fatigue cycle levels. Except for the progressive reduction in stiffness, no significant distress was observed in any of the composite deck prototypes during ten million load cycles. The effects of extreme temperatures and accumulated load cycles on the load-deflection and load-strain response of FRP composite and FRP-concrete hybrid bridge decks are discussed based on the experimental results.