Arc sprayed zinc (Zn) anode on concrete surfaces has been an emerging technology for protecting reinforced concrete structures from rebar corrosion in coastal environments. Many cathodic protection (CP) systems with arc sprayed Zn anodes will reach or exceed their design life in the near future and thus may function improperly or insufficiently, making it necessary to replace the aged anodes. However, prior to this study, little was known about the most effective profile for the concrete surface, for either new concrete or old concrete with existing Zn anodes removed. This work develops criteria to properly prepare the concrete surface before the application of new Zn anode. Experimental studies were conducted both in the laboratory and for a field structure in Oregon. Artificial neural network was used to achieve better understanding of the complex cause-and-effect relationships inherent in the Zn-mortar or Zn–concrete systems and was successful in finding meaningful, logical results from the bond strength data. The goal is to achieve strong initial bond strength of new Zn to concrete, which is essential for long-term performance of the CP system. The results from this case study suggest that it is necessary to adjust the anode removal and surface sandblasting based on the electrochemical age of the existing concrete. In all cases of sandblasting, minimize the exposure of large aggregates (e.g., those bigger than 19 mm in diameter).

Video-based vibration measurement is a cost-effective way for remote monitoring the health conditions of transportation and other civil structures, especially for situations where accessibility is restricted and does not allow installation of conventional monitoring devices. Besides, video-based system is global measurement. The technical basis of video-based remote vibration measurement system is digital image analysis. Comparison of the images allow the field of motion to be accurately delineated. Such information is important to understand the structure behaviors including the motion and strain distribution. This paper presents system and analyses to monitor the vibration velocity and displacement field. The performance is demonstrated on a testbed of model building. Three different methods (i.e., frame difference method, particle image velocimetry, and optical Flow Method) are utilized to analyze the image sequences to extract the feature of motion. The Performance is validated using accelerometer data. The results indicate that all three methods can estimate the velocity field of the model building, although the results can be affected by factors such as background noise and environmental interference. Optical flow method achieved the best performance among these three methods studied. With further refinement of system hardware and image processing software, it will be developed into a remote video based monitoring system for structural health monitoring of transportation infrastructure to assist the diagnoses of its health conditions.

Large open-ended pipe pile has been found to be advantageous for use in transportation projects. The current design method, however, is not adequately developed. To close this practice gap, this paper first summarized different design methods for open-ended pipe piles in sandy soils. A major factor for all the design codes is to properly account for the formation and effects of soil plug. The comparison indicates that there is a large variation in the base capacity evaluation among different methods due to the complex behaviors of soil plug. To close the knowledge gap, discrete element method (DEM) was used to simulate the soil plugging process and provide insight on the plugging mechanism. The simulation results show that the arching effect significantly increases the internal unit shear resistance along pipe piles. The porosity distribution and particle contact force distribution from DEM model indicate a large stress concentration occurs at the bottom of the soil plug. Besides, nearly 90% of the plug resistance is provided by the bottom half portion of the soil column. The soil-pile friction coefficient has a significant effect on the magnitude of plug resistance, with the major transition occurred for friction coefficient between 0.3 and 0.4.

Existing test methods to determine moisture sensitivity in hot-mix asphalt (HMA) mixtures are time consuming and inconsistent. This research focused on wheel tracking devices to evaluate moisture sensitivity. The Asphalt Pavement Analyzer (APA) and the Hamburg Wheel Tracking Device (HWTD) were used for this research. Compacted cylindrical samples were fabricated using a Superpave Gyratory compactor. This study selected two most commonly used mixtures, SM-12.5A with PG 64-22 binder in overlay projects and SM-19A mixtures with PG 64-22 binder for major modification projects at Kansas Department of Transportation. Test results show that APA tests could induce stripping in most samples without any anti-stripping agent, which could be identified visually. However, APA results did not indicate any stripping inflection point while the HWTD results showed stripping inflection points, which are important to identify stripping potential of mixtures. The APA results show that wet tests are severe at lower temperatures. The HWTD results show improvement in the performance using anti-stripping agents at later stage. The HWTD test is more effective as a rapid test method in case of determining moisture sensitivity. Laboratory results from this study should be verified and correlated with field performance.

The use of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcement is becoming increasingly attractive in construction of new structures. However, the inherent linear elastic behavior of FRP materials up to rupture is considered as a major drawback under seismic attacks when significant material inelasticity is required to dissipate the input energy through hysteretic cycles. Besides, cost considerations, including FRP material and construction of pre-fabricated FRP configurations, especially for stirrups, and probable damage to epoxy coated fibers when transported to the field are noticeable issues. The current research has proposed a novel economical hybrid reinforcement scheme for the next generation of infrastructures implementing on-site fabricated FRP stirrups comprised of FRP sheets. The hybrid reinforcement consists of conventional longitudinal steel reinforcement and FRP stirrups. The key feature of the proposed hybrid reinforcement is the enhanced strength and ductility owing to the considerable confining pressure provided by the FRP stirrups to the longitudinal steel reinforcement and core concrete. Reinforced concrete beam specimens and beam-column joint specimens were tested implementing the proposed hybrid reinforcement. The proposed hybrid reinforcement, when compared with conventional steel stirrups, is found to have higher strength, stiffness, and energy dissipation. Design methods, structural behavior, and applicability of the proposed hybrid reinforcement are discussed in detail in this paper.

A composite structural system consisting of prefabricated reinforced concrete frame with infill slit shear walls (PRCFW), with good ductility, is a new type of earthquake resistant structure. Pseudo-static tests were performed to evaluate the seismic behavior of the PRCFW system. Two one-bay, two-story PRCFW specimens were both built at one-half scale. Additional computational research is also conducted to enhance the nonlinear analytical capabilities for this system. Combined with the concrete damaged plastic (CDP) model provided by finite element program ABAQUS and the constitutive model of concrete proposed by Chinese code, the damage process of the PRCFW structure under cyclic load is simulated. The simulated results show a good agreement with the test data, the dynamic behavior of the PRCFW system can be simulated sufficiently accurate and efficient to provide useful design information. The experimental and numerical study show that this system has the potential to offer good ductility and energy absorption capacity to dissipate input energy, and stiffness adequate for controlling drift for buildings located in earthquake-prone regions.

The common vibration of cable caused by rain-wind combination has been known as most typical type and a lot kind of its countermeasures has been proposed for suppressing this phenomenon. Recently, stayed-cables were also proved that they could be excited in dry state (without rain), which is called dry-galloping. Recently, its mechanisms have been explained by axial flow, Reynolds number and so on. To clarify the characteristics of this galloping, wind tunnel test of a cable model with various kinds of wind angle was conducted. Then, three types of countermeasure were examined to suppress dry- galloping of bridge cable. The tests confirmed that the occurrence of dry-galloping depends on relative wind attacked angles and onset reduced wind speed. Furthermore, single spiral wire, double spiral wire and circular ring were found to have high effectiveness in mitigating this galloping when those are installed properly.

Numerical analyses of the coupled vibrations of vehicle-bridge system and the effects of different types of cable stayed bridges on the coupled vibration responses have been presented in this paper using ANSYS. The bridge model and vehicle model were independently built which have no internal relationship in the ANSYS. The vehicle-bridge coupled vibration relationship was obtained by using the APDL program which subsequently imposed on the vehicle and bridge models during the numerical analysis. The proposed model was validated through a field measurements and literature data. The judging method, possibility, and criterion of the vehicle-bridge resonance (coupled vibrations) of cable stayed bridges (both the floating system and half floating system) under traffic flows were presented. The results indicated that the interval time between vehicles is the main influence factor on the resonance excitation frequency under the condition of equally spaced traffic flows. Compared to other types of cable stayed bridges, the floating bridge system has relatively high possibility to cause vehicle-bridge resonance.

Wind-tunnel study on the improvement of aerodynamic stability of simplified suspension-bridge girder structures was conducted with using a 1/40-scaled section model. Objective of the study is the development of an economically superior suspension bridge with 500–1,000 m center span length. The wind-tunnel test showed that an edge-girder type cross section exhibited large amplitude torsional vortex-induced vibration as well as torsional flutter at a low wind speed. Accordingly, aerodynamic countermeasures of open grating deck and triangular faring, and structural countermeasures of center stay, diagonal bracing and mass increase were tried to improve the aerodynamic stability. Finally, feasibility of the best combination to a full-scale bridge was examined by structural analysis.

The numerical analysis of pile-soil interaction commonly requires a lot of trial works to determine the interface parameters and the accuracy cannot be ensured normally. Considering this, this paper first conducts a sensitivity analysis to figure out the influence of interface parameters on the bearing behavior of a single pile in sand. Then, a simplified method for the determination of pile-soil interface parameters in layered soil is proposed based on the parameter studies. Finally, a filed loading test is used for the validation of the simplified method, and the calculated results agree well with the monitoring data. In general, the simplified method proposed in this paper works with higher accuracy and consumes less time compared with the traditional trial works, especially on the determinations of interfacial cohesive and interfacial friction angle.

Corrosion of embedded rebars is a classical deterioration mechanism of reinforced concrete structures exposed to chloride environments. Such environments can be attributed to the presence of seawater, deicing or sea-salts, which have high concentrations of chloride ion. Chloride ingress into concrete, essential for inducing rebar corrosion, is a complex interaction between many physical and chemical processes. The current study proposes two chloride ingress parameter models for fly ash concrete, namely: 1) surface chloride content under tidal exposure condition; and 2) chloride binding. First, inconsistencies in surface chloride content and chloride binding models reported in literature, due to them not being in line with past research studies, are pointed out. Secondly, to avoid such inconsistencies, surface chloride content and chloride binding models for fly ash concrete are proposed based upon the experimental work done by other researchers. It is observed that, proposed models are simple, consistent and in line with past research studies reported in literature.

This study presents a development of an advanced cyberbased database-enabled design module for low-rise buildings (DEDM-LR) which provides estimation of the wind-induced responses for main wind force resisting frames by making direct use of pressure time histories measured at a large number of pressure taps over a suite of building models. These responses may be considered in lieu of code-specified load effects in which the overall accuracy may be influenced by the inherent simplifications in codes. In addition, this new automated approach is particularly attractive and advantageous as it allows a web-based online analysis/design via intuitive user-friendly interfaces for both the input and output in terms of familiar web-style forms that are nowadays very common in most of web-based services. Presently, the DEDM-LR hosts an aerodynamic database developed by the Tokyo Polytechnic University (TPU), Japan for a variety of building configurations like flat, gable, and hip roofs under suburban terrain flow condition with immediate application to other databases. The paper shows the efficacy and validity of the DEDM-LR by walking through its details and examples on selected gable-roofed buildings. The architecture of DEDM-LR platform offers the ability to pool resources by hosting other databases that may become available in the near future.