Super-long span bridges demand high design requirements and involve many difficulties when constructed, which is an important indicator to reflect the bridge technical level of a country. Over the past three decades, a large percentage of the new long-span bridges around the world were built in China, and thus, abundant technological innovations and experience have been accumulated during the design and construction. This paper aims to review and summarize the design and construction practices of the superstructure, the substructure, and the steel deck paving of the long-span bridges during the past decades as well as the current operation status of the existing long-span bridges in China. A future perspective was given on the developing trend of high-speed railway bridge, bridge over deep-sea, health monitoring and maintenance, intellectualization, standard system, and information technology, which is expected to guide the development direction for the construction of future super long-span bridges and promote China to become a strong bridge construction country.

This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of research on the utilization of fibers (predominantly derived from waste materials) as reinforcement in adobe brick production. Recycling of these wastes provides sustainable construction materials and helps to protect the environment. Specimen preparation and test procedures are outlined. The effects of addition of these wastes on the physical and mechanical properties of adobe bricks as presented in the literature, are investigated. The main results for each additive are presented and discussed. It is concluded that improved adobe brick properties can be expected with the addition of combination of waste additives. The use of waste materials in the construction industry is generally of interest and useful for engineers and designers seeking sustainable solutions in construction. It is also of interest to researchers actively seeking to develop methodical approaches to quantifying, optimising and testing the performance in use of such waste material additives.

Scour depth around bridge piers plays a vital role in the safety and stability of the bridges. The former approaches used in the prediction of scour depth are based on regression models or black box models in which the first one lacks enough accuracy while the later one does not provide a clear mathematical expression to easily employ it for other situations or cases. Therefore, this paper aims to develop new equations using particle swarm optimization as a metaheuristic approach to predict scour depth around bridge piers. To improve the efficiency of the proposed model, individual equations are derived for laboratory and field data. Moreover, sensitivity analysis is conducted to achieve the most effective parameters in the estimation of scour depth for both experimental and filed data sets. Comparing the results of the proposed model with those of existing regression-based equations reveal the superiority of the proposed method in terms of accuracy and uncertainty. Moreover, the ratio of pier width to flow depth and ratio of d50 (mean particle diameter) to flow depth for the laboratory and field data were recognized as the most effective parameters, respectively. The derived equations can be used as a suitable proxy to estimate scour depth in both experimental and prototype scales.

A long-span concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) arch bridge suffers severe vehicle-induced dynamic responses during its service life. However, few quantitative studies have been reported on the typical diseases suffered by such bridges and their effects on vehicle-induced dynamic response. Thus, a series of field tests and theoretical analyses were conducted to study the effects of typical diseases on the vehicle-induced dynamic response of a typical CFST arch bridge. The results show that a support void results in a height difference between both sides of the expansion joint, thus increasing the effect of vehicle impact on the main girder and suspenders. The impact factor of the displacement response of the main girder exceeds the design value. The variation of the suspender force is significant, and the diseases are found to have a greater effect on a shorter suspender. The theoretical analysis results also show that the support void causes an obvious longitudinal displacement of the main girder that is almost as large as the vertical displacement. The support void can also cause significant changes in the vehicle-induced acceleration response, particularly when the supports and steel box girder continue to collide with each other under the vehicle load.

In this study, a total of 177 flexural experimental tests of corroded reinforced concrete (CRC) beams were collected from the published literature. The database of flexural capacity of CRC beam was established by using unified and standardized experimental data. Through this database, the effects of various parameters on the flexural capacity of CRC beams were discussed, including beam width, the effective height of beam section, ratio of strength between longitudinal reinforcement and concrete, concrete compressive strength, and longitudinal reinforcement corrosion ratio. The results indicate that the corrosion of longitudinal reinforcement has the greatest effect on the residual flexural capacity of CRC beams, while other parameters have much less effect. In addition, six available empirical models for calculating the residual flexural strength of CRC beams were also collected and compared with each other based on the established database. It indicates that though five of six existing empirical models underestimate the flexural capacity of CRC beams, there is one model overestimating the flexural capacity. Finally, a newly developed empirical model is proposed to provide accurate and effective predictions in a large range of corrosion ratio for safety assessment of flexural failure of CRC beams confirmed by the comparisons.

In this study, the performance of an efficient two-stage methodology which is applied in a damage detection system using a surrogate model of the structure has been investigated. In the first stage, in order to locate the damage accurately, the performance of the modal strain energy based index for using different numbers of natural mode shapes has been evaluated using the confusion matrix. In the second stage, to estimate the damage extent, the sensitivity of most used modal properties due to damage, such as natural frequency and flexibility matrix is compared with the mean normalized modal strain energy (MNMSE) of suspected damaged elements. Moreover, a modal property change vector is evaluated using the group method of data handling (GMDH) network as a surrogate model during damage extent estimation by optimization algorithm; in this part of methodology, the performance of the three popular optimization algorithms including particle swarm optimization (PSO), bat algorithm (BA), and colliding bodies optimization (CBO) is examined and in this regard, root mean square deviation (RMSD) based on the modal property change vector has been proposed as an objective function. Furthermore, the effect of noise in the measurement of structural responses by the sensors has also been studied. Finally, in order to achieve the most generalized neural network as a surrogate model, GMDH performance is compared with a properly trained cascade feed-forward neural network (CFNN) with log-sigmoid hidden layer transfer function. The results indicate that the accuracy of damage extent estimation is acceptable in the case of integration of PSO and MNMSE. Moreover, the GMDH model is also more efficient and mimics the behavior of the structure slightly better than CFNN model.

Concrete encased with trapezoidally corrugated web profiled cold-formed steel beams are used worldwide to improve resistance toward fire and corrosion, higher load carrying capacity as well as significant increase in the bending stiffness by encasing concrete on the beam portion. The present work gives a detailed description on the experimental, analytical and numerical investigation on the flexural behavior of concrete encased trapezoidally corrugated web profiled cold-formed steel beams which were simply supported at both ends and subjected to two point symmetric loading. The flexural behavior of such structure has been experimentally tested to failure under pure bending. To find the effect of concrete encasement in the web, 12 experiments were conducted by two different series. Beams having three different web corrugation angles of 0°, 30°, and 45° with two different web depth-thickness (d_w/t_w) ratios of 60 and 80 were tested. Experimental results such as load-deflection relationship, ultimate capacity, load-strain relationship, moment-curvature curves, ductility and failure mode indices of the specimens are presented. From the static bending tests the concrete encased trapezoidally corrugated web beam showed improved moment carrying capacity, ductility behavior and the resistance to transverse deflections in comparison to concrete encased with plain web beam. Especially for the beams with concrete encased 30° trapezoidally corrugated web having (d_w/t_w) ratio 60 and 80, the loading capacity was improved about 54% and 67.3% and the ductility also increased about 1.6 and 3.6 times, when compared to concrete encased beams with plain web. This research should contribute to the future engineering applications on seismic resistant structures and efficient usage of concrete encased with cold-formed steel beams by exhibiting its super elasto-plastic property. The analytical and numerical results showed good agreement with the experimental results at yield load, which indicates that the proposed analytical equations can be applied in predicting flexural strength accurately for such concrete encased trapezoidally corrugated web profiled cold-formed steel beams.

Frost heave experiments on saturated sandstone and tuff with an open crack are conducted under uniform and unidirectional freezing conditions. Frost heave of crack in sandstone with high permeability is more significant under uniform freezing condition than that under unidirectional freezing condition. However, frost heave of crack in tuff with low permeability is more significant under unidirectional freezing condition. To illustrate the reasons for this phenomenon, a numerical model on the freezing processes of saturated rock with an open crack considering the latent heat of pore water and water in crack is proposed and confirmed to be reliable. Numerical results show that a frozen shell that blocks the migration of water in crack to rock develops first in the outer part of the rock before the freezing of water in crack under uniform freezing condition. However, the migration path of water in crack to the unfrozen rock under freezing front exists under unidirectional freezing condition. The freezing process and permeability of rock together determine the migration of water in crack and lead to the different frost heave modes of crack for various permeable rocks under different freezing conditions. The frost heave modes of crack in rock with low or high permeability are similar under uniform freezing condition because water migration is blocked by a frozen shell and is irrelevant to rock permeability. For high permeability rock, the frost heave of crack will be weakened due to water migration under unidirectional freezing condition; however, the frost heave of crack would be more significant for low permeability rock because water migration is blocked under unidirectional freezing condition. Therefore, the freezing condition and rock permeability determine the frost heave of rock with crack together, and this should be concerned in cold regions engineering applications.

A uniform arrangement of individual piles is commonly adopted in the conventional pile group foundation, and basin-shaped settlement is often observed in practice. Large differential settlement of pile groups will decrease the use-safety requirements of building, even cause the whole-building tilt or collapse. To reduce differential settlement among individual piles, non-uniformly arranged pile groups can be adopted. This paper presents a finite element analysis on the response of pile groups with different layouts of individual piles in pile groups. Using the user-defined subroutine FRIC as the secondary development platform, a softening model of skin friction and a hyperbolic model of end resistance are introduced into the contact pair calculation of ABAQUS software. As to the response analysis of a single pile, the reliability of the proposed secondary development method of ABAQUS software is verified using an iterative computer program. The reinforcing effects of individual piles is then analyzed using the present finite element analysis. Furthermore, the response of non-uniformly arranged pile groups, e.g., individual piles with variable length and individual piles with variable diameter, is analyzed using the proposed numerical analysis method. Some suggestions on the layout of individual piles are proposed to reduce differential settlement and make full use of the bearing capacity of individual piles in pile groups for practical purposes.

Precast concrete structures have developed rapidly in the last decades due to the advantages of better quality, non-pollution and fast construction with respect to conventional cast-in-place structures. In the present study, a theoretical model and nonlinear 3D model are developed and established to assess the dynamic behavior of precast concrete slabs under blast load. At first, the 3D model is validated by an experiment performed by other researchers. The verified model is adopted to investigate the blast performance of fabricated concrete panels (FCPs) in terms of parameters of the explosive charge, panel thickness, and reinforcement ratio. Finally, a simplified theoretical model of the FCP under blast load is developed to predict the maximum deflection. It is indicated that the theoretical model can precisely predict the maximum displacement of FCP under blast loads. The results show that the failure modes of the panels varied from bending failure to shear failure with the mass of TNT increasing. The thickness of the panel, reinforcement ratio, and explosive charges have significant effects on the anti-blast capacity of the FCPs.

Urban tunnels crossing faults are always at the risk of severe damages. In this paper, the effects of a reverse and a normal fault movement on a transversely crossing shallow shotcreted tunnel are investigated by 3D finite difference analysis. After verifying the accuracy of the numerical simulation predictions with the centrifuge physical model results, a parametric study is then conducted. That is, the effects of various parameters such as the sprayed concrete thickness, the geo-mechanical properties of soil, the tunnel depth, and the fault plane dip angle are studied on the displacements of the ground surface and the tunnel structure, and on the plastic strains of the soil mass around tunnel. The results of each case of reverse and normal faulting are independently discussed and then compared with each other. It is obtained that deeper tunnels show greater displacements for both types of faulting.

The safety evaluation of engineering systems whose performance evaluation requires finite element analysis is a challenge in reliability theory. Recently, Adjusted Control Variates Technique (ACVAT) has proposed by the authors to solve this issue. ACVAT uses the results of a finite element method (FEM) model with coarse mesh density as the control variates of the model with fine mesh and efficiently solves FEM-based reliability problems. ACVAT however does not provide any results about the reliability-based mesh convergence of the problem, which is an important tool in FEM. Mesh-refinement analysis allows checking whether the numerical solution is sufficiently accurate, even though the exact solution is unknown. In this study, by introducing expanded control variates (ECV) formulation, ACVAT is improved and the capabilities of the method are also extended for efficient reliability mesh convergence analysis of FEM-based reliability problems. In the present study, the FEM-based reliability analyses of four practical engineering problems are investigated by this method and the corresponding results are compared with accurate results obtained by analytical solutions for two problems. The results confirm that the proposed approach not only handles the mesh refinement progress with the required accuracy, but it also reduces considerably the computational cost of FEM-based reliability problems.

The current work experimentally explores and then theoretically examines the lateral vibrations of an unbalanced Jeffcott rotor-system working at several unbalance conditions. To this end, three conditions of eccentric masses are considered by using a Bently Nevada RK-4 rotor kit. Measurements of the steady-state as well as the startup data at rigid and flexible rotor states are captured by conducting a setup that mimics the vibration monitoring industrial practices. The linear governing equation of the considered rotor is extracted by adopting the Lagrange method on the basis of rigid rotor assumptions to theoretically predict the lateral vibrations. The dynamic features of the rotor system such as the linearized bearing induced stiffness are exclusively acquired from startup data. It is demonstrated that, with an error of less than 5%, the proposed two-degrees-of-freedom model can predict the flexural vibrations at rigid condition. While at flexible condition, it fails to accurately predict the dynamic response. In contrast to the other works where nonlinear mathematical models with some complexities are proposed to mathematically model the real systems, the present study illustrates the applicability of employing simple models to predict the dynamic response of a real rotor-system with an acceptable accuracy.