Extensive laboratory tests were conducted to investigate the effect of load amplitude, geogrid position, and number of geogrid layers, thickness of ballast layer and clay stiffness on behavior of reinforced ballast layer and induced strains in geogrid. A half full-scale railway was constructed for carrying out the tests, the model consists of two rails 800 mm in length with three wooden sleepers (900 mm × 10 mm × 10 mm). The ballast was overlying 500 mm thickness clay in two states, soft and stiff state. Laboratory tests were conducted to investigate the response of the ballast and the clay layers where the ballast was reinforced by a geogrid. Settlement in ballast and clay, soil pressure and pore water pressure induced in the clay were measured in reinforced and unreinforced ballast cases. It was concluded that the effect of frequency on the settlement ratio is almost constant after 500 cycles. This is due to that the total settlement after 500 cycles, almost reached its peak value, which means that the ballast particles become very close to each other, so the frequency is less effective for high contact particles forces. The average maximum vertical stress and pore water pressure increased with frequency.

In mountainous areas of China, concrete poles with connectors are widely employed in power transmission due to its convenience of manufacture and transportation. The bearing capacity of the poles must have degenerated over time, and most of the steel connectors have been corroded. Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) offers a durable, light-weight alternative in strengthening those poles that have served for many years. In this paper, the bearing capacity and failure mechanism of CFRP sheet strengthened existing reinforced concrete poles with corrosion steel connectors were investigated. Four poles were selected to conduct flexural capacity test. Two poles were strengthened by single-layer longitudinal CFRP sheet, one pole was strengthened by double-layer longitudinal CFRP sheets and the last specimen was not strengthened. Results indicate that the failure is mainly bond failure between concrete and the external CFRP sheet, and the specimens fail in a brittle pattern. The cross-sectional strains of specimens approximately follow the plane section assumption in the early stage of loading, but the strain in the tensile zone no longer conforms to this assumption when the load approaches the failure load. Also, bearing capacity and stiffness of the strengthened specimens are much larger than those without CFRP sheet. The bearing capacity, initial stiffness and elastic-plastic stiffness of specimen strengthened by double-layer CFRP are larger than those strengthened by single-layer CFRP. Weighting the cost-effective effect, it is more economical and reasonable to strengthen with single-layer CFRP sheet. The results can provide a reference to the same type of poles for strengthening design.

One of the instances which demand structural engineer's greatest attention and upgradation is the changing live load requirement in bridge design code. The challenge increases in developing countries as the pace of infrastructural growth is being catered by the respective country codes with bigger and heavier vehicles to be considered in the design. This paper presents the case study of India where Indian Roads Congress (IRC) codes in its revised version from 2014 to 2017 introduced massive Special vehicle (SV) around 40 m long and weighing 3850 kN to be considered in the design of road bridges. The code does not specify the minimum distance between successive special vehicles unlike other loading classes and hence the consequences of it form the motivation for this study. The effect of SV in comparison with Class 70R, Class AA, Class A, and Class B loading is studied based on the maximum bending moment with moving load applied in Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis. The spans considered in the analysis varied from 10 m to 1991 m corresponding to the span of Akashi Kaikyo Bridge (longest bridge span in the world). A total of 182 analyses for 7 types of vehicles (class B, class A, class 70R tracked, class 70R wheeled, class AA tracked, AA wheeled, and Special vehicle) on 26 different span lengths is carried out. The span corresponding to other vehicles which would equal the bending moment of a single SV is presented along with a comparison relative to Standard Uniformly Distributed Load. Further, the results are presented by introducing a new parameter named Intensity Factor which is proven to relate the effect of axle spacing of vehicle on the normalized bending moment developed.

In the present study, the objective is to detect the structural damages using the responses obtained from the sensors at the optimal location under uncertainty conditions. Reducing the error rate in damage detection process due to responses' noise is an important goal in this study. In the proposed algorithm for optimal sensor placement, the noise of responses recorded from the sensors is initially reduced using the principal component analysis. Afterward, the optimal sensor placement is obtained by the damage detection equation based sensitivity analysis. The sensors are placed on degrees of freedom corresponding to the minimum error rate in structural damage detection through this procedure. The efficiency of the proposed method is studied on a truss bridge, a space dome, a double-layer grid as well as a three-story experimental frame structure and the results are compared. Moreover, the performance of the suggested method is compared with three other algorithms of Average Driving Point Residue (ADPR), Effective Independence (EI) method, and a mass weighting version of EI. In the examples, young's modulus, density, and cross-sectional areas of the elements are considered as uncertainty parameters. Ultimately, the results have demonstrated that the presented algorithm under uncertainty conditions represents a high accuracy to obtain the optimal sensor placement in the structures.

The use of concrete filled steel tube (CFST) column is widely accepted due to its property of high axial load carrying capacity, more ductility and more resistant to earthquake specially using in bridges and high-rise buildings. The initial imperfection (δ) that produces during casting or fixing causes the reduction in load carrying capacity, this is the reason, experimental capacity is always less then theoretical one. In this research, the effect of δ on load carrying capacity and behavior of concrete filled steel tube (CFST) column have been investigated by numerically simulation of large number of models with different δ and other geometric parameters that include length (L), width (B), steel tube thickness (t), f'_c and f_y. Finite element analysis software ANSYS v18 is used to develop model of SCFST column to evaluate strength capacity, buckling and failure pattern of member which is applied during experimental study under cyclic axial loading. After validation of results, 42 models with different parameters are evaluated to develop empirical equation predicting axial load carrying capacity for different value of δ. Results indicate that empirical equation shows the 0 to 9% error for finite element analysis Forty-two models in comparison with ANSYS results, respectively. Empirical equation can be used for predicting the axial capacity of early estimating the axial capacity of SCFT column including 𝛿.