This study applied autoclave expansion and heat curing to accelerate the hydration of concrete and investigated how these methods affect the expansion rate, crack pattern, aggregate size effect, and expansion of electric arc furnace oxidizing slag (EOS)-containing concrete. An expansion prediction model was simulated to estimate the expansion behavior over a long period and to establish usage guidelines for EOS aggregates. The results showed that the EOS content in concrete should range between 20% and 30% depending on the construction conditions, and that coarse aggregates with a diameter of ${\geq}4.75-mm$ are not applicable to construction engineering. By comparison, aggregates with a size of 1.18-0.03 mm resulted in higher expansion rates; these aggregates can be used depending on the construction conditions. On Day 21, the prediction model attained a coefficient of determination ($R^2$) of at least 0.9.

In this study, pullout capacities of post-installed deformed bars anchored in low strength concrete using different bonding materials are investigated experimentally. The experimental study was conducted under outdoor and indoor conditions; on the beams of an actual reinforced concrete building and on concrete bases constructed at Istanbul Technical University (ITU). Ready-mixed cement based anchorage mortar with modified polymers (M1), ordinary cement with modified polymer admixture (M2), and epoxy based anchorage mortar with two components (E) were used as bonding material. Furthermore, test results are compared with the predictions of current analytical models. Findings of the study showed that properly designed cement based mortars can be efficiently used for anchoring deformed bars in low quality concrete. It is important to note that the cost of cement based mortar is much lower with respect to conventional epoxy based anchorage materials.

This paper investigates the compressive fatigue behaviour of polypropylene fibre reinforced self compacting concrete with Granite Sawing Waste (GSW). An experimental programme was conducted to obtain the fatigue lives of fibre reinforced self compacting concrete (FRSCC) at various stress levels. The stress ratio was kept constant as 0.3. Compressive fatigue test was conducted on 60 cubic specimens with 100mm edge length and 0.1% of polypropylene fibres at a frequency of 0.05Hz. The test results indicate that the fatigue lives of concretes containing granite sawing waste follow the double-parameter Weibull distribution. The fatigue strength equations have been developed based on different probabilities of failure.

Structural optimization is one of the most important topics in structural engineering and has a wide range of applicability. Therefore, the main objective of the present study is to apply the Lagrange Multiplier Method (LMM) for minimum cost design of singly and doubly reinforced rectangular concrete beams. Concrete and steel material costs are used as objective cost function to be minimized in this study, and ultimate flexural strength of the beam is considered to be as the main constraint. The ultimate limit state method with partial material strength factors and equivalent concrete stress block is used to derive general relations for flexural strength of RC beam and empirical coefficients are taken from topic 9 of the Iranian National Building Regulation (INBR9). Optimum designs are obtained by using the LMM and are presented in closed form solutions. Graphical representation of solutions are presented and it is shown that proposed design curves can be used for minimum cost design of the beams without prior knowledge of optimization and without the need for iterative trials. The applicability of the proposed relations and curves are demonstrated through two real life examples of SRB and DRB design situations and it is shown that the minimum cost design is actually reached using proposed method.

Enhanced tensile properties of fiber reinforced concrete make it suitable for strengthening of reinforced concrete elements due to their superior corrosion resistance and high tensile strength properties. Recently, the use of fibers as strengthening material has increased motivating the development of numerical tools for the design of this type of intervention technique. This paper presents numerical analysis results carried out on a set of concrete beams reinforced with short fibers. To this purpose, a database of experimental results was collected from an available literature. A reliable and simple three-dimensional Finite Element (FE) model was defined. The linear and nonlinear behavior of all materials was adequately modeled by employing appropriate constitutive laws in the numerical simulations. To simulate the fiber reinforced concrete cracking tensile behavior an approach grounded on the solid basis of micromechanics was used. The results reveal that the developed models can accurately capture the performance and predict the load-carrying capacity of such reinforced concrete members. Furthermore, a parametric study is conducted using the validated models to investigate the effect of fiber material type, fiber volume fraction, and concrete compressive strength on the performance of concrete beams.

In this paper, a parallel algorithm of nonlinear dynamic analysis of three-dimensional (3D) reinforced concrete (RC) frame structures based on the platform of graphics processing unit (GPU) is proposed. Time integration is performed using Newmark method for nonlinear implicit dynamic analysis and parallelization strategies are presented. Correspondingly, a parallel Preconditioned Conjugate Gradients (PCG) solver on GPU is introduced for repeating solution of the equilibrium equations for each time step. The RC frames were simulated using fiber beam model to capture nonlinear behaviors of concrete and reinforcing bars. The parallel finite element program is developed utilizing Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). The accuracy of the GPU-based parallel program including single precision and double precision was verified in comparison with ABAQUS. The numerical results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm can take full advantage of the parallel architecture of the GPU, and achieve the goal of speeding up the computation compared with CPU.

In this study, the construction of a reinforced concrete bridge pier was analyzed from durability point of view. The goal of the study is to analyze the crack iniation condition due to construction and present some recommendations for construction conditions of the reinforced concrete bridge pier. The bridge is located at the western port area of Shenzhen, where the climate is high temperature and humidity. To control the cracking of concrete, a construction simulation was carried out for a heat transfer problem as well as a thermal stress problem. A shrinkage model for heat produced due to cement hydration and a Burger constitutive model to simulate the creep effect are used. The modelling based on Femmasse(C) is verified by comparing with the testing results of a real underground abutment. For the bridge pier, the temperature and stress distribution, as well as their evolution with time are shown. To simulate the construction condition, four initial concrete temperatures ($5^{\circ}C$, $10^{\circ}C$, $15^{\circ}C$, $20^{\circ}C$) and three demoulding time tips (48h, 72h, 96h) are investigated. From the results, it is concluded that a high initial concrete temperature could result in a high extreme internal temperature, which causes the early peak temperature and the larger principle stresses. The demoulding time seems to be less important for the chosen study cases. Currently used 72 hours in the construction practice may be a reasonable choice.

As concrete is most usable material in construction industry it's been required to improve its quality. Nowadays, nanotechnology offers the possibility of great advances in construction. For the first time, the nonlinear buckling of straight concrete columns armed with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) resting on foundation is investigated in the present study. The column is modelled with Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. The characteristics of the equivalent composite being determined using the Mori-Tanaka model. The foundation around the column is simulated with spring and shear layer. Employing nonlinear strains-displacements, energy methods and Hamilton's principal, the governing equations are derived. Differential quadrature method (DQM) is used in order to obtain the buckling load of structure. The influences of volume percent of SWCNTs, geometrical parameters, elastic foundation and boundary conditions on the buckling of column are investigated. Numerical results indicate that reinforcing the concrete column with SWCNTs, the structure becomes stiffer and the buckling load increases with respect to concrete column armed with steel.