In high rise buildings that utilize precast large panel system for construction, the shear wall provides strength and stiffness during earthquakes. The performance of a wall panel system depends mainly on the type of connection used to transfer the forces from one wall element to another wall element. This paper presents an experimental investigation on different types of construction detailing of the precast wall to wall vertical connections under reverse cyclic loading. One of the commonly used connections in India to connect wall to wall panel is the loop bar connection. Hence for this study, three types of wet connections and one type of dry connection namely: Staggered loop bar connection, Equally spaced loop bar connection, U-Hook connection, and Channel connection respectively were used to connect the precast walls. One third scale model of the wall was used for this study. The main objective of the experimental work is to evaluate the performance of the wall to wall connections in terms of hysteretic behaviour, ultimate load carrying capacity, energy dissipation capacity, stiffness degradation, ductility, viscous damping ratio, and crack pattern. All the connections exhibited similar load carrying capacity. The U-Hook connection exhibited higher ductility and energy dissipation when compared to the other three connections.

The influence of subsequent curing on the performance of fly ash contained mortar under steam curing was studied. Mortar samples incorporated with different content (0%, 20%, 50% and 70%) of Class F fly ash under five typical subsequent curing conditions, including standard curing (ZS), water curing(ZW) under 25℃, oven-dry curing (ZD) under 60℃, frozen curing (ZF) under -10℃, and nature curing (ZN) exposed to outdoor environment were implemented. The unsteady chloride diffusion coefficient was measured by rapid chloride migration test (RCM) to analyze the influence of subsequent curing condition on the resistance to chloride penetration of fly ash contained mortar under steam curing. The compressive strength was measured to analyze the mechanical properties. Furthermore, the open porosity, mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP), x-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) were examined to investigate the pore characteristics and phase composition of mortar. The results indicate that the resistance to chloride ingress and compressive strength of steam-cured mortar decline with the increase of fly ash incorporated, regardless of the subsequent curing condition. Compared to ZS, ZD and ZF lead to poor resistance to chloride penetration, while ZW and ZN show better performance. Interestingly, under different fly ash contents, the declining order of compressive strength remains ZS>ZW>ZN>ZD>ZF. When the fly ash content is blow 50%, the open porosity grows with increase of fly ash, regardless of the curing conditions are diverse. However, if the replacement amount of fly ash exceeds a certain high proportion (70%), the value of open porosity tends to decrease. Moreover, the main phase composition of the mortar hydration products is similar under different curing conditions, but the declining order of the C-S-H gels and ettringite content is ZS>ZD>ZF. The addition of fly ash could increase the amount of harmless pores at early age.

Mechanical and thermal properties of composite sandwich wall panels are affected by changes in their external environment. Humidity and temperature changes induce stress on wall panels and their core connectors. Under the action of ambient temperature, temperature on the outer layer of the wall panel changes greatly, while that on the inner layer only changes slightly. As a result, stress concentration exists at the intersection of the connector and the wall blade. In this paper, temperature field and stress field distribution of UHPC-RW-RC (Ultra-High Performance Concrete - Rock Wool - Reinforced Concrete) wall panel under high temperature-sprinkling and heating-freezing conditions were investigated by using the general finite element software ABAQUS. Additionally, design of the connection between the wall panel and the main structure is proposed. Findings may serve as a scientific reference for design of high performance composite sandwich wall panels.

This study aims to establish a new methodological framework for the evaluation of the evolution of the reliability of plain concrete for pavement vs number of cycles under flexural fatigue loading. According to the framework, a new method calculating the reliability was proposed through probability simulation in order to describe a random accumulation of fatigue damage, which combines reliability theory, one-to-one probability density functions transformation technique, cumulative fatigue damage theory and Weibull distribution theory. Then the statistical analysis of flexural fatigue performance of cement concrete tested was carried out utilizing Weibull distribution. Ultimately, the reliability for the tested cement concrete was obtained by the proposed method. Results indicate that the stochastic evolution behavior of concrete materials under fatigue loading can be captured by the established framework. The flexural fatigue life data of concrete at different stress levels is well described utilizing the two-parameter Weibull distribution. The evolution of reliability for concrete materials tested in this study develops by three stages and may corresponds to develop stages of cracking. The proposed method may also be available for the analysis of degradation behaviors under non-fatigue conditions.

Studies have proved that the mechanical properties of concrete, suddenly is dropped off with employing waste materials as replacements. The effectiveness of fibre addition on the structural stability of concrete has been indicated in recent investigations. There are different waste aggregates and fibres as plastic, rubber tire, coconut, and other natural wastes, which have been evaluated throughout the last decades. The fibres incorporation has a substantial effect on the properties of concrete mix subjected to different loading scenarios. This paper has reviewed different types of wastes and the effect of typical fibres including Poly Ethylene Terephthalate (PET), rubber tire, and waste glass. Furthermore, waste plastic and waste rubber has been especially studied in this review. Although concretes containing PET fibre revealed a reduction in compressive strength at low fibre fractions, using PET is resulted to micro-cracking decrement and increasing flexibility and flexural strength. Finally, according to the reviews, the conventional waste fibres are well-suited to mitigated time-induced damages of concrete and waste fibres and aggregates could be a reliable replacement for concrete.

Microtubules buckle under bending and torsion and this property has been studied for free microtubules before using orthotropic elastic shell model. But as microtubules are embedded in other elastic filaments and it is experimentally showed that these elastic filaments affect the critical buckling moment and critical buckling torque of the microtubules. To prove that, we developed orthotropic Winkler like model and demonstrated that the critical buckling moment and critical buckling torque of the microtubules are orders of higher magnitude than those found for free microtubules. Our results show that Critical buckling moment is about 6.04 nNnm for which the corresponding curvature is about θ = 1.33 rad /㎛ for embedded MTs, and critical buckling torque is 0.9 nNnm for the angle of 1.33 rad/㎛. Our results well proved the experimental findings.

Concrete dams are important structures due to retaining amount of water on their reservoir. So such kind of structures have to be designed against static and dynamic loads. Especially considering on critical importance against blasting threats and environmental safety, dams have to be examined according to the blast loads. This paper aims to investigate structural response of concrete gravity dams under blast loads. For the purpose Sarıyar Concrete Gravity Dam in Turkey is selected for numerical application with its 85 m of reservoir height (H), 255 m of reservoir length (3H), 72 m of bottom and 7 m of top widths. In the study, firstly 3D finite element model of the dam is constituted using ANSYS Workbench software considering dam-reservoir-foundation interaction and a hydrostatic analysis is performed without blast loads. Then, nearly 13 tons TNT explosive are considered 20 m away from downstream of the dam and this is modeled using ANSYS AUTODYN software. After that explicit analyses are performed through 40 milliseconds. Lastly peak pressures obtained from analyses are compared to empirical equations in the literature and UFC 3-340-02 standard which provide unified facilities criteria for structures to resist the effects of accidental explosions. Also analyses' results such as displacements, stresses and strains obtained from both hydrostatic and blasting analysis models are compared to each other. It is highlighted from the study that blasting analysis model has more effective than the only hydrostatic analysis model. So it is highlighted from the study that the design of dams should be included the blast loads.

The main aim of the current research is to investigate the flexural behavior of the reinforced concrete (RC) slabs strengthened with strain hardening cementitious composites (SHCC) experimentally and numerically. Seven RC slabs were prepared and tested under four-points loading test. One un-strengthened slab considered as control specimen while six RC slabs were strengthened with reinforced SHCC layers. The SHCC layers had different reinforcement ratios and different thicknesses. The results showed that the proposed strengthening techniques significantly increased the ultimate failure load and the ductility index up to 25% and 22%, respectively, compared to the control RC slab. Moreover, a three dimensional (3D) finite element model was proposed to analyze the strengthened RC slabs. It was found that the results of the proposed numerical model well agreed with the experimental responses. The validated numerical model used to study many parameters of the SHCC layer such as the reinforcement ratios and the different thicknesses. In addition, steel connectors were suggested to adjoin the concrete/SHCC interface to enhance the flexural performance of the strengthened RC slabs. It was noticed that using the SHCC layer with thickness over 40 mm changed the failure mode from the concrete cover separation to the SHCC layer debonding. Also, the steel connectors prevented the debonding failure pattern and enhanced both the ultimate failure load and the ductility index. Furthermore, a theoretical equation was proposed to predict the ultimate load of the tested RC slabs. The theoretical and experimental ultimate loads are seen to be in fairly good agreement.