• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.213-228
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• 2014

Alkali-activated binder (AAB) is recently being considered as a sustainable alternative to portland cement (PC) due to its low carbon dioxide emission and diversion of industrial wastes and by-products such as fly ash and slag from landfills. In order to comprehend the behavior of AAB, detailed knowledge on relations between microstructure and mechanical properties are important. To address the issue, a new approach to characterize hardened pastes of AAB containing fly ash as well as those containing fly ash and slag was adopted using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectra microanalyses. The volume stoichiometries of the alkali activation reactions were used to estimate the quantities of the sodium aluminosilicate (N-A-S-H) and calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) produced by these reactions. The 3D plots of Si/Al, Na/Al and Ca/Si atom ratios given by the microanalyses were compared with the estimated quantities of CSH(S) to successfully determine the unique chemical compositions of the N-A-S-H and CSH(S) for ten different AAB at three different curing temperatures using a constrained nonlinear least squares optimization formulation by general algebraic modeling system. The results show that the theoretical and experimental quantities of N-A-S-H and CSH(S) were in close agreement with each other. The $R^2$ values were 0.99 for both alkali-activated fly ash and alkali-activated slag binders.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.463-469
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• 2002

The governing equation and force-displacement rotations of a beam-column element on elastic foundation we derived based on variational approach of total potential energy. An exact static and dynamic 4×4 element stiffness matrix of the beam-column element is established via a generalized lineal-eigenvalue problem by introducing 4 displacement parameters and a system of linear algebraic equations with complex matrices. The structure stiffness matrix is established by the conventional direct stiffness method. In addition the F. E. procedure is presented by using Hermitian polynomials as shape function and evaluating the corresponding elastic and geometric stiffness and the mass matrix. In order to verify the efficiency and accuracy of the beam-column element using exact dynamic stiffness matrix, buckling loads and natural frequencies are calculated for the continuous beam structures and the results are compared with F E. solutions.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.785-802
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• 2018

In this paper, two different computational methods, called Rayleigh-Ritz and collocation are developed to estimate the ultimate strength of composite plates. Progressive damage behavior of moderately thick composite laminated plates is studied under in-plane compressive load and uniform lateral pressure. The formulations of both methods are based on the concept of the principle of minimum potential energy. First order shear deformation theory and the assumption of large deflections are used to develop the equilibrium equations of laminated plates. Therefore, Newton-Raphson technique will be used to solve the obtained system of nonlinear algebraic equations. In Rayleigh-Ritz method, two degradation models called complete and region degradation models are used to estimate the degradation zone around the failure location. In the second method, a new energy based collocation technique is introduced in which the domain of the plate is discretized into the Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto points. In this new method, in addition to the two previous models, the new model named node degradation model will also be used in which the material properties of the area just around the failed node are reduced. To predict the failure location, Hashin failure criteria have been used and the corresponding material properties of the failed zone are reduced instantaneously. Approximation of the displacement fields is performed by suitable harmonic functions in the Rayleigh-Ritz method and by Legendre basis functions (LBFs) in the second method. Finally, the results will be calculated and discussions will be conducted on the methods.