NDE for Steel Bridges
Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) is the only way to detect fatigue cracks hidden by the paint on steel bridges, and FHWA-sponsored research into the problem has been given highest priority....
Composite Sketch
Composite materials from the aerospace and military sectors are showing promise in highway, bridge and transportation applications. Some of the current and potential applications of composites...
Engineering a Landslide
A slope failure in northwest Alabama has been stabilized using a system of grouted INSERT piles to provide load transfer across the failure surface of the slide. This system, referred...
Advances in Underground Pipeline Engineering II
The first international conference on Advances in Underground Pipeline Engineering was held in 1985. Some 50 authors and over 300 delegates from 20 countries took part in the presentations...
Designing for Drama
Near the Passaic River in Newark, N.J., not far from the famous Iron Bound restaurant district and Newark's Penn Station, construction crews swarm around the steel skeleton...
More Parking Above
Vertical expansion of six (6) new floors of parking garage on top of four (4) floors of existing structure that was built over three decades ago, adding 155,000 square foot of new structure....
Rock Steady
Heavily damaged during the Loma Prieta earthquake, Oakland City Hall had to be repaired and retrofitted. Now Oakland boasts the tallest seismically isolated building in the world. The...
Lessons from Nonfailures
Two case histories are described in which building owners were told during rehabilitation projects that their structures were in serious trouble. In one case, the engineer told the owner...
Rising from the River
The Corps of Engineers completed construction of a 20 Million cu yd dredged material containment facility in the Delaware River in 1990. The authors examine the performance of the geotextile...
Do Civil Engineers Have an Ethical Responsibility to their Client at the Expense of the Environment?
The application of engineering ethics to the environment is at the center of the debate regarding sustainable development. If the environment is to be held above client needs, say many,...
When the Levee Breaks
As repairs to the billions of dollars in damages left by the Mississippi and Missouri floods continue, many engineers believe it is time to step back and see if there are better ways of...
Checking Concrete Growth
When the Tennessee Valley Authority built its dams in the 1930s, instrumentation installed in the massive concrete detected a defect that would later cause major problems: concrete growth...
Human Extender: A Material Handling System
A human's ability to perform physical tasks is limited by physical strength, not by intelligence. `Extenders' are a class of robot manipulators worn by humans to augment human mechanical...
Real-Time Control for a Robotic Rebar Bender
Job conditions and variability in the properties of the stock material combine in a rebar bending operation to create a challenging environment for a robotic bender. This paper reports...
Dynamics of Laminated Plates with Layer Waviness
Composite structures usually exhibit a high strength-to-weight ratio as compared to traditional structural materials. This makes them attractive solutions in many aerospace applications....
A Membrane Structure for a Lunar Assembly Building
This paper describes potential design options and construction approaches for the development of an inflatable membrane structure of non-circular cross section. This structure could be...
Analysis of Inflating Habitable Space Structures with neomass (near-Earth-object mass)
The discovery of near Earth objects (NEOs), during August 1992, and that one of them is a dormant comet, dramatically changed the potential availability of near-Earth resources. NEOs provide...
Behavior of Bolted Joints in 3-D Braided Composites
As composites are used more as replacements for metals in space structures, the question arises as to the most efficient way to join the components. Mechanical fasteners are a common joining...
Late Stage Damage in G30-500/PMR-15 Laminates
Damage progression has been studied experimentally under tension using [02/906]s...
Biosphere II - Its Effects on Space Colonization
In the middle of the Arizona desert, a strange sight can be seen. A small world with ecosystems and different climate zones, just like Earth, is enclosed in glass and steel. The 3.15 acre...
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