A Discussion of the Numerical Modeling of Sea Ice Ridging
Pressure ridging, is the failure mechanism of the Arctic pack ice in compression. The large-scale compressive strength of the ice pack is determined by the aggregate of ridge building...
Predicting the Performance Limits of Soil-Culvert Systems
A finite element model for elastic plastic large deformation analysis of soil-culvert systems is presented. Predictions of this numerical model are in good agreement with failure tests...
Compressive Strength and Characterization of Failure Modes for Polymer Concrete
The effect of aggregate type, polymer content and specimen dimensions on the compressive strength and failure modes of a polyester polymer concrete (PC) was investigated. Two aggregate...
Failure Prediction of Anisotropic Material
Basic mathematical elements of a higher order failure theory for anisotropic material are outlined. Surface closure is ensured by requiring a tensor polynomial to satisfy constraint conditions....
Macromodeling of Complex Composites
Dimensionally reduced p-version finite elements based on higher order theory are developed for modeling laminated composite plates and shells in the presence of cracks, notches, and delaminations....
Response of Space Structures Under Sudden Local Damage
Damages to space structures can come from such adverse events as impact by foreign objects, docking, drastic temperature changes, and exposure to radiation and charged particles. This...
Roof Management Alternatives for Aging Launch Infrastructure
This paper describes a Roof Management System approach to better cope with aging and deteriorating infrastructure support facilities at our national spaceports. It describes facility conditions...
Denver International Airport Fabric Roof Design
The design of Denver's Landside Terminal Complex for the new Denver International Airport, called for some far reaching vision coupled with imaginative building technologies. Because of...
Evaluating Spillway Adequacy
More than a third of all dam failures are caused by overtopping. Equipment malfunctions or operations errors are sometimes to blame, but the principal cause is inadequate spillway capacity....
Piping in Earth Dams of Dispersive Clay (Paper introduced by Norman L. Ryker)
In 1971 Jim Sherard was engaged to investigate the common failure of a group of Soil Conservation Service (SCS) floodwater retarding earthfill dams built between 1957 and 1970, eleven...
Aversion to Epistemic Uncertainties in Rational Decision Making: Effects on Engineering Risk Management
When faced with epistemic uncertainties in a decision problem, subjective expected-utility theory (SEU) implies that the only relevant characteristic of these uncertainties is the mean...
On Deciding Between the Use of Engineering Standards and Risk Analysis
Risk analysis offers advantages for the optimal design and maintenance of infrastructure, but it is not always practical to apply due to the nature of certain types of infrastructure....
Asymptotic Importance Sampling
One of the main issues in reliability analysis is the accurate and efficient calculation of the multivariate reliability integral. The Asymptotic Importance Sampling Technique (AIS) selects...
Comparison of Some Importance Sampling Techniques in Structural Reliability
The approximate calculation of structural reliabilities by FORM/SORM is well known. Nevertheless, alternatives or at least methods with which the error by these methods can be quantified...
Incorporating Corrosion in Reliability-Based Design of Anchored Bulkheads
Corrosion of steel is an important factor in the design of marine structures. A reliability analysis of anchored bulkheads showed that corrosion changes the critical failure mode from...
Sensitivity Evaluation of Simulation Methods for Reliability Assessment
Commonly used reliability assessment methods include the first-order methods, second-order methods, and Monte Carlo simulation methods with or without variance reduction techniques. The...
High Order Statistics in Structural Reliability
The new simulation technique described in this paper attempts to avoid the significant amount of arbitrariness involved in the choice of the sampling distribution in the increasingly popular...
A Mathematical Tool Set for SORM Reliability Methods
FORM and SORM methods are used for approximating failure probabilities. Here an overview of the main mathematical results of SORM methods is given: Classification of asymptotic behavior,...
Experiences with Experimental Design Schemes for Failure Surface Estimation and Reliability
When using FORM and SORM to predict the probability of failure for a structural component a model for the failure function has to exist. For certain structural components a mechanical...
On a Procedure to Estimate the Reliability of Mechanical Components
A procedure, based on the response surface concept is suggested to estimate the failure probability of mechanical components and structures under static as well as dynamic loading conditions....
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