The Engineer's Role in Reducing Curtainwall Failures
For a variety of reasons, engineers have abdicated responsibility for curtainwall design. Failures of curtainwall components are very common, leading to expensive repairs and even complete...
Current Forensic Courses in Civil Engineering
The ASCE is taking a leadership role in the prevention of failures of engineered facilities. The Technical Council on Forensic Engineering Education Committee recently completed a survey...
Things That Fall?Lessons from Some Construction Accidents and Structural Failures
The causes and results of several construction accidents are reviewed. The lessons to be learned from such a summary are that all too often the simplest oversight leads to catastrophic...
Vortex Shedding Induced Fatigue Fracture of Mast Tower
The fracture of a pair of 60m high circular steel masts is investigated. The design criteria and fabrication practices are reviewed. The cause of failure is related to the fatigued condition...
A California Tower: Response to Seismic Forces
First Interstate World Center is a signature building for the city of Los Angeles. The granite clad tower with its serrated facade rises 1,018 ft. above street level. It is the tallest...
Orthotropic Rigidities of Curved Concrete Waffle Slabs
Analytical expressions are derived for predicting the flexural and torsional rigidities during the pre-cracking and post-cracking stages for horizontally- curved waffle slab structures....
Tuned Mass Dampers for Towers and Buildings
Tuned mass dampers (TMD's) are used to reduce the response of tall slender structures to resonant wind-induced oscillations. This paper reviews the authors' experience with the design...
Fluid Viscous Damper for Improving the Earthquake Resistance of Buildings
Experimental results are presented which demonstrate that the use of fluid dampers as add-on devices in moment resisting frames substantially increases damping and reduces seismic story...
Viscoelastic Dampers for Seismic Pounding Mitigation
A hysteretic model for viscoelastic (VE) damper is explained. The model accurately accounts for the effects of excitation frequency as well as temperature of the damper. Benefit of using...
Recent Developments in Seismic Isolation Technology
Large experimental research projects for isolators for both civil structures and nuclear reactor applications have been conducted at the Earthquake Engineering Research Center (EERC) over...
Seismic Performance of Base-Isolated Building Structures
The theories and assumptions behind the base isolation technology are briefly described. As an illustration of its application, the base isolation of an existing 12-story hospital in Long...
Seismic Effectiveness of Active Tuned Mass Dampers for the Control of Flexible Structures
The possibility of enhancing Tuned Mass Damper (TMP) effectiveness with an added active control capability is presented in this paper. The weighting matrix associated with the components...
Diagnosing Lateral Strength of Existing Concrete or Masonry Buildings
A research prospectus is presented for improving present methods of structural evaluation for concrete and masonry buildings. Specifically, the proposed research plan is limited to strength...
Mitigation of Wind-Created Risks During Construction
Wind damage to structures during construction has been found to be significant and often catastrophic. Structural failures are often the result of wind loads that are far less than the...
Investigation of Full-Scale Performance of Structures?Research Potentials
It is well known that actual, or true, behavior of completed structures does not necessarily conform to often simplified analysis predictions. This may be due to any of several reasons...
Linear and Nonlinear Finite Element Analyses of RC Skewed Slab Bridges with Integral Wall Abutments
The design of rigid-frame skewed slab bridges is complicated by higher shears and moments near the obtuse corner (see Fig.1). While the finite element method can be used to compute these...
Experimental Testing of Laterally Loaded Large Scale Bridge Abutments
The challenges to a bridge analyst in defining abutment boundary conditions and the current state of the practice are presented. Variables within the abutment system are defined and discussed...
Modal Analysis Technique for Bridge Damage Detection
The dynamic responses of a wide-flange steel beam with artificially introduced cracks were studied analytically and experimentally. Frequencies, displacement mode shapes (DMS) and strain...
Correction Factor Method for Building Analysis Under Sequential Dead Loads
The effect of the sequential application of dead load due to the sequential nature of construction is an important factor to be considered in the multistory frame analysis. One of the...
An Efficient Analysis of Framed-Tube Structures
An efficient model for analysis of framed-tube systems is proposed in this study. The proposed model can represent the interaction between plane frames consisting the tube system. Analysis...
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