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...
85 Stories in Kuala Lumpur?The 5th and 6th Tallest Buildings in the World
A concrete core and cylindrical concrete tube structure provides a safe, elegant, efficient and constructible solution to the challenge of designing the world's 5th and 6th tallest buildings,...
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...
Predicting Turbine-Generator Foundation Vibrations
Two of the major considerations in the design of large turbine-generator foundations are to maintain the proper shaft alignment and to limit the vibration of the machine during operation....
Dynamic In-Plane Racking Tests of Curtain Wall Glass Components
This paper is concerned with the seismic performance of 'architectural.' or 'non-structural' building elements such as glass elements in curtain wall systems. A pilot study was undertaken...
Response of Equipment in Structures Supported on Resilient-Friction Base Isolators Subjected to Ground Motion
In this paper, the response of equipment in structures on a particular friction-type device, the resilient-friction base isolator, is examined. The R-FBI is composed of layers of Teflon...
Robust Control for Buildings Under Earthquake
Robust control techniques are applied to civil engineering structures subjected to earthquake excitation. Full state feedback and observer based control laws are used to reduce the response...
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...
Neural Networks in Structural Control
Let the response of a simple two-story frame to a stochastic dynamic excitation be controlled by activating suitable actuators. A neural network is trained to recognize, from the measurement...
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...
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