Introduction: Common theme within the electric utility industry is doing more work with fewer resources. Shrinking staff resources and budgets create challenges in light of the continuing strong investment required for national lifeline infrastructure projects. Methods: The presentation will define and address one traditional type of waste – overproduction, particularly applied to the design of electric utility transmission structures. Results and Conclusion: It will illustrate a variety of typical design choices and the risks in making design decisions that result in larger than necessary, and thus more expensive, structures.

Background:Present intensifying forest fire incidents are becoming a major concern as they pose threats to the environment, economy and human’s safety. This paper aims to identify forest fire hotspots using advanced hotspot analysis in the Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and suggest appropriate preventive measures.Objective:Brunei Darussalam is one of the Southeast Asian countries that is significantly affected by the increase in forest fire incidents in this region. Brunei Muara is the worst-hit district by forest fire in Brunei Darussalam, and hence it was selected as a case study for this research.Results and Conclusion:This research identified and prioritized forest fire hotspots, highlighted the shortage of fire stations within the identified hotspots and suggested the suitable locations for new fire stations in Brunei Muara district.

Introduction:Considering the promising results gained from several studies using cementitious composites with strain hardening behaviour (High Performance Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Composites, HPFRCC) for repair and retrofitting concrete flexural members, in this paper the possibility of using HPFRCC for retrofitting two-way RC slabs is investigated.Methods:A total of five two-way slabs were made and tested to failure. Three slabs were retrofitted with a variety of different types of retrofit configurations and two other slabs, having low and conventional reinforcement ratios, were used as control slabs. A novel technique of bonding, designated NSM-HPFRCC, is proposed. Flexural responses of all slabs are evaluated and the bonding behaviour and associated failure modes are investigated.Results and Conclusion:It is shown that the proposed retrofit configurations, especially when accompanied by the NSM-HPFRCC technique, can greatly improve the flexural performance of retrofitted slabs; hence, they can be used successfully to retrieve the flexural reinforcement deficiency of weak slabs.

Introdcution:Engineered cementitious composite (ECC) has gained attention among researchers due to its superior tensile properties. To improve its modulus elasticity, due to absence of coarse aggregate, nano-silica (NS) has been added to ECC mixture.Method:To facilitate the usage of the NS-ECC in the construction industry, using nondestructive tests such as rebound hammer (RH) and ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) to predict the compressive strength of NS-ECC is worthwhile. Twenty mixtures with two variables which are four PVA% (0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2) and five NS% (0, 1, 2, 3 and 4) have been proportioned, cast, cured and tested using RH, UPV and then crushed to determine the compressive strength at age of 28 days.Results and Conclusion:Response surface methodology (RSM) has been performed to develop models for predicting the compressive strength of NS-ECC utilizing results from RH and UPV. It has been established that the newly developed models are significant with values of “Prob > F” less than 0.05 and also have variance less than 0.2. Therefore, these models can be used to predict the compressive strength of NS-ECC using rebound hammer or/and ultra-pulse velocity.

Introduction: To fully ascertain the ultimate shear failure state and friction sliding performance of laminated rubber bearings used in bridges, a series of cyclic loading tests on such laminated rubber bearings was conducted. Method: The energy dissipation characteristics of rubber bearings with two fixed end plates, rubber bearings with unilateral friction sliding and a lead rubber bearing (LRB) under a low-frequency cyclic load were compared and analyzed. Results and conclusion: The results showed that (1) the ultimate shear deformation of the rubber bearings with two fixed end plates reached 300% to 400% of the rubber layer thickness. The damage was mainly focused on the rubber layer fracture. The energy dissipation capacity of the bearings was weak, and the hysteresis curve presented a narrow zonal shape. (2) The rubber bearings with unilateral friction sliding had a similar energy dissipation capacity compared to the LRB. The maximum energy dissipation in a single cycle could reach 126% of the LRB’s maximum energy dissipation. With an increase in the sliding distance, the dissipated energy continuously increased. The shear deformation of the bearing no longer increased after reaching its maximum. After the test, the bearings remained in good condition. The hysteresis curves of load-displacement presented a bilinear shape. (3) Under cyclic loading, the energy dissipation capacity of LRBs was stable. The LRBs played an effective role in energy dissipation during loading. After the test, the LRBs nearly returned to their original condition. The hysteresis curves of LRB were always fuller than the laminated rubber bearings.

Introduction: Bridge scour is one of the major causes of bridge failure. Prediction of the maximum depth and shape of local scour plays an important role in bridge design and maintenance. In this paper, k-ε turbulent model combined with wall function was employed and complex flow fields are exhibited. The bed load transport model summarized by Qian and Wan [1] was applied to evaluate the development of local scour. Besides, σ-grid module was developed and embedded into the commercial solver FLUENT to fit the change of channel-bed. Method: In this module, the change of the elevation of the channel bed is calculated through using user defined functions(UDF), and the motion of the grid system is realized based on a program developed through C++ language, which extends the applications of FLUENT. The evolution of local scour hole for two cases, i.e., local scour around a cylindrical pier and a semicircular abutment, was simulated. Results and Conclusion: The depth and the shape of local scour as well as the flow fields were predicted. Numerical result conforms well to the experimental measurement. Especially, it provides fairly reasonable prediction on the key issue of the maximum scour depth. The satisfactory agreement validates the numerical method developed in the present study. In addition to the validation purpose, the different performance of this method for predicting local scour around the cylindrical pier and the semicircular abutment was discussed.

The application of buckling restrained braced frames is hindered in Europe by the absence of a standardized design procedure in Eurocode 8, the European seismic design standard. The presented research aims to develop a robust design procedure for buckling restrained braced frames. A design procedure is proposed by the authors. Its performance has been evaluated for buckling restrained braced frames with two-bay X-brace type brace configurations using a state-of-the-art methodology based on the recommendations in the FEMA P695 document. A special numerical material model was developed within the scope of this research to represent the behavior of buckling restrained braces more appropriately in a numerical environment. A total of 24 archetype designs were prepared and their nonlinear dynamic response was calculated using real ground motion records in incremental dynamic analyses. Evaluation of archetype collapse probabilities confirms that the proposed design procedure can utilize the advantageous behavior of buckling restrained braces. Resulting reliability indices suggest a need for additional regulations in the Eurocodes that introduce reasonable structural reliability index limits for seismic design.

In Europe, Eurocodes are the set of standards for structural design, integrating all specific National experiences and research outputs. However, about ten years have elapsed since the official issue of these codes. Within this last decade, European codes for structural design have been extensively used by designers and practitioners, thus showing the lacks and fallacies in the application of some requirements and confirming the need to update the codes. On the other hand, prolific research activities have been carried out in different fields of structural design introducing a number of novel results on different topics. In line with that, the CEN Technical Committee, called CEN/TC 250 'Structural Eurocodes', and specific sub-committee working groups (SC/WG) made up of renown experts have been organized to work on each and/or new additional Eurocode within a six year program of work to develop the next generation of European standards for structural design, which should be ended within 2020 with the aim to embrace new technologies and future market needs.

Loads on most of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures, are triaxial. For the principled analysis and design of these structures, being aware of the concrete behavior under triaxial stress states is essential. Also studying the stress-strain curves under triaxial loads for nonlinear analysis and design of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures, is important.

High-strength steel has increasingly become widely used among various engineering practices, but the relevant provisions of the codes lag behind its development. Six sets of experiments on simple supported beams reinforced with HTB600 and HTB700 rebars subject to bending loading were conducted in this study to 1) investigate the conditions of crack development, 2) contrast the calculating modes of short-term crack width between Chinese and European concrete codes, and 3) analyze European applicability and precision pertaining to high-strength reinforcement of beams. According to the experiments and research, when the calculation formulae obtained from Chinese codes were used to calculate the average crack spacing of high-strength reinforced concrete beams, the error relative to that obtained in the experiment reached approximately 20%. Based on this, a revised formula for the calculation of average crack spacing is proposed in this article, and the results of these calculations align with the results obtained from the experiment. In addition, this study also demonstrates that the maximum cracking spacing calculated by adhering to Eurocode standards yielded no significant deviation as compared to the experimental results. However, owing to a difference in the crack width exceeding 20% being observed between the results obtained under Eurocode standards and the experimental results, the calculation methods need to be further improved for better applicability of high-strength reinforced rebars.