Volumen 23 (2015): Edición 3 (September 2015)

The results of an experimental program conducted on seventeen simply supported concrete beams to study the effect of transverse reinforcement on the behavior of the lap splice of a steel reinforcement in tension zones in high-strength concrete beams are presented. The parameters included in the experimental program were the concrete compressive strength, the lap splice length, the amount of transverse reinforcement provided within the splice region, and the shape of the transverse reinforcement around the spliced bars. The experimental results showed that the displacement ductility increased and the mode of failure changed from a splitting bond failure to a flexural failure when the amount of the transverse reinforcement in the splice region increased, and the compressive strength increased up to 100 MPa. The presence of the transverse reinforcement around the spliced bars had a pronounced effect on increasing the ultimate load, the ultimate deflection, and the displacement ductility. The prediction of maximum steel stresses for spliced bars using the ACI 318-05 building code was compared with the experimental results. The comparison showed that the effect of the transverse reinforcement around spliced bars has to be considered into the design equations for lap splice length in high-strength concrete beams.

There are currently three design methods to verify the in-plane buckling of an arched structure: substitute member method, the method of equivalent imperfection with recommendations for arched bridges, and the equivalent unique global and local initial imperfection method (EUGLI), which uses the critical elastic buckling mode as an imperfection. The latter method is included in the EN 1993-1-1 cl. 5.3.2 (11) since 2002; however, to this day it is neither utilized in the design practice nor is it incorporated in ordinary structural analysis software. The main purpose of this article is to show the application of the proposed methods in a step-by-step manner to the numerical example considered and to compare these design methods for various arched structures. Verification of the in-plane buckling of an arch is explained in detail.

The longitudinal behaviour of embedded rails significantly differs from that of ballasted or slab tracks with direct rail fastenings. As the ambient temperature rises and falls, rails expand and contract, thereby imposing stress on the channel and embedding compound. In the article the author presents the creation of a method that makes the calculation and the inspection of embedded rails simpler and closer to the everyday engineering mentality. The design process includes an analysis of the displacement and normal forces along a rail axis.

Geotechnical and structural engineers are faced with a difficult task when their designs interact with each other. For complex projects, this is more the norm than the exception. In order to help bridge that gap, a method for modeling the behavior of a foundation using a simple elasto-plastic subgrade reaction was developed. The method uses an optimization technique to position 4-6 springs along a pile foundation to produce similar load deflection characteristics that were modeled by more sophisticated geotechnical finite element software. The methodology uses an Excel spreadsheet for accepting user input and delivering an optimized subgrade spring stiffness, yield, and position along the pile. In this way, the behavior developed from the geotechnical software can be transferred to the structural analysis software. The optimization is achieved through the solver add-in within Excel. Additionally, a beam on a nonlinear elastic foundation model is used to compute deflections of the optimized subgrade reaction configuration.

Circulation pumps are mechanical devices, which are used to create the overpressure required for the transportation of a heat-transfer medium in heating technology as well as in other related technologies. In a circulation pump the mechanical energy generated by the drive machine – an electric motor is transformed to hydraulic energy, which consists of kinetic and static energy. In the pipeline of a heating system circulation pumps represent a source of hydraulic energy (positive differential pressure), which is consumed to transport the heat-transfer medium. During the flow, the heat-transfer medium puts up resistance to the so-called passive resistors, which consist of pressure losses from friction in the pipes and pressure losses due to local resistance. In this article the authors analyze the effect of a circulation pump on the operating costs in an apartment building. Different types of circulating pumps, ranging from the most unfavorable to the optimal, were selected.

Soil water retention curves were measured using a sandbox and the pressure plate extractor method on undisturbed soil samples from the Borská Lowland. The basic soil properties (e.g. soil texture, dry bulk density) of the samples were determined. The soil water retention curve was described using the van Genuchten model (Van Genuchten, 1980). The parameters of the model were obtained using the RETC program (Van Genuchten et al., 1991). For the determination of the soil water retention curve parameters, two pedotransfer functions (PTF) were also used that were derived for this area by Skalová (2003) and the Rosetta computer program (Schaap et al., 2001). The performance of the PTFs was characterized using the mean difference and root mean square error.