This study focuses on the behavior of simply supported perforated prestressed concrete rafters (PPCRs) under single midspan monotonic static loading. The experimental program consisted of testing seven specimens; one solid (control) rafter, and six perforated with quadrilateral openings. The main investigated variables are the number and height of the openings. The test findings indicate that, in comparison to the solid rafter, the presence of quadrilateral openings in the PPCRs led to reducing the load capacity by (4.3-36%) and increase the midspan deflection at ultimate by (14.8-33%). Also, increasing the number of concrete posts between openings resulted in increasing the failure load and decreasing the deflection at all stages of performance of the prestressed concrete rafter. On the other hand, decreasing the depth of the upper and lower chords by 25% for PPCRs with the same number of openings led to a reduction in the failure load by (36, 29.5, and 24.5%) for rafters with 6, 8, and 10 openings, respectively.
Construction joints are stopping places in the process of placing concrete, and they are required because in many structures it is impractical to place concrete in one continuous operation. The amount of concrete that can be placed at one time is governed by the batching and mixing capacity and by the strength of the formwork. A good construction joint should provide adequate flexural and shear continuity through the interface.
In this study, the effect of location of construction joints on the performance of reinforced concrete structural elements is experimentally investigated.
Nineteen beam specimens with dimensions of 200×200×950 mm were tested. The variables investigated are the location of the construction joints
... Show MoreThe effect of using grinded rocks of (quartzite and porcelanite) as powder of (10 and 20) % replacement by weight of cement for self-compacting concrete slabs was investigated in this study. Five slabs with 15 concrete cubes were tested experimentally at 28 days to study the compressive strength, ultimate load, ultimate deflection, ductility, crack load and steel strain. The test results show that, the compressive strength improvement when replacement of local rock powder reached to (7.3, 4.22) % for (10 and 20) % quartzite powder and (11.3, 16.1) % for (10 and 20) % porcelanite powder, respectively compared to the reference specimen. The ultimate load percentage increase for slabs with (10 and 20) % rep
... Show MoreThe thermal performance of three solar collectors with 3, 6 mm and without perforation absorber plate was assessed experimentally. The experimental tests were implemented in Baghdad during the January and February 2017. Five values of airflow rates range between 0.01 – 0.1 m3/s were used through the test with a constant airflow rate during the test day. The variation of the following parameters air temperature difference, useful energy, absorber plate temperature, and collector efficiency was recorded every 15 minutes. The experimental data reports that the increases the number of absorber plate perforations with a small diameter is more efficient rather than increasing the hole diameter of the absorber plate with decr
... Show MoreThe main aim of this study is to assess the performance and residual strength of post-fire non-prismatic reinforced concrete beams (NPRC) with and without openings. To do this, nine beams were cast and divided into three major groupings. These groups were classified based on the degrees of heating exposure temperature chosen (ambient, 400, and 700°C), with each group containing three non-prismatic beams (solid, 8 trapezoidal openings, and 8 circular openings). Experimentally, given the same beam geometry, increasing burning temperature caused degradation in NPRC beams, which was reflected in increased mid-span deflection throughout the fire exposure period and also residual deflectio
This experimental study demonstrates the gable-reinforced concrete beams’ behavior with several number of openings (six and eight) and posts’ inclination, aimed to find the strength reduction in this type of beam. The major results found are: for the openings extending over similar beam length it is better to increase the number of posts (openings),
The world's population growth and the increasing demand for new infrastructure facilities and buildings , present us with the vision of a higher resources consumption, specially in the form of more durable concrete such as High Performance Concrete (HPC) . Moreover , the growth of the world pollution by plastic waste has been tremendous. The aim of this research is to investigate the change in mechanical properties of HPC with added waste plastics in concrete. For this purpose 2.5%, 5% and 7.5% in volume of natural fine aggregate in the HPC mixes were replaced by an equal volume of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) waste , got by shredded PET bottles. The mechanical propert
... Show MoreVibration analysis plays a vital role in understanding and analyzing the behavior of the structure. Where, it can be utilized from this analysis in the design process of the structures in different engineering applications, check the quality and safety of the structure under different working conditions. This work presents experimental measurements and numerical solutions to an out of plane vibration of a rectangular plate with a circular hole. Free edges rectangular plates with different circular holes diameters were studied. The effects of hole location on the plate natural frequencies were also investigated. A finite element modeling (using ANSYS Software) has been used to analyze the vibration characteristics of the plates. A good agree
... Show MoreNo-fine concrete (NFC) is cellular concrete and it’s light weight concrete produced with the exclusion of sand from the concrete. This study includes the mechanical properties of lightweight reinforced by steel fiber, containing different proportions of steel fiber. This study was done using number of tests. These tests were density, compressive strength, flexural strength and absorption. These tests of the molds at different curing time. The results of tests that implication of fiber to No. fine concrete did not affect significantly on the compressive strength, While the flexural strength were gets better. Results explained that, the flexural strength of (1%) fiber No- fine concrete molds are four times that of the reference mold
... Show MoreDuring the last quarter century, many changes have taken place in the tanks industry and also in the materials that used in its production، while concrete is the most suitable material where concrete tanks has the benefits of strength, long service life and cost effectiveness. So, it is necessary improvement the
conventional concrete in order to adapt the severe environment requirements and as a result high
performance concrete (HPC) was used. It is not fundamentally different from the concrete used in the past, although it usually contains fly ash, ground granulated blast furnace slag and silica fume, as well as
superplasticizer. So, the content of cementitious material is high and the water/cement ratio is low. In this
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