Field Study of HPTRM Combined with Vegetation and Anchor to Protect Newly Excavated Expansive Soil Slope

Anchor reinforced vegetation system(ARVS)comprises high performance turf reinforcement mats(HPTRM),vegetation and anchors.It is a new attempt to apply the system in expansive soil slope protection.The goal of this paper was to evaluate the effectiveness of ARVS in protecting newly excavated expansive soil slopes.The field tests on the bare slope,grassed slope and ARVS protective slope were carried out,including natural and artificial rainfall.During the test,the soil water content,soil deformation,and anchor axial force were monitored,and then the slope protection mechanism of ARVS was analyzed.It was found that ARVS can effectively protect expansive soil slopes compared with bare slopes and grassed slopes.The vegetation and HPTRM form a reinforced turf,and the anchors fix it to the slope surface,thus restraining the expansion deformation.The axial force on the anchor of ARVS includes frictional resistance and tensile force transmitted by HPTRM,which is maximum at the early stage of support.The neutral point of the anchor of ARVS moves deeper under atmospheric action,but the vegetation and HPTRM on the slope surface can limit this movement.

Numerical Determination of Shear Strength of Steel Reinforced Concrete Column Strengthened by CFRP Sheets

The earthquake resistant property of reinforced concrete members depends on the interaction between reinforcing bars and surrounding concrete through bond to a large degree. In this paper a general system aimed at dealing with the failure analysis of reinforced concrete columns strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) sheets including bond slip of the anchored reinforcing bars at the foot of the columns is presented. It is based on the yield design theory with a mixed modeling of the structure, according to which the concrete material is treated as a classical two dimensional continuum, whereas the longitudinal reinforcing bars are regarded as one dimensional rods including bond slip at the foot of the columns. In shear reinforced zones both the shear CFRP sheets and transverse reinforcing bars are incorporated in the analysis through a homogenization procedure and they are only in tension. The approach is then implemented numerically by means of the finite element formulation. The numerical procedure produces accurate estimates for the loading carrying capacity of the shear members taken as an illustrative application by correlation with the experimental results, so the proposed approach is valid.

Seismic behavior of outrigger truss-wall shear connections using multiple steel angles

An experimental investigation on the seismic behavior of a type of outrigger truss-reinforced concrete wall shear connection using multiple steel angles is presented. Six large-scale shear connection models, which involved a portion of reinforced concrete wall and a shear tab welded onto a steel endplate with three steel angles, were constructed and tested under combined actions of cyclic axial load and eccentric shear. The effects of embedment lengths of steel angles, wall boundary elements, types of anchor plates, and thicknesses of endplates were investigated. The test results indicate that properly detailed connections exhibit desirable seismic behavior and fail due to the ductile fracture of steel angles. Wall boundary elements provide beneficial confinement to the concrete surrounding steel angles and thus increase the strength and stiffness of connections. Connections using whole anchor plates are prone to suffer concrete pry-out failure while connections with thin endplates have a relatively low strength and fail due to large inelastic deformations of the endplates. The current design equations proposed by Chinese Standard 04G362 and Code GB50011 significantly underestimate the capacities of the connection models. A revised design method to account for the influence of previously mentioned test parameters was developed.