Strain Monitoring and Stress Analysis of a Post-Prestressed Tunnel Liner

The strain monitoring and stress analysis of a new type of post-prestressed tunnel liner were carried out. The instrumentation block of the tunnel liner, with the dimensions of 12.06 m in length, 6 500 mm in diameter, and 650 mm in thickness, was post-prestressed with the unbonded tendons, each of which consists of 8 pieces of double-looped strands and the axial spacing of the tendons is 500 mm. Concrete strain meters, rebar meters, load cell and zero-stress meters were installed for the strain monitoring. The tensioning loads were applied incrementally in three cycles (50%, 77% and 100%) at the concrete age of 28 d and the tensioning work lasted for 187.1 h. Strain readings were taken before and after each cycle during tensioning period and at the specified time interval after tensioning period. It is found that concrete creep developed over tensioning period is 30% of total strain and 41.5% of elastic strain respectively. Prestress force in the unbonded tendon and concrete stress in the liner were evaluated according to the observed strain variations. Both of them are time-dependent, and about 5.3%, 8.3% and 9.0% of the prestress losses are observed at the age of 1 d, 30 d and 60 d respectively after stressing. The distribution of prestress in the liner is relatively uniform and meets the design requirement.

Layout optimization of steel reinforcement in concrete structure using a truss-continuum model

Owing to advancement in advanced manufacturing technology,the reinforcement design of concrete structures has become an important topic in structural engineering.Based on bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization(BESO),a new approach is developed in this study to optimize the reinforcement layout in steel-reinforced concrete(SRC)structures.This approach combines a minimum compliance objective function with a hybrid trusscontinuum model.Furthermore,a modified bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization(M-BESO)method is proposed to control the level of tensile stress in concrete.To fully utilize the tensile strength of steel and the compressive strength of concrete,the optimization sensitivity of steel in a concrete–steel composite is integrated with the average normal stress of a neighboring concrete.To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed procedures,reinforcement layout optimizations of a simply supported beam,a corbel,and a wall with a window are conducted.Clear steel trajectories of SRC structures can be obtained using both methods.The area of critical tensile stress in concrete yielded by the M-BESO is more than 40%lower than that yielded by the uniform design and BESO.Hence,the M-BESO facilitates a fully digital workflow that can be extremely effective for improving the design of steel reinforcements in concrete structures.

Evaluation of early-age strains and stresses in roller-compacted concrete pavement

In the structural design of a roller-compacted concrete pavement(RCCP), it is crucial to estimate strain and stress developments in the RCCP slab realistically. Since the RCCP mix uses less cement and lower amount of water, shrinkage strain and concrete temperature during the hardening stage are expected to be reduced as compared to those of conventional concrete mixture, resulting in a reduction of the concrete early-age deformation and stress developments in the RCCP slab. In this paper, early-age concrete strain and stress developments in RCCP slab subjected to environmental loads were evaluated. A full-scale test section of RCCP under real climatic conditions was monitored. The early-age total strains,stress-independent strains, shrinkage strains, and coefficient of thermal expansion(CTE) of the RCCP were measured and analyzed. Using the results of measured strains, in-situ CTE and shrinkage strain, and temperature, the early-age concrete stress development is computed by incorporating a viscoelastic property of the early-age concrete. The results revealed that the shrinkage strain of the RCCP is quite low as compared to that of conventional concrete. The early-age stress developments in the RCCP slab are strongly governed by the thermal-induced stresses. Shrinkage-induced stresses were quite small and might be negligible in a preliminary estimation of early-age stress developments in the RCCP slab.