Rammed Earth (RE) is enjoying a renewed interest in North America. Contemporary stabilized rammed earth (SRE) builds upon traditional RE and incorporates rigid insulation and reinforcing steel, enhancing the structural and energy performance of the walls while satisfying current building codes. RE structures are currently engineered by licensed Structural Engineers using the Concrete Building C...

Cross-bracing (X-bracing) is one of the most popular methods of seismic retrofitting, and has been shown to significantly increase the structural stiffness and strength of buildings. Conventional steel X-bracing methods typically exhibit brittle failure at the connection between the brace and the building, or buckling failure of the braces. This study investigated the structural properties of a...

A parametric study, based on design optimization using distributed genetic algorithm, is conducted to develop a reliable design procedure for steel portal frames. The efforts are made to modify distributed genetic algorithm in order to enhance the quality of performance and accelerate the convergence to possible optimum solutions. The modification includes defining a state-of-art mutation schem...

This paper presents the results of an analytical investigation conducted to replicate experimentally obtained behavior, and better understand the behavior of the proposed structural fuse concept for bridges that is presented in a companion paper. First, a steel plate shear link (SPSL) proposed as a new type of structural fuse is described. Equations are derived to define its shear-moment intera...

today, corrosion in reinforcements is an important issue in many structures, especially those made in off-shore, resulting of reduction of the structural capacity under gravitational and lateral loads. using frp polymer can reduce this effect to some extents. a numerical and experimental investigation has been conducted on three different concrete beams to find out the effect of replacing steel...

An innovative lateral force resisting system is investigated that allows steel braced frames to uplift and rock on their foundation, partially isolating the frame. Passive energy dissipation devices are implemented at the uplifting location to control the rocking response to within allowable limits. The structure’s gravitational forces provide an inherent restoring force during the rocking resp...

Steel plate shear walls (SPSW) have been used as the primary lateral force resisting system in buildings. Extensive analytical studies on steel plate shear walls in the United States, Canada, Taiwan and other countries have already validated the simple analytical model known as strip model to predict the monotonic behavior of this kind of structural system. However, more research is still neede...