Performance of structures during recent earthquakes shows that the effect of vertical component of earthquake (VCE) could be considered as one of the main causes of bridges collapse. In most of bridge design codes, for seismic analysis of bridges, VCE is not taken into account or a distinguished method isn’t presented for assessment of VCE. In the present work, the effect of VCE on two existing...

As part of a larger project to investigate the use of Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) materials in bridge construction, a short-span FRP-reinforced concrete bridge was installed in central Missouri. The Walters Street Bridge is a precast concrete panel bridge reinforced with both glass FRP (GFRP) and carbon FRP (CFRP) reinforcing bars. It was designed according to the American Concrete Institute...

In this letter, we examine the computational mechanisms of reinforce-ment-based decision making. We bridge the gap across multiple levels of analysis, from neural models of corticostriatal circuits-the basal ganglia (BG) model (Frank, 2005 , 2006 ) to simpler but mathematically tractable diffusion models of two-choice decision making. Specifically, we generated simulated data from the BG mode...

This paper presents results from an extensive experimental study on hydraulic performance of new rectangular bridge deck drains developed by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Bridge Division. It fits between the deck reinforcement with the top of the drain flush with the bridge surface and does not interfere with the structural connection of the bridge rail to the deck. Experiments...

This paper attempts to bridge the elds of machine learning, robotics, and distributed AI. It discusses the use of communication in reducing the undesirable eeects of locality in fully distributed multi-agent systems with multiple agents/robots learning in parallel while interacting with each other. Two key problems, hidden state and credit assignment, are addressed by applying local undirected ...

This paper attempts to bridge the elds of machine learning, robotics, and distributed AI. It discusses the use of communication in reducing the undesirable eeects of locality in fully distributed multi-agent systems with multiple agents/robots learning in parallel while interacting with each other. Two key problems, hidden state and credit assignment, are addressed by applying local undirected ...

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) Precast Slab Span System was initially designed by Mn/DOT with input from University of Minnesota researchers and local fabricators. The bridge system consisted of a series of precast, prestressed concrete inverted tee bridge elements which also served as stay-in-place formwork for the cast-in-place portion of the deck placed in the field. One...

local scouring around bridge piers is a natural phenomenon caused by the erosive process of flowing stream on alluvial beds. the 3d flow field around bridge piers interacting with the bed materials increases complexity of local scour process. the local scour depth develops in accelerated flows and if it is not predicted correctly, the bottom level of local scour hole will exceed the original le...

This paper deals with the economic optimization of reinforced concrete road vaults and with the optimization of rectangular hollow section bridge piers typically used in road construction. It shows the efficiency of a heuristic optimization by the threshold accepting algorithm. The evaluation of solutions follows the Spanish Code for structural concrete. Design loads are in accordance to the na...