Kincardine Bridge – An engineering triumph 85 years on

Author(s):  
David K. Pritchard ◽  
Ryan D. Simmonette ◽  
Kieran O'Connor ◽  
Cameron B. Gair

When construction of Kincardine Bridge was completed in 1936, it was the longest road bridge in Scotland and the largest swing-span bridge in Europe. 85 years on, the Historic Environment Scotland Category A listed bridge remains in service and carries approximately 12,000 vehicles daily across the Forth Estuary. On occasions when the Queensferry Crossing and Forth Road Bridge are closed simultaneously, the Kincardine Bridge offers the shortest available diversion route across the estuary for unrestricted traffic. A 2019 principal inspection highlighted deterioration to some structural elements and in 2020 DMRB bridge assessment standards were revised. As a result, a quantitative assessment was undertaken to provide confidence that the bridge remains safe for use and fit for purpose and to inform future maintenance requirements. This paper focuses on the multitude of structural forms that comprise the overall bridge and how they: - have comparably performed relating to durability over the past 85 years - have been quantitatively assessed - have comparably withstood present-day traffic loading criteria - will be maintained in future.

Author(s):  
Diego Carro-López ◽  
Ignasi Fernandez ◽  
Natalie Williams Portal

<p>There is an extensive network of reinforced concrete bridges that give service to roads, highways and railways. These structures where constructed with quality standards of the past, and they suffer of severe problems. Now we consider the idea of substituting them with structural elements with much longer service life. However, there is an important question to be addressed in this area: what to do with the existing infrastructure that would be demolished. Even more if we consider environmental issues.</p><p>One good example of this recurrent problem could be found in the case of the Gullspång bridge (Sweden). It was constructed in 1935 and it was severely damaged with corrosion. The administration decided in the 2016 that no further repair would be done and that the bridge would be demolished and a new erected in substitution. A fraction of the concrete from the old bridge was crushed and processed to produce new aggregate. With this aggregate, using the coarse fraction, it was analyzed the structural effect of replacing natural aggregates with these recycled aggregates. The performance of the new structural elements was positive, and it seems that a high percentage of the natural aggregates could be replaced with recycled ones.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 555-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Geiger

This article is devoted to the issue of operationalizing and empirically measuring the development of behavioral economics, focusing on trends in the academic literature. The main research goal is to provide a quantitative, bibliometric assessment to answer the question of whether the relative importance of behavioral economics has increased over the past decades. After an introduction and a short summary of the history of behavioral economics, several studies are laid out and evaluated. The results generally provide a quantitative confirmation of the story of a rise of behavioral economics that can be found in the literature, and add some notable additional insights.


2007 ◽  
Vol 44 (04) ◽  
pp. 212-225
Author(s):  
Lior Banai ◽  
Omri Pedatzur

Stiffened plates form the backbone of most of a ship's structure. Today, finite element (FE) models are used to analyze the behavior of such structural elements for different types of loads. In the past, when usage of computers and FE models were not used very much, analytical analysis methods were required. Two well-known methods have been developed for analyses of stiffened plates under lateral loading (uniform pressure), based on two different models, namely, the orthotropic plate model and the grillage model. Both models can give estimations for the maximum plate deflection under uniform lateral pressure. The objective of this paper is to present the two methods, evaluate and compare the methods using the finite element method, and finally implement the methods as a computer program for quick estimations of the maximum deflection of stiffened plates. The degree of accuracy of the two methods when compared to FE is discussed in some detail.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi Ramniklal Gondalia ◽  
Amit Sharma ◽  
Abhishek Shende ◽  
Amay Kumar Jha ◽  
Dinesh Choudhary ◽  
...  

Abstract From 2005 to 2020, the application of hydraulic fracturing technology in India has touched the length and breadth of the country in almost every basin and reservoir section. The variety of reservoirs and operating environment present in India governed this evolution over the past 15 years resulting in a different fit for purpose fracturing strategy for each basin varying from conventional single-stage fracturing (urban, desert & remote forested regions) to high volume multi-stage fracturing, deepwater frac-packs and offshore ultra-HPHT fracturing. The objective of this paper is to present the milestones along this evolution journey for hydraulic fracturing treatments in India from 2005 to 2020. This paper begins with a review of published industry literature from 2005 to 2020 categorized by reservoir type and the proven economical techno-operational fracturing strategy adopted during that period. The milestones are covered chronologically since the success or failure of technology application in one basin often influenced the adoption of novel hydraulic fracturing methods in other basins or by other operators during the initial years. The offshore evolution is branched between the west and the east coasts which have distinctly different journeys and challenges. The onshore evolution is split into 5 categories: Cambay onshoreBarmer Hills & Tight GasEast India CBM and shale gasAssam-Arakan BasinOnshore KG Basin Each of these regions is at different stages of evolution. The Barmer region is in the most advanced state of evolution with frac factories in place while the Assam-Arakan Basin is in a relatively nascent stage. Figure 1 presents estimated hydraulic stage count based on published literature underlining the exponential growth in hydraulic fracturing activity in India. This paper enlists the technical and operational challenges present in the onshore and offshore categories mentioned above along with the identified novel techno-operational strategies which have proven to be successful for various operators in India. A comparison is presented of the different timelines of the exploration-appraisal-development journey for each region based on the economic viability of fracturing solutions available today in the Industry. Lastly, specific non-technical challenges related to available infrastructure, logistics and social governance are discussed for each region. This paper concludes by identifying the next step-change in the evolution of hydraulic fracturing operations in India among the 5 categories. Each of Government, operators and service providers have important roles to play in expanding the adoption of this technology in India. These roles are discussed for each identified category with the perspective of continuing the country's journey towards energy security.


Author(s):  
Jerremie V. Clyde ◽  
Glenn R. Wilkinson

This chapter explores the limits of simulations for university-level historical education. The authors develop an alternative gamic mode more fit for purpose by focusing on epistemology and procedural rhetoric. This chapter will start by examining how history functions as a form of disciplinary knowledge and how this disciplinary way of knowing things is taught at the post-secondary level. The manner in which history is taught will be contrasted with its evaluation in order to better define what students are actually expected to learn. The simulation will be then examined in the light of learning goals and evaluation. This will demonstrate that simulations are in fact a poor fit for most post-secondary history courses. The more appropriate and effective choice is to construct the past via procedural rhetoric, using games that mirror the structure of the historical argument.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1124 ◽  
pp. 209-218
Author(s):  
Pavel Svoboda ◽  
Karl Heinz Winter

Reinforced and pre-stressed concrete have been used increasingly for various kinds of complex structures in the past decades. The structures assembled from panels belong into this group. The current design methods rely on linear elastic analyses based on empirically derived material laws assuming homogeneous and isotropic material. Practical experience and various investigations however have indicated that majority of structures and structural elements are in fact stressed beyond the range of linear elastic behavior. In addition, long term effects may have a significant influence on the structural behavior of this category of structures and structural members.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (10) ◽  
pp. 731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Li ◽  
Leonard F. Lindoy

The use of metalloligands as building blocks for the assembly of metallo-organic cages has received increasing attention over the past two decades or so. In part, the popularity of this approach reflects its stepwise nature that lends itself to the predesigned construction of metallocages and especially heteronuclear metallocages. The focus of the present discussion is on the use of metalloligands for the construction of discrete polyhedral cages, very often incorporating heterometal ions as structural elements. The metalloligand approach uses metal-bound multifunctional ligand building blocks that display predesigned structural properties for coordination to a second metal ion such that the rational design and construction of both homo- and heteronuclear metal–organic cages are facilitated. The present review covers published literature in the area from early 2015 to early 2019.


Author(s):  
David Dutwin ◽  
Trent D Buskirk

Abstract Telephone surveys have become much maligned in the past few years, considering recent failures to correctly predict elections worldwide, response rates declining into the single digits, and the rise of low-cost, nonprobabilistic alternatives. Yet there is no study assessing the degree to which data attained via modern-day telephone interviewing has or has not significantly declined in terms of data quality. Utilizing an elemental approach, we evaluate the bias of various cross-tabulations of core demographics from a collection of surveys collected over the past two decades. Results indicate that (1) there has been a modest increase in bias over the past two decades but a downward trend in the past five years; (2) the share of cell phone interviews in samples has a significant impact on the bias; (3) traditional weighting largely mitigates the linear trend in bias; and (4), once weighted, telephone samples are nearly on par in data quality to higher response rate unweighted in-person data. Implications for the “fit for purpose” of telephone data and its general role in the future of survey research are discussed given our findings.


Author(s):  
A. М. Bocharnikova

The article contains information on all general-purpose linguistic museums that are currently functioning in the world, functioned in the past, or are at the project stage. In cases where this is possible, the structure of museum’s exposition is examined. Criteria that have played a key role in the division of museums’ content into structural elements are defined. The accuracy of exposition authors’ compliance of their approaches has also been analyzed. The first linguistic museum in the world that opened its doors to visitors was Taras Shevchenko university of Kyiv’s Linguistic Educational Museum founded in 1992 by the order of the university’s rector. During next sixteen years it was world’s only linguistic museum till the year 2008 when National Museum of Language in the US was opened. In 2013 a new linguistic museum named Mundolingua was established in Paris. After 2014 when the museum in USA was closed and till now it continues to be the only linguistic museum in the world except Linguistic Educational Museum in Ukraine that is functioning. At present times there are several big projects of establishing a comprehensive linguistic museum in different countries. Among them is Planet Word in Washington, Museum der Sprachen der Welt in Berlin, Museum of Language in London. The work upon these projects is in progress and hasn’t reached the stage of completeness. There are also two websites available on the Internet that have the name of museum but does not contain any traces of the exposition content. These are the website of the above mentioned National Museum of Language and Taalmuseum in the Netherlands. Both of these websites are portals for announcements concerning exhibitions, lectures and meetings in different places that are somehow referred to language topics. In this article the structure of the museums content has also been analyzed. Linguistic Educational Museum in Kyiv was established for academic purposes therefore its content has the same structure as the Introductory Linguistics course. At the same time it reveals the principles of the museum exposition author’s Doctor of Science thesis named the Metatheory of Linguisics.


2000 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald J. Leo ◽  
Eric M. Austin ◽  
Christopher Beattie

The chief tool for design of viscoelastic-based damping treatments over the past 20 years has been the modal strain energy (MSE) approach. This approach to damping design traditionally has involved a practitioner to vary placement and stiffness of add-on elements using experience and trial and error so as to maximize the add-on element share of system MSE in modes of interest. In this paper we develop a new technique for maximizing strain energy as a function of stiffness for add-on structural elements modeled as rank r perturbations to the original stiffness matrix. The technique is based on a constrained substructure approach allowing us to parameterize strain energy in terms of the eigenvalues of the perturbed structure. An optimality condition is derived that relates the input-output response at the attachment location of the add-on elements to the maximum achievable strain energy. A realizability condition is also derived which indicates whether or not the optimal solution is achievable with passive structural elements. This method has applications in the design of structural treatments for controlling sound and vibration and promises an efficient means of determining the limits of performance of passive structural treatments. An advantage of our approach over existing methods is that the maximum achievable strain energy fraction in the add-on elements is directly computable with the realizability condition then indicating whether the optimal solution is achievable.


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