Life, the Universe, and CSS Tests

The W3C CSS Working Group maintains a CSS test suite already composed of more than 17,000 tests and growing constantly. Tracking the results of running such a large number of tests on a PDF formatter is more than anyone could or should want to do by hand. The system needs to track when a test’s result changes so that the changes can be verified and the test’s status updated. Finding differences is not the same as checking correctness. An in-house system for running the tests and tracking their results has been implemented as an eXist-db app. Is it a masterpiece of agile development, or an example of creeping featurism?

Experimental Database of Cyclic Simple Shear Tests under Transient Loadings

This paper describes four data sets of cyclic simple shear (CSS) tests under modulated harmonic and transient loadings. The CSS tests were performed on reconstituted Nevada Sand specimens prepared by the wet sedimentation method at target relative densities of 40% and 70%. The data sets are freely available through the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation data repository ( NEEShub.org ; database DOIs: 10.4231/D3W66991S, 10.4231/D30Z70X6F, 10.4231/D34Q7QR0T, 10.4231/D3RJ48W0Z). This paper describes the experimental apparatus, documentation of the specimen preparation procedures, loading histories, and summarizes the available CSS test data. The database includes 106 CSS tests and provides valuable information that can systematically illustrate the response of sand subjected to transient loadings before and after initiation of liquefaction; such a public database had been virtually non-existent until now.