in this paper, evaluation of torsional stiffness in beam and slab bridge deck elements is presented. a beam and slab bridge decks structurally behave as a grillage. a grillage has an efficient transverse load distribution due to transverse asymmetric load. in the case of bridge deck without transverse beams in the span, transverse load distribution depends on the torsional stiffness of longitud...

The introduction and development of wireless sensor network technology has resulted in rapid growth within the field of structural health monitoring (SHM), as the dramatic cable costs associated with instrumentation of large civil structures is potentially alleviated. Traditionally, condition assessment of bridge structures is accomplished through the use of either vibration measurements or str...

A new generation of concrete highway bridges has recently been built in Canada using new design concepts and advanced materials for reinforcing and prestressing concrete . This paper describes briefly the design and construction of three bridges. The first smart concrete highway bridge (Centre Street, Beddington Bridge, Calgary, Alberta) is prestressed by carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) ...

An Expert System for aid in material selection process is proposed, which in conjunction with TOPSIS(Technique for Order Preference by Similiarity to Ideal Situation) method[l] provides a very effective and efficient technique of material selection for a component. TOPSIS is a highly advanced optimization technique, which requires that user provides relative importance to different properties b...

Intelligent systems can facilitate decision making and have been widely applied to various domains. The output of intelligent systems relies on the users’ input. However, with the development of Web-Based Interface, users can easily provide dishonest input. Therefore, the accuracy of the generated decision will be affected. This dissertation presents three essays to discuss the defense solution...

In the bridge inspection, the information of cracks is important to maintain a bridge. Therefore, automatic crack detection is highly desirable for efficiency and objectivity of crack assessment. However, in general, it is very difficult to detect cracks automatically from noisy concrete surfaces. In this paper, we propose a machine vision system for automatic inspection of bridges. The propose...

Due to the growing number of structurally deficient bridges in the United States, methods for determining the structural performance of in-service bridges is vital to the preservation of the nation’s bridge network. By utilizing field testing, the response of the bridge due to a known traffic load can be assessed, and more accurate structural performance can be determined. The objective of this...

Bridge is among the zero-sum games for which artificial intelligence has not yet outperformed expert human players. The main difficulty lies in the bidding phase of bridge, which requires cooperative decision making under partial information. Existing artificial intelligence systems for bridge bidding rely on and are thus restricted by human-designed bidding systems or features. In this work, w...

Expert systems are a branch of artificial intelligence that encode the knowledge and performance of a subject matter expert. An expert system provides a powerful approach to managing and applying knowledge to the business. The paradigm here is to encapsulate knowledge in an automated "expert" who can utilize this knowledge for the company's benefit. An expert system can shield a company from em...