There are four primary accident types at steel building construction (SC) projects: falls (tumbles), object falls, object collapse, and electrocution. Several systematic safety risk assessment approaches, such as fault tree analysis (FTA) and failure mode and effect criticality analysis (FMECA), have been used to evaluate safety risks at SC projects. However, these traditional methods ineffecti...

The corrosion of reinforced steel, and subsequent reinforced concrete degradation, is a major concern for infrastructure durability. New materials with specific, tailor-made properties or the establishment of optimum construction regimes are among the many approaches to improving civil structure performance. Ideally, novel materials would carry self-repairing or self-healing capacities, trigger...

Steel sheet piling, typically used for retaining structures in the United States, is a potential alternative for use as the primary component in low-volume road (LVR) bridge substructures. To investigate the viability of sheet pile abutments, a demonstration project was performed in Black Hawk County, Iowa. The project involved construction of a 40 ft single-span bridge utilizing axially loaded...

Reinforced concrete pipe (RCP) has been one of the most common pipes for medium to large diameter utility systems including sanitary sewer, and storm drainage systems. RCP typically has superior structural properties combining high compressive strength from concrete and tensile strength from reinforced steel. RCP tends to deteriorate over time due to hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas in sewage and man...

The objective of this paper is to provide the stiffness and strength characteristics for coldformed steel stud walls stabilized by sheathing. The primary stability resistance is provided by translational (lateral) stiffness supplied at the fastener locations to the cold-formed steel studs. This paper separates the source of this translational stiffness into two parts: local and diaphragm. To an...

Metal thin-walled members have been widely used in building industry. Usually they are utilized as purlins, girts or ceiling beams. Due to slenderness of thin-walled cross-sections these structural members are prone to stability problems (e.g. flexural buckling, lateral torsional buckling). If buckling is not constructionally prevented their resistance is limited by buckling strength. In practi...

Many industries, such as the aerospace and the automotive industries have successfully used Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites (FRPC). These types of composite materials offer significant advantages over conventional civil engineering materials, such as concrete and steel. This is due to their chemical and corrosion resistance, lightweight, and high strength, which make them attractive for the...

One of the major limitations of most of the currently available commercial CAD systems is the fact that they lack the possibility of representing non-manifold solids. This leads to the consequence that big limitations are imposed on the types of solids representable in a system: for example, neither dangling faces are allowed, nor are solids obtained through one-dimensional soldering of steel p...

Enhancing the accuracy of an approximate cost estimate is a critical issue since the estimate ordinarily predicts the total cost of a project with insufficient project information. In order to facilitate the approximate cost estimate process, this paper proposes a computer-based integrated system that enables the flexibility to varying amount and accuracy of available information, higher accura...