This paper deals with the development of a numerical simulation methodology for estimating damages in laminate composite materials caused by a low-speed impact. Experimental tests were performed on laminate plates reinforced with woven carbon fibers and epoxy resin. Three thickness plates were evaluated. The impact loads were transversal and punctual. Two lamina failure criteria were evaluated....

This paper presents a numerical investigation on the influence of different types of damage to the load capacity of in-service timber utility poles. Current design codes do not highlight a pole’s strength performance due to different types of damage. However, damages typically found in ageing timber poles, such as damage due to fungus or termite attack, have very different characteristics and r...

In performance-based earthquake engineering, deformation based methods such as member plastic rotation and inter-story drift ratio are recommended in guideline documents such as FEMA-356 for evaluating structural performance. Such response quantities, however, don’t provide insight into the state of damage in the structure. Yet, damage at a certain local level in the system can result in unexpe...

The aim of this study was to investigate whether variation in estrogen levels during the menstrual cycle influences susceptibility to exercise-induced muscle damage after stretch-shortening cycle exercise. Physically active women (n = 18; age = 20.2 ± 1.7 yr) participated in this research. The subjects performed one session of 100 maximal drop jumps on day 1 or 2 of the follicular phase and ano...

[Purpose] The present study aimed to determine the changes in physical and balance performance following exercise-induced muscle damage using a sport-specific protocol. [Subjects and Methods] Fifteen collegiate soccer players were asked to perform a sport-specific sprint protocol to induce muscle damage. The markers of muscle damage (soreness, range of motion, limb girth, muscle strength, creat...

Kinesio taping (KT) has been widely used to prevent muscle pain and to improve range of motion in clinical settings. However, no previous research has examined how long KT should be applied to muscle following damaging exercise. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the duration of KT application on markers of muscle damage following eccentric exercise. Thirty-two male subjects...

In the present study, ten steel-moment resisting frames (SMRFs) having different numbers of stories ranging from 3 to 20 stories and fundamental periods of vibration ranging from 0.3 to 3.0 second were optimized subjected to a set of earthquake ground motions using the concept of uniform damage distribution along the height of the structures. Based on the step-by-step optimization algorithm dev...

Concrete strength evaluated from compression tests on cores is affected by several factors causing differences from the in-situ strength at the location from which the core specimen was extracted. Among the factors, there is the damage possibly occurring during the drilling phase that generally leads to underestimate the actual in-situ strength. In order to quantify this effect, in this study t...