in the current engineering practices, buildings are commonly designed for an effective lifetime of 50 years. this lifetime can increase the cost of buildings with short lifetimes and can reduce the safety level of buildings with large lifetimes. in this paper, a “service-life factor” has been defined. applying this factor into the nominal values of live, earthquake, wind, and snow loads, the ef...

Load balancing is one of the best efficient methods for performance improvement of cluster system. Recently, WLC algorithm is used for the load balancing of cluster system. But, the algorithm also has load imbalance between servers, because it uses inaccurate static load status of servers. In this paper, I suggest a more efficient dynamic load balancing algorithm base on various load status inf...

This study is to evaluate the behavior of integral and segmental specimens through static and cyclic tests. Integral specimens were made with the same size to be compared with segmental specimens that were made by connected precast members. To evaluate its bending performance and serviceability, 1 integral and 3 segmental specimens were tested under static load. And 1 integral and 2 segmental s...

This paper describes a study evaluating increase in design strength, performance and capacity when including bridge parapets in a bridge analytical model. Traditionally, concrete parapets are treated solely as superimposed dead load in an overall bridge structural design. Parapets are detailed from a safety standpoint to resist impact forces from vehicle loading. However, in the global design m...

This technical note presents the results of a field investigation into pile aging in soft clay which was conducted over a period of ten years. Static load tests were conducted after the excess pore pressure generated by the installation of 6 m long driven concrete piles were fully equalised. These tests allowed the time-capacity aging profile to be established. A normalised capacity-time trend ...

The feasibility of using railroad flatcars (RRFCs) as the superstructure for bridges on lowvolume roads has been investigated in two previous research projects at Iowa State University. The results of these projects verified that RRFCs are efficient and economical alternatives for low-volume road bridges. Two county engineers involved with the RRFC project cited cost as the main factor for choo...

In this paper, we present a game theoretic framework for obtaining a user-optimal load balancing scheme in heterogeneous distributed systems. We formulate the static load balancing problem in heterogeneous distributed systems as a noncooperative game among users. For the proposed noncooperative load balancing game, we present the structure of the Nash equilibrium. Based on this structure we der...

A bi-criteria optimization is considered whose objectives are the maximization of the load sustained by a structure and the minimization of the structure's volume. As the objectives are conflicting, the solution to the problem is of the Pareto type. The problem is elaborated for a thin-walled column of cruciform cross-section, prone to flexural and torsional buckling. A numerical example is als...

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 work presented in this paper investigates the causes of size effects in structural-concrete members. it isbased on the use of a finite-element model found to yield realistic predictions of structural-concrete behavior in allcases investigated to date. in fact, the previous use of this model in investigations of size effects in reinforced-concretebeams indicated that such effects reflect the...