American Society Of Civil Engineers Research Articles

Seismic analysis of RC building with plan irregularity in Baghdad/Iraq to obtain the optimal behavior

Abstract A study was conducted for four-story reinforced concrete (RC) structure existing in Baghdad-Iraq (residential building) to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of the equivalent lateral force procedure (ELFP) analysis and the response spectrum model (RSA) according to Iraqi seismic code (ISC 2016) for designing and analyzing irregular buildings. The building was classified as an irregular in plan according to American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE 7-16). The seismic behavior of the building was investigated by verifying many parameters: the ratio of shear demand to shear strength on the columns ( V V / V n {V}_{n} ), internal force (bending moment, shear force, and axial force) for beams and columns, and the inter-story drift ratio (IDR) obtained from the (ELFP and RSA); then, the results were compared with the nonlinear static procedure (NSP) and the nonlinear dynamic procedure (NDP) according to ASCE 7-16. Also, this study investigated the effects of the higher modes in the plan (roof plan displacement). From the results, it can be concluded that ELFP and RSA are not a suitable analysis for asymmetric structures and should use appropriate methods such as the NSP and NDP.

Potential Dam Breach Flood Assessment with the 2D Diffusion and Full Dynamic Wave Equations Using a Hydrologic Engineering Center-River Analysis System

Dam breaches have catastrophic consequences, causing severe property damage, life loss, and environmental impact. The potential dam breach downstream flooding of the Kulekhani reservoir, Nepal, was studied using a 2D Diffusion Wave Equation (DWE) and Full Dynamic Wave Equation (FDWE) through an open-source solver, Hydrologic Engineering Center-River Analysis System (HEC-RAS). The suitable dam breach model was identified based on the dam geometry and sixteen historical dam failure cases. The simulated downstream peak was tested with an empirical relation, considering reservoir volume and duration of failure. Model comparisons through the flood plain mapping of water depth, flow velocity, flood intensity as per guidelines of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and arrival time were carried out for flood hazard assessment. FDWE was able to capture the physical flow phenomena in the river bend resulting in higher flow velocity at the outer bend, lower velocity at the inner bend, and formation of eddies due to the application of the turbulence model, considering possible momentum losses, whereas DWE was unable to capture these effects due to a simplified momentum equation. The total area of flood extension was found to be increased by 30% using FDWE than the DWE due to higher water surface elevation. Most of the towns along the Kulekhani River were classified as “Very High” intensity flood regions according to ASCE, due to the V-shape valley. The peak time difference at the Bagmati River confluence was evaluated between the models. This plays an important role in decision-making for the selection of the flood model to make a safe evacuation plan. The application of FDWE was found to be suitable for the rapidly varying unsteady flow in the steep meandering river.

Comments: New Year Marks JPT’s 75th Anniversary

We’re excited to begin the year with the commemoration of JPT’s 75th anniversary. This issue launches our special features dedicated to JPT’s reporting of technology and practices over the past 7½ decades. Emerging Technology Senior Editor Stephen Rassenfoss and Senior Technology Editor Trent Jacobs penned this month’s articles highlighting innovations in drilling, completions, and reservoir engineering. Each month, our editors will dive into the archives to round up milestones of industry advancements and achievements as reported in JPT. Since its inaugural issue in January 1949, JPT has remained true to its mission of reporting the technological and scientific learnings and advancements in the global oil and gas industry. Built upon a strong technical foundation, it continues to draw upon the expertise and knowledge of industry experts to disseminate up-to-date, relevant information to SPE members from all disciplines. JPT’s evolution began with The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME), founded in 1871 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It was one of the first national engineering societies established in the US. In subsequent years, AIME was joined by four other engineering founder societies—The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers [IEEE]), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)—and formed the United Engineering Foundation. (US President Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer, served as AIME’s president in 1920.) As AIME itself continued to grow, it decentralized and formed four independently operated member societies: SME (Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration); TMS (The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society); AIST (Association for Iron & Steel Technology); and SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers). AIME had as part of its membership a small, but growing, number of petroleum engineers. These members had specific technological issues far removed from their peers in the older, more-established engineering disciplines. The AIME Petroleum Branch Executive Committee (whose members represented companies such as The Pure Oil Co., Dowell Inc., Humble Oil and Refining Co., and the Texas Co.) determined that the best way to meet this group’s needs was to develop a “publication so dominantly petroleum as to secure wide reader interest,” one that would “rapidly gain the respect of the industry.” Over the years, that goal was achieved. JPT came to be recognized worldwide as the source for authoritative technical information in the petroleum industry. JPT’s first issue included four technical papers, one of which was “A Hydraulic Process for Increasing the Productivity of Wells.” The paper’s author, J.B. Clark, noted, “To date the process has been used in 32 jobs on 23 wells in 7 fields, resulting in a sustained increase in production in 11 wells.” The hydraulic fracturing techniques for well stimulation that he discussed have been responsible for the subsequent recovery of billions of barrels of oil. Also, bear in mind that the world’s total crude oil production in 1949 was about 3.8 billion bbl, less than the projected total US annual production in 2023—4.7 billion bbl. Other articles related to the oil and gas business were “Private Financing of Oil-Producing Properties” and “Middle Eastern Oil and Its Importance to the World.” Interestingly, although the content is outdated, both topics remain relevant today, 75 years later. Join us each month to explore our rich history and follow us on LinkedIn. All issues of JPT from 1949 to date are available in OnePetro. Even a cursory glance at the titles of the papers will show the remarkable evolution of technology over the years. We wish you the best in 2024, both in your professional and personal lives.

Progressive Collapse Evaluation of a Reinforced Concrete High-rise Building Designed According to Turkish Earthquake Code

In this study, a numerical progressive collapse response evaluation was performed on a 40-story high-rise building designed according to the Turkish Earthquake Code of 2018 (TEC-2018). The alternate path method specified in the General Services Administration of 2016 (GSA2016) and the Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC 4-023-03) was used for the evaluation. A total of 18 scenarios were investigated for column and shear wall removals. In the cases where hinges were observed, the extent of damage was evaluated using the performance criteria given in the Turkish Seismic Code and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 41-17. In this study, the most damage was observed when the corner column was removed at the bottom floor, while the least damage was observed on the shear walls close to the center and core of the building. For all the scenarios evaluated, no collapse was observed. The study deduced that the high-rise building designed according to TEC-2018 showed sufficient resistance to progressive collapse.

Neighborhood component analysis to leverage the class label information during feature selection to enhance the damage classification performance

In the health monitoring of large structures data from multiple sensors are fused to get reliable and robust results. Using data from multiple sensors leads to high dimensional feature vectors which result in computational inefficiency and overfitting. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the dimension of these feature vectors, especially in the case of real-time health monitoring systems. Principal component analysis has become a go-to algorithm for dimensionality reduction in the structural health monitoring literature. However, it reduces the dimension by maximum variance criterion without considering the class labels of these initial feature vectors, this implies that the reduced dimensional feature vectors do not guarantee best class separability in damage classification problems. Using linear discriminant analysis to solve this issue poses singularity problems in the damage classification problems with small datasets having high dimensional feature vectors. This paper proposes the use of neighborhood component analysis for reducing the dimensionality of the feature vectors. As in the case of damage type identification problems the input signals have to be labeled, neighborhood component analysis makes use of the class label information and reduces the dimension by considering the classification performance. The algorithm’s performance has been validated by solving a damage classification problem by combining it with a K-nearest neighbor classifier. An experimental benchmark dataset from the American Society of Civil Engineers is utilized for this purpose. A comparison with the Principal Component Analysis on the same dataset depicts that the ability of Neighborhood Component Analysis to include the class label information indeed helps in enhancing the damage classification performance.

SPH AND ANALYTICAL MODELING OF AN URBAN FLOATING STRUCTURE FOR COASTAL EXPANSION

The development of large-scale floating structures is recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a critical step towards resilient coastal cities for climate change adaptation (ASCE, 2019). Yet, a lack of design guidelines acts to limit their development at the community scale. In response, we demonstrate and validate the applicability of a simplified analytical procedure against numerical solutions to elucidate the dynamics of a freely-floating pontoon-building system. This effectively presents a pathway towards the evaluation of structural requirements for the realization of floating cities as a sustainable alternative to traditional land reclamation.

Urban space maintainability factors based on life cycle approach

PurposeThe maintainability of urban spaces has become critical with rapid urbanization to create an effective and safe environment for the increasing population. The absence of scientific studies exploring the factors that affect urban space maintainability (USM) has hindered the incorporation of maintainability aspects during the urban space planning and designing stages. This paper aims to establish critical factors for USM.Design/methodology/approachQualitative content analysis is performed under an abductive approach to developing USM factors. A bibliometric search is conducted using databases including Scopus Elsevier, Emerald Insight, Science Direct, IEEE XPLORE and the American Society of Civil Engineers. The selected primary data set comprises journal papers on USM published after 2000. Seventy-three journal articles are selected through a comprehensive screening procedure and subjected to further analysis. The literature findings are processed via a software-assisted systematic coding and visualizing of the key data using NVivo 12 software. The coded USM factors are validated based on experts’ consensus statements by conducting an expert focus group discussion.FindingsTwelve critical factors are established for USM; they include six design stage-related factors, one construction stage-related factor and five operational stage-related factors.Research limitations/implicationsEstablished USM factors give an insight into the main focus areas when incorporating maintainability into urban spaces.Originality/valueThe authors establish a set of maintainability factors for urban spaces based on the life cycle stages. USM factors such as vegetation management, interdepartmental coordination and work zone safety draw attention to context-specific aspects of USM.

Distributed model predictive control based on the alternating direction method of multipliers for branching open canal irrigation systems

Most studies of open canal automation concentrated on the control of single canal pool or cascaded multiple canal pools, neglecting the hydraulic coupling effects between the main canal and lateral canals. Low transmission efficiency and poor equity of agriculture water delivery may be caused in the practical application of large-scale irrigation networks. Considering the high computation and communication requirements for large-scale operating systems, a distributed model predictive control (DMPC) algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is developed for the branching open canal irrigation systems (BOCISs). A simplified BOCIS example, originating from Test case 2 proposed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, is used for control tests. Moreover, for control performance comparisons and evaluations, centralized model predictive control (CMPC) is employed by modifying the state space of the integrator delay (ID) model. The results show that the control performance of the proposed DMPC converges to the global optimal solution of the CMPC under the normal scenario, and the degradation is less than 0.35 %. The communication and coordination process of DMPC contributes to more powerful robustness and interference immunity than CMPC. Furthermore, in case of sudden accidents occurring in some subsystems, the proposed DMPC is more convenient and timely to execute fault isolation. The improvements on water level oscillations and overshoots can reach 20.3 % and 52.1 % in the other subsystems which need normal water delivery, respectively. Equipped with outstanding control characteristics, the proposed ADMM-based DMPC framework enables the water authorities of large-scale BOCISs to promote surface water distribution in a practicable, flexible, and secure way, showing great potential in developing intelligent irrigation districts.

Revision of ASCE 8 - Design of cold-formed stainless steel structural members

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Stainless Steel Structural Members was last updated in 2002 and significant advancements in research knowledge and companion design standards have occurred in the intervening 20 years. A dedicated group of volunteers re-formed the ASCE 8 specification committee and over the course of four years completely revamped the standard. The new version, ASCE 8–22, still parallels the cold-formed carbon steel standard AISI S100, and has improved and simplified design expressions for members and connections. Both the Continuous Strength Method and the Direct Strength Method are provided in ASCE 8–22, along with traditional effective width design approaches. The standard provides a robust set of provisions for slender austenitic, ferritic, and duplex cold-formed stainless steel structural members and their connections. This paper overviews major changes in the ASCE 8–22 standard highlighting areas of divergence from carbon cold-formed steel (AISI S100) and from stainless structural steel (AISC 370–21).

Proposed Enhancements to the Risk-Informed and Performance-Based Regulatory Framework for Seismic Hazard Design at NRC-Regulated Nuclear Power Plants

The commercial nuclear power plant industry initiated the licensing modernization project (LMP) to enhance the risk-informed and performance-based (RIPB) regulatory basis for advanced nuclear power reactors. The LMP framework relies heavily on RIPB concepts and approaches that together integrate the defense-in-depth philosophy. One example approach for seismic design is to align the LMP concepts with the performance targets described in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) standard, ASCE 43-19. The underlying strategy of this approach is to consider the performance of individual structures, systems, and components (SSCs) in seismic design, as well as the role they play in an accident event sequence. This approach contrasts with current regulations, in which every individual safety-related SSC is designed to the same seismic criteria irrespective of the role the SSC plays in the overall system performance. This new philosophy envisions more flexible seismic design options for each SSC, such that the overall seismic design can meet system-level acceptability criteria as well as plant-level acceptability criteria. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the flexibility and benefits of this proposed approach to the seismic design of SSCs in terms of reduced SSC demands (by reducing the design ground motions for SSCs) and improved SSC capacities (by allowing for alternative damage state limits). A simple shear wall was designed using ASCE 43-19 for a hard rock site in the Central Eastern United States considering alternate seismic design category and limit state combinations to examine the physical designs and functional fragilities of these combinations and their impact on seismic performance. The flexibility of this proposed approach is illustrated by an example that shows reduced SSC demands, while the SSC capacities and margins remain consistent with the required safety performance without any loss in overall plant safety.

Analysis and Design of Lateral Framing Systems for Multi-Story Steel Buildings

This study focused on identifying the most appropriate structural system for multi-story buildings and analyzing its response to lateral loads. The study analyzed and compared the different structural systems to determine the most suitable option. The study aims to utilize three lateral framing systems (moment, braced, and diagrid) in order to investigate which system needs the least amount of steel to meet the design requirements. Thus, in order to determine the estimated steel savings of this system as compared to the moment and braced frames, the four-story and eight-story buildings that are 96′ × 96′ in the plane and utilize moment frames, braced frame, and diagrid framing structural systems are presented. Based on the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 7–10, load combinations are considered for the designs, and the RAM structural analysis is used for the modeling and analysis of the structural systems. The findings of this study’s illustrations were the optimum for the analysis of wind of 176 kips and seismic loads of 122 kips, the building’s lateral displacements, which were the lowest at 0.045 inches, the story drift, the story stiffness, and the story shear for each structural system. In addition, the diagrid system also had the least amount of shear for all the stories, suggesting that it is better able to manage the lateral forces. These results indicate that the diagrid system is a more efficient structural system and can be recommended for use in multi-story buildings.

Comparison between a traditional Colombian Structural Design and the Use of Viscous-Type Energy Damping Systems (2021)

This paper compares a traditional Colombian structural design to the same structure with viscous-type energy dampers, considering both structural behavior and construction costs. To this effect, a building was designed: first, in accordance with the Colombian Seismic-Resistant Construction Regulations (NSR-10); and then according to the recommendations of American Society of Civil Engineers with regard to damping systems. Finally, the quantities and construction costs were calculated. As a result, an unconventional structure was obtained which was more expensive than a traditionally designed building. Still, said structure had less cross-sections, stresses, and displacements. The above demonstrates that, while the initial cost of this method may be higher, the extra cost can be offset when an earthquake occurs, as the building has better earthquake resistance.

A Novel Structural Damage Detection Method via Multisensor Spatial–Temporal Graph-Based Features and Deep Graph Convolutional Network

Structural damage detection plays an important part in structural health monitoring for engineering structures. However, monitored signals are easily polluted by noise and the damaged data are difficult to obtain. In this work, a novel structural damage detection approach using multisensor spatial–temporal graph-based features and deep graph convolutional networks (DGCNs) is presented. The spatial–temporal graph is constructed by the graph theory based on continuous wavelet transform (CWT) of vibration signals. Then, the multisensor spatial–temporal graph-based feature is extracted based on the Laplacian matrix derived from the spatial–temporal graph of the multisensor data. To overcome the limitation of small data size which obstructed the use of the artificial neural network and convolutional neural network, a DGCN is utilized to classify the damage type of the monitored structure. The extracted multisensor spatial–temporal graph-based feature vector is used to represent the node of the global graph as the input of the DGCN. The node with the same condition of the structure can be classified by using the well-trained DGCN. Experiments of the International Association for Structural Control (IASC)-American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) SHM benchmark structure and Qatar steel frame structure in the laboratory are performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The experimental results show that the DGCN method can be used to detect structural damage by learning from the constructed global graphs. Comparative experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach performs better than the conventional approach, especially for the limited dataset and noise-polluted case.

Conceptual cost estimation of highway bid items – A systematic literature review

PurposeChallenges associated with ensuring the accuracy and reliability of cost estimation of highway construction bid items are of significant interest to state highway transportation agencies. Even with the existing research undertaken on the subject, the problem of inaccurate estimation of highway bid items still exists. This paper aims to assess the accuracy of the cost estimation methods employed in the selected studies to provide insights into how well they perform empirically. Additionally, this research seeks to identify, synthesize and assess the impact of the factors affecting highway unit prices because they affect the total cost of highway construction costs.Design/methodology/approachThis paper systematically searched, selected and reviewed 105 papers from Scopus, Google Scholar, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Transportation Research Board (TRB) and Science Direct (SD) on conceptual cost estimation of highway bid items. This study used content and nonparametric statistical analyses to determine research trends, identify, categorize the factors influencing highway unit prices and assess the combined performance of conceptual cost prediction models.FindingsFindings from the trend analysis showed that between 1983 and 2019 North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East contributed the most to improving highway cost estimation research. Aggregating the quantitative results and weighting the findings using each study's sample size revealed that the average error between the actual and the estimated project costs of Monte-Carlo simulation models (5.49%) performed better compared to the Bayesian model (5.95%), support vector machines (6.03%), case-based reasoning (11.69%), artificial neural networks (12.62%) and regression models (13.96%). This paper identified 41 factors and was grouped into three categories, namely: (1) factors relating to project characteristics; (2) organizational factors and (3) estimate factors based on the common classification used in the selected papers. The mean ranking analysis showed that most of the selected papers used project-specific factors more when estimating highway construction bid items than the other factors.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the body of knowledge by analyzing and comparing the performance of highway cost estimation models, identifying and categorizing a comprehensive list of cost drivers to stimulate future studies in improving highway construction cost estimates.

FIVE-DIMENSIONAL ASSESSMENT MODEL FOR OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE OF STORMWATER CONTROL MEASURES - TOOL FOR STRATEGIC PLANNING AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Most stormwater infrastructures are aging and deteriorating in the United States. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) announced in its 2021 Report Card for America's Infrastructure that stormwater infrastructure has received a 'D' grade. The primary study objective is to help decision-makers deal effectively with the control measures of the limited-budgeted, ambiguous and inconsistently applied operation and maintenance of stormwater infrastructures. A five-dimensional assessment model for operation and maintenance of stormwater control measures (5D-SAM) was developed, including location, quality, time/quantity, cost, and environmental aspects. The model is very effective in helping decision-makers identify the current stormwater infrastructure conditions, predict the future state, manage the quantity and improve the quality of stormwater runoff in the most cost-effective manner. It helps determine whether a distressed stormwater system is beneficial to be demolished or it would be cost-effective to either repair, rehabilitate or retrofit. Moreover, the model can be utilized for fast and accurate assessment and better resource allocation for strategic planning of stormwater infrastructures.

Structural Health Monitoring: GGBS – Foam concrete evaluation for Stress-Strain Characterization

Digital Image Processing (DIP) uses photogrammetry principles to monitor elements in space and attribute respective coordinates to a pre-set reference frame. The comparison makes the measure of a graphic collection taken above fixed intervals. The technique may be performed in many experiments, including compressive, longitudinal, torque, bending, and different combined loading for static and dynamic applications. As the world’s engineering structures (such as towers and highways) mature, there seems to be a critical necessity to maintain and analyse the integrity of the system of large buildings. As per the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), there were 161,892 obsolete or technically deficient bridges in the U. S. as of 2008, with the mean lifespan of a bridge being 43 years old. The primary method used to assess deck integrity today is subjectively direct observation, which is unreliable since specific damage can be hard to spot, difficult to quantify visibly, or subject to individual perception. Bridges have lately been monitored using classic detectors like strain gauges and deflection indicators.

Evaluation of polyethylene pipe–sandy soil interaction subjected to strike-slip faulting

Pipelines are simulated in the form of a continuous beam resting on a collection of linear springs. The relationships put forth by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) guidelines are commonly used to derive the specifications of the spring elements. Some recent studies have suggested that these relationships are accompanied by a certain degree of inaccuracy. In this study, two full-scale tests were carried out on polyethylene pipes (with diameters of 120.5 and 214 mm) buried in sandy soil. The displacement of the pipe along its length was recorded throughout the entire test. Then, using the Abaqus finite-element software package and an optimisation algorithm developed in the Matlab software, a modelling approach was adopted so that the properties of the equivalent linear springs simulating the soil could be determined. In this way, the displacements obtained from the experiments would have the highest level of congruence with the values derived from the numerical simulations. Using this approach, the initial stiffness and the maximum force resulting from the pipe–soil interaction were computed and compared with the values given by the ASCE and American Lifelines Alliance (ALA) guidelines. The results showed that for a polyethylene pipe at the condition of strike-slip faulting, these values were much smaller than the values put forth by ASCE and ALA.

Locating underground utilities in the United States: A comparative analysis of services provided by private locators

The ability to locate underground utilities is imperative for the protection of these facilities and for the coordination of these facilities with transportation projects. The proliferation of underground facilities in the United States has led to an increase in dig-in strikes resulting in loss of services, project delivery delays, injuries, and even deaths. In fact, the Federal Highway Administration found utility-related issues to be one of the top causes of delays for transportation projects. These delays are often attributed to unknown or inaccurate utility location information. This scenario has led to a vast industry of utility location service providers. Additionally, national and state damage prevention laws led to the creation of one-call systems for the purpose of providing a communication conduit between designers or constructors and utility owners and operators. The importance of accurate utility locates and the risk and liability of providing utility location services also led to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) standardizing the practice of Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) into a professional service. Even with this standard, there remains misinformation and misunderstandings regarding SUE and non-SUE services provided by private utility location firms. The differences between the services provided by SUE investigations and non-SUE private locating services that do not meet SUE standards has largely been anecdotal. This study serves as an advancement in understanding the distinction of SUE services versus non-SUE services and provides evidence of industry misunderstanding of differences in these service types.

Study on the Calculation Method of Water Inflow Velocity of Loose Rock Landslide

Landslide surges pose a serious threat to the ecological environment and human life safety. Based on rock structure mechanics and water sediment dynamics, considering the additional resistance caused by the interference of loose landslide particles on flow structure, this paper deduces the resistance calculation formula of loose-rock landslide particles when entering water. It modifies the landslide velocity formula (ASCE) recommended by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The acceleration calculation formula and velocity calculation formula of bulk-rock landslides entering water are obtained, and the determination method of the main parameters in the formula is given. Based on the data of the Xintan Landslide into the Yangtze River, the rationality of the calculation results of this formula and the ASCE formula are compared and analyzed. It shows that the ASCE formula calculates the average velocity of landslide movement on land, and there will be a noticeable deviation from the actual situation when it is used to calculate the water entry velocity of a loose-rock landslide. The formula given in this paper is more practical and can be used to calculate the velocity of loose-rock landslides entering water.

Review: Sculpture on a Grand Scale: Jack Christiansen’s Thin Shell Modernism

Review: <i>Sculpture on a Grand Scale: Jack Christiansen’s Thin Shell Modernism</i>