The purpose of this study is to analyze the foundation beam linked between two shear walls in the presence of lateral loads. Mat foundation with shear walls is one of the most commonly used reinforced concrete structural systems to resist the lateral load. When two independent walls are connected with a link beam, also known as the coupling beam, the overturning resistance of the building is largely increased. However, the coupling beams are relatively weaker structures and can develop larger stresses. When there is a mat foundation, or pile cap in case of pile foundation, the part of the foundation which is right below the coupling beam where no shear wall is present, will also get large stresses due to the highly rigid nature of adjacent shear walls. Most of the lateral deformations are imposed only on the coupling beams and foundation beam. There is not much literature or design procedure found in books and codes to mitigate the high risks associated with the foundation beam between shear walls on its design vulnerability. This thesis is focused on the risks associated with exceptionally high forces on the foundation beam due to earthquake forces.

Roughness noise can be a significant contributor of sound in low Mach number, high Reynolds number flows. Only a small amount of experimental research has been conducted to analyze roughness noise because of its often low energy levels that are hard to isolate even in a laboratory setting. This study details efforts to scale the roughness noise while independently varying roughness size and edge velocity. Measurements were taken in the Virginia Tech Anechoic Wall Jet Facility for stochastic rough surfaces varying from hydrodynamically smooth to fully rough as well as deterministic rough surfaces including 1mm and 3mm hemispheres and a 2D wavy wall. Inner and outer variable normalizations were applied to recorded far field data in an attempt to find specific driving variables of the roughness noise. Also, a newly formulated derivation that attempts to scale the far field sound from a single point wall pressure measurement was used to collapse the far field noise. From the results, the inner and outer variable scalings were unable to collapse the noise generated by all velocities and roughness sizes. The changing spectral shapes of noise generated by rough surfaces with significantly varying wavenumber spectra make it impossible to scale the produced noise using the proposed inner and outer variable scalings. They use only one a single scaling value for the entire frequency range of each spectrum. The analyzed wall pressure normalization, which is inherently frequency dependent, produces a tight collapse within the uncertainty of the measurements for all rough surfaces studied except the larger hemispherical roughness which had individual elements that dominated the surrounding region of the wall pressure microphone. This indicates that the roughness generated noise is directly proportional to the wall pressure spectrum. The collapsed data displayed a slope of Ï ^2, the expected dipole efficiency factor. This is the clearest confirmation to date that the roughness noise source is of a dipole nature. / Master of Science

The thesis of this project is to develop a language of architecture for the design of a rural house. Parameters for this language are specified through program, ideas about living in a country home, and the importance of integrating the building with its site. The parameters are reaffirmed through the materials and elements of architecture. In order to develop a cohesive language, four houses have been designed for four different sites. Each house implements the specified parameters in a manner appropriate to the setting of the surrounding landscape. The houses themselves become a transition between the inside and the outside and between the natural and the man-made. Thus this thesis is: Four Houses - A Language of Transition from Earth to Sky. Our experience-space is necessarily in conflict with the space of nature. The space that nature offers us rises above the ground and is oriented entirely towards the earth's surface. The contrast between the mass of the earth below and the space of the air above, which meet at the surface of the earth, is the primary datum of this (experience) space. Dom H. Van Der Laan, "Architectonic Space" (E.J. Brill, 1983), p. 5 / Master of Architecture

No description available.

published_or_final_version / Conservation / Master / Master of Science in Conservation

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.