The Diploma thesis deals with the Diagnostics of Reinforced Concrete Bridge in the village of Luhačovice. This thesis also describes the individual Diagnostic methods and instruments used in purpose to make Diagnosis of bridge constructions. The main aim of the Diagnostics is to determine the current state of the Bridge which consists in verification of the actual road structure, determination of the physical and mechanical parameters of the Concrete (strength, depth of carbonation) and in some parts of the bridge structure to determine the type, number and position of the bending or shear reinforcement. Based on the evaluation of the laboratory tests a static calculation of the selected part of the Bridge structure is performed. The final evaluation is the determination of the load and the subsequent design of the necessary and recommended measures for maintaining or improving the functionality of the bridge structure.

AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Elaine Conrad, for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Communication Studies, presented on September 21, 2018, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: “I WANT TO TELL YOU MY STORY”: THE POTENTIAL OF NARRATIVE TO BRIDGE CULTURAL DIVIDE MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Nilanjana Bardhan In this dissertation, I examine a strange kind of divide or disconnect that occurs between international students and U.S.-American students. While international students studying in the United States are often strongly interested in forming connections within their newly adopted country and are anxious to get to know and make new friends with U.S.-American students as well as with other community members, it is not always reciprocated by their U.S.-American counterparts. According to data collected in a survey at Midwestern University, frequently U.S.-Americans lack the same motivation for forming connections, find conversing with international students “awkward” at best, threatening or frightening at worst, and view international students as “very foreign,” “strange,” and “too different from me.” Some are fearful of even beginning a conversation, afraid that they will say or do the wrong or politically incorrect thing. Or they may purposely distance themselves from anyone they perceive as different from themselves, preferring that those they view as different stay “someplace else” as far away as possible. My principal concern and overall question in this dissertation is how to begin to bridge these gaps between U.S.-American students and international students so the divide does not become even greater when they leave the protected environment of a college campus and venture out in the world. Perhaps a good starting point to begin to build bridges toward such understanding is through narrative and the stories that international students tell. Stories connect people. They ii draw us in and engage us. It seems only natural to turn in the direction of narratives about the challenges international students experience while negotiating their newly adopted culture in the United States as that potential connecting point, and to begin with audiences of primarily U.S.-American students and community members. In this qualitative study, I was a participant observer in the U.S.-American audiences for the presentations delivered by international students who volunteered to tell their personal stories about the challenges that they have faced. The topic and the exact nature of the challenges they experienced was left open regarding what information and what stories they chose to share with their audiences. I followed up each presentation by conducting qualitative interviews with the 6 female international students involved. In addition, I conducted interviews with 10 audience members who participated and volunteered to be interviewed. My interest was in learning what the U.S.-American students and community members heard when listening to the narratives, stories about how these international students have constructed and negotiated their identities in relation to their “Other” (in this case those of us who are U.S. American). Did U.S.-Americans pick up the same messages that the story-tellers believed that they were delivering? What questions were the audience members motivated to ask? What did they learn from listening to the storytellers’ stories? Did they gain any new insights? Were there commonalities between the different audience members who volunteered to be interviewed? And did they hear common messages? Regarding the students telling their stories, I was interested in discovering what they chose to discuss as well as how much they chose to disclose, and if they gained any insights from the process of telling their stories or from questions that the audience members asked or did not ask. What were their observations about the audience and the audience reactions? How did they iii feel when they were telling their stories? Did the process of telling their stories impact their own identities? There were similar themes that both the storytellers and their audience members discussed during their interviews; however, the subthemes differed. The primary themes that the storytellers believed that they focused on were: cultural issues and differences, religious perceptions, and to a lesser degree, language and communication. While these primary themes were consistent across the storyteller narratives, how strongly they were emphasized and what subthemes were discussed differed from storyteller to storyteller. Among the audience members, the themes heard and discussed were similar to those of the storytellers; however, when the U.S.-Americans discussed cultural differences, they emphasized similarities as opposed to differences, and focused more on communication and language challenges. Religious perceptions were viewed through a western, mostly Christian lens. Subthemes mentioned by U.S.-Americans were bullying, gender, and stereotypes. When I began this dissertation, many of us in the United States were celebrating our first Black president and I, along with many others, hoped that U.S.-Americans would begin to feel more comfortable with diversity in that new and historic reality. However, the political environment has changed once again. Unfortunately, many U.S.-Americans appear to feel even more threatened by diversity, viewing those who are “different” from themselves with ever increasing amounts of anxiety, fear, xenophobia and anger, which are fueled by almost daily news reports. In the current environment, narrative has become even more important as a way to connect and begin to better understand each other, with the potential of bridging cultural divide.

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a bridge bridges. we build bridges so that we may overcome a perceived break in the continuity of our movement and wonder. the bridge intercedes in order to make a way towards something; beyond a limit, river, border, or mountain. it physically connects that which is perceived as separated. what is special about a bridge are the many relationships that are illuminated and created by the finished work. towards this end, the architect manipulates the bridge's form and space to render the prevailing relationships of a bridge and its landscape. he works to cultivate the landscape in order to unite the disparate entities present, just as the bridge unites one place with another. through precise and thoughtful compositions, he frames views to capture the beauty of the form he makes, the water it crosses, the earth it springs from and the sky it marvels at. the architect gives us eyes to see the landscape as it ought to be seen. / Master of Architecture

It all started with one of my deep memories -- when I was a child, and first saw QINGMING FESTIVAL, a masterpiece created by great painter, Zhang Zeduan, I was attracted by the riverside city scene of Song dynasty, and was surprised by the amiable atmosphere among citizens social life and the comfortable sense of urban scale. This memory has deeply affected me. In contrast, our Chinese newborn modern cities become dreadfully alike, with their monotonous expansion, and meanwhile, they gradually lost their intimate sense of scale and regional sense of identity that they once had. Bridge, as one of Chinese infrastructural development, not only indicates the Chinese urban development in history, but its role and responsibilities go beyond its proper functions. No matter who we are, ancient Chinese or modern Chinese, their love for the bridge have beyond the practicability of the bridge itself. The bridge has a deep cultural heritage in a sense. Since such issues have arisen in our contemporary cities, why not date back to the origins of Chinese cities development -- to reinterpret the function of bridges so that reshape the scale of entire city by using modern architectural language? / Master of Architecture

This study builds on the National Capital Planning Commission's (NCPC) 50 year Master Plan for Washington D.C. It focuses on several of the NCPC's five key goals; to build on the legacy of the historic L'Enfant and McMillan plans, unify the city, with the Capitol as its center, use new buildings to stimulate economic development, and integrate the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers to the city's public life. This site and project has a historical tradition. A pedestrian bridge was proposed to connect SouthWest D.C. to Haines Point with a new aquarium, which was eventually located in Baltimore, anchoring the Haines Point side. This proposal was never realized. Integral to this project is the development of the masterplan for SouthWest D.C. It proposes reinforcing the existing city grid, while developing small plazas along the water's edge. A major plaza is located at the intersection of the bridge and the city. It is the masterplan and orientation of the bridge that make it a viable development of the NCPC's masterplan. The project proposes an inhabitable bridge continuing the grid of Washington across the channel. Commercial shops and offices juxtapose views north to the city's skyline. Housing units float ontop of the bridge creating a vibrant daily cycle of activity. Public walkways and plazas provide vistas, places to gather, meet and reflect. It is the combination of functions that make the bridge a viable attraction. Finally, the intersection of public and private space on the bridge creates vibrant city life. This bridge contributes to the rich texture of Washington. / Master of Architecture

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The mathematics basis that can form a telemetry system is orthogonal functions. Three kinds of orthogonal functions are used up to now. First of them is sine and cosine function family. The second one is block pulse function family. The third one is Walsh function family. Their corresponding telemetry systems are FDM, TDM and SDM (CDM). Later we introduced an orthogonal function which is called Bridge function. The corresponding system is named telemetry system based on Bridge function. Now a new kind of orthogonal function, Generalized Bridge function, has been found. It can be applied to practical multiplex of information transmission. In this paper the author provides the design concept, block diagram, operational principle and technical realization of telemetry system based on Generalized Bridge function.

Bridges are a vitally important part of modern infrastructure. Their condition needs to be monitored on a continuous basis in order to ensure their safety and functionality. Teams of engineers visually inspect more than half a million bridges per year in the US and the EU. There is clear evidence to suggest that they are not able to meet all bridge inspection guideline requirements. In addition, the format and storage of inspection reports varies considerably across authorities because of the lack of standardisation. The availability of a comprehensive and open digital representation of the data involved in and required for bridge inspection is an indispensable necessity for exploiting the full potential of modern digital technologies like big data exploration, artificial intelligence and database technologies. A thorough understanding of bridge inspection information requirements for reinforced concrete bridges is needed as basis for overcoming the stated problem. This work starts with a bridge inspection guideline analysis, from which an information model and a candidate binding to Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is developed. The resulting bridge model can fully store inspection information in a standardised way which makes it easily shareable and comparable between users and standards. Then, two inspection stages for locating and classifying visual concrete defects are devised, implemented and benchmarked to support the bridge inspection process: In a first stage, healthy concrete surfaces are located and disregarded for further inspection. In a second hierarchical classification stage, each of the remaining potentially unhealthy surface areas is classified into a specific defect type in accordance with bridge inspection guidelines. The first stage achieves a search space reduction for a subsequent defect type classification of over 90% with a risk of missing a defect patch of less than 10%. The second stage identifies the correct defect type to a potentially unhealthy surface area with a probability of 85%. A prototypical implementation serves as a proof of concept. This work closes the gap between requirements arising from established inspection guidelines, the demand for holistic data models which has recently become known as "digital twin", and methods for automatically identifying and measuring specific defect classes on small scale images. It is of great significance for bridge inspectors, bridge owners and authorities as they now have more suitable data models at hand to store, view and manage maintenance information on bridges including defect location and defect types which are being retrieved automatically. With these developments, a foundation is available for a complete revision of bridge inspection processes on a modern, digital basis.

Reciprocal processes, whose concept can be traced back to E. Schrödinger, form a class of stochastic processes constructed as mixture of bridges, that satisfy a time Markov field property. We discuss here a new unifying approach to characterize several types of reciprocal processes via duality formulae on path spaces: The case of reciprocal processes with continuous paths associated to Brownian diffusions and the case of pure jump reciprocal processes associated to counting processes are treated. This presentation is based on joint works with M. Thieullen, R. Murr and C. Léonard.

Accelerated bridge construction methods are being progressively used to construct and replace bridges in North America. Unlike traditional bridge construction methods, accelerated bridge construction methods allow bridges to be built in a shortened period of time on the construction site. These methods reduce the road closure time and the traffic disruption that are associated with bridge construction. One of these methods is carried out by prefabricating the bridge elements offsite and then assembling them onsite in a time-efficient way to build the bridge. This construction method can be used to build steel-precast composite bridges, where steel plate girders are connected to full-depth precast concrete deck panels. For the expeditious construction of composite bridges, a proper shear connection detail is needed to develop composite action between the steel plate girders and the precast concrete deck panels. This research project investigated two types of shear connection that would accelerate the construction of steel-precast composite bridges. First, finite element analysis was used to study the behaviour of composite bridge girders with panel end connections. The girders were analyzed for their load-displacement behaviour, cross-sectional stress and strain profile, and connection force distributions. Secondly, experimental push tests were conducted to study the load-slip behaviour of bolted connections. The effects of steel-concrete interface condition, bolt diameter and bolt tension on the shear capacity of bolted connections were analyzed. Based on the finite element analysis results, it is concluded that the panel end connected girder exhibited strong composite action at service and ultimate load. The level of composite action decreased slightly when the panel end connection stiffness was reduced by a factor of ten. Based on the experimental results, it is concluded that the total shear capacity of the bolted connection is the sum of the friction resistance and the bolt dowel action resistance. The friction resistance of the connection depends on the interface condition and the bolt clamping force. An analytical model that can predict the ultimate shear capacity of bolted connections has been developed and recommended. The proposed model is shown to give reliable predictions of the experimental results. It should be noted that bolted connections exhibit good structural redundancy because the bolt fracture failures do not happen simultaneously.