The Fluid Concrete (FC) is a concrete that has high fluidity, which may allow the filling of molds without the need of mechanical compaction, only under the action of its own weight. As a concrete whole, the FC has low tensile strength, and an alternative to minimize this limitation is the inclusion of fibers to the concrete. The incorporation of fiber reinforced composite and induce tensile stresses. Within this context, this paper aims to provide a contribution to the production of a fluid concrete fiber, rubber and polypropylene and addition of waste from the processing of marble and granite(FFC). The methodology dosage used was Gomes (2002) for obtaining fluid concrete (FC) being adapted for insertion of fiber. To study the properties of compacting tests were carried out in the fresh state, such as scattering, V funnel and box L. To check the mechanical properties tests were performed in the hardened state, such as compression, tensile and modulus of elasticity with cylindrical body-of - proof dimensions of 10cm x 20cm RC and FFC, with fiber content rubber 2.0% polypropylene and 0.25% of the amount by weight of cement. As a result, the SC showed a decrease in scattering maximum diameter with increasing fiber content entered. The compressive strength and modulus of elasticity decreased, since the tensile strength showed an increase when compared to RC. From the results it is concluded that the FFC is not self compacting concrete, but has characteristics of self compacting, the increase in tensile strength indicates a higher ability to absorb impact. The FFC helps reduce scrap waste, reducing the environmental impact by becoming a ecoeffient concrete. / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Define-se como Concreto Fluido (CF) um concreto que apresenta abatimento entre 18cm e 25cm. Essa elevada fluidez pode permitir o preenchimento de fôrmas sem que haja necessidade de adensamento mecânico, apenas sob a ação do seu peso próprio. Como todo concreto, o CF possui baixa resistência à tração, e uma alternativa de minimizar essa limitação é a inserção de fibras ao concreto. A incorporação de fibras pode reforçar o compósito e permitir maior absorção de tensões de tração. Dentro deste contexto, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo proporcionar uma contribuição ao estudo de compósitos por meio da produção de um concreto fluido com fibras de borracha e de polipropileno e adição de resíduos do beneficiamento de mármore e granito (CFF). A Metodologia de dosagem utilizada para a obtenção desse concreto foi a de Gomes (2002) estabelecida para concreto autoadensável, com adaptações para inserção das fibras. Para o estudo das propriedades de adensabilidade foram realizados ensaios no estado fresco, tais como: espalhamento, funil V e caixa em L. Para verificação das propriedades mecânicas foram realizados ensaios no estado endurecido, tais como: compressão, tração e módulo de elasticidade, com corpos-de-prova cilíndricos de dimensões de 10cm x 20cm de CR e de CFF, com teor de fibras de borracha de 2,0% e de polipropileno de 0,25% da quantidade de cimento em massa. Como resultados, o CFF apresentou características de autoadensabilidade com um diâmetro máximo de espalhamento de 62,5cm. A resistência à compressão e o módulo de elasticidade apresentou uma redução, já a resistência à tração apresentou um aumento quando comparados ao Concreto de Referencia (CR). Dos resultados conclui-se que o CFF possui características de autoadensabilidade e acréscimo na resistência à tração. O CFF com fibras permitiu a incorporação de um resíduo inservível, reduzindo o impacto ambiental e se caracterizando como um concreto ecoefiente.

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Uncertainty involved in the safe and comfort design of the structures is a major concern of civil engineers. Traditionally, the uncertainty has been overcome by utilizing various and relatively large safety factors for loads and structural properties. As a result in conventional design of for example tall buildings, the designed structural elements have unnecessary dimensions that sometimes are more than double of the ones needed to resist normal loads. On the other hand the requirements for strength and safety and comfort can be conflicting. Consequently, an alternative approach for design of the structures may be of great interest in design of safe and comfort structures that also offers economical advantages. Recently, there has been growing interest among the researchers in the concept of structural control as an alternative or complementary approach to the existing approaches of structural design. A few buildings have been designed and built based on this concept. The concept is to utilize a device for applying a force (known as control force) to encounter the effects of disturbing forces like earthquake force. However, the concept still has not found its rightful place among the practical engineers and more research is needed on the subject. One of the main problems in structural control is to find a proper algorithm for determining the optimum control force that should be applied to the structure. The investigation reported in this thesis is concerned with the application of active control to civil engineering structures. From the literature on control theory. (Particularly literature on the control of civil engineering structures) problems faced in application of control theory were identified and classified into two categories: 1) problems common to control of all dynamical systems, and 2) problems which are specially important in control of civil engineering structures. It was concluded that while many control algorithms are suitable for control of dynamical systems, considering the special problems in controlling civil structures and considering the unique future of structural control, many otherwise useful control algorithms face practical problems in application to civil structures. Consequently a set of criteria were set for judging the suitability of the control algorithms for use in control of civil engineering structures. Various types of existing control algorithms were investigated and finally it was concluded that predictive optimal control algorithms possess good characteristics for purpose of control of civil engineering structures. Among predictive control algorithms, those that use ARMA stochastic models for predicting the ground acceleration are better fitted to the structural control environment because all the past measured excitation is used to estimate the trends of the excitation for making qualified guesses about its coming values. However, existing ARMA based predictive algorithms are devised specially for earthquake and require on-line measurement of the external disturbing load which is not possible for dynamic loads like wind or blast. So, the algorithms are not suitable for tall buildings that experience both earthquake and wind loads during their life. Consequently, it was decided to establish a new closed loop predictive optimal control based on ARMA models as the first phase of the study. In this phase it was initially established that ARMA models are capable of predicting response of a linear SDOF system to the earthquake excitation a few steps ahead. The results of the predictions encouraged a search for finding a new closed loop optimal predictive control algorithm for linear SDOF structures based on prediction of the response by ARMA models. The second part of phase I, was devoted to developing and testing the proposed algorithm The new developed algorithm is different from other ARMA based optimal controls since it uses ARMA models for prediction of the structure response while existing algorithms predict the input excitation. Modeling the structure response as an AR or ARMA stochastic process is an effective mean for prediction of the structure response while avoiding measurement of the input excitation. ARMA models used in the algorithm enables it to avoid or reduce the time delay effect by predicting the structure response a few steps ahead. Being a closed loop control, the algorithm is suitable for all structural control conditions and can be used in a single control mechanism for vibration control of tall buildings against wind, earthquake or other random dynamic loads. Consequently the standby time is less than that for existing ARMA based algorithms devised only for earthquakes. This makes the control mechanism more reliable. The proposed algorithm utilizes and combines two different mathematical models. First model is an ARMA model representing the environment and the structure as a single system subjected to the unknown random excitation and the second model is a linear SDOF system which represents the structure subjected to a known past history of the applied control force only. The principle of superposition is then used to combine the results of these two models to predict the total response of the structure as a function of the control force. By using the predicted responses, the minimization of the performance index with respect to the control force is carried out for finding the optimal control force. As phase II, the proposed predictive control algorithm was extended to structures that are more complicated than linear SDOF structures. Initially, the algorithm was extended to linear MDOF structures. Although, the development of the algorithm for MDOF structures was relatively straightforward, during testing of the algorithm, it was found that prediction of the response by ARMA models can not be done as was done for SDOF case. In the SDOF case each of the two components of the state vector (i.e. displacement and velocity) was treated separately as an ARMA stochastic process. However, applying the same approach to each component of the state vector of a MDOF structure did not yield satisfactory results in prediction of the response. Considering the whole state vector as a multi-variable ARMA stochastic vector process yielded the desired results in predicting the response a few steps ahead. In the second part of this phase, the algorithm was extended to non-linear MDOF structures. Since the algorithm had been developed based on the principle of superposition, it was not possible to directly extend the algorithm to non-linear systems. Instead, some generalized response was defined. Then credibility of the ARMA models in predicting the generalized response was verified. Based on this credibility, the algorithm was extended for non-linear MDOF structures. Also in phase II, the stability of a controlled MDOF structure was proved. Both internal and external stability of the system were described and verified. In phase III, some problems of special interest, i.e. soil-structure interaction and control time delay, were investigated and compensated for in the framework of the developed predictive optimal control. In first part of phase III soil-structure interaction was studied. The half-space solution of the SSI effect leads to a frequency dependent representation of the structure-footing system, which is not fit for control purpose. Consequently an equivalent frequency independent system was proposed and defined as a system whose frequency response is equal to the original structure -footing system in the mean squares sense. This equivalent frequency independent system then was used in the control algorithm. In the second part of this phase, an analytical approach was used to tackle the time delay phenomenon in the context of the predictive algorithm described in previous chapters. A generalized performance index was defined considering time delay. Minimization of the generalized performance index resulted into a modified version of the algorithm in which time delay is compensated explicitly. Unlike the time delay compensation technique used in the previous phases of this investigation, which restricts time delay to be an integer multiplier of the sampling period, the modified algorithm allows time delay to be any non-negative number. However, the two approaches produce the same results if time delay is an integer multiplier of the sampling period. For evaluating the proposed algorithm and comparing it with other algorithms, several numerical simulations were carried during the research by using MATLAB and its toolboxes. A few interesting results of these simulations are enumerated below: ARM A models are able to predict the response of both linear and non-linear structures to random inputs such as earthquakes. The proposed predictive optimal control based on ARMA models has produced better results in the context of reducing velocity, displacement, total energy and operational cost compared to classic optimal control. Proposed active control algorithm is very effective in increasing safety and comfort. Its performance is not affected much by errors in the estimation of system parameters (e.g. damping). The effect of soil-structure interaction on the response to control force is considerable. Ignoring SSI will cause a significant change in the magnitude of the frequency response and a shift in the frequencies of the maximum response (resonant frequencies). Compensating the time delay effect by the modified version of the proposed algorithm will improve the performance of the control system in achieving the control goal and reduction of the structural response.

The work reported in this thesis is in the area of computational modeling of reliability of engineering structures. The emphasis of the study is on developing methods that are suitable for analysis of large-scale structures such as aircraft structure components. This class of problems continues to offer challenges to an analyst with the most difficult aspect of the analysis being the treatment of nonlinearity in the structural behavior, non-Gaussian nature of uncertainties and quantification of low levels of probability of failure (of the order of 10-5 or less), requiring significant computational effort. The present study covers static/ dynamic behavior, Gaussian/ non-Gaussian models of uncertainties, and (or) linear/ nonlinear structures. The novel elements in the study consist of two components: • application of modeling tools that already exists in the area of design and analysis of computer experiments, and . • application of data based extreme value analysis procedures that are available in the statistics literature. The first component of the work provides opportunity to combine space filling sampling strategies (which have promise for reducing variance of estimation) with kriging based modeling in reliability studies-an opportunity that has not been explored in the existing literature. The second component of the work exploits the virtues of limiting behavior of extremes of sequence of random variables with Monte Carlo simulations of structural response-a strategy for reliability modeling that has not been explored in the existing literature. The hope here is that failure events with probabilities of the order of 10-5 or less could be investigated with relatively less number of Monte Carlo runs. The study also brings out the issues related to combining the above sources of existing knowledge with finite element modeling of engineering structures, thereby leading to newer tools for structural reliability analysis. The thesis is organized into four chapters. The first chapter provides a review of literature that covers methods of reliability analysis and also the background literature on design and analysis of computer experiments and extreme value analysis. The problem of reliability analysis of randomly parametered, linear (or) nonlinear structures subjected to static and (or) dynamic loads is considered in Chapter 2. A deterministic finite element model for the structure to analyze sample realization of the structure is assumed to be available. The reliability analysis is carried out within the framework of response surface methods, which involves the construction of surrogate models for performance functions to be employed in reliability calculations. These surrogate models serve as models of models, and hence termed as meta-models, for structural behavior in the neighborhood of design point. This construction, in the present study, has involved combining space filling optimal Latin hypercube sampling and kriging models. Illustrative examples on numerical prediction of reliability of a ten-bay truss and a W-seal in an aircraft structure are presented. Limited Monte Carlo simulations are used to validate the approximate procedures developed. The reliability of nonlinear vibrating systems under stochastic excitations is investigated in Chapter 3 using a two-stage Monte Carlo simulation strategy. Systems subjected to Gaussian random excitation are considered for the study. It is assumed that the probability distribution of the maximum response in the steady state belongs to the basin of attraction of one of the classical asymptotic extreme value distributions. The first stage of the solution strategy consists of an objective selection of the form of the extreme value distribution based on hypothesis tests, and the next involves the estimation of parameters of the relevant extreme value distribution. Both these steps are implemented using data from limited Monte Carlo simulations of the system response. The proposed procedure is illustrated with examples of linear/nonlinear single-degree and multi-degree of freedom systems driven by random excitations. The predictions from the proposed method are compared with results from large-scale Monte Carlo simulations and also with classical analytical results, when available, from theory of out-crossing statistics. The method is further extended to cover reliability analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems with randomly varying system parameters. Here the methods of meta-modeling developed in Chapter 2 are extended to develop response surface models for parameters of underlying extreme value distributions. Numerical examples presented cover a host of low-dimensional dynamical systems and also the analysis of a wind turbine structure subjected to turbulent wind loads and undergoing large amplitude oscillations. A summary of contributions made along with a few suggestions for further research is presented in Chapter 4.

This work presents a study to quantify the influence of geometrical and stiffness parameters on the behavior of beam-column concrete connections. Therefore, linear elastic models are designed by using three-dimensional finite elements in the commercial software Abaqus. These models serve as a reference for the optimization of geometrical and rigidity parameters of reticulated models, which are commonly used in structural projects. The results confirm some tendencies of influence by parameters already reported in the literature, such as variations in stiffness caused by eccentricity and width variations. The results indicate variations in vertical displacement of the beams up to 5%, maintaining the vertical load and varying only the eccentricity and up to 60% only by varying the widths of the elements. Furthermore, the use of punctual representations of semi-rigidity on monolithic concrete connections through rotational springs is discarded, proving necessary an improvement of the model to represent the behavior of the connection. Several models have been proposed and tested in the representation of the semi-rigid behavior of the connections, making use of rigid core, rotational springs and variations of inertia and area. / CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Este trabalho apresenta um estudo de quantificação da influência de parâmetros geométricos e de rigidez no comportamento de ligações viga-pilar de concreto. Para tanto, são concebidos modelos elásticos lineares de ligação em elementos finitos tridimensionais utilizando o programa comercial Abaqus. Esses modelos servem como referência para a otimização dos parâmetros geométricos e de rigidez de modelos reticulados, que são os comumente utilizados em projetos estruturais. Os resultados obtidos confirmam algumas tendências de influência de parâmetros já apresentados na literatura, como variações de rigidez causadas por excentricidade e variações de largura. Os resultados indicam variações de deslocamento vertical nas vigas de até 5%, mantendo-se a carga vertical e variando apenas a excentricidade, e de até 60% variando-se apenas as larguras dos elementos. Além disso, é descartada a utilização de representações pontuais da semi-rigidez em ligações monolíticas de concreto através de molas rotacionais, provando ser necessário um aprimoramento do modelo para a representação do comportamento da ligação. Diversos modelos de barra são propostos e testados na representação do comportamento semi-rígido das ligações, fazendo uso de núcleos rígidos, molas rotacionais e variações de inércia e área.

The plane frame formed by precast elements have been increasingly used in structural systems of buildings throughout Brazil. These frames, as most of the precast structures deformable connections have a greater or lesser degree. The aim of this study is to analyze the structural behavior of portal frames composed of precast reinforced concrete taking into account the variation in the stiffness of the connections and the physical and geometric nonlinearity evaluated by approximate methods. The analysis of geometric nonlinearity was taken through the process P- and physical nonlinearity was checked by the Branson method. For the analysis of material and geometric nonlinearity simultaneously proposed a coupling of the two methods mentioned above. The proposed coupling was tested in a case study of a building with four floors, considering the loads recommended by NBR 6118 (ABNT, 2014) and evaluating the influence on the stiffness of two beam-column connection types. The results show an increase in the displaceability of the structure more deformable links analyzed five times at the most critical situation is compared with the evaluated frames with more rigid links. The structures analyzed taking into account the nonlinearities present in the internal structural strain variations of up to 162% compared with the linear analysis. Therefore it can be stated that the determination of the stiffness of the connections and the consideration of nonlinearities directly influenced the behavior of the efforts that will act in the structure, and therefore the structural analysis and design of the components of the same. / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Os pórticos planos formados por elementos pré-moldados vêm sendo cada vez mais utilizados em sistemas estruturais de edifícios em todo Brasil. Esses pórticos, como a maior parte das estruturas pré-moldadas, apresentam ligações deformáveis em maior ou menor grau. O objetivo geral deste trabalho é analisar o comportamento estrutural de pórticos planos formados por elementos pré-moldados de concreto armado levando em consideração a variação na rigidez das ligações e as não-linearidade física e geométrica avaliadas por métodos aproximados. A análise da não-linearidade geométrica foi feita através do processo P- e a não-linearidade física foi verificada através do método de Branson. Para a análise das não-linearidades física e geométrica de maneira simultânea foi proposto um acoplamento dos dois métodos citados anteriormente. O acoplamento proposto foi testado em um estudo de caso de um edifício com quatro pavimentos, considerando-se os carregamentos recomendados pelas normas brasileiras e avaliando-se a influência na rigidez de duas tipologias de ligação viga-pilar. Os resultados obtidos mostram um aumento na deslocabilidade da estrutura analisada com ligações mais deformáveis de cinco vezes na situação mais crítica se comparado com os pórticos avaliados com ligações mais rígidas . As estruturas analisadas levando em consideração as não-linearidades apresentaram variações nos esforços internos solicitantes de até 162% se comparadas com a análise linear. Portanto pode-se afirmar que a determinação da rigidez das ligações e a consideração das não-linearidades influem diretamente no comportamento dos esforços que irão atuar na estrutura e por consequência, na análise estrutural e dimensionamento dos elementos que compõem a mesma.

Main intention of the thesis is to name and explain budgeting methods of building constructions with main focus on creating budget for water management and engineering structures. The practical part presents itemized budgets for a wastewater treatment plant and a bicycle trail. After that the price determined of the itemized budget is compared to the price determined by budget indicator.

Composite structures are extremely useful for aerospace, automotive, marine and civil applications due to their very high specific structural properties. These structures are subjected to severe dynamic loading in their service life. Repeated exposure to these severe loading conditions can induce structural damage which ultimately may precipitate a catastrophic failure. Therefore, an interest in the continuous inspection and maintenance of engineering structures has grown tremendously in recent years. Sensitive aerospace applications can have small design margins and any inadequacy in knowledge of the system may cause design failure. Structures made from composite materials posses complicated failure mechanism as compared to those made from conventional metallic materials. In composite structural design, it is hence very important to properly model geometric intricacies and various imperfections such as delaminations and cracks. Two important issues are addressed in this thesis: (1) structural modeling of nonlinear delamination and uncertainty propagation in nonlinear characteristics of composite plate structures and (2) development of a model based damage detection system to handle uncertainty issues. An earlier proposed shear deformable C0 composite plate finite element is modified to alleviate modeling uncertainty issues associated with a damage detection problem. Parabolic variation of transverse shear stresses across the plate thickness is incorporated into the modified formulation using mixed shear interpolation technique. Validity of the proposed modification is established through available literature. Correction of the transverse shear stress term in the formulation results in about 2 percent higher solution accuracy than the earlier model. It is found that the transverse shear effect increases with higher modes of the plate deformation. Transverse shear effects are more prominent in sandwich plates. This refined composite plate finite element is used for large deformation dynamic analysis of delaminated composite plates. The inter-laminar contact at the delaminated region in composite plates is modeled with the augmented Lagrangian approach. Numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the effect of delamination on the nonlinear transient behavior of composite plates. Results obtained from these studies show that widely used unconditionally stable β-Newmark method presents numerical instability problems in the transient simulation of delaminated composite plate structures with large deformation. To overcome this instability issue, an energy and momentum conserving composite implicit time integration scheme presented by Bathe and Baig is used for the nonlinear dynamic analysis. It is also found that a proper selection of the penalty parameter is very crucial in the simulation of contact condition. It is shown that an improper selection of penalty parameter in the augmented Lagrangian formulation may lead to erroneous prediction of dynamic response of composite delaminated plates. Uncertainties associated with the mathematical characterization of a structure can lead to unreliable damage detection. Composite structures also show considerable scatter in their structural response due to large uncertainties associated with their material properties. Probabilistic analysis is carried out to estimate material uncertainty effects in the nonlinear frequencies of composite plates. Monte Carlo Simulation with Latin Hypercube Sampling technique is used to obtain the variance of linear and nonlinear natural frequencies of the plate due to randomness in its material properties. Numerical results are obtained for composite plates with different aspect ratio, stacking sequence and oscillation amplitude ratio. It is found that the nonlinear frequencies show increasing non-Gaussian probability density function with increasing amplitude of vibration and show dual peaks at high amplitude ratios. This chaotic nature of the dispersion of nonlinear eigenvalues is also revealed in eigenvalue sensitivity analysis. For fault isolation, variations in natural frequencies, modal curvatures and curvature damage factors due to damage are investigated. Effects of various physical uncertainties like, material and geometric uncertainties on the success of damage detection is studied. A robust structural damage detection system is developed based on the statistical information available from the probabilistic analysis carried out on beam type structures. A new fault isolation technique called sliding window defuzzifier is proposed to maximize the success rate of a Fuzzy Logic System (FLS) in damage detection. Using the changes in structural measurements between the damaged and undamaged state, a fuzzy system is generated and the rule-base and membership functions are generated using probabilistic informations. The FLS is demonstrated using frequency and mode shape based measurements for various beam type structures such as uniform cantilever beam, tapered beam in single as well as in multiple damage conditions. The robustness of the FLS is demonstrated with respect to the highly uncertain input information called measurement deltas (MDs). It is said, if uncertainty level is larger than or close to the changes in damage indicator due to damage, the true information would be submerged in the noise. Then the actual damaged members may not be identified accurately and/or the healthy members may be wrongly detected as damaged giving false warning. However, this being the case, the proposed FLS with new fault isolation technique tested with these noisy data having large variation and overlaps shows excellent robustness. It is observed that the FLS accurately predicts and isolates the damage levels up-to considerable uncertainty and noise levels in single as well as multiple damage conditions. The robustness of the FLS is also demonstrated for delamination detection in composite plates having very high material property uncertainty. Effects of epistemic uncertainty on damage detection in composite plates is addressed. The effectiveness of the proposed refined Reddy type shear deformable composite plate element is demonstrated for reducing the modeling or epistemic uncertainty in delamination detection.

La comparaison entre des systèmes civilistes et, plus particulièrement, la Province de Québec et la France, permet de confronter des expériences diverses au service de la construction de l'Union européenne. La méthode comparatiste peut, dans une approche régulatrice, permettre de réaliser une véritable intégration commune pour une matière comme la construction, au service des citoyens. Dans une perspective d'innovation législative, il s'agirait donc de modéliser des structures juridiques cohérentes pour une véritable Union européenne de la construction. La participation des constructeurs est requise aux débats, afin de faciliter l'intégration et l'application de la future norme commune, avec le concours d'une institution européenne dédiée. Mais comment respecter les diversités nationales, tout en cherchant à élaborer un principe « unioniste » dans l'objectif d'une harmonisation des délais au sein des États membres de l'Union européenne ? La trop grande diversité des délais spécifiques, dans le secteur de la construction, suscite en effet au sein de l'Union européenne la volonté de faire émerger un modèle européen, source future de stabilité et de prospérité. / The comparison between civil law systems and, more particularly, between the Province of Quebec and France, allows to confront diverse experiences in favor of the European Union's construction. The comparative method can, in a regulating approach, allow to realize a real common integration in such area as the construction, in favor of the citizens. In a perspective to innovate the legislation, it would be therefore a matter of modelling coherent legal structures for a real European Union of the construction. The participation of the builders in the debates is required, to facilitate the integration and the application of the future common standards with the support of a new European institution devoted for this mission.But how respect the national diversities, while seeking to set up a "unionist" principle keeping in mind the goal of full harmonization of the legal warranty periods settled down by the Member states of the European Union ? The very wide diversity of legal warranty periods in the construction's sector is an issue of real concern within the European Union to give rise to the new European model, a future source of stability and prosperity.