The global understanding that natural resources and non renewable energy sources are not inexhaustible has been growing lately together with the increase of conscientiousness on the consequences that our demanding way of life has on the environment. Global warming, ozone layer depletion, the greenhouse effect or the acid rain, are some of these consequences, which may reach catastrophic levels if nothing is done to emend the actual situation. Lately, society is beginning to see sustainability not only as a needed requirement but as a distinctive value which has to be pursued by the different areas of society involved and responsible for a sustainable development such as public administration and companies, engineers and researchers. As a fundamental part of society, infrastructures have utmost importance in sustainable development. Even more when it comes to rail transport infrastructure, given the important role of rail transport in the development of a sustainable society. That is why engineers should make an effort to use all the tools available to choose the best structural design, which not only meets structural requirements, but has also a good performance for the environment. To do so, engineers must focus on using renewable sources or energy and materials, increasing the life of the existing infrastructures, making them more durable. When it comes to railway bridges, it is preferable to reuse and adapt existing structures than tear them down to build new ones. In this line, environmental assessment methodologies provide an incredibly valuable tool for help decision-makers and engineers to identify and select the best alternative design regarding environmental issues. Therefore, it is important to count on a common basis and established criteria together with a systematic methodology in order to obtain reliable results to compare alternatives and make the right decisions. However, nowadays, there exists very little guidance to perform this kind of analysis, and an extensive variety of databases and methodologies non standardized, which leads to uncertainties when it comes to evaluate and compare the obtained results. This thesis means to be a good guide for engineers, when performing a Life Cycle Assessment of a railway bridge, and to become a useful tool to compare several alternatives to identify the best option relating the environmental burdens involved. With this purpose, in order to know the state of the art of LCA methodology, it has been studied a wide range of existing literature and previous studies performed to analyze bridges and building materials. Finally, it has been developed an own methodology based on all the research done before, and implemented in an Excel application program based on Visual Basic macros, which means to be easy to use with a simple user interface, and to provide reliable results. The application is useful for assessing, repair or improving existing bridges, where the amounts of materials and energy are known, but can also be helpful in the design phase to compare different alternatives. It also allows using different weighting methodologies according to several reference sources depending on the case of study. The application is tested by carrying out a Life Cycle Assessment of a Spanish railway bridge located in the city center of Vitoria-Gasteiz, evaluating the different structures that conform the bridge system thorough all the stages of its life cycle identifying the most contributive parameters to the environmental impacts. The study was carried out over a 100 year time horizon. In the case of performing the LCA of this particular bridge, the contribution of the whole bridge is taken into consideration. When comparing two different bridges, the application has the option to compare them in the same basis, dividing by length and width of the bridge, which is a helpful tool if both bridges are not the same size. All stages of the life cycle were considered: the material stage, construction, the use and maintenance stage, and the end of life. The material stage includes the raw material extraction, production and distribution. The construction stage accounts the diesel, electricity and water consumption during construction activities. The use and maintenance stage covers the reparation and replacing operations. And the end of life covers several scenarios. In this case of study, in order not to interrupt the rail traffic, the bridge was constructed parallel to its final location, and then moved into the right place with hydraulic jacks. This leads to an important auxiliary structure with its own foundations, which has a significant contribution to the overall environmental impact. The scenario chosen for the end of life was based on similar actuation in other constructions in the proximities of the bridge, as the bridge is already in use. These assumptions were to recycle 70 % of the concrete and 90 % of the steel; all the wood used for formwork was disposed as landfill. The results obtained, weighted according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, shows that the main contributor to the environmental impacts is the material phase, with the 64 % of the total weighted results with concrete and steel production as principal factors, followed by timber production. These processes account great amounts of CO 2emissions, which makes essential to focus on reducing the impact of the material processes by optimizing the processes but mainly by reusing materials from other constructions as much as it may be possible. The maintenance activities have some importance due to the frequency of the track replacement, assumed to be once every 25 years. While construction does not imply great burdens for the environment, the end of life causes the 33 % of the overall bridge impact. This is due to the timber formwork disposal as landfill and to a lesser extent because of the recycling of the steel. The timber disposal increases widely the eutrophication effect, and will be easy to be reused in further constructions. Regarding the different parts of the bridge structure, the auxiliary structure has an important contribution with the 61 % of the overall weighted impact. As it is a concrete bridge, both the substructure and superstructure has similar contribution. The substructure has a slightly higher impact with the 21 % and the superstructure the 15 %. Rail structure and transport have very little contribution.

This thesis aims to compare the cost of post-tensioned connection systems with conventional connections for the transferal of uplift forces in CLT stabilising walls. The desire for taller timber buildings has increased over time, in part due to environmental aspects but also to meet demands from an urbanizing population. For taller buildings, the horizontal load from wind increases. Due to timbers low self-weight, the uplifting force caused by the horizontal loading will be relatively large. Post-tensioning within timber structures is a non-conventional method for the transferal of uplifting forces that has been applied in only a few projects. The cost of the post-tensioning method is therefore unclear to the general engineer and has for that reason been investigated within this thesis. To gain information about the different aspects that might be affected by the connection method, interviews were held with different professionals who had worked with the post- tension method in timber structures. A cost comparison was performed for four different connection methods for stabilising walls, where the methods were three versions of the post-tension method and one with the more common angle brackets and hold-downs. The thesis was completed with a cost comparison within a case study, where the financial differences between the different connection methods for stabilising walls in a building were investigated. The case study building was based on a project currently being designed in Uppsala. Several different versions of the building were created, where the number of stories and stabilising walls of the building were changed. The connection costs for the different versions were compared to find the most cost-effective solution. The results from the stabilising wall analysis showed that the conventional connection method, was the cheaper option for stabilising walls of 4-storeys. While the post-tension method had a cheaper material cost for stabilising walls of 8-storeys and above. As the building height increased the post-tension systems became more priceworthy. The largest cost difference found between the conventional and the post-tension systems was for the 20-storey tall wall subjected to an uplift of 100 kN, where the conventional system was 76,5% more expensive than the most economical post-tensioning system. A four- storey interval was used for the analysis of the building heights. The results from the case study cost comparison followed in the same line as the results from the stabilising wall cost comparison. Both indicated that the post-tension systems became more economical compared to the angle brackets for increased building heights. / Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka kostnaden för olika infästningsmetoder för stabiliserande väggar i träkonstruktioner. Fokus ligger på efterspänningsmetoden, som innebär att det monteras stänger i väggarna genom flera våningar som sedan spänns åt. Examensarbetet begränsas i att titta på byggnader uppförda i KL-trä. Det övergripande syftet med arbetet är att avgöra om efterspänningssystem är ett ekonomiskt lönsamt alternativ kontra konventionella infästningsmetoder, för att stabilisera KL-träväggar. KL-trä står för kors-limmat trä och används idag för bärande konstruktioner inom träbyggnader och består av flera lager träskivor som har limmats ihop. Varje lager har vridits med 90 grader i förhållande till det föregående, för att främja komponentens styrka och fuktmotstånd. För att samla information om de olika aspekter som påverkas av valet av infästningsmetod hölls intervjuer med personer som använt sig av efterspänningsmetod i träkonstruktioner. Utöver detta genomfördes även en kostnadsjämförelse mellan olika infästningsalternativ för olika stabiliserande väggar. De alternativ som jämfördes var efterspänningsmetoden och de mer konventionella vinkeljärnen. Resultaten från kostnadsjämförelsen visade att vinkeljärnen var det mest ekonomiska valet för byggnader i 4-våningar, medan materialkostnaden för efterspänningsmetoden var lägre för byggnader med 8-våningar och uppåt. Den största prisskillnaden mellan de två metoderna var för en vägg i en byggnad med 20 våningar och 100 kN i upplyftande krafter, där kostnaden av det konventionella systemet var 76,5% dyrare än det billigaste av de efterspända systemen. Analysen av byggnadshöjderna gjordes i intervaller om fyra våningar. Detta examensarbete avslutades med en fallstudie där de olika aspekterna som påverkar kostnaden av anslutningsmetod, som byggnadshöjd och planlösning, jämfördes. Resultaten från fallstudien följde i samma fotspår, då efterspänningsmetoden blev allt mer kostnadseffektiv med ökat våningsantal.

Chlamydiae may exist at the site of infection in an alternative replicative form, called the aberrant body (AB). ABs are produced during a viable but non-infectious developmental state termed "persistence" or "chlamydial stress." As persistent/stressed chlamydiae: (i) may contribute to chronic inflammation observed in diseases like trachoma; and (ii) are more resistant to current anti-chlamydial drugs of choice, it is critical to better understand this developmental stage. We previously demonstrated that porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) co-infection induced Chlamydia pecorum persistence/stress in culture. One critical characteristic of persistence/stress is that the chlamydiae remain viable and can reenter the normal developmental cycle when the stressor is removed. Thus, we hypothesized that PEDV-induced persistence would be reversible if viral replication was inhibited. Therefore, we performed time course experiments in which Vero cells were C. pecorum/PEDV infected in the presence of cycloheximide (CHX), which inhibits viral but not chlamydial protein synthesis. CHX-exposure inhibited PEDV replication, but did not inhibit induction of C. pecorum persistence at 24 h post-PEDV infection, as indicated by AB formation and reduced production of infectious EBs. Interestingly, production of infectious EBs resumed when CHX-exposed, co-infected cells were incubated 48-72 h post-PEDV co-infection. These data demonstrate that PEDV co-infection-induced chlamydial persistence/stress is reversible and suggest that this induction (i) does not require viral replication in host cells; and (ii) does not require de novo host or viral protein synthesis. These data also suggest that viral binding and/or entry may be required for this effect. Because the PEDV host cell receptor (CD13 or aminopeptidase N) stimulates cellular signaling pathways in the absence of PEDV infection, we suspect that PEDV co-infection might alter CD13 function and induce the chlamydiae to enter the persistent state.

En la siguiente tesis se presenta los resultados de un trabajo de investigación sobre los deficientes procesos autoconstructivos de las estructuras de una vivienda de dos pisos en el Asentamiento Humano Vivienda Única - San Juan de Miraflores. Sabemos que un gran porcentaje de la población habita en viviendas autoconstruidas, vulnerables a cualquier fenómeno de la naturaleza, pues no cumplen con los parámetros de construcción establecidos. Para desarrollar el problema y los objetivos de la presente tesis de investigación se resume a continuación el contenido de cada capítulo a desarrollar. Primero se identifican los principales factores internos y/o externos que motivaron a los pobladores en la autoconstrucción de sus viviendas, mediante una encuesta en campo realizada a 30 pobladores del Asentamiento Humano Vivienda Única. Luego se procesaron los datos obtenidos y se graficaron los resultados. Seguido, se determinó las condiciones de estas viviendas y se detalló cuáles son los daños que pueden afectar negativamente su comportamiento ante un eventual sismo. Para conseguir la información requerida se realizó una evaluación de 5 viviendas donde se recabaron los datos necesarios con ayuda de los pobladores y el presidente de la zona en mención. Después de realizar esta investigación se pasó a formar la guía de autoconstrucción para mejorar los procesos constructivos deficientes donde se encontrará los materiales y procedimientos óptimos para la construcción de una vivienda en el Asentamiento Humano Vivienda Única. Por último, se diseñará un modelo de vivienda de dos pisos de un área de 120 m2 donde se realizará el diseño de los principales elementos estructurales, y se realizará un análisis costo - beneficio entre dos sistemas de losas: el sistema convencional y el sistema con viguetas pretensadas y casetones de poliestireno. / The following thesis presents the results of a research work on the deficient self-constructive processes of the structures of a two-story house in the Single House Human Settlement - San Juan de Miraflores. We know that a large percentage of the population lives in self-built houses, vulnerable to any phenomenon of nature, as they do not meet the established construction parameters. To develop the problem and the objectives of this research thesis, the content of each chapter to be developed is summarized below. First, the main internal and / or external factors that motivated residents to self-build their homes are identified through a field survey of 30 residents of the Single House Human Settlement. Then the obtained data were processed and the results were plotted. Next, the conditions of these homes were determined and the damages that could negatively affect their behavior in the event of an eventual earthquake were detailed. In order to obtain the required information, an evaluation of 5 houses was carried out, where the necessary data was collected with the help of the residents and the president of the area in question. After carrying out this research, the self-construction guide was formed to improve the deficient construction processes where the optimal materials and procedures for the construction of a house will be found in the Single House Human Settlement. Finally, a two-story house model of an area of 120 m2 will be designed where the design of the main structural elements will be carried out, and a cost-benefit analysis will be carried out between two slab systems: the conventional system and the system with prestressed joists and polystyrene shells. / Tesis

The main idea behind stabilisation by diaphragm action is to create a deep beam thatcan resist horizontal loads acting on a structure. It is achieved by connecting the sheetingto the primary structure of the roof so that the edge beams resist the bending momentthrough normal stresses and the sheeting resists the shear force through shear stresses.An essential assumption of a functional diaphragm system is a sufficient connectionbetween the sheeting and the primary structure.In this thesis, the global behaviour of a diaphragm, as well as possible failure modesof sheeting of different thicknesses, are investigated.A laboratory experiment is conducted in the first part of the thesis. In the experiment,two types of self-drilling screws in combination with three different plate thicknesses aretested in shear. Slip flexibility of the screws is evaluated based on the experiment andcompared to flexibilities according to European Recommendations for the Application ofMetal Sheeting Acting as a Diaphragm.In the second part of the thesis, a finite element simulation is performed on two structuresto investigate the global behaviour of the diaphragm. The experimental results are,additionally, implemented into the finite element model.In the last part, hand calculations are performed based on analytical formulas given inEuropean Recommendations for the Application of Metal Sheeting Acting as a Diaphragmand the maximum horizontal displacement of the structure is compared to the FEAresults.

Разработаны алгоритмы расчета температурных полей и оценки термонапряженного состояния массивных железобетонных фундаментов в стадии охлаждения. / Algorithms for calculating temperature fields and assessing the thermally stressed state of massive reinforced concrete foundations in the cooling stage have been developed.

This master theses depicts FEM analysis of bolt joints where the focus is on investigating the stressrelationship between plate and bolt. Two bolts, M8 and M16, have been analyzed where they havebeen prestressed to 70 % of the ultimate tensile strength for steel type 8.8. A surface load has beenapplied in tension along the lateral surface of a cylindrical plate. The load distribution between plateand bolt of the external load varies between 2-28 % and 1-99 % for M8 and M16 in comparison to 20% stated in equation 2.7 in SS-EN 1993-1-8.The conclusion of studies shows that the behavior between the bolt and plate is not as previouslythought in SS-EN 1993-1-8. The bolt deforms negatively first when the system is subjected to externalload. This causes the resulting force to decrease. This behavior means that the bolt is designed towithstand larger loads than necessary. The factor 0.2 should be redefined. The authors recommendthat methods proposed by Pedersen and Pedersen [2008] or Haidar et al. [2011] should be used.

Finite element modeling has become a powerful tool in orthopedic biomechanics, allowing simulations with complex geometries. Current fatigue behavior simulations are unable to accurately predict the cycles to failure, creep, and damage or modulus loss even when applied to a bending model. It is thought that the inhomogeneity of the models may be the source of the problem. It has also been suggested that the volume size of the element will affect the fatigue behavior. This is called a stressed volume effect. In this thesis non-homogeneous finite element models were used to examine the effects of "sizing factors" on damage laws in fatigue simulations. Non-homogeneous finite element models were created from micro computed tomography (CT) images of dumbbell shaped fatigue samples. An automatic voxel meshing technique was used which converted the CT data directly into mesh geometry and material properties. My results showed that including these sizing factors improved the accuracy of the fatigue simulations on the non-homogeneous models. Using the Nelder-Mead optimization routine, I optimized the sizing factors for a group of 5 models. When these optimized sizing factors were applied to other models they improved the accuracy of the simulations but not as much as for the original models, but they improved the results more than with no sizing factors at all. I found that in our fatigue simulations we could account for the effects of stressed volume and inhomogeneity by including sizing factors in the life and damaging laws. / Master of Science

We use the semi-inverse method to solve a St. Venant and an Almansi-Michell problem for a prismatic body made of a homogeneous and isotropic elastic material that is stress free in the reference configuration. In the St. Venant problem, only the end faces of the prismatic body are loaded by a set of self-equilibrated forces. In the Almansi-Michell problem self equilibrated surface tractions are also applied on the mantle of the body. The St. Venant problem is also analyzed for the following two cases: (i) the reference configuration is subjected to a hydrostatic pressure, and (ii) stress-strain relations contain terms that are quadratic in displacement gradients. The Signorini method is also used to analyze the St. Venant problem. Both for the St. Venant and the Almansi-Michell problems, the solution of the three dimensional problem is reduced to that of solving a sequence of two dimensional problems. For the St. Venant problem involving a second-order elastic material, the first order deformation is assumed to be an infinitesimal twist. In the solution of the Almansi-Michell problem, surface tractions on the mantle of the cylindrical body are expressed as a polynomial in the axial coordinate. When solving the problem by the semi-inverse method, displacements are also expressed as a polynomial in the axial coordinate. An explicit solution is obtained for a hollow circular cylindrical body with surface tractions on the mantle given by an affine function of the axial coordinate / Master of Science

This study investigates the mechanical differences between old and newly produced slatted floors through a four-point bending test. To understand to what extent the actual environment has affected the slatted floors, the carbonation depth and corrosion will be examined. The tests showed no mechanical differences between slatted floors which had been in service for a certain amount of years and newly produces ones. Corrosion could be observed on some of the samples but it was not because of the carbonation process. When comparing the calculations of reinforced and pre-stressed concrete slatted floors, the result showed that the pre-stressed floor could carry up to double the load of what the reinforced slatted floor could. The conclusion of this study is, that the pre-stressed slatted floors will certainly hold for at least thirty years and will most likely hold for many years to come.