Lock Head Sustainability: A parametric study into the design of lock heads with mitre gates and single leaf gates

In this research an effort is made to contribute to the goals of the Betonakkoord. This is done by optimising the design of big and bulky structures consisting out of a lot of concrete, namely lock heads. Lock heads are part of the navigation lock. The main research question answered in this thesis is phrased as follows: How can the design of...

Combined Actions: Investigation on Widened Deck KW03.01

Structures may be subjected to both mechanical loads and imposed deformation. On one hand, the mechanical loads include, for example, the self-weight of the construction work, the action from normal use by person, furniture and movable objects, vehicles, snow, wind, execution, etc. On the other hand, when the deformation of a structure is...

Engineering Models for Shear Crack Width and Shear Deflection in Slender Reinforced Concrete Beams

Shear cracking in slender reinforced concrete beams with thin webs can result in significant shear crack width and deflection which is usually ignored in practice due to lack of availability of the engineering models in design codes. This can lead to unconservative predictions of the crack width and total deflection in the SLS (Serviceability...

Industrial floors: Research on the structural behaviour

This research focuses on the structural behaviour of an elastic supported reinforced concrete slab. Over the years, there is a tendency to realise industrial floors with large joint-spacings. The downside of a slab on grade with a large joint-spacing is that the risk of (uncontrolled) cracking due to a shrinkage load is higher, which often...

Concrete Hyperloop: A feasibility study on the application of concrete tubes in the Hyperloop infrastructure

In August of 2013 Elon Musk published his paper ’Hyperloop Alpha’, in which he describes an alternative transportation system for the to be built railway connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Hyperloop system that Musk describes relies on partial vacuum tubes through which vehicles can travel at speeds up to 1000 km/h with great...

The implementation of alkali-activated concrete in jointless ground floors

To realise more sustainable industrial ground floors the implementation of alkali-activated concrete is considered for jointless elastically supported ground floors. Such floors are realised with large areas without dilations, the shrinkage reduction is therefore restrained causing cracks to arise at the top surface of the floor. The control of...

Application of vertical profiled mortar connections in precast concrete shear walls

This thesis focusses on the application of vertical profiled mortar connections in precast concrete shear walls that are built up with a stacked element configuration. The goal of the project is to develop a practical modelling approach in order to be able to apply the connections in a FEM model for structural analyses. For this purpose several...

Effective concrete tension zone: Comparison of the effective concrete tension zone between finite element models using DIANA and Eurocode 2 and Jones method

This Master Thesis is about the comparison of the effective concrete tension zone height determined with either finite element models using DIANA or Eurocode 2 and Jones method. The effective reinforcement ratio is an important parameter for the determination of the crack width and is depending on the effective concrete tension zone height....

Seismic Response of Liquid Storage Tank in a Semi Analytical Method

This thesis focuses on the dynamic analysis of liquid storage tanks subjected to seismic excitation with its primary aim being the development of a semi-analytical model able to predict this dynamic response accurately. In engineering practice, there are two primary methods to solve this problem. Numerical models based primarily on the finite...

The conceptual design of a Tidal Power Plant in the Brouwersdam

Zeeland, located in the south west of The Netherlands, has suffered major casualties and damage due to the flood in 1953. After the disaster, the Dutch Government appointed the so-called Deltacomittee, provided with the task of advising on the execution of the Deltaplan. As part of the Deltaplan, North Sea estuaries has been closed off from the...

Quantifying the influence of membrane forces, curvature, and imperfections on the nonlinear buckling load of thin-shells

Shells tend to be thin because their curvature enables them to carry distributed loads as membrane forces. The property of thinness stems from shells’ capacity to store membrane strain energy without much deformation. As a result, buckling failures often govern the design of shell structures. These buckling failures usually start locally, at a...

Bond strength of cementitious screeds on concrete bearing floors

In this study the cracking and debonding behaviour of cementitious screeds bonded to concrete bearing floors is <br/>analysed. In order to obtain insight in this behaviour research is performed to the surface tensile strength of concrete, <br/>the bond strength of screeds on concrete bearing floors, the behaviour of screeds during shrinkage and...

Displacement-based verification of unreinforced masonry walls acting out-of-plane within a structural system

The out-of-plane behavior of unreinforced masonry walls subjected to lateral loading is a complex structural problem. This thesis focuses on the stability of URM walls in a building system under seismic loads that are comparable to those found in the Groningen scenario. The investigation is carried out by addressing both the physical and the...