Flexural Behaviour of Concrete Reinforced With Basalt Fibre Reinforcement Bars: An Experimental and Numerical Research

The emergence of innovative construction materials is dawning a new era of ambition within the civil engineering community. Among these innovative materials, Basalt Fibre Reinforced Polymer (BFRP) has recently surfaced with promising potential as a reinforcing material in concrete. Currently, in the Dutch concrete construction industry, the...

Influence of flanges on the shear capacity of reinforced non-rectangular concrete members without shear reinforcement

This master thesis investigates the influence of flanges on the shear capacity of reinforced non-rectangular members without shear reinforcement. The study adapts the evaluation procedure developed by Yang (2014) for rectangular cross-sections to analyze plates with holes, I-beams and T-beams.

Feasibility study - CIE5050-09 Additional Research Project: Upscaling architected metamaterials for applications in civil infrastructure: auxetic lattices for confining concrete

Villa Henny: The Concrete House

Villa Henny (1916), designed by Robert van’t Hoff, baptized as the concrete villa, defines a turning point in modernism in the Netherlands. The Villa has been extensively researched in relation to the De Stijl art movement and influence by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, yet less attention has been given to the fact that it is one of...

Reliability assessment of corroded reinforced concrete structures: The effect of using random fields and nonlinear finite element analysis

One of the most severe deteriorations in reinforced concrete structures is associated with reinforcement corrosion, where the corrosion distribution shows considerable spatial variability. In the existing investigations of spatial variability of corrosion on the reliability of reinforced concrete structures, symbolic expressions are used for the...

Development of a Reliable and Efficient 3D Calculation Model of a High-Rise Building Under Seismic Loading

This thesis research focusses on the development of a reliable and efficient 3D calculation model of an existing high-rise, reinforced concrete building in the Groningen area, in order to analyse the dynamic behaviour of the existing and subsequently retrofitted main bearing structure of this high-rise building. The assessment of the existing...

Application of Evolutionary Structural Optimization to Reinforced Concrete Structures

The present thesis has the objective to create a procedure for the automatic preliminary design of reinforced concrete structures, based on the Evolutionary Structural Optimization method (ESO). The developed algorithm performs heuristic topology optimization based on multiple criteria, in subsequent optimization cycles executed in series. In...

Random Fields for Non-Linear Finite Element Analysis of Reinforced Concrete

With more advanced methods and increasing computational power, the simulation of reinforced concrete in a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has become more and more realistic. In a non-linear analysis of reinforced concrete, cracking behaviour and the maximum load-capacity can be determined. Such analyses sometimes suffer from unstable behaviour,...

Optimisation of Reinforced Concrete Structures

The design of reinforcement in concrete structures is a complex procedure, often resulting in inefficient designs. One possible solution to improve the design process and create more efficient designs is structural optimisation. This Master’s Thesis focusses on the development of a technique for optimisation of reinforcement in 3D concrete...

Propagation and band width of smeared cracks

The crack band approach (in the smeared crack concept) is widely used for the modeling of concrete fracture and is an important analysis technique within advanced engineering. However, the simulations can be impeded by mesh-induced directional bias. Cracks prefer to propagate along continuous mesh lines, which causes a dependency of the...