Bengi Arisoy

Investigation of structural safety of existing masonry healthcare facilities in Turkey

Masonry healthcare facilities in Turkey are investigated in the current research. The structural assessment of the healthcare facilities has become very important for increasing building safety. A large amount of the existing healthcare facilities are generally old buildings, constructed before engineering practices were developed making most buildings vulnerable to severe structural damage. Since healthcare facilities are costly buildings to replace, structural and non-structural assessments have economical importance. Even non-structural behavior can be more critical than structural behavior as ground vibrations can cause severe damage to these types of facilities. Different ground vibrations and soil types are employed in the analyses to investigate structural and non-structural behavior of these types of facilities.

Analysis of Strengthened Composite Beams Under Flexural Stress

A steel-concrete composite beam is composed of a steel beam and concrete slap connected with shear connectors. Composite beams are highly efficient structural members in order to load carrying capacity because the tension component of the force pair originating from bending is carried by the steel profile and the compressive component is carried by the concrete slab in composite beams. In this study, numerical and experimental analysis of steel-concrete composite and strengthened steel-concrete composite beams is presented. In experimental study, one strengthened and one un-strengthened specimens are produced and tested in bending. Strengthening is produced applying carbon fiber reinforced polymers sheet to the lower flange of the steel beam and using steel fiber reinforced concrete in the concrete slab. Specimens are tested under four-point loading test. During the tests, load, deflection and strain values are collected by data acquisition system. In numerical study, the finite element models of the steel-concrete composite beams are generated and analyzed by Atena-GiD program. Comparison and evaluations are made in terms of strength, applicability, stiffness and energy consumption about the steel-concrete composite beams with carbon fiber reinforced polymers and steel fibered concrete for both numerical and experimental results.

Wall panel application of fibre-reinforced lightweight concrete

Abstract In this study, material properties of lightweight concrete reinforced with randomly distributed poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) fibres are discussed, on account of a possible structural use. Flexural, compressive and cyclic performances of the material are tested and the results are presented. The effect of fibres on high-strength lightweight concrete is investigated, and the expected performance of any wall panel produced with the mentioned material is compared with commercially-available wall panels. In the frame work of the study, hollow sphere aggregates are used to produce lightweight concrete and PVA fibres are used to increase ductility. Using 1.5% fibre volume fraction caused an increase in the flexural strength by up to 2.5 times compared to lightweight concrete, and using lightweight aggregate provides considerable decrease in density depending amount of lightweight aggregate used. Using this type of aggregate with a range between 20% to 40% of lightweight aggregate content provided densities in a range between 1.2 to 1.6 g/cm3. It is found that the matrix design of PVA fibre-reinforced lightweight concrete produced for this study has 5% to 15% higher flexural strength than the ones commercially available for approximately the same density range.