N. Melkoumian

Earthquake Design of Unreinforced Masonry Residential Buildings Up to 15 Metres in Height

Abstract The paper summarises the results of a displacement-based assessment (DBA) of the seismic capacity of typical load-bearing unreinforced masonry buildings between two and five storeys in height across a range of site sub-soil classes (B to D) and earthquake hazard factors (0.05 to 0.12), covering all of the capital cities and major regional centres in Australia. The study found that the DBA for out-of-plane bending of walls in the top storey of buildings identified far fewer cases of failure than did a traditional strength-based assessment. A similar trend was observed for the DBA for in-plane shear of walls at the ground storey of buildings. The DBA implied, for all practical purposes, that typical walls will have the in-plane shear displacement capacity to withstand the earthquake induced loads and displacements for any site soil conditions, and earthquake hazard factor up to 0.12. This contrasts with the corresponding strength-based calculations, which identified significant numbers of cases where failure would occur.

Design Improvements for a True Triaxial Cell to Monitor Initiation and Propagation of Damage and Body Cracks during Testing

Understanding damage and body crack initiation and propagation in rocks subjected to three-dimensional (3D) stress regimes is of fundamental importance for designing stable mining and civil engineering structures, scheduling and maintaining safe mining operations and for other applications such as hydraulic fracturing of rocks. Most studies on this topic focus on numerical modeling and involve many assumptions and simplifications. Currently, the results from the numerical modeling cannot be validated against laboratory studies due to lack of data on damage and body crack initiation and propagation in rocks subjected to conventional and true triaxial compression tests.

A New Cost-Effective Active Structural Health Monitoring Technology for Detecting Shear Bands in Poorly Cemented Sands Leading to Exploration Borehole Collapse

The paper presents laboratory studies on the suitability of a new active structural health monitoring (SHM) technology and associated piezoelectric transducers (PZTs) for detecting the formation of shear bands in poorly cemented sand specimens around a rectangular opening simulating an exploration borehole and for indirectly evaluating the movement of sand volumes in the vicinity of the exploration borehole wall during laboratory tests. Presented preliminary laboratory results show that the PZTs used with the proposed active SHM technology can be embedded within a poorly cemented sand specimen and can detect changes in sand porosity. However, further laboratory studies need to be conducted to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the technology and associated PZTs for detecting the aforementioned.

Modeling Blending Process at Open-Pit Stockyards: A Northern Kazakhstan Mining Company Case Study

The paper presents a model of blending stockpile, which has been developed as a module of a decision support system, and applied to a real-life ore blending process at mineral and iron ore deposits in the Northern Kazakhstan.