The following are summaries of papers published in other parts of ICE Proceedings during 2005 that readers of Bridge Engineering may find of interest. Summaries of all papers in ICE journals are freely available and fully searchable at the ‘journals on-line’ section of the ICE website. See www.ice.org.uk/journals for details.
Unravelling the secrets of cement
K. Scrivener
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Civil Engineering, 158, No. 2, May, 54
Concrete is one the oldest and most sustainable construction materials, yet we still don't really understand it. Karen Scrivener says a new pan-European research consortium she co-ordinates could finally unravel its secrets, enabling the development of even better and smarter materials.
Promoting research: a joined-up approach
F. Costello
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Civil Engineering, 158, No. 2, May, 55
It is much easier to get people interested in advances in built-environment technology if it is presented holistically rather than as the output of individual engineering disciplines. Based on the experiences of a major recent research exhibition, Fionnuala Costello of the EPSRC describes how it can be done.
Procedures for the assessment of highway structures
E. J. O'Brien, A. Žnidarič, K. Brady, A. González and A. O'Connor
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Transport, 158, No. 1, February, 17–25
Bridges, earth-retaining walls and buried structures make up a substantial proportion of the fixed assets of the land-based transportation infrastructure within Europe. Little work has been done on the development of documents covering the assessment of highway structures compared to the design of new structures. This paper describes an approach to assessment developed through working groups 4 and 5 of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (Cost) Action 345, entitled procedures required for assessing highway structures. This action was supported by the European Commission and involved experts from 16 European countries. The ICE trust fund has supported a study of a road bridge in Vienna to demonstrate the applicability and potential benefits of the approach developed through Cost 345. The approach is similar to that used in the UK in that there are five levels of assessment of increasing complexity and reliability, but there are a number of differences. This paper describes the approach developed through Cost 345 with a view to opening the debate on the need for a code of practice for assessment that facilitates the use of site-specific loading.
Scour of gravel beds at bridge piers and abutments
R. V. Raikar and S. Dey
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Water Management, 158, No. 4, December, 157–162
Results of an experimental investigation into local scour at piers and abutments in uniform gravels under a clear water scour condition are presented. Two types of pier, namely circular and square, and two types of short abutment (abutment length/upstream flow depth < 1, for short abutments), namely wing-wall and vertical-wall, were tested. Although scour at piers and abutments has been studied widely in sand beds, it remains almost unexplored in gravel beds. Therefore, different gravel sizes, ranging from 4·1mm to 14·25 mm, were used in this experimental study. The influence of gravel size on equilibrium scour depth at piers and abutments is prominent. From the experimental results, it is observed that the equilibrium scour depth increases with decrease in gravel size and with increase in pier width and abutment length. The variations of equilibrium scour depth with gravel size for both pier and abutment scour depart considerably from the variations of equilibrium scour depth with sand size. Consequently, for scour at piers and abutments, the resulting sediment size factors for gravels, evaluated by fitting envelope curves, are significantly different from the existing sediment size factor for sands. Combining pier and abutment scour data, an integrated approach to estimating the equilibrium scour depth at a bridge foundation is proposed. Scaling of distorted experimental model results to prototype is also discussed.
