Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Publication
    Fleet Monitoring - Using Sensors in a Fleet of Passing Vehicles to Monitor the Health of Bridges
    This paper proposes the use of a fleet of instrumented vehicles to monitor the condition of infrastructure and bridges. It is anticipated that data from privately owned vehicles with low-cost accelerometer and GPS data, will be available for this purpose in the future. An inverse version of the well known Newmark-Beta method is proposed to determine road/rail surface profile from measured accelerations. Some results are reported from an instrumented train that made repeat runs on railway track over a period of a month. For bridge health monitoring, the concept of a moving reference influence line is proposed as a damage indicator. It is shown in simulation to give good indications of bearing damage in a simply supported bridge.
      147
  • Publication
    Aligning Learning Outcomes to Improve Communication and Learning Skills in an Interdisciplinary Problem-Based Learning Environment
    Engineers require the skill of effective communication and interaction with architects to be successful throughout their professional career. While the relationship between architects and structural engineers develops during their professional career, it is often overlooked during their undergraduate education. This paper presents learning strategies to improve the communication between engineering and architecture students as well as the awareness of the others’ profession. The strategy of aligning learning outcomes to develop communication skills and prevent reproductive learning are applied in four continuous assessment problem-based learning (PBL) submissions. The strategies were applied in the experimental setting of a Stage 1 undergraduate module jointly offered to architecture and general entry engineering students at the School of Civil Engineering, University College Dublin. Results from surveys showed the students enjoyed the module and had a high level of understanding of the other profession at the end of the module. The students identified an improvement in their own communication skills as a result of the module.
      170
  • Publication
    A 3D computational fluid dynamics validation study for the Queensferry Crossing Bridge with bus models on the deck
    In this paper, 3D CFD models of a bridge section of the Queensferry Crossing Bridge including a bus and other secondary structures on the deck are developed in OpenFOAM using the k-ω-SST turbulence model to determine the aerodynamic coefficients. The aerodynamic performance of the bridge deck accounting for several angles of attack with the bus located in various traffic lanes is investigated. The models are then validated with wind tunnel test results and good agreement is found between the 3D CFD models and the wind tunnel tests. The importance of the validated models is that they can be used in the future to study what wind speed should be set as a limit to prevent high-sided vehicles from overturning on the Queensferry Crossing Bridge.
      52