This presents the static flexural analysis of a three edge simply supported, one support free (SSFS) rectangular plate under uniformly distributed load using a refined shear deformation plate theory. The shear deformation profile used, is in the form of third order. The governing equations were determined by the method of energy variational calculus, to obtain the deflection and shear deformation along the direction of x and y axis. From the formulated expression, the formulars for determination of the critical lateral imposed load of the plate before deflection reaches the specified maximum specified limit and its corresponding critical lateral imposed load before plate reaches an elastic yield stress is established. The study showed that the critical lateral imposed load decreased as the plates span increases, the critical lateral imposed load increased as the plate thickness increases, as the specified thickness of the plate increased, the value of critical lateral imposed load increased and increase in the value of the allowable deflection value required for the analysis of the plate reduced the chances of failure of a structural member. This approach overcomes the challenges of the conventional practice in the structural analysis and design which involves checking of deflection and shear after design; the process which is proved unreliable and time consuming. It is concluded that the values of critical lateral load obtained by this theory achieve accepted transverse shear stress to the depth of the plate variation in predicting the flexural characteristics for an isotropic rectangular SSFS plate. Numerical comparison was conducted to verify and demonstrate the efficiency of the present theory, and they agreed with previous studies. This proved that the present theory is reliable for the analysis of a rectangular plate. Keywords— Allowable deflection, critical imposed load, energy method, plate theories, shear deformation, SSFS rectangular plate
Numerical and computational analyses surrounding the behavior of the bearing capacity of soils near or adjacent to slopes have been of great importance in earthwork constructions around the globe due to its unique nature. This phenomenon is encountered on pavement vertical curves, drainages, and vertical infrastructure foundations. In this work, multiple data were collected on the soil and footing interface parameters, which included width of footing, depth of foundation, distance of slope from the footing edge, soil bulk density, slope and frictional angles, and bearing capacity factors of cohesion and overburden pressure determined for the case of a foundation on or adjacent to a slope. The genetic programming (GP), evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR), and artificial neural network (ANN) intelligent techniques were employed to predict the ultimate bearing capacity of footing on or adjacent to a slope. The performance of the models was evaluated as well as compared their accuracy and robustness with the findings of Prandtl. The results were observed to show the superiority of GP, EPR, and ANN techniques over the computational works of Prandtl. In addition, the ANN outclassed the other artificial intelligence methods in the exercise.
Tropical forests are increasingly exposed to devastating bushfires leading to increased erosion. This work involve the study of effect of bushfire on erosion development. Four different soil samples from the study area were used for the study. In this study, the post-fire impacts of laboratory fire representing bushfire and subsequent rainfall simulation experiment representing postfire rainfall to evaluate short-term impact of fire on bare soil. The laboratory observations show that bushfire or wildfire affects the erodibility of different types of soil. When the soil under consideration contains meaningful amount of clay, initial exposure to heat tend to cement the soil sample, because clay minerals hardens on exposure to bush burning. However, it is generally observed that at 6 hours exposure to burning, the cementation is adversely affected leading to increased soil loss.
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