SUMMARYThe Asymmetric Friction Connection (AFC) remains elastic during moderate earthquake shaking but slides and dissipates energy through friction during severe earthquake shaking. The sliding friction forces developed are dependent on the clamping force in the connection which is provided by fully tensioned bolts which pass through slotted holes. During sliding these bolts are subject to moment and shear as well as axial force. Moment-shear-axial force interaction reduces the clamping axial force on the sliding interfaces thereby reducing the sliding shear resistance (V ss ). Two methods to evaluate the moment-shear-axial force interaction have been proposed so that the sliding shear strength can be quantified, but as yet, these methods are not robust. This paper describes the results of 60 tests undertaken to improve the two methods, namely the moment-shear-axial force bolt model and the effective coefficient of friction method, for AFCs with high hardness steel shims. The bolts were M16 to M30 bolts and cleat thicknesses ranged from 12 mm to 25 mm. It is shown that either method may be used in design as the results obtained are similar.

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The mechanical properties of different adhesives at elevated temperatures can change differently due to the differences in adhesive molecular chain structure. Therefore, a profound understanding of the effect of these property changes on the bond behaviour of carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP)-to-steel bonded joints is of great importance when designing bonded CFRP strengthening systems for steel structures. Existing studies on CFRP-to-steel bonded joints under monotonic loading have clearly shown that both adhesive mechanical properties and geometrical properties of the bonded joints (e.g. bond length) may significantly influence the bond strength. Existing studies on adhesive mechanical properties under elevated temperatures have shown that the variation of adhesive mechanical properties, especially fracture energy with temperature depends significantly on the adhesive type. No comprehensive study exists so far on understanding the effects of key mechanical and geometrical parameters of a CFRP-tosteel bonded joints at elevated temperatures on bond strength. This paper presents a study aimed at understanding the effects of different parameters such as temperature dependent mechanical properties of adhesive and bond length on the behaviour of CFRP-to-steel bonded joints at elevated temperatures.Results of this study showed that (1) load-displacement behaviour of the bonded joints is sensitive to temperature variations, (2) for bonded joints with sufficiently long bond length, the ultimate load depends only on the fracture energy of the final temperature, and (3) the maximum load of the bonded joints depends on the ratio between the loading and heating rates.

The rapid development of many open source and commercial image editing software makes the authenticity of the digital images questionable. Copy-move forgery is one of the most widely used tampering techniques to create desirable objects or conceal undesirable objects in a scene. Existing techniques reported in the literature to detect such tampering aim to improve the robustness of these methods against the use of JPEG compression, blurring, noise, or other types of post processing operations. These post processing operations are frequently used with the intention to conceal tampering and reduce tampering clues. A robust method based on the color moments and other five image descriptors is proposed in this paper. The method divides the image into fixed size overlapping blocks. Clustering operation divides entire search space into smaller pieces with similar color distribution. Blocks from the tampered regions will reside within the same cluster since both copied and moved regions have similar color distributions. Five image descriptors are used to extract block features, which makes the method more robust to post processing operations. An ensemble of deep compositional pattern-producing neural networks are trained with these extracted features. Similarity among feature vectors in clusters indicates possible forged regions. Experimental results show that the proposed method can detect copy-move forgery even if an image was distorted by gamma correction, addictive white Gaussian noise, JPEG compression, or blurring.

Trunk transportation and terminal distribution are two important parts of express delivery in China. Heavy truck and medium truck are two main vehicles of trunk transportation. Mini van and two‐wheel electric bicycle are widely used for terminal distribution. Four vehicles mentioned previously and a sedan car were chosen for vibration level measurement and analysis in this paper. The results revealed that vibration levels were significantly higher in the vertical axis, and decreased with the increase of payload, and increased with the increase of speed again. Similar power spectral density peak frequencies were found in a comparison study with previous results in the low‐frequency region (1‐10 Hz), occurred at approximately 2 Hz in the van and sedan car and at 3 to 4 Hz in the truck and at 4 to 5 Hz in the two‐wheel electric bicycle. Except the two‐wheel electric bicycle, the second peak frequency occurred at approximately 20 to 30 Hz in the sedan car and at 10 to 20 Hz in the mini van and at 20 to 40 Hz in the heavy truck, which were also similar to the previous studies. Vibration levels of the sedan car were the lowest, and the trunk transportation vehicles (heavy truck, medium truck) were the highest. The terminal distribution vehicles (mini van, two‐wheel electric bicycle) were somewhere in the middle.

A new approach for road-vehicle vibration simulation is proposed and demonstrated feasible by testing with three express-road vehicle-vibration records, that is, record A, two-wheel electric bicycle, 80% loaded, traveling on urban road; record B, median van, 50% loaded, traveling on urban road; and record C, minivan, 80% loaded, traveling on urban road too. This method decomposes the original signal into a series of approximate Gaussianvibration segments and a shock segment with high kurtosis by moving crest factor and one-tenth peak-value method. Simulate Gaussian-distribution vibration one by one from the power spectral density (PSD) of each decomposed segments. The overall signal is simulated by concatenating of each decomposed Gaussian segment. The simulated signal has not only the same overall root-mean-square (RMS), duration as the original signal, but also has a similar PSD to the original signal, without incurring excessive acceleration levels. This allows an improved and more representative simulated input signal to be generated that can be use in the current generation of vibration table.

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We evaluated the sublethal effects of malathion treatment on the behavioral responses of male Asian corn borers, Ostrinia furnacalis (Guenée), to their sex pheromones. Doses of malathion causing 1-50% mortality were topically applied to Asian corn borer male moths. The survivors were tested for behavioral and electroantennogram (EAG) responses to their sex pheromones. Sublethal doses of malathion affected males' ability to locate a pheromone source. In wind tunnel tests, male moths treated with sublethal doses of malathion took 2.5 to 12 times as long to take flight as control moths. Malathion-treated male moths were 60-96% less likely to locate a sex pheromone source than control moths. Multiple linear regression analysis revealed that the proportions of males performing each key stage were significantly correlated with the doses of malathion, but not with the time since treatment. Sensitivity and specificity of perception to pheromones in male moths were also disrupted by sublethal doses of malathion. The EAG responses of males treated with malathion decreased 0.13 mV on average compared with control moths. In addition, the ratios of pheromone components that elicited the largest responses shifted from approximately 5:5 to 1:9 (E/Z) and 9:1. We conclude that treatment with sublethal doses of malathion significantly reduced the likelihood that male Asian corn borers could successfully locate a normal female releasing sex pheromones.