The response of reinforced concrete slabs to hard missile impact

Impact loads result when a structure is hit by a missile. The two major considerations in designing for impact are the limitation of local damage and the control of the overall response of the target structural element. Local damage may include penetration, perforation, scabbing and/or punching shear in the region of the impact on the structure. Overall response includes flexure and reaction shear in the structure. Since the analytical prediction of local damage effects is extremely difficult, damage formulae have been developed on an empirical basis. These formulae depend on many parameters which may be classified into two groups, either missile parameters or target parameters. Two of the target parameters, the amount of reinforcing steel and maximum size of aggregate are not considered in the existing empirical formulae to determine critical perforation and scabbing velocities. The principle aim of the research reported in this thesis is, therefore, to find a term accounting for the level of reinforcement to be included in the formulae and to establish the influence of the maximum size of aggregate on the value of missile impact velocity causing scabbing or perforation. The research undertaken involved an experimental programme of sixty-four individual tests. The tests were concerned with the influence of the two parameters previously mentioned upon the perforation and scabbing of model, steel reinforced concrete targets. The test rig was especially designed using high pressure compressed air to accelerate a steel missile along a barrel to impact upon the target. This system can produce a variety of impact forces by either varying the applied pressure or the mass of the missile. Chapter One discusses the local effects and the overall dynamic response caused by high velocity impact upon reinforced concrete targets. The evaluation of the yield line method of analysis for design to resist high velocity impact is mentioned. The objectives and scope of the proposed research are also discussed . Chapter Two contains a literature review on procedures for determining local missile effects. The chapter considers and compares the existing empirical formulae. Also mentioned in Chapter Two are the experimental investigations into the effects of reinforcement and the associated model similarity requirements for impact conditions. The design and construction of a high velocity impact testing facility and the instrumentation associated with the facility are described in Chapter Three. Chapter Four discusses the fabrication of specimens and the test procedure. An account of the results obtained from the experimental programme is given in Chapter Five and Chapter Six discusses the development and application of the new perforation and scabbing formulae. Empirical formulae have been proposed to account for the amount of reinforcement. A general discussion of the results and the conclusions drawn from the experimental results and some recommendations for future research work are given in Chapter Seven and Eight respectively

'Unhappy news': the construction of happiness as a social problem in UK newspapers

Interest in happiness has seen an unprecedented growth in both popular and scholarly writing, in the mass media, and has been institutionalised into the policy and practice of a wide array of institutions. Both implicit and explicit in this rising interest is the notion that happiness re presents a serious problem requiring the intervention of a range of professional and political powers. The rapid and widespread affirmation that claims about happiness have received warrants critical examination. This study examines the construction of happiness as a socia l problem in four major UK newspapers, from the perfunctory evocations of the past to the present-day project of redefining the id iom as the legitimate domain ,of expertise and campaigns to bring it to the forefront of public debate. With theo retica l too ls drawn from the constructionist study of social problems and methodological tools garnered from qualitative media analysis, it examines the roles played by various claimsmakers in the construction of the problem and the rhetoric mobilised in support of their cause. It offers important insights into the ascendance of happiness onto the public agenda and identifies some of the underlying cultural currents on which claims about happiness draw and which make it a particularly powerful idiom th rough which to conceptualise contemporary social problems

The Victorian Naturalist

v.116 (1999

Common Knowledge: The Epistemology of American Realism

My dissertation, Common Knowledge: The Epistemology of American Realism, focuses on realist fiction (primarily the novel) at the end of the nineteenth century. Its motivating claim is that the central descriptive and thematic imperative of realism--to depict life as it is rather than in some idealized form--emerged in response to crises in the status of knowledge that resulted from an attempt by writers and readers to come to a common understanding of the relationship between private experience and an increasingly fragmented social world. While William Dean Howells\u27s definition of realism as a form of writing that displays fidelity to experience and probability of motive assumes a correspondence between writing and the real, my dissertation argues that realism\u27s primary aesthetic achievement was its response to a pervasive sense of epistemological uncertainty. Accordingly, Common Knowledge engages the tensions embodied in interpenetrating depictions of social conflict and shared knowledge. On one hand, much recent scholarship has been devoted to demonstrating realism\u27s commitment to documenting the intensified class conflict characteristic of the last decade of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, much scholarship has also been dedicated to portraying realism as an articulation of bourgeois gentility that remained largely ignorant of the stakes of such conflicts. In studies of the novels of Howells, Henry James, Harold Frederic, and Charles Chesnutt, I attempt to synthesize those two interpretations of American realism, preferring to read oscillations between social concern and reified class privilege as indications of a fundamental ambivalence about the reliability of social knowledge. Common Knowledge entwines readings of fiction with elaborations on the critical, technological, and aesthetic discourses of epistemological uncertainty that emerge from them, documenting how recognitions of socio-economic, racial, and ontological difference both rely on and throw into question the possibility of a shared knowledge of the world

Mechanics' institutes in Northumberland and Durham 1824-1902

Except for Hudson's major work which explored developments in the first half of the nineteenth century, and more recently the research undertaken by Tylecote and Kelly, most surveys of the Mechanics' Institute Movement in England have been confined t6 local studies of individual institutes, unpublished theses and collected essays on the subject. Kelly acknowledged that the limitations characteristic of his publication George. Birkbeck. which attempted a nationwide review of the subject, were due to a lack of detailed regional investigation upon which he could have drawn. A stimulus is therefore provided for further regionally based research. The purpose of this work is to trace the origins and metamorphosis of the Movement in the North East of England during; the last century, until its final state of change in the early 1900s.Within the region, several factors featured prominently in creating the environment in which the institutes were to function. These included economic and political reform, together with the broad spectrum of educational, social and cultural activities made available to the working-classes. Thus, the interaction between representatives from the various sections of society was inevitably brought into focus in voluntary bodies such as the mechanics' institutes, where it was hoped that mutually beneficial ambitions might be fulfilled. The Mechanics' Institute Movement in the North East reflected experiences which were typical of many other regions, yet much was exceptional. To illustrate this point, certain issues have been subjected to detailed analysis - in particular the identity of promoters, their motives, and how they brought their schemes to fruition. The effect of the powerful and often conflicting demands for the various services which together constituted both adult education and recreation has been assessed against a background determined by the promoters of institutes and by increasing Government legislation which provided for the introduction of public libraries and technical instruction. Consequently, the survival of the institutes was secured within a climate of progressive external and internal pressures. In the past, the full significance of the Movement's contribution to working-class educational, social and cultural development has lacked the appreciation it deserves. This regional analysis has shown that after existing for almost one hundred years its legacy remains encapsulated within our national system of public libraries, technical colleges, social centres, and not least in our heritage of mechanics' institute buildings. The task of providing insights into the complexity of the Movement's role in the North East has not been achieved without confronting difficulties similar to those experienced by Kelly and others. If any questions, therefore, remain unanswered, they do so because of the elusiveness of source material. At best, much was of a scattered, fragmentary and sometimes contradictory nature. Despite diligently pursued enquiry at repositories both locally and in other parts of the country, it has had to be accepted that the location of many relevant items is unknown

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Casco Bay Weekly : 30 July 1998

https://digitalcommons.portlandlibrary.com/cbw_1998/1032/thumbnail.jp

Gertrude Kasebier: Her Photographic Career, 1894-1929

The photographer Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934) is best known for her affiliation with Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession. However, as this study shows, she also conducted a successful career as a studio portraitist in New York, and contributed to popular illustrated magazines. Chapters are devoted to Mrs. Kasebier\u27s professional development, including her education at Pratt Institute, her successes in photographic publications and exhibitions, and her friendships with such photographers and artists as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, F. Holland Day, Baron Adolf de Meyer, Robert Demachy, Frances Benjamin Johnston, and Auguste Rodin. Her portraits of Rodin and his studio are analyzed. Her relationship to Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession is considered in detail, with particular attention devoted to the first Photo-Secession exhibition in 1902, and to the issues of Camera Work in which Kasebier\u27s photographs were featured. The causes of her disagreement with Stieglitz and her resignation from the Photo-Secession in 1912 are discussed, and her post-Secession work is reassessed. Much of the dissertation considers the significance of Kasebier\u27s portraits and thematic photographs. The development of her portrait style is traced, and portraits of her colleagues Clarence H. White, Steichen and Stieglitz are used to illustrate Kasebier\u27s ability to capture her subjects\u27 personalities. Her photographs of Sioux Indians are examined; these portraits are shown to be unusual for their day because of Kasebier\u27s interest in individual Indians, rather than in anthropological or symbolic types. Kasebier\u27s thematic photographs, which include pictures of mothers and children, animal scenes, and other subjects, are shown to be unified by Kasebier\u27s concerns with themes of independence and solitude. Her photographs are set in historical and social context: her seldom-noted concern with women\u27s reform is identified. Kasebier\u27s evident pictorial interest in mothers\u27 granting freedom to their children (a theme which distinguishes her work from most other artists of her time) is explained as springing from ideas of Friedrich Froebel and the kindergarten movement. The final chapter discusses Kasebier\u27s influence on other photographers