Laboratory and Field Testing of an Accelerated Bridge Construction Demonstration Bridge: US Highway 6 Bridge over Keg Creek, RB02-012, 2013

The US Highway 6 Bridge over Keg Creek outside of Council Bluffs, Iowa is a demonstration bridge site chosen to put into practice newly-developed Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) concepts. One of these new concepts is the use of prefabricated high performance concrete (HPC) bridge elements that are connected, in place, utilizing advanced material closure-pours and quick-to-install connection details. The Keg Creek Bridge is the first bridge in the US to utilize moment-resisting ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) joints in negative moment regions over piers. Through laboratory and live load field testing, performance of these transverse joints as well as global bridge behavior is quantified and examined. The effectiveness of the structural performance of the bridge is evaluated to provide guidance for future designs of similar bridges throughout the US

Diode-quad bridge circuit means

Diode-quad bridge circuit means is described for use as a transducer circuit or as a discriminator circuit. It includes: (1) a diode bridge having first, second, third, and fourth bridge terminals consecutively coupled together by four diodes polarized in circulating relationship; (2) a first impedance connected between the second bridge terminal and a circuit ground; (3) a second impedance connected between the fourth bridge terminal and the circuit ground; (4) a signal source having a first source terminal capacitively coupled to the first and third bridge terminals, and a second source terminal connected to the circuit ground; and (5) an output terminal coupled to the first bridge terminal and at which an output signal may be taken

The detection of an older population in the Magellanic Bridge

The Magellanic system comprises the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), and the less frequently observed Magellanic Bridge and Magellanic Stream. The Bridge is traced by neutral gas and has an observed stellar component, while the Stream consists of gas only, with no observed stellar counterpart to date. This study uses catalogues created in the direction of the Bridge from 2MASS and WISE to investigate the stellar content of the Magellanic Bridge. Catalogues were created and colour-magnitude and two colour diagrams were analysed. A study was also carried out on removing the Galactic foreground population in the direction of the Magellanic Bridge, which was an important consideration due to the low stellar density within the Bridge. This study finds that the Magellanic Bridge contains a candidate older stellar population in addition to the younger population already known. The formation of the Magellanic Bridge is likely to have occurred from a tidal event between the LMC and SMC drawing most of the material into it from the SMC. An older population in the Bridge indicates that a stellar content was drawn in during its formation together with a gas component.Comment: 11 pages, 16 figures, accepted by A&A on 17th Jan 201