Defending a PhD thesis is an emotional moment candidates and supervisors should be prepared for

The PhD defence, or viva, is significant academic rite of passage, which as well as marking the culmination of years of study, can also be a highly charged emotional moment. Drawing on years of collecting accounts of PhD defences on her blog and her recent book (Planning and Passing Your PhD Defence, co-authored with Olga Degtyareva), Eva Lantsoght, discusses how both PhD students and supervisors can benefit from a more engaged understanding of the emotions underlying the PhD defence

Neural network-based formula for shear capacity prediction of one-way slabs under concentrated loads

According to the current codes and guidelines, shear assessment of existing reinforced concrete slab bridges sometimes leads to the conclusion that the bridge under consideration has insufficient shear capacity. The calculated shear capacity, however, does not consider the transverse redistribution capacity of slabs, thus leading to overconservative values. This paper proposes an artificial neural network (ANN)-based formula to come up with estimates of the shear capacity of one-way reinforced concrete slabs under a concentrated load, based on 287 test results gathered from the literature. The proposed model yields maximum and mean relative errors of 0.0% for the 287 data points. Moreover, it was illustrated to clearly outperform (mean Vtest / VANN =1.00) the Eurocode 2 provisions (mean VE,EC / VR,c =1.59) for that dataset. A step-by-step assessment scheme for reinforced concrete slab bridges by means of the ANN-based model is also proposed, which results in an improvement of the current assessment procedures

ACI Avances en Ciencias e Ingenierías en 2022

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Research Counts, Not the Journal

‘If there is one thing every bibliometrician agrees, is that you should never use the journal impact factor (JIF) to evaluate research performance for an article or an individual – that is a mortal sin’. Few sentences could define so precisely the uses and misuses of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) better than Anthony van Raan’s. This manuscript presents a critical overview on the international use, by governments and institutions, of the JIF and/or journal indexing information for individual research quality assessment. Interviews given by Nobel Laureates speaking on this matter are partially illustrated in this work. Furthermore, the authors propose complementary and alternative versions of the journal impact factor, respectively named Complementary (CIF) and Timeless (TIF) Impact Factors, aiming to better assess the average quality of a journal – never of a paper or an author. The idea behind impact factors is not useless, it has just been misused

Methodology for Proof Load Testing

This chapter deals with the methodology for proof load testing. All aspects of proof load testing that are shared with other load testing methods have been discussed in Part II of Volume 12. In this chapter, the particularities of proof load testing are discussed. These elements include the determination of the target proof load, the procedures followed during a proof load test (loading method, instrumentation, and stop criteria), and the post-processing of proof load test data, including the assessment of a bridge after a proof load test

Current Codes and Guidelines

This chapter reviews the existing codes and guidelines for load testing of structures. A summary of the main requirements of each existing code is provided, with a focus on the determination of the required load and measurements. The requirements for load testing of bridges and buildings are revised, for new and existing structures. An international perspective is given, revising the practice from Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, and Hungary. The chapter concludes with a short overview of the current developments and with a discussion of the different available codes and guidelines