Are Cities of Northern Europe at Risk ?

A benchmark study on seimic risk has been realised on Liege, Belgium, at the request of the Regional Authority. Its main interest is that it deals with the seismic risk of a city in a low seismicity region. The work involves a hazard study based on the recently defined map of seismicity of Belgium, the definition of the individual vulnerability of buildings, the combination of hazard and vulnerability to define risk and static evaluations of connecting details in non engineered structures. For the evaluation of vulnerability, a simplified screening method has been defined. The main conclusion is that in regions where the Peak Ground Acceleration is higher than 0,1g and the building stock does not possess good structural quality, the seismic risk may be considered high.Peer reviewe

Three beneficiaries of project-oriented education in power electronics

peer reviewedPower Electronics education at the University of Liège exhibits a particular feature, in that a person from industry is directly involved in the teaching of the introductory Power Electronics course since academic year 2007-2008. Together with him, we teach this subject making use of a project-oriented method. After two years of this experience, it is now of great interest to analyze the main benefits of this method for the students, the teaching team at the University and the company involved in the teaching process. In this paper we present through an example the method that is being used. We mention some interesting technical problems encountered by the students during their project work. We also present the evolution of the method from the first year of application in 2007-2008 to the forthcoming third year in 2009-2010.OptiSHE

Experimental study of the force transfer mechanism in transition zone between composite column and reinforced concrete column

[EN] The current EN 1992 provides structured information related to the design of reinforced concrete columns or reinforced concrete column beam connections. On the other hand, EN 1994 gives enough information on the design of composite columns but none of the current codes provide details about a possible transfer zone in the case of usage of RC and composite column solution. The current study tends to fill the gap between these two norms. In the current experimental campaign, carried out in the frame of the European research program SmartCoCo, it is presented as a calibration method for a tentative design method which has been elaborated by one of the authors based on theoretical strut and tie reasoning. The objective of the current paper is to present the results of the experiments and aims to validate the theoretical approach for calculating the force transfer mechanism in the transfer zone. The experimental campaign comprises of 4 columns and 4 column-beam connections, all of them being composed by a RC part and a composite. The tests are performed on vertical column, simply supported with a width of 350mm, length of 380 mm and a height of 3850 mm with a regular concrete quality (C25/30). This contribution describes the test specimens, summarizes their design, presents a selection of the most relevant results from analog and digital measurements and a short interpretation of the obtain results. We concluded from this set of tests that the new design method is able to explain the force transfer mechanism with a good accuracy and can therefore be considered as a suitable solution for designing practical cases.Dragan, D.; Plumier, A.; Degee, H. (2018). Experimental study of the force transfer mechanism in transition zone between composite column and reinforced concrete column. En Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Steel-Concrete Composite Structures. ASCCS 2018. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 315-321. https://doi.org/10.4995/ASCCS2018.2018.7028OCS31532

Experimental Study of the Resistance of Expanded Metal Panels Submitted to Cyclic Shear Tests

Experimental and theoretical study of expanded metal panels (EMP) has shown that they are useful for seismically retrofitting reinforced concrete moment resisting frames (RC-MRF). Although this product has merit of strength and ductility, it is at present only used for non-structural applications. There is no guidance existing to help the engineers determine the mechanical properties or to indicate in which field of the structures this product can be used. With the aims at providing quantitative data for these purposes and at introducing a simplified model of EMP working in shear, description and comparison of the results of 22 monotonic and cyclic experiments of 4 profiles of EMP in small and large scale is presented. Numerical approach with FINELG, a nonlinear finite element code developed at University of Liege, is used to calibrate and simulate the tests. A good correlation between tests and numerical simulations is observed

A relaxation scheme to combine Phasor-Mode and Electromagnetic Transients Simulations

This paper deals with a new scheme for coupling phasor-mode and electromagnetic transients simulations. In each simulation, an iteratively updated linear equivalent is used to represent the effect of the subsystem treated by the other simulation. Time interpolation and phasor extraction methods adapted to this scheme are presented and compared to existing methods. Finally, simulation results obtained with a 74-bus test system are reporte