An Experimental Campaign on the Long-Term Properties of Self Compacting Concrete

In the present paper, the results of an experimental campaign concerning the long-term properties of self-compacting concrete are presented. Five mixes of SCC and one mix of CVC have been employed, with different compressive strength covering the range of application from cast-in-place to prestressed structures. For each mix, compressive strength, elastic modulus and shrinkage evolution with time have been monitored. Creep tests have also been performed at different stress levels and at two ages at loading (7 and 28 days). The influence of concrete strength, stress level have been observed, together with the role played by the mix parameters. The Poisson' ratio evolution with time has been also observed; the role played by the application of long term loads and by different curing conditions on the concrete residual strength has been also investigated. Finally, experimental data both in terms of shrinkage and creep are compared with international code provisions

Infill Modelling Influence on Dynamic Identification and Model Updating of Reinforced Concrete Framed Buildings

In order to correctly capture the dynamic behavior of infilled framed buildings, the importance to take into account in seismic design the infill panels' contribution is nowadays well recognized since they could modify in a significant way the global and local response of the whole building. Despite about sixty years of continuous research in the field, the modelling of the frame-infill interaction still represents a serious issue for the daily practical design since there is no reference model proven to be suitable to cover a wide record of possible cases. Moreover, few works are available in the literature, comparing the results of different modelling proposals with outcomes of dynamic tests on a full-scale building. To this regard, starting from the results of induced vibration dynamic tests performed on a 7-story building with reinforced concrete frames with masonry infill, in the present paper, the effects of the infill presence have been evaluated by comparing experimental outcomes, achieved using a MDOF Circle-Fit identification procedure, with the results obtained by means of numerical analyses performed on finite element models. Using a model updating procedure, the optimal width to assign to the masonry equivalent struts modelling the infill panels was defined. Furthermore, several literature proposals for the definition of the equivalent strut width have been analysed. Thirteen different proposals have been selected and implemented in thirteen different finite element models. The reliability of each proposal has been investigated and quantified by comparing the dynamic properties of the models with the building dynamic response obtained by the experimental tests. The main outcomes of the analyses highlight that different proposals provide a great variability for the strut width. This brings to a large variability of the mechanical properties of the equivalent struts, and as a consequence, the modelling choice also influences the dynamic behaviour of the numerical models. Currently, this represents a serious issue for the daily designers' activity. The outcomes provided in the paper, although established for a specific case study, can be extended to a wide range of buildings and should drive the future research studies in order to provide more robust criteria for the modelling of this worldwide building class

Clitics : Lexicalization Patterns of the So-called 3rd Person Dative

Manzini and Savoia (1999, 2001, 2002, to appear) argue that the basic facts about the clitic string are best accounted for without having recourse to anything but a minimalist syntactic component, i.e. making no use of a specialized morphological component nor of optimality-type comparisons between derivations/ representations. In particular, they assume that clitics correspond to specialized inflectional categories, and are merged directly into the positions where they surface; such categories are furthermore ordered in a universal hierarchy, as we will detail below. The aim of the present paper is to consider datives in the light of this framework. We will conclude that there is no evidence for the category dative in the Romance dialects we shall consider, while in fact there is evidence for categorizations of so-called dative clitics as quantificational elements or as deictic elements (locatives). In all cases, the relevant categorization relies entirely on referential properties, or more generally on interpretive properties intrinsic to the lexical items involved, calling into question the traditional notion of Case itself.Manzini i Savoia (1999, 2001a, 2001b, en premsa) defensen que els fenòmens bàsics que afecten les seqüències de clítics s'expliquen millor només fent referència a un component sintàctic minimalista, és a dir, sense fer ús d'un component morfològic especialitzat o comparacions dins el marc de l'Optimitat entre derivacions i representacions. En particular, aquests treballs assumeixen que els clítics són categories de flexió especialitzades que s'adjunten directament a les mateixes posicions on després apareixen; a més, aquestes categories estan ordenades dins una jerarquia universal, tal com s'explica en l'article. L'objectiu d'aquest article és examinar el comportament de la categoria datiu des d'aquesta òptica. Conclourem que no hi ha evidència a favor de la categoria datiu en les llengües romàniques que examinem, sinó que hi ha evidència a favor de la categorització dels anomenats clítics de datiu com a elements quantificats o com a elements díctics(locatius). En tots els casos, la categorització emprada dependrà del tot de les propietats referencials, o més generalment, de les propietats semàntiques intrínsiques a les entrades lèxiques involucrades, fet que fins i tot posa en cuestió la noció tradicional de Cas

Root, Thematic Vowels and Inflectional Exponents in Verbs: A Morpho-Syntactic Analysis

A long-time generative tradition treats the functional domains of the verb and noun as a result of motion and affixing; however, assuming a close correspondence between the order in syntax and morphology, as in the Mirror Principle proposed by Baker seems to be too strong a hypothesis and empirically unsustainable. Distributed Morphology (DM) incorporates this idea by translating it into rules manipulating syntactic nodes. The morphological phenomena we will investigate essentially concerns the thematic vowel (TV) and its interaction with agreement morphology. A complex micro-variation emerges, which provides us with a test bench in order to account for the word-internal morphological organization. We question the idea that morphology is an auxiliary and expensive post-syntactic component, DM, that conveys information separated from its original locus as assumed by Embick and Noyer. On the contrary, we think that a more adequate account is reached assuming that the morphology is governed by the same computational rules as the syntax, where the operation Merge combines fully interpretable sub-word elements forming complex inflected words