Corrugated wood composite panels for structural decking

High flexural strength and stiffness can be achieved by forming a thin panel into a wave shape perpendicular to the bending direction. The use of corrugated shapes to gain flexural strength and stiffness is common in metal and reinforced plastic products. However, there is no commercial production of corrugated wood composite panels. This research focuses on the application of corrugated shapes to wood strand composite panels. Beam theory, classical plate theory and finite element models were used to analyze the bending behavior of corrugated panels. The most promising shallow corrugated panel configuration was identified based on structural performance and compatibility with construction practices. The corrugation profile selected has a wavelength equal to 8”, a channel depth equal to ¾”, a sidewall angle equal to 45 degrees and a panel thickness equal to 3/8”. 16”x16” panels were produced using random mats and 3-layer aligned mats with surface flakes parallel to the channels. Strong axis and weak axis bending tests were conducted. The test results indicate that flake orientation has little effect on the strong axis bending stiffness. The 3/8” thick random mat corrugated panels exhibit bending stiffness (400,000 lbs-in2/ft) and bending strength (3,000 in-lbs/ft) higher than 23/32” or 3/4” thick APA Rated Sturd-I-Floor with a 24” o.c. span rating. Shear and bearing test results show that the corrugated panel can withstand more than 50 psf of uniform load at 48” joist spacings. Molding trials on 16”x16” panels provided data for full size panel production. Full size 4’x8’ shallow corrugated panels were produced with only minor changes to the current oriented strandboard manufacturing process. Panel testing was done to simulate floor loading during construction, without a top underlayment layer, and during occupancy, with an underlayment over the panel to form a composite deck. Flexural tests were performed in single-span and two-span bending with line loads applied at mid-span. The average strong axis bending stiffness and bending strength of the full size corrugated panels (without the underlayment) were over 400,000 lbs-in2/ft and 3,000 in-lbs/ft, respectively. The composite deck system, which consisted of an OSB sheathing (15/32” thick) nailed-glued (using 3d ringshank nails and AFG-01 subfloor adhesive) to the corrugated subfloor achieved about 60% of the full composite stiffness resulting in about 3 times the bending stiffness of the corrugated subfloor (1,250,000 lbs-in2/ft). Based on the LRFD design criteria, the corrugated composite floor system can carry 40 psf of unfactored uniform loads, limited by the L/480 deflection limit state, at 48” joist spacings. Four 10-ft long composite T-beam specimens were built and tested for the composite action and the load sharing between a 24” wide corrugated deck system and the supporting I-joist. The average bending stiffness of the composite T-beam was 1.6 times higher than the bending stiffness of the I-joist. A 8-ft x 12-ft mock up floor was built to evaluate construction procedures. The assembly of the composite floor system is relatively simple. The corrugated composite floor system might be able to offset the cheaper labor costs of the single-layer Sturd-IFloor through the material savings. However, no conclusive result can be drawn, in terms of the construction costs, at this point without an in depth cost analysis of the two systems. The shallow corrugated composite floor system might be a potential alternative to the Sturd-I-Floor in the near future because of the excellent flexural stiffness provided.

Structural capacity of steel tubular cast-in-place piling

Steel tubular cast-in-place pilings are used throughout the country for many different project types. These piles are a closed-end pipe with varying wall thicknesses and outer diameters, that are driven to depth and then the core is filled with concrete. These piles are typically used for smaller bridges, or secondary structures. Mostly the piling is designed based on a resistance based method which is a function of the soil properties of which the pile is driven through, however there is a structural capacity of these members that is considered to be the upper bound on the loading of the member. This structural capacity is given by the AASHTO LRFD (2010), with two methods. These two methods are based on a composite or non-composite section. Many state agencies and corporations use the non-composite equation because it is requires much less computation and is known to be conservative. However with the trends of the time, more and more structural elements are being investigated to determine ways to better understand the mechanics of the members, which could lead to more efficient and safer designs. In this project, a set of these piling are investigated. The way the cross section reacts to several different loading conditions, along with a more detailed observation of the material properties is considered as part of this research. The evaluation consisted of testing stub sections of pile with varying sizes (10-¾”, 12-¾”), wall thicknesses (0.375”, 0.5”), and testing methods (whole compression, composite compression, push through, core sampling). These stub sections were chosen as they would represent a similar bracing length to many different soils. In addition, a finite element model was developed using ANSYS to predict the strains from the testing of the pile cross sections. This model was able to simulate the strains from most of the loading conditions and sizes that were tested. The bond between the steel shell and the concrete core, along with the concrete strength through the depth of the cross section were some of the material properties of these sections that were investigated.

Capacity optimization of a prestressed concrete railroad tie

Today the use of concrete ties is on the rise in North America as they become an economically competitive alternative to the historical industry standard wood ties, while providing performance which exceeds its competition in terms of durability and capacity. Similarly, in response to rising energy costs, there is increased demand for efficient and sustainable transportation of people and goods. One source of such transportation is the railroad. To accommodate the increased demand, railroads are constructing new track and upgrading existing track. This update to the track system will increase its capacity while making it a more reliable means of transportation compared to other alternatives. In addition to increasing the track system capacity, railroads are considering an increase in the size of the typical freight rail car to allow larger tonnage. An increase in rail car loads will in turn affect the performance requirements of the track. Due to the increased loads heavy haul railroads are considering applying to their tracks, current designs of prestressed concrete railroad ties for heavy haul applications may be undersized. In an effort to maximize tie capacity while maintaining tie geometry, fastening systems and installation equipment, a parametric study to optimize the existing designs was completed. The optimization focused on maximizing the capacity of an existing tie design through an investigation of prestressing quantity, configuration, stress levels and other material properties. The results of the parametric optimization indicate that the capacity of an existing tie can be increased most efficiently by increasing the diameter of the prestressing and concrete strength. However, researchers also found that current design specifications and procedures do not include consideration of tie behavior beyond the current tie capacity limit of cracking to the first layer of prestressing. In addition to limiting analysis to the cracking limit, failure mechanisms such as shear in deep beams at the rail seat or pullout failure of the prestressing due to lack of development length were absent from specified design procedures, but discussed in this project.

Wind plant interaction with series-compensated power systems

Wind power based generation has been rapidly growing world-wide during the recent past. In order to transmit large amounts of wind power over long distances, system planners may often add series compensation to existing transmission lines owing to several benefits such as improved steady-state power transfer limit, improved transient stability, and efficient utilization of transmission infrastructure. Application of series capacitors has posed resonant interaction concerns such as through subsynchronous resonance (SSR) with conventional turbine-generators. Wind turbine-generators may also be susceptible to such resonant interactions. However, not much information is available in literature and even engineering standards are yet to address these issues. The motivation problem for this research is based on an actual system switching event that resulted in undamped oscillations in a 345-kV series-compensated, typical ring-bus power system configuration. Based on time-domain ATP (Alternative Transients Program) modeling, simulations and analysis of system event records, the occurrence of subsynchronous interactions within the existing 345-kV series-compensated power system has been investigated. Effects of various small-signal and large-signal power system disturbances with both identical and non-identical wind turbine parameters (such as with a statistical-spread) has been evaluated. Effect of parameter variations on subsynchronous oscillations has been quantified using 3D-DFT plots and the oscillations have been identified as due to electrical self-excitation effects, rather than torsional interaction. Further, the generator no-load reactance and the rotor-side converter inner-loop controller gains have been identified as bearing maximum sensitivity to either damping or exacerbating the self-excited oscillations. A higher-order spectral analysis method based on modified Prony estimation has been successfully applied to the field records identifying dominant 9.79 Hz subsynchronous oscillations. Recommendations have been made for exploring countermeasures.

Energy and conductance state modeling of power electronic converters for DC microgrids

This document will demonstrate the methodology used to create an energy and conductance based model for power electronic converters. The work is intended to be a replacement for voltage and current based models which have limited applicability to the network nodal equations. Using conductance-based modeling allows direct application of load differential equations to the bus admittance matrix (Y-bus) with a unified approach. When applied directly to the Y-bus, the system becomes much easier to simulate since the state variables do not need to be transformed. The proposed transformation applies to loads, sources, and energy storage systems and is useful for DC microgrids. Transformed state models of a complete microgrid are compared to experimental results and show the models accurately reflect the system dynamic behavior.

STATE OF CHARGE BALANCING DROOP CONTROL

This thesis presents a load sharing method applied in a distributed micro grid system. The goal of this method is to balance the state-of-charge (SoC) of each parallel connected battery and make it possible to detect the average SoC of the system by measuring bus voltage for all connected modules. In this method the reference voltage for each battery converter is adjusted by adding a proportional SoC factor. Under such setting the battery with a higher SoC will output more power, whereas the one with lower SoC gives out less. Therefore the higher SoC battery will use its energy faster than the lower ones, and eventually the SoC and output power of each battery will converge. And because the reference voltage is related to SoC status, the information of the average SoC in this system could be shared for all modules by measuring bus voltage. The SoC balancing speed is related to the SoC droop factors. This SoC-based load sharing control system is analyzed in feasibility and stability. Simulations in MATLAB/Simulink are presented, which indicate that this control scheme could balance the battery SoCs as predicted. The observation of SoC sharing through bus voltage was validated in both software simulation and hardware experiments. It could be of use to non-communicated distributed power system in load shedding and power planning.