Experimental Study of the Structural Behaviour of Reinforced Concrete Box Girder with the Using of Steel Plates Strengthening and Different Shapes of Cells

The aim of this research is to study the effect of using corrugated steel plate strengthening on the structural behaviour of reinforced concrete box girder by using corrugated steel plates with vertical and horizontal corrugation and studying the effect of the shape of cells by using rectangular and circular shape with the same web width and strengthening the circular cell with smooth plate. Five simply supported reinforced concrete box girders are casted by using Self-compacting concrete and experimentally tested under four-point load. The box girder specimens are divided into two groups according to the steel strengthening and the shape of cells. The experimental results showed that in the first group, the using of the vertical and horizontal corrugated steel plates strengthening increased the ultimate load by (7.14% and 11.03%) respectively compared with the control box girder, and decreased the crack width, the results also showed that in the second group, the using of circular cell and circular strengthened cell increased the ultimate load by (17.85% and 29.22%) respectively compared with the control box girder with rectangular cell and decreased the crack width. All the box girders in the first and second group failed with diagonal shear.

Study on architecture design of electroactive sites on Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (V-RFB)

Numerous researches have been conducted to look for better design of cell architecture of redox flow battery. This effort is to improve the performance of the battery with respect to further improves of mass transport and flow distribution of electroactive electrolytes within the cell. This paper evaluates pressure drop and flow distribution of the electroactive electrolyte in three different electrode configurations of vanadium redox flow battery (V-RFB) cell, namely square-, rhombus- and circular-cell designs. The fluid flow of the above-mentioned three electrode design configurations are evaluated under three different cases i.e. no flow (plain) field, parallel flow field and serpentine flow field using numerically designed three-dimensional model in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. The cell exhibits different characteristics under different cases, which the circular cell design shows promising results for test-rig development with low pressure drop and better flow distribution of electroactive electrolytes within the cell. Suggestion for further work is highlighted.