No abstract

Pavement infrastructure is essential and must be protected with limited resources. For decades, industrialized nations have used Pavement Management Systems (PMS) and pavement distress assessment to examine network and project-level pavement conditions. Pavement condition models can anticipate pavement degradation, schedule maintenance, and create multi-year rehabilitation plans based on historical data. Pavement condition surveys are done annually or biannually to calibrate pavement condition models and reduce network maintenance costs. This study highlights road system deficiencies to meet traffic demand, improper systematic methods of maintaining networks, budget constraints for decision makers, deficiencies in road geometrics, poor construction and maintenance practices, the need for proper planning and resource management, and improper planning. The technique comprises a theoretical element of PMS and a review of performance evaluation studies. A PMS lets users export data in an easy-to-understand manner, helping them manage their roadways better. Manual pavement distress surveys need certified raters.

In most engineering designs, steel connections are usually considered as fully rigid connections or perfectly pinned connections, for simplicity of design work. In reality, this assumption is incorrect. The behaviour of the beam-column connection is in between of rigid connection and perfectly pinned connection. This type of connection is termed semi-rigid connection. This article represents a numerical analysis using finite element method of structural steel frames to investigate the effect of semi-rigid beam-column connection on the behaviour of the frame. ANSYS software was used for the finite element modelling of the frames. The beam-column connection was modelled as rotational spring with specified rotational stiffness using COMBIN14 element. The study includes investigation the effect of semi-rigid on different study cases such as: support types and number of stories. The obtained results reveal that changing the beam-column connection from rigid case to semi-rigid case with different rotational stiffness can increase the vertical and horizontal displacement of the frame with a percentage depends on the rotational stiffness of the beam-column connection. Changing the support type of the frame from fixed to pinned support or increasing the number of stories with semi-rigid connection can decrease the strength capacity of the frame. This indicates the importance of including the semi-rigid connection in the design and analysis of steel frames to obtain more realistic results.