The report is titled "Highway Bridge Vibration Studies". This Interim Report is of some of the activity which has been in progress on this research in the Joint Highway Research Project at Purdue University.It is an investigation of those parameters which affect bridge accelerations and human response. The findings indicate that the parameters which affect the human pedestrian are predominately span length, weight and speed of the vehicle, and surface roughness.The Report is presented to the Board for acceptance as partial fulfillment of the objectives of the research. It The results of the investigation indicated that, for simple span bridges, the amplitudes of accelerations which psychologically disturbed the pedestrian were predominately affected by the span length of the bridge, the weight and speed of the vehicle, and the surface roughness.The parameters that provided the minor effects were the girder flexibilities and the transverse position of load.For two and three span continuous bridges, the magnitudes of acceleration were larger than the recommended limit of comfort only when the surface roughness of the bridges was taken into account.Deflection limitations and maximum girder span-depth ratios used in present bridge design codes do not assure the bridge users' comfort.Present bridge design criteria have limited the use of high strength steel although the dynamic characteristics of the bridge may be satisfactory.Some reports indicate that bridge acceleration was significant in producing psychological effects.The results of this study indicate high strength steel girders could be used for highway bridges since the effect on bridge accelerations of flexibility of the steel was relatively Insignif 1 cant.

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Nowadays, materials used to construct house or building wall areconsidered not only in the physical material behaviour but also energy conscious and economic factor. Adding crumb rubber to the brick composite is one of many methods to develop the properties of bricks. As widely known,the finite element method (FEM) is a tool used for finding accurate solutions of the heat transfer equation of materials including the composite bricks. In this paper an investigation of the heat transfer of a soil cement brick containing crumb rubber particles, is presented and compared to results of finite element analysis (FEA) simulation. To determine the effect of crumb rubber to the heat transfer behaviour of soil cement brick, different volume fractions are varied by 10, 20, 30 and 40%. It was reported that a modelling application reveals good correspondence with the experimental results.

Composite beams are made of steel sections connected with slabs of concrete held together with shear connectors. The beams enhance the loading capacity and stiffness according to AISC and AASHTO design standards. In this study tests on three restrained steel-concrete full composite beams subjected to a cyclic point load and monotonic loading were conducted and their performances on stiffness, strength, ductility and energy dissipation capacity were analyzed and compared with the results of monotonic loading cases. It was found that the degree of the shear connectors and the type of loading and the position of the load were the major factors influencing the stiffness and cumulative energy dissipation capacity of the full composite restrained steel beams.