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The fire resistance of precast prestressed concrete floor systems is heavily influenced by the end connections and the stiffness of the surrounding structure, both of which must be considered in any analysis. Analysing floor slabs with beam or shell elements whose end nodes share the nodes of supporting beams leads to a major problem for precast prestressed flooring systems where the steel tendons terminate at the end of the flooring units, because the approach of sharing nodes of the supporting beam and floor assumes that these tendons are anchored into the supporting beams. In order to solve this problem, a "multi-spring" connection element has been developed. Experimental data available from previous research work has been used to validate the finite element model. It is concluded that the inclusion of the multi-spring connection results in more accurate predictions of prestressed hollowcore slab behaviour in fire conditions.

This paper discusses algorithms for large displacement analysis of interconnected flexible and rigid multibody systems. Hydrostatic and hydrodynamic loads for systems being submerged in water are also considered. The systems may consist of cables and beams and may combine very flexible parts with rigid parts. Various ways of introducing structural joints are discussed. A special implementation of the Hilber‐Hughes‐Taylor time integration scheme for constrained non‐linear systems is outlined. The formulation is general and allows for displacements and rotational motion of unlimited size. Aspects concerning efficient solution of constrained dynamic problems are discussed. These capabilities have been implemented in a general purpose non‐linear finite element program. Applications involving static and dynamic analysis of a bi‐articulated tower and a floating tripod platform kept in place by three anchor lines are discussed.

Realistic composite vehicles with 2, 3, 5 and 9 axles, consisting of a truck with one or two trailers, are addressed in this paper by computational models for vehicle–bridge interaction analysis.

The vehicle–bridge interaction (VBI) models are formed by sets of 2-D rigid blocks interconnected by mass, damping and stiffness elements to simulate their suspension system. The passage of the vehicles is performed at different speeds. Several rolling surface profiles are admitted, considering the maintenance grade of the pavement. The spectral density functions are generated from an experimental database to form the longitudinal surface irregularity profiles. A computational code written in Phyton based on the finite element method was developed considering the Euler–Bernoulli beam model.

Several models of composite heavy vehicles are presented as manufactured and currently travel on major roads. Dynamic amplification factors are presented for each type of composite vehicle.

The VBI models for compound heavy vehicles are 2-D.

This work contributes to improving the safety and lifetime of the bridges, as well as the stability and comfort of the vehicles when passing over a bridge.

The structural response of the bridge is affected by the type and size of the compound vehicles, their speed and the conservative grade of the pavement. Moreover, one axle produces vibrations that can be superposed by the vibrations of the other axles. This effect can generate not usual dynamic responses.