A New Panel Element Tester for the Investigation of Reinforced Concrete Behavior under Non-proportional Load Paths
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The first Panel Element Tester was conceived by Vecchio and Collins at the University of Toronto in the late 1970s. This apparatus allows for the mechanical testing of concrete elements under combined in-plane normal and shear stresses and provided important experimental insights into the behavior of reinforced concrete leading to the development of the Modified Compression Field Theory (MCFT). A next-generation version of this testing rig has been constructed at EPFL, Switzerland, to study reinforced concrete and other materials subject to general, non-proportional load trajectories. The EPFL Panel Element Tester features increased hydraulic capacity as well as servo-actuator control to allow for real-time, independent command of shear and normal stresses, enabling a more extensive range of testing protocols. This paper presents the design of the EPFL Panel Element Tester, including descriptions of the mechanical, hydraulic and control systems. Alternate potential configurations of the modular, bolted design are also presented. Moreover, it is shown through linear analysis that a redesigned connection point eliminating geometric eccentricity between the actuator links and the reinforced concrete panel improves the uniformity of stresses in the tested panel elements
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".