Artigos de Revista

Nowadays, there are multiple initiatives showing a renewed interest on railway transport of goods and passengers around the world. Thus, an efficient management of railway infrastructures, both at the operational level and in terms of economic profitability, is not only desirable but also corresponds to an area of ongoing research. In order to contribute to these efforts, an alternative and novel methodology to evaluate railway track support conditions is presented here, based on modal analysis of the characteristic frequencies of the multi-element system composed by a railway infrastructure and an instrumented vehicle moving over it. This methodology belongs to the group of vibration-based structural damage identification methods, and is focused on observing the characteristic frequencies of this multi-element system, which can be correlated with changes in the physical properties of the railway infrastructure under analysis. An important feature of the proposed methodology is that it should enable the collection of information regarding the conditions of the substructure of a railway infrastructure. By performing this assessment of a railway infrastructure over its length, and over time by comparing different rides over the same railway stretch, important information can be gathered regarding the support conditions of the track. This paper presents a complete description on the current stage of development of the proposed methodology, along with the theoretical model that serves as the basis to interpret the collected data. Preliminary verification of this methodology is performed through the analysis of two case studies regarding the passage of an instrumented vehicle over two underpasses. The results obtained so far show that the proposed methodology can provide relevant information regarding the support conditions of railway tracks.

A reabilitação de edifícios tem crescido nos últimos anos, sendo uma das áreas com maior investimento do setor público e privado. O desafio na reabilitação de edifícios permite reduzir o uso de recursos, tentando reduzir o impacto ambiental e tornando o setor de construção mais eficiente. O principal objetivo da pesquisa desenvolvida é compreender como o uso de ferramentas digitais permite uma abordagem mais eficiente na reabilitação energética de um edifício. Desta forma, e considerando diferentes soluções de reabilitação, é possível realizar uma análise de alternativas, comparando-as com a solução base e assim sendo capaz de compreender quais são os ganhos energéticos, bem como a solução ótima. Os resultados serão apresentados possibilitando a comparação com medidas reais e os parâmetros de referência dos padrões para desempenho térmico. A possibilidade de editar as propriedades térmicas dos materiais de construção considerados, permite a realização de várias simulações com diversas combinações de possíveis melhorias. Os resultados obtidos podem ser parte integrante de uma análise de custo-benefício para apoiar a tomada de decisão

The safety and resilience of school buildings against natural disasters is of paramount importance since schools represent a reference point for communities. Such significance is not only related to the direct consequences of collapse on a vulnerable part of the population, but also due to the importance of schools in the post-disaster recovery. This work is focused on the risk and resilience assessment of school buildings in Lisbon (Portugal) under seismic events. The results of this study, in which a subset of 32 schools are analyzed, are used to define a prioritization strategy to mitigate the seismic risk of the Lisbon City Council school building portfolio and to assess the overall resilience of the school network. Numerical modeling of the school buildings is performed in order to estimate losses in terms of the built-up area of the schools and recovery times associated with different seismic scenarios, which are probabilistically defined specifically for the sites of the buildings, accounting for the local soil conditions and associated amplification effects. Based on the obtained risk estimates, which are compared to reference values established on international guidelines and specialized literature, the Lisbon City Council and LNEC jointly defined a short- and medium-term risk mitigation plan, starting with a detailed inspection and assessment of the most vulnerable school buildings and continuing to the implementation of retrofitting measures.

O SAFEPORT-SINES é um sistema de previsão e alerta para a segurança da navegação em zonas portuárias, englobando situações de emergência associadas a navios em trânsito ou amarrados, devidas a condições meteo-oceanográficas extremas. O sistema fornece previsões com 3 dias de antecedência da agitação marítima, das condições de vento e de maré, assim como dos movimentos dos navios, identificando as situações que possam ter consequências gravosas nos navios em manobra ou amarrados dentro do porto. Os níveis de risco associados baseiam-se em critérios de segurança e de operacionalidade, nomeadamente nos movimentos do navio e nos esforços nos elementos de amarração. Neste trabalho apresenta-se o sistema SAFEPORT em termos do seu desenvolvimento e arquitetura, do fluxo e tratamento de dados e do funcionamento dos modelos numéricos utilizados. Apresenta-se ainda o funcionamento da plataforma web e da aplicação móvel onde é possível consultar os parâmetros relevantes para aferir os riscos referidos

SAFEPORT safety system aims at forecasting and alerting, on a regular basis, emergency situations regarding ships operation in port areas caused by extreme weather-oceanographic conditions. It uses forecasts provided offshore of the area under study of sea agitation, wind and tide. The characterization of the response of the free and moored ships at a berth is performed using the numerical package SWAMS. The system issue alerts, through danger levels associated with risk levels of exceedance of recommended values for movements and forces imposed on ship mooring systems. SAFEPORT can be adapted to any port. So far, it has been developed and adapted to three terminals of the port of Sines, where three different ships were simulated. This paper presents the developments made to date of the safety system, which includes tests performed in storm situations. The numerical models run every day, in real-time mode, in a computer cluster and the system provide forecast results for the next 72 hours. The results are disseminated on a web page and a mobile application in a variety of formats. It was concluded that the SAFEPORT safety system issued alerts according to the observed reality during the storm Dora. It has also been shown to be a computer tool for the optimization of ship mooring systems. The system is currently in testing and validation phase therefore, forecasts should be interpreted as indicative.

Salt decay is one of the main decay mechanisms of the porous building materials but due to its complexity progress has been slow, both regarding the understanding of the mechanism itself and the definition of mitigation solutions. Research has so far privileged a reductionist approach, focusing on the behavior of a few individual salts. However, the typical reality of these constructions are multi-ionic solutions from which, depending on the conditions, different types of salts can precipitate in different crystalline forms. The originality of Arnold and Zehnder was that they did not embrace reductionist approaches, maintaining the focus on salt mixtures and the way these behave in real constructions. This path led to approaches to the problem and possible mitigation solutions that have not yet been adequately discussed and explored. In this review, I seek to identify the most interesting contributions of the two authors and the directions they suggest for future research.

Probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA), despite its deep criticism, is still the most common tool used to decide on the acceptable seismic risk and corresponding mitigation measures. We propose two consistency tests to address the variability of earthquake generation models found in PSHA studies: (i) one rule-of-thumb test where the seismic moment release from the model is converted to an average slip on a typical fault and compared with known plate kinematics or GNSS deformation field and (ii) a test where using a neotectonic model the computed deformation is converted into seismic moment release and to a synthetic earthquake catalogue. We apply these tests to W and SW Iberia slowly deforming region, where two earthquake source areas are investigated: (1) the Lower Tagus Valley, one of the largest seismic risk zones of Portugal; and (2) the offshore SW Iberia area, considered to be the source for the 1 November 1755 event (M

Docking of very large ships is a delicate procedure as the kinetic energy associated with large masses of the ship can result in high impact forces causing damages to the ship, the fenders and even the quay itself. The expected berthing loads are a key element in quay design. Fenders are usually rubbery flexible elements that turn the vessel

Docking of very large ships is a delicate procedure as the kinetic energy associated with large masses of the ship can result in high impact forces causing damages to the ship, the fenders and even the quay itself. The expected berthing loads are a key element in quay design. Fenders are usually rubbery flexible elements that turn the vessel

The To-SEAlert project (Fortes et al., 2021) aims to include a set of tools/methodologies into the Early Warning System HIDRALERTA (Poseiro, 2019, Fortes et al., 2020, Pinheiro et al., 2020) to make it more efficient, reliable and robust.