Wason Medal for Most Meritorious Paper, American Concrete Institute

Award winner

ICHINOSE Toshikatsu (Emeritus Professor, Nagoya Institute of Technology)

Award-winning research

Experimental Investigation of Size Effect on Shear Strength of Reinforced Concrete Pile Caps

Related Website of the winner

researchmap

Ichinose Laboratory.

Related Website

American Concrete Institute Paper Awards

Outline

As urbanization progresses, reinforced concrete structures around the world are becoming larger, but it is difficult to reproduce such large structures in a laboratory. In order to predict the strength large structures from the experimental results of small structres, it is essential to understand the effect that the size of the structure has on its strength (size effect).  In this study, experiments were conducted using one of the world's largest loading facilities, recently installed in Taiwan, and it was demonstrated that there is a lower bound to the size effect. This is expected to make it easier to build megastructures in the future.

This achievement was published in the January 2024 issue of the American Concrete Institute (ACI) Structural Journal and was recognized as the best paper across all disciplines published by the ACI in 2024.