Coronavirus ate my dessert

 Hello everyone,

in the last post I have mentioned the dessert which I've prepared to end my experimental campaign.

Together with team of dr. Odile Abraham from Université Gustave Eiffel, Nantes, we have planned an interesting test. I have executed two unusual T-shaped UHPFRC beams with steel reinforcement bar at mid-height (same as this one). They were supposed to instrument the beams with ultrasonic devices and use their novel measurement technique to detect and estimate the length of cracks and discontinuities.

Not only this technique was never tried for UHPFRC, but also (as far as I know) it was neither tested on element exposed to fatigue loading!

Originally we've planned to commence the test on 16th of March. This happened to be the exact date of the lockdown in Switzerland due to COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, we had to postpone the test.

Back in the early summer, we've set the new date of commencement of the test for the beginning of October. But, again, the pandemics has spoiled our plans - since mid-September all visitors from Nantes region (and almost whole France) need to stay for 10 days quarantine after entering Switzerland. Unfortunately, this made us to cancel this much expected cooperation. The fatigue testing takes more than a month, and my contract at EPFL ends in less than 12 weeks, so we didn't have any more chance to run it in later period....

Of course, I am still running the test without them - I use multiple measurement techniques, automatized and synced so the experiment can run 24/7. 

  Still, it is a shame that we were not able to run the experiment together...

It is truly difficult to conduct the international research during this special time of pandemic.