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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
KEYWORDS Abstract Many research studies have been carried out on the different parameters affecting the
Transverse reinforcement; bond strength of tension lap splices in RC beams but limited attention has been given to the effect
Lap splice; of using transverse reinforcement along the splice length. The first part of this research is an exper-
High strength concrete; imental program which consisted of sixteen reinforced concrete beams tested at the concrete labo-
Self-compacting concrete; ratory of the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. The parameters under study herein are the
Ductility; diameter of the transverse reinforcement as well as its shape and distribution while using three dif-
ABAQUS ferent types of concrete. The beams were all simply supported with 1800 mm span and
150 250 mm cross section. The tensile steel was spliced in the constant moment zone. The second
part of the research consisted of an analytical study to enhance the understanding of the topic of
this research. Three-dimensional nonlinear finite element analysis was carried with the help of
the well-known finite element software; ABAQUS. The concrete damaged plasticity model is
selected at this study because it is capable of representing the complete inelastic behavior of concrete
both in tension and in compression including damage characteristics. The analytical and experimen-
tal results were compared and contrasted. Good agreement was obtained.
Ó 2017 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an
open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
[1]. In addition, the mechanical properties of concrete have a other variables were considered. He concluded that there is a
significant effect on the bond characteristics which makes the drastic increase in ductility of beams when transverse rein-
type of concrete a worthy parameter in the study of the behav- forcement was used. Ghasabeh [7] conducted an experimental
ior of the tension lap splices [2]. Many advances in the produc- program on twelve beam specimens cast with self-compacting
tion of concrete led to different concrete types such as Self- concrete. He concluded that the ACI 408R-03 [8] descriptive
Compacting Concrete and High Strength Concrete. Self- equation for predicting the stress at spliced bars was good just
Compacting Concrete is known for its excellent deformability for beams without transverse reinforcement within lap zone,
and high resistance to segregation [3]. High Strength Concrete while it was not accurate for beams that contain transverse
has the advantage of a much higher strength than the usual reinforcement where it under-estimates the role of confinement
normal strength concrete. by stirrups. Generally, it can be said that design codes such as
Many researches were reported on the bond strength ECP 203-2007 [9] and ACI 318-05 [10] do not take the effect of
between deformed bars and concrete for each of the above transverse reinforcement into consideration.
mentioned three types separately. El-Azab [4] tested sixteen Based on the above, it can be seen that the usage of the
High Strength Self Compacting beam specimens with two or transverse reinforcement has not yet been fully investigated.
three spliced bars. He studied the effect of reinforcement diam- The main objective of this research is to study the effect of
eter, and ratio, splice length and casting position. He con- using transverse reinforcement with different ratios, distribu-
cluded that for improving the splice bond strength, a splice tion and shapes on the behavior of reinforced concrete beams
length of 40 times the bar diameter need to be taken as well loaded under pure tension while using three different types of
as using smaller bar diameter for the same reinforcement ratio concrete namely normal strength concrete, self-compacting
and avoiding top casting position. Twelve full-scale beams concrete and high strength concrete.
were tested in positive bending by Turk [5] with the loading
system designed to determine the effect of self-compacting con-
crete and the diameter of reinforcement on the bond–slip char- 2. Experimental program
acteristics of tension lap splices. The results showed that load
transfer within the tension lap spliced bars embedded in self- 2.1. Test specimens
compacting concrete was better than that of the spliced bars
embedded in normal strength concrete. A total of sixteen concrete beams were fabricated and tested at
Some research was conducted to study the effect of trans- the concrete laboratory of Cairo University, Giza, Egypt
verse reinforcement on the behavior of the tension lap splice. [11,12]. All the specimens were 2000 250 150 mm with a
Seventeen full-scale beam specimens cast with high strength loaded span 1800 mm. The main reinforcement consisted of
concrete were tested in positive bending by Ahmed [6]. He two high grade (400/600) steel deformed bars with diameter
studied the effect of the concrete compressive strength, splice 10 mm. The specimens were divided into five groups as shown
length and the amount of transverse reinforcement within in Table 1. Group I consisted of three control specimens cast
lap splice zone. The results showed that providing stirrups with the three types of concrete used in this research namely
within lap splice zone increase the beam’s ultimate load capac- Normal Strength Concrete (NC), High Strength Concrete
ity and ductility. Diab [1] tested twelve normal strength con- (HC), and Self-Compacting Concrete (SC). In these control
crete beam specimens. In this study, the type, spacing and specimens, no splices were used. Group II consisted of 6 spec-
shape of spacing and shape of transverse reinforcement in imens with lap splice in the middle zone to study the effect of
splice region embedded in normal strength concrete among the transverse reinforcement in terms of number, diameter and
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices 3
distribution. Group III and Group IV studied the HC and SC investigated namely vertical, rectangular, corrugated and spi-
concrete, respectively. Group V studied the effect of the differ- ral as shown in Fig. 1. All the specimens other than the control
ent shapes of stirrup. Four different types of stirrups were group were designed to have a lap splice of length 300 mm at
mid span. This value was selected to develop stresses in steel
less than the yield stress in order to ensure a splitting mode
of failure [9]. Transverse reinforcement with diameter of
6 mm and spacing of 100 mm (Ø 6 @100 mm) was provided
outside the splice region of all beams to avoid shear failure.
Complete details of the different specimens are shown in
Fig. 2.
A four-part notation system was used to indicate the vari-
ables of each beam. The first part of the notation indicates
the type of concrete: NC, HC and SC for Normal strength,
High strength and Self Compacting concretes respectively.
The second part indicates splice length: L00 for no splice
and L30 for 300 mm splice. The third part indicates details
of transverse reinforcement provided and it is represented by
two numbers. For example; 4T6, the first number indicates
existence of four stirrups within lap zone while the second
Fig. 1 Different shapes of transverse reinforcement used. number indicates that the used diameter for the stirrups is
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
4 R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir
6 mm. The fourth part represents the four different shapes of 2.63 and fineness modulus of 2.78 was used. The coarse aggre-
stirrups used. V indicates vertical closed stirrups, R indicates gate used was well graded crushed dolomite with a nominal
rectangular hoop stirrups, C indicates corrugated stirrups maximum size of 20 and 10 mm. with specific gravity of 2.61
and S indicates spiral stirrups. and water absorption of 0.5% by mass. The mineral admixture
was light gray locally produced silica fume. The chemical
2.2. Materials used admixture was super-plasticizer type GLENIUM C315 which
is used to increase the workability of concrete and to reduce
Three types of concrete mixes were designed to satisfy the the amount of required mixing water. The mixes used to cast
experimental program objectives. The first one is normal the specimens were developed by trial batching at the Concrete
strength concrete (NC) with a 30 MPa targeted compressive Research Laboratory of Cairo University. Mixture propor-
strength after 28 days. This concrete did not contain any type tions are shown in Table 2.
of admixtures. The second mix is for self-compacting concrete The SC was poured into the mold at once without any
(SC) with the same targeted compressive strength of 30 MPa vibration while the NC and HC were cast in two layers in each
but requires a high level of fluidity. This was achieved by add- beam specimen and compacted using an electrical vibrator.
ing mineral and chemical admixtures. The last mix was the Methods used to determine the fresh self-compacting concrete
high strength concrete (HS) which requires a higher cement properties are different than the ones recommended for fresh
content and lower water content together with using admix- normal vibrated concrete. In addition to the slump, there are
tures to produce a characteristic compressive strength of several other essential test items for fresh concrete properties
90 MPa. of SC based on the guidance given in EFNARC (2005) [3],
In the three mixes, ordinary Portland cement CEM I 42.5R including the slump flow, T50, V-funnel test, L-box test and
was used that complies with ASTM C150 type 1 cement. The segregation sieve test. The slump of NC was 68 mm as mea-
fine aggregate was natural sand with a specific gravity of sured before casting while, a slump flow of 660 mm was
obtained for SC as shown in Fig. 3. Typically, three
150 150 150 mm cubes were cast with each test beam
and used for compression test. The beams and cubes were kept
under the same curing conditions. Compression test on cubes
were carried out on the same day of beam testing, and the
results were higher than the design compressive strengths of
concrete.
(a) Control specimens with no splices (b) Specimens with lap splices
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices 5
In this part the experimental results of all the tested beams are
Fig. 5 General test arrangement. discussed in terms of load-deflection relationships, ductility (D)
and modes of failure. Table 3 shows the output results for all
the tested beams. The ductility index of the beam is defined as
the ratio of mid span deflection at ultimate load to the mid
span deflection at the yielding load of the main steel [11]. In
this research, the ultimate deflection of the tested beams is also
compared to the ultimate deflection of the control specimen
and is referred to herein as the relative ductility. Crack pat-
terns and load strain curves can be referred to in Refs. [12,13].
Table 3 Ultimate loads and ductility measures for the tested beams.
Group Specimen notation Deflection Deflection at ultimate Ultimate Ductility Relative Mode of
at yield (mm) load (mm) load (kN) index ductility failure
I NC-L00-0T6-V 7.9 32.49 104 4.11 1 Flexure
HC-L00-0T6-V 2.74 40.43 132 14.76 1 Flexure
SC-L00-0T6-V 4.02 29.46 106 7.33 1 Flexure
II NC-L30-0T6-V 3.92 6.66 84.6 1.70 0.20 Splitting
NC-L30-2T6-V 3.56 6.10 99 1.71 0.19 Splitting
NC-L30-4T6-V 2.74 5.80 98 2.12 0.18 Flexure
NC-L30-6T6-V 3.68 30.10 102 8.18 0.93 Flexure
NC-L30-2T8-V 3.78 5.91 93 1.56 0.18 Splitting
NC-L30-NT6-V 3.26 22.71 95.5 6.97 0.70 Splitting
III HC-L30-0T6-V NAa NAa 96 NAa NAa Splitting
HC-L30-6T6-V 5.89 40.08 130 6.80 1.23 Flexure
IV SC-L30-0T6-V 3.88 10.10 101 2.60 0.31 Splitting
SC-L30-6T6-V 3.78 22.30 122 5.90 0.69 Flexure
b b
V NC-L30-4T6-S 6.48 75.6 0.20 Splitting
NC-L30-4T6-R 4.57 5.41 101 1.18 0.17 Flexure
NC-L30-4T6 C 3.13 5.58 81 1.78 0.17 Flexure
a
An error occurred with the data reading during the experiment.
b
Steel did not yield.
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
6 R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir
120 120
NC-L30-2T8-V
100 100
Total vercal load (KN)
60 60
40
40
NC-L00-0T6-V
20 NC-L30-0T6-V
NC-L30-6T6-V 20
0
0 20 40 60 0
0 10 20 30 40
Deflecon (mm)
Deflecon (mm)
Fig. 7 Effect of stirrups.
Fig. 9 Effect of stirrups diameter.
120
120
100
100
Total vercal load (KN)
Total vercal load (KN)
80
80
60 60
40 40
NC-L30-2T6-V
NC-L30-NT6-V
20 NC-L30-4T6-V 20
NC-L30-6T6-V
NC-L30-6T6-V
0 0
0 20 40 60 0 20 40 60
Deflecon (mm) Deflecon (mm)
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices 7
0
3.5. Concrete type 0 20 40 60
Deflecon (mm)
Figs. 7 and 14 show the load deflection curves for the beams
using the three types of concrete NC, SC and HC. Regardless Fig. 13 Load deflection curves for high strength concrete.
of concrete type, all beams without stirrups along splice length
(NC-L30-0T6-V, SC-L30-0T6-V and HC-L30-0T6-V) had a
sudden splitting mode of failure. Similar increase of transverse ing the ultimate load capacity for the two cases of no splice and
reinforcement resulted in an increase in the beams ductility when six stirrups were provided within the splice zone, there
over beams with no stirrups along the splice length and a was not much difference for NC and HC. However, for SC
change in the mode of failure to flexural one as seen for beams concrete the ultimate load of the beam with transverse rein-
NC-L30-6T6-V, SC-L30-6T6-V and HC-L30-6T6-V. Compar- forcement surpassed the beam with no splice with about 15%.
120 120
100 100
80 80
Load (kN)
Load (kN)
60 60
40 40
end strain gauge end strain gauge
20 mid strain gauge 20 mid strain gauge
0 0
0 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0 0.001 0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005
Strain Strain
(a) Beam NC-L30-6T6-V (b) Beam NC-L30-NT6-V
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
8 R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir
140 140
120 120
80 80
60 60
40 SC-L00-0T6-V 40 HC-L00-0T6-V
SC-L30-0T6-V HC-L30-6T6-V
20 SC-L30-6T6-V 20
0 0
0 20 40 60 0 20 40 60
Deflecon (mm) Deflecon (mm)
(a) Self-compacting concrete (b) High strength concrete
Fig. 13 shows a comparison between the three types of con- and parameters to reproduce high accuracy in calculations and
crete in case of using six stirrups within the lap splice. It can be provide comprehensive outputs concerning stress analysis.
seen that the beam with HC had an ultimate load capacity Fully integration scheme was chosen to integrate the element’s
30% higher than that of NC while the beam with SC had an internal forces and stiffness. The materials nonlinearity due to
ultimate load 22% higher than NC despite the fact that the cracking, crushing of concrete, and yielding of reinforcement
SC mix was designed with the same compressive characteristic were taken into consideration during the analysis [15].
strength as the NC. This can be attributed to the fact that self- ABAQUS has an advanced and extensive library for ele-
compacting concrete has good bonding characteristics that ments and materials [15]. As shown in Fig. 15a, concrete was
resulted in improving the beam behavior more than the normal modeled using 3-dimensional, 8-node solid elements; C3D8,
vibrated concrete with the same compressive strength [2,5]. It with three degrees of freedom for each node; translations u,
can be said that self-compacting concrete can give optimum v, and w in the three orthogonal directions; x, y and z, respec-
compatibility between concrete, main reinforcement and trans- tively. Steel reinforcement was modeled as 2-node truss ele-
verse reinforcement at splice zone. Comparing the ductility of ments also with three degrees of freedom per each node. The
the three beams in Fig. 13, it can be seen that normal concrete bonding between reinforcement and concrete was achieved in
had the highest ductility index of 8.18 followed by high ABAQUS using the ‘‘embedded” technique as shown in
strength concrete (6.8) and finally the self-compacting concrete Fig. 15b, where, steel reinforcement was used as the embedded
with 5.9. element and the concrete was designated as the host element.
Supporting and loading plates that transfer the reactions from
4. Numerical simulation and to the concrete elements are modeled as rigid solid parts.
Similar to concrete beam, the three dimensional solid element
In order to support the experimental results, a three- C3D8 was chosen to model the steel plates on both loading
dimensional nonlinear finite element analysis was undertaken and supporting positions. Figs. 16 and 17 show the different
with the help of the commercial finite element software; ABA- model components.
QUS version 6.13. ABAQUS is a very complex finite element To avoid stress concentrations within the concrete beam,
analysis program introduced with huge material characteristics the reaction forces were transferred to the beam through plates
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices 9
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
10 R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir
fctm ¼ 2:12 logð1 þ ðfcm =10ÞÞ > C50=C60 ð4Þ rt ¼ ð1 dt Þ E ðet ee Þ ð7Þ
The damage parameter value (dc) is defined as the ratio of
fctm the inelastic strain to the total strain, E is modulus of elasticity
ee ¼ ð5Þ
E and ee is the elastic strain.
where fctm is the tensile strength of concrete, fck is the charac-
teristic cylinder strength, fcm is the target mean cylinder 4.2. Steel reinforcement model
strength, E is the modulus of elasticity and ee is the elastic
strain. C50/C60 represents the strength class equivalent to The reinforcing steel is assumed to be elastic-perfectly plastic
fcu = 60 N/mm2. material in both tension and compression. The steel input data
After the crack is initiated, the tensile stress starts to for all beams were taken as follows: in elastic zone; the elastic
decrease by means of a softening response [15]. In order to sim- behavior was modeled as linear and isotropic. The modulus of
ulate the complete tensile behavior of reinforced concrete in elasticity and Poisson’s ratio of reinforcing steel are input to
ABAQUS, a simplified post failure stress-strain relationship ABAQUS for elastic behavior simulation. However, once the
for tension according to Nayal and Rasheed [17] is adopted stress in the steel exceeds the yield stress, permanent plastic
Fig. 20 Tension stiffening model according to (a) ABAQUS manual and (b) Nayal and Rasheed simplified model.
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices 11
deformation begins to occur. The stiffness of the steel analysis using ABAQUS are presented. The goal of this com-
decreases once the material yields. The material model used parison is to assess the behavior of the lap splices in the beams
for reinforcing steel follows the standard stress-strain diagram under study and to assure that the elements, material proper-
in Eurocode 2 1992-1 [14] as shown in Fig. 21. ties, real constants and convergence criteria are adequate to
model the behavior of reinforced concrete beams containing
4.3. Experimental verification
60
40 NC-L30-0T6-V
Experiment
20
ABAQUS
0
0 2 4 6 8 10
Deflecon (mm)
120
120
100
Total vercal load (KN)
100
Total vercal load (KN)
80
80
60
60
40 NC-L30-2T6-V
40
Experiment Experiment
20 20
ABAQUS ABAQUS
0 0
0 10 20 30 40 0 2 4 6 8 10
Deflecon (mm) Deflecon (mm)
Fig. 22 Load deflection curve for NC-L00-0T6-V. Fig. 25 Load deflection curve for NC-L30-2T6-V.
140
120
120 100
Total vercal load (KN)
Total vercal load (KN)
100 80
80
60
60
HC-L00-0T6-V 40 NC-L30-4T6-V
40
Experiment Experiment
20 20
ABAQUS ABAQUS
0 0
0 20 40 60 0 2 4 6 8 10
Deflecon (mm) Deflecon (mm)
Fig. 23 Load deflection curve for HC-L00-0T6-V. Fig. 26 Load deflection curve for NC-L30-4T6-V.
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
12 R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir
tensile reinforcement lap splice with or without transverse rein- elling. Therefore, the three beams cast using self-compacting
forcement within the splice zone. concrete were not studied using ABAQUS. Further study
Currently, there are no specific models incorporated in the and investigations are needed in this area.
design codes to simulate the behavior of self-compacting con- Figs. 22–34 show the comparison between experimental
crete instead of normal concrete in terms of material mod- data and results obtained using ABAQUS regarding the load
120
120
100
Total vercal load (KN)
100
120 140
100 120
Total vercal load (KN)
100
80
80
60
60
40 HC-L30-6T6-V
NC-L30-2T8-V 40
Experiment
20 Experiment
20 ABAQUS
ABAQUS
0 0
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 10 20 30 40 50
Deflecon (mm) Deflecon (mm)
Fig. 28 Load deflection curve for NC-L30-2T8-V. Fig. 31 Load deflection curve for HC-L30-6T6-V.
120
120
100
100
Total vercal load (KN)
80 80
60 60
40 NC-L30-NT6-V 40 NC-L30-4T6-S
Experiment Experiment
20 20
ABAQUS ABAQUS
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 2 4 6 8 10
Deflecon (mm) Deflecon (mm)
Fig. 29 Load deflection curve for NC-L30-NT6-V. Fig. 32 Load deflection curve for NC-L30-4T6-S.
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices 13
120 deflection curves for the studied beams. The curves are shown
up to the failure point as the post failure part is not well rep-
Total vercal load (KN) 100 resented using ABAQUS. Regarding the values of the ultimate
deflection, there is a rather big difference in the values obtained
80 from experiment and those estimated using finite element. One
reason for that can be that the post cracking stiffness and sim-
60 ulation of the reinforced concrete elements are not well repre-
sented which is another point that requires further
40 NC-L30-4T6-R
investigation. Overall, the general load – deflection curves esti-
Experiment mated using ABAQUS followed the same trend compared to
20 the ones obtained from experiment. Table 4 summarizes the
ABAQUS
output results. It can be seen that the differences in case of ulti-
0 mate load capacity did not exceed 20% except for three cases.
0 2 4 6 8 10
It can be said that the results obtained from the finite element
Deflecon (mm) analysis in terms of the ultimate load gave a reasonable agree-
ment when compared with the experimental data.
Fig. 33 Load deflection curve for NC-L30-4T6-R.
5. Conclusions
120
two bars at the tension side of the beam were studied under
80 constant bending moment. Comparison with FEM program
ABAQUS was conducted. Based on the analysis and compar-
60 ison of ultimate load capacity, modes of failure, load-
deflection relationship and ductility of the beams studied in
40 NC-L30-4T6-C this research, the following conclusions were made:
a
% represents ratio of values estimated by ABAQUS to values from Experimental results.
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001
14 R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir
Please cite this article in press as: R.T.S. Mabrouk, A. Mounir, Behavior of RC beams with tension lap splices confined with transverse reinforcement using different
types of concrete under pure bending, Alexandria Eng. J. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aej.2017.05.001