Engineering firm Pieters Bouwtechniek Delft has designed many cantilevering elements in Compact Reinforced Composite over the past years. This material, often abbreviated as CRC, is an UHPFRC developed by Hi-Con Denmark and the material distinguishes itself from other concretes as it incorporates large volumes of steel fibres and reinforcement steel. As a result it is a ductile concrete type with outstanding crack controlling properties. One of the challenges met during designing with CRC is the fact that the Eurocode does not implement the improved properties of the material, such as the improved post-cracking response which is a result of the addition of fibres. This results in designs often requiring stirrups in order to comply with the Eurocode with regard to the shear capacity and the prevention of brittle failure.An example case where this problem was faced, is in the design of the landing platform in a staircase for the Raqtan project, engineered by Pieters Bouwtechniek. This design consist of a cantilevered platform, connected to a wall via a console. The Eurocode requires the addition of stirrups, while it is expected that these stirrups are not required in order to provide a sufficiently safe design. Therefore the following question was raised: Were stirrups required in the console in the design of the Raqtan landing platform in order to obtain a level of safety as required by the Eurocode? This report researched the structural response of the element without the application of stirrups in order to answer this question and determine whether the safety standards as stated in the Eurocode are met. The design without the stirrups is validated in three ways. The first method is by application of multiple design standards which incorporate a contribution by the fibres, such as the Model Code 2010 and the renewed French annex to the Eurocode. Most codes did not validate the design and predicted shear failure before the design load was reached. The French annex did validate the application of the design without stirrups. This is a result of the underlying principles used for this approach: the French guideline bases the tensile behaviour of the UHPFRC on the uni-axial tensile curve, while the other guidelines are based on the flexural tensile curve.The second validation method was through the Finite Element Method. Multiple tensile models were validated against previous experiments and were then used to determine the structural response and ultimate capacity of the Raqtan element. The models failed in bending at a capacity above the design load, thus validating the design. After the results were analytically validated, a variation study was performed on the influence of certain model properties on the structural response. The variations, such as the boundary conditions and mesh configuration, did not significantly influence the ultimate capacity. This analysis validated the application of the design without stirrups. The third and last validation was performed by testing multiple elements in the lab to find the actual capacity. Both elements without and with stirrups were tested to compare the resulting change in structural response. Some elements were reinforced to increase the bending capacity by at least 50%, as the FE models predicted failure in bending even when mean material properties were applied. The reinforced elements did not fail in shear as well, which demonstrated that the bending moment capacity was not only governing, but also significantly lower than the shear capacity. The derived design values for the ultimate load resulted in sufficient capacity for the element to resist the design loads.Combining the performed validations, it is concluded that the element's shear capacity was not governing for the ultimate resistance as it was at least 50% higher than the found the bending moment capacity. This bending moment capacity was sufficient according to all applied codes. When this capacity is taken as the total capacity of the element, it can be stated that the element complies with the codes and therefore provides a level of safety as required by the Eurocode.

As the amount of digital content being shared is increasing, the need for a privacy protecting and resilient method of file sharing grows. New copyright law proposals are suggesting that governments and corporations are attempting to claim control over the use of the internet. As these new laws may lead to restrictions in digital content sharing, as well as endangering the privacy of users, alternative methods of sharing files may be able to solve these issues. Peer-to-peer networks for file sharing, such as BitTorrent, are resilient networks due to their decentralised nature. Tribler combines the BitTorrent protocol with a Tor-like anonymity system to protect its users against governments and spooks. Due to its Tor-like onion routing protocol, exit nodes are important for a robust network. This project focuses on PlebNet, an autonomous self-replicating network of Tribler exit nodes. Using Cloudomate, PlebNet is able to purchase servers with Bitcoins acquired from selling Tribler’s bandwidth tokens and replicate itself to expand its network of exit nodes.