Experimental Study of Shear Failure of Damaged RC Beam Strengthened with GFRP
Antecedents of Variations in Construction Contracts - A Statistical Correlational Study
Dynamic Response of Footbridge Decks
Urban Green Spaces and their Role in Enhancing Quality of Life
Parametric Study on Structural Behaviour of RCC Box Culvert
Study on Strength Properties of Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate Concrete
A Step By Step Illustrative Procedure to Perform Isogeometric Analysis and Find the Nodal Displacements for a Two Dimensional Plate Structure
Lateral - Torsional Buckling of Various Steel Trusses
Comparative Study on Methodology of Neo-Deterministic Seismic Hazard Analysis Over DSHA and PSHA
A Step by Step Procedure to Perform Isogeometric Analysis of Beam and Bar Problems in Civil Engineering Including Sizing Optimisation of a Beam
Investigation on the Properties of Non Conventional Bricks
Analysis on Strength and Fly Ash Effect of Roller Compacted Concrete Pavement using M-Sand
Investigation on Pozzolanic Effect of Mineral Admixtures in Roller Compacted Concrete Pavement
Effect of Symmetrical Floor Plan Shapes with Re-Entrant Corners on Seismic Behavior of RC Buildings
Effect of Relative Stiffness of Beam and Column on the Shear Lag Phenomenon in Tubular Buildings
The ability to service and increase the loadbearing capacity of structural materials has been considered as an important economic issue for a long time. Concrete is a widely used structural material today. Despite its remarkable properties, including high ductility, high durability, longevity, availability and low cost, concrete is a brittle material and performs extremely poor under flexural and tensile loads. In general, the breakdown and destruction of concrete strongly depends on the formation of cracks and micro-cracks. As loading increases, the micro-cracks interconnect and form cracks. In order to address this problem and to create homogeneous conditions, a series of thin filaments have been used throughout the concrete in recent decades; they are called fibers. Steel fiber is one of the most commonly used fibers in concrete. In this study, the compressive strength of concrete was investigated, with some specimens reinforced with steel and containing pozzolanic materials, which increases the compressive strength of the control specimens. Also the flexural and tensile strength of the steel fiber reinforced specimens were investigated. According to the results, flexural strength increases with increase in steel fibers. The specimens contain 1%, 1.5%, and 2% of the dramix hooked steel fibers. By reinforcing the specimens with steel fibers, the behavior of tensile concrete is more flexible than that of non-steel specimens.
Concrete develops cracks and get deteriorated, losing its structural performance when exposed to alternate freezing and thawing. Usually, the effect of freezing and thawing in concrete is reduced by lowering the water-cement (w/c) ratio or by using an air-entraining admixture. Researches carried out on bacterial concrete have shown that the CaCO 3 produced by the bacteria seals the micro-cracks and improves the properties of the concrete. In this study, an attempt has been done to investigate the effect of freezing and thawing of Quaternary Blended Bacterial Self-Compacting Concrete (QBBSCC), which is a blend of 40 % cement, 10 % micro-silica, 25 % fly ash and 25 % GGBFS (Ground-Granulated Blast-Furnace Slag). Bacillus Subtilis bacteria was selected for this study. For water-binder (w/b) ratios 0.3 and 0.4, super-plasticizer of 1.8 % and 1.6% by weight of binder respectively were used. QBBSCC cubes were subjected to 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50 numbers of freeze-thaw cycles in an ice-cream freezer box. Each freeze-thaw cycle comprised of freezing the samples from 10 ºC to -10 ºC within two hours, then maintaining the temperature at -10 ºC for half-an-hour and thawing from -10 ºC to 10 ºC within another two hours i.e., a freezing rate of 10ºC/hr was adopted. Weight loss, residual compressive strength, dynamic modulus of elasticity, and relative dynamic modulus of elasticity were evaluated. From the result, it was found that QBBSCC exhibited better freeze-thaw resistance than reference concrete without bacteria, Quaternary Blended Self-Compacting Concrete (QBSCC).
The present study aims at an optimal design of a model water treatment plant comprising of a Rapid mix unit, Clariflocculator and Rapid sand filter. The suspended solids are considered as the basic impurity whose volume is assumed to be reduced to 2 mg/lit in filtered water for different raw water qualities. Various parameters such as velocity gradient, detention time, surface overflow rate, filtration rate, diameter of sand grain, depth of sand bed and time of filter run are considered as design variables for the optimization process. A set of mathematical formulae comprising of the above design variables is used to arrive at optimal values. Algorithms developed based on dynamic programming are used to arrive at the stated optimal design variables. It can be observed from the study that the optimal design differs from conventional design mainly with reference to the two design variables, i.e., surface overflow rate in the clariflocculator and filtration rate of filtration unit. A comparison of the existing treatment plant of capacity 15 MGD locally with that of the optimal design of same capacity plant using the optimal design variables is presented.
Laminated composite is an emerging area of Civil Engineering. The conventional materials can be replaced with composite materials having light weight and improved strength. This study aims to perform a static analysis of laminated composite plates using a six node curved shell triangular element. The shape functions are of the second degree, which can precisely represent the variation of displacement within the element. The coding for this study is done using MATLAB®. In this study, two standard examples from the literature have been solved, - simply supported and clamped boundary conditions. The maximum central deflection for a simply supported plate carrying a uniformly distributed load using six node triangular element is 0.4449 when compared with the maximum central deflection of 0.4498 using LDT18 formulation given in the literature. The central deflections show an improved result over the existing results by many authors available in the literature. The deformed shape of the plate is presented. This study can be useful for the analysis of narrow domains where the use of quadrilateral elements is not feasible.
Concrete Sandwich Panel (CSP) system is an energy efficient, light weight and economic construction system for civil infrastructure. It consists of concrete wythes, shear connectors and light weight core material. This system can be used as wall, floor and roof panel for the properties of light weight, great strength and good thermal performance. The strength of Concrete Sandwich Panel systems are obtained by using high strength shear connectors and high performance concrete. Concrete strength is improved by using Textile Reinforced Concrete (TRC), Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete (GFRC) and adding admixtures to the concrete. Thermal performance and light-weight can be achieved by using light weighted core materials, such as Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), Extruded Polystyrene (XPS) etc., and Foamed Concrete (FC) further reduces the structural weight. Concrete Sandwich Panels (CSP) will reduce the seismic effect due to light weight and lateral strength. This article provides an overview of state-of- the-art research and development and also the applications of Concrete Sandwich Panel (CSP). It discovers the problems and future potential for the wide use of these enhanced systems in civil infrastructure.
The usage of nano-materials in concrete is gaining increasing attention in the construction industry. Studies have shown that concrete containing nanoparticles has demonstrated increased strength and durability. The use of large quantity of cement product increases CO emissions and also consequents the greenhouse effect. The use of nano-materials reduces the cement content in the concrete mix and hence reduces the greenhouse effect. In the present paper, the influence of nano-silica on mechanical properties of concrete is studied by replacing the cement with various percentages of nano-silica. Experimental investigations are being conducted with nano-silica as a partial replacement for cement in the range of 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% and 5% for concrete of grades M40, M50 and M60 mixes, respectively. The optimum dosage of replacement of nano-silica was found to be 3%, beyond which the results for the mechanical properties were not encouraging. The durability is also tested. The results of the tests are analyzed, discussed and presented.