This study presents experimental and numerical investigations on seven one-way, reinforced concrete (RC) slabs with a new technique of slab weight reduction using polystyrene-embedded arched blocks (PEABs). All slabs had the same dimensions, steel reinforcement, and concrete compressive strength. One of these slabs was a solid slab, which was taken as a control slab, while the other six slabs were cast with PEABs. The main variables were the ratio of the length of the PEABs to the length of the slab (lp/L) and the ratio of the height of the PEABs to the total slab depth (hP/H). The minimum decrease in the ultimate load capacity was about 6% with a minimum reduction in the slab weight of 15%. In contrast, the maximum decrease in the ultimate load capacity was about 24% with a maximum reduction in the slab weight of 40%. Moreover, the mode of failure changed from flexure to shear failure, especially for those slabs with an lP/L ratio equal to one. The geometric and material non-linearity was adopted in the proposed finite element (FE) model to simulate the slabs with PEABs using Abaqus software. Good agreement was obtained between the developed FE and experimental results.
This paper presents a study to investigate the behavior of post-tensioned segmental concrete beams that exposed to high-temperature. The experimental program included fabricating and testing twelve simply supported beams that divided into three groups depending on the number of precasting concrete segments. All specimens were prepared with an identical length of 3150 mm and differed in the number of the incorporated segments of the beam (9, 7, or 5 segments). To simulate the genuine fire disasters, nine out of twelve beams were exposed to a high-temperature flame for one hour. Based on the standard fire curve (ASTM – E119), the temperatures of 300◦C (572◦F), 500◦C (932◦F), and 700◦C (1292◦F) were adopted. Consequently,
... Show MoreConventional concretes are nearly unbendable, and just 0.1 percent of strain potential makes them incredibly brittle and stiff. This absence of bendability is a significant cause of strain failure and has been a guiding force in the production of an elegant substance, bendable concrete, also known as engineered cement composites, abbreviated as ECC. This type of concrete is capable of displaying dramatically increased flexibility. ECC is reinforced with micromechanical polymer fibers. ECC usually uses a 2 percent volume of small, disconnected fibers. Thus, bendable concrete deforms but without breaking any further than conventional concrete. This research aims to involve this type of concrete, bendable concrete, that will give solut
... Show MoreThe aim of this investigation is to determine how different weight percentages of alumina nanoparticles, including 0.02, 0.04, and 0.06 percent wt, affect the physical characteristics of Poly Acrylamide (PAAM). Using a hot plate magnetic stirrer, 10 g of poly acrylamide powder was dissolved in 90 g of di-ionized distillate water for 4 hours to produce PAAM with a concentration of 0.11 g/ml. Four sections of the resulting solution, each with a volume of 20 ml, were created. Each solution was added independently with alumina nanoparticles in different ratios 0.0, 0.02, 0.04, and 0.06 to create four nano fluid solutions with different alumina nanoparticle contents based on each weight percent. The hand casting process for n
... Show MoreThe influence of fiber orientation and water absorption on fatigue crack growth resistance for cold cure acrylic (PMMA) reinforced by chopped and woven -glass-fibers were investigated. A weight of 2 g for chopped fibers and the same weight for woven -glass-fibers (one layer) were used to prepare samples. Some of these samples would storage in dry condition; the others were immersed in water for 15 days. Fatigue test was carried out. The results shows that, for PMMA, the initial bending stress for dry specimen was 3.392 N/cm2 and the number of cycles were 1364, the initial bending stress for wet samples was 4.20 N/cm2, and the number of cycles was 2411. The samples would cut in two pieces because of the cracks would propagated fast during
... Show MoreThis study was aimed to find and test biological methods for reducing the aggregation of plastics such as PS in the environment and study the ability of Greater Wax worms larvae (Galleria mellonella) to eat PS that similar in the its structure to beeswax .Weight loss, morphology changes ,FTIR spectroscopy and GC-mass analysis were performed which showed changes in chemical properties of the PS due to degradation. In this study the percentage of weight loss was 33% in the PS treated with G. mellonella. FTIR of PS frass showed the disappearance of aromatic cycle band that was found in the origin PS at region more than 3000 cm-1. Also The PS frass samples from wax worms larvae revealed the creation of a new O-H stretching alcohol
... Show MoreThe primary objective of this study is to manage price market items in the construction of walls for affordable structures with load-bearing hollow masonry units using the ACI 211.1 blend design with a slump range of 25-50 mm that follows the specification limits of IQS 1077. It was difficult to reach a suitable cement weight to minimum content (economic and environmental goal), so many trail mixtures were cast. A portion (10-20%) of the coarse aggregates was replaced with concrete, tile, and clay-brick waste. Finally, two curing methods were used: immersion under water as normal curing, and water spraying as it is closer to the field conditions. The recommendation in IQS 1077 to increase the curing period from 14 to 28 days was tak
... Show MoreData hiding is the process of encoding extra information in an image by making small modification to its pixels. To be practical, the hidden data must be perceptually invisible yet robust to common signal processing operations. This paper introduces a scheme for hiding a signature image that could be as much as 25% of the host image data and hence could be used both in digital watermarking as well as image/data hiding. The proposed algorithm uses orthogonal discrete wavelet transforms with two zero moments and with improved time localization called discrete slantlet transform for both host and signature image. A scaling factor ? in frequency domain control the quality of the watermarked images. Experimental results of signature image
... Show MoreThe historic cities in the Arab and Islamic world (including the cities of the holy shrines in Iraq) suffer from many and varied problems and most notably it is clear in its origin functional structure. It had been transformed from a basic place to live for a few thousand of the population to the center or part of the main center of large city populations of more than one million. Functional structure of the ancient city have been change with the beginning of the twentieth century and accelerated rate of change in the second half of the last century. The research aims to analyze the problems of the historic centers of holy cities and analyze the methods of dealing with these problems, leading to discrimination method could be the
... Show MoreEco-friendly concrete is produced using the waste of many industries. It reduces the fears concerning energy utilization, raw materials, and mass-produced cost of common concrete. Several stress-strain models documented in the literature can be utilized to estimate the ultimate strength of concrete components reinforced with fibers. Unfortunately, there is a lack of data on how non-metallic fibers, such as polypropylene (PP), affect the properties of concrete, especially eco-friendly concrete. This study presents a novel approach to modeling the stress-strain behavior of eco-friendly polypropylene fiber-reinforced concrete (PFRC) using meta-heuristic particle swarm optimization (PSO) employing 26 PFRC various mixtures. The cement was partia
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