scholarly journals XBLOC-PLUS: THE INTERLOCKING, PATTERN PLACED AND EFFICIENT ARMOUR UNIT

Author(s):  
James Donnelly ◽  
Pieter Bakker ◽  
Bas Reedijk ◽  
Yang Zi Qian

Most breakwaters are built with randomly placed single layer armour units as these are most cost-efficient. Most single layer blocks require random unit orientations, which requires the crane operator to assess the orientation of each individual unit during placement. DMC noticed the desire for an interlocking block which can be placed in a regular pattern as many crane operators find it easier to place units uniformly, which requires less intuition. Fifteen years after the introduction of Xbloc, DMC introduces a new interlocking breakwater armour unit called XblocPlus which is placed with uniform block orientations.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/oEb1vsYfjL8

Author(s):  
Robert Jacobs ◽  
Pieter Bakker ◽  
Ineke Vos-Rovers ◽  
Bas Reedijk

Randomly placed single layer interlocking concrete armor units are currently the most advanced and cost-efficient option for the protection of breakwaters. The key feature of these units is the random orientation of the units, which requires the crane operator to assess the orientation of each individual unit during block placement. DMC noticed the desire for a block which can be placed in a regular pattern as this will increase the placement rates. Apart of this, regular placement of armor units can also be preferred for aesthetical reasons. Fifteen years after the introduction of Xbloc, DMC therefore introduces a new breakwater armour unit called XblocPlus which is placed with uniform block orientations.


Author(s):  
Guirong Yan ◽  
Jianxin Zu ◽  
Yi Zhao ◽  
Yan Xiao

Reticulated shell structures have been widely built for public assembly venues, where many people get together during events. Therefore, it is important to conduct condition assessment for this type of structure to ensure the safety of the general public. Considering that the member configuration of this type of structure may follow a regular pattern and damage in a local region may destroy the regular pattern, a damage detection approach based on the change in structural shape is proposed in this study. The change in structural shape can be obtained from the displacement at each joint. Since it may be difficult to measure displacements on this type of structure, it is proposed to use the uniform load surface calculated from the constructed modal flexibility matrix to represent displacements at joints. Therefore, this approach requires the measurement of acceleration responses, instead of displacement measurement. For validating the feasibility of the proposed approach, numerical simulations are conducted on a single-layer dome structure with different levels of damage severity considered. The obtained results verify that the proposed approach is capable of locating damage to exact members.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (9) ◽  
pp. 1339-1354
Author(s):  
Guirong Yan ◽  
Tiantian Li ◽  
Jianxin Yu ◽  
Ruoqiang Feng ◽  
Xiaoyun Shao

Civil large-span space structures have been widely built for public assembly venues. The failure of this type of structure may endanger the lives of many people. Considering that the member configuration of this type of structure may follow a regular pattern and damage in a local region may destroy the regular pattern, a damage detection approach based on the change in structural shape has been proposed by the present authors. In that approach, to obtain the change in structural shape due to damage, the displacements at joints between members are required to be measured. Since it is difficult to measure displacements on this type of structure in practice, in this study, the authors proposed to use the shape change of the uniform load surface for damage localization. Uniform load surface physically represents the deflection profile of the structure under the assumed uniformly distributed loading and can be calculated from the flexibility matrix constructed from the identified natural frequencies and mode shapes. This approach can locate damage to exact structural members. It will avoid costly and tedious work in measuring displacements. This approach has been numerically validated on single-layer space structures with two different member configurations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (36) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Bas Reedijk ◽  
Tamara Eggeling ◽  
Pieter Bakker ◽  
Robert Jacobs ◽  
Markus Muttray

Single layer, randomly placed, interlocking concrete units are widely used for the protection of exposed breakwaters. Based on 15 years of experience with Xbloc projects around the world, DMC started the development of an armour unit called XblocPlus. XblocPlus is a single layer concrete unit which is placed in a regular pattern. An essential part of this development were hydraulic model tests in 2D and in 3D to determine the hydraulic stability under wave loading and the overtopping volumes for the new units. These studies and the results regarding the stability, failure mechanisms and roughness coefficient are described in this paper.


2018 ◽  
pp. 22-30
Author(s):  
Yahiea Al Naiemy ◽  
Taha Elwi ◽  
Lajos Nagy ◽  
Thomas Zwick

In this paper, an Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) lens of a single layer is invented to improve the gain of a truncated slotted square patch antenna for the Wi-Fi applications. The proposed EBG lens is structured from 55 planar array. The individual unit cell is basically shaped as a couple of a split concave conductive patch. The proposed EBG struc- ture performance is tested numerically using Finite Integration Technique (FIT) formulations of CSTMWS and analytically using circuit theory. Then, the antenna performance in terms of |S11|, the boresight gain, and radiation patterns are reported and compared to the performance before introducing the EBG lens to identify the significant enhancements. The proposed EBG antenna is simulated numerically inside FIT formulations of CSTMWS time domain (TD) solver. A significant gain enhancement of 11.1 dBi at 2.45 GHz and a front to back ratio (F/B) about 22 dB are achieved after introducing the EBG lens. The antenna performance is validated using a frequency domain (FD) solver based CSTMWS formulations to obtain excellent agreements between the two invoked methods.


Author(s):  
Murray Stewart ◽  
T.J. Beveridge ◽  
D. Sprott

The archaebacterium Methanospirillum hungatii has a sheath as part of its cell wall which is composed mainly of protein. Treatment with dithiothreitol or NaOH released the intact sheaths and electron micrographs of this material negatively stained with uranyl acetate showed flattened hollow tubes, about 0.5 μm diameter and several microns long, in which the patterns from the top and bottom were superimposed. Single layers, derived from broken tubes, were also seen and were more simply analysed. Figure 1 shows the general appearance of a single layer. There was a faint axial periodicity at 28.5 A, which was stronger at irregular multiples of 28.5 A (3 and 4 times were most common), and fine striations were also seen at about 3° to the tube axis. Low angle electron diffraction patterns (not shown) and optical diffraction patterns (Fig. 2) from these layers showed a complex meridian (as a result of the irregular nature of the repeat along the tube axis) which showed a clear maximum at 28.5 A, consistent with the basic subunit spacing.


Author(s):  
Maria Anna Pabst

In addition to the compound eyes, honeybees have three dorsal ocelli on the vertex of the head. Each ocellus has about 800 elongated photoreceptor cells. They are paired and the distal segment of each pair bears densely packed microvilli forming together a platelike fused rhabdom. Beneath a common cuticular lens a single layer of corneagenous cells is present.Ultrastructural studies were made of the retina of praepupae, different pupal stages and adult worker bees by thin sections and freeze-etch preparations. In praepupae the ocellar anlage consists of a conical group of epidermal cells that differentiate to photoreceptor cells, glial cells and corneagenous cells. Some photoreceptor cells are already paired and show disarrayed microvilli with circularly ordered filaments inside. In ocelli of 2-day-old pupae, when a retinogenous and a lentinogenous cell layer can be clearly distinguished, cell membranes of the distal part of two photoreceptor cells begin to interdigitate with each other and so start to form the definitive microvilli. At the beginning the microvilli often occupy the whole width of the developing rhabdom (Fig. 1).


Author(s):  
X. Lin ◽  
X. K. Wang ◽  
V. P. Dravid ◽  
J. B. Ketterson ◽  
R. P. H. Chang

For small curvatures of a graphitic sheet, carbon atoms can maintain their preferred sp2 bonding while allowing the sheet to have various three-dimensional geometries, which may have exotic structural and electronic properties. In addition the fivefold rings will lead to a positive Gaussian curvature in the hexagonal network, and the sevenfold rings cause a negative one. By combining these sevenfold and fivefold rings with sixfold rings, it is possible to construct complicated carbon sp2 networks. Because it is much easier to introduce pentagons and heptagons into the single-layer hexagonal network than into the multilayer network, the complicated morphologies would be more common in the single-layer graphite structures. In this contribution, we report the observation and characterization of a new material of monolayer graphitic structure by electron diffraction, HREM, EELS.The synthesis process used in this study is reported early. We utilized a composite anode of graphite and copper for arc evaporation in helium.


Swiss Surgery ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 114-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steinke ◽  
Leippold ◽  
Schweizer

Über die Frage der besten oder "richtigen" Technik bei gastrointestinalen Anastomosen wird seit je diskutiert. Die Ansprüche an eine gute Anastomosentechnik sind: Gute Durchblutung, Wasserdichtigkeit, Spannungsfreiheit, Sicherheit, leichte Durchführbarkeit, wenig Unruhe und Verschmutzung im Operationsgebiet und geringe Kosten. Die Operationstechnik der extramukösen, fortlaufenden Anastomosentechnik im Gastrointestinaltrakt wird in Wort und Bild erläutert. Anhand einer Pilotstudie, einer randomisierten Vergleichsstudie, einer Schweizer Multizenterstudie und schliesslich einer 5-jährigen Qualitätskontrollstudie wird gezeigt, dass diese "Schweizer"-Technik allen Anforderungen zur Durchführung einer "idealen" Anastomose gerecht wird und an fast allen intestinalen Lokalisationen verwendet werden kann.


2020 ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Nandan Kumar ◽  
Sainath Shrikant Pawaskar

Flash fire caused by electric arc is different than that caused by flammable liquids/fumes or combustible dusts. A suitable protective clothing for protection against electric arc-flash must be designed as per Indian weather conditions. Currently available garments are manufactured using two or three layers of woven/nonwoven combinations to achieve higher Hazard Risk Category (HRC) rating (level 3 and above). However, they are heavy and not comfortable to the end users. Savesplash® is a single layer inherent flame-retardant knitted fabric. Its arc rating was determined using ASTM standards. It achieved arc thermal performance value (ATPV) of 41 cal/cm2, breakopen threshold energy (E_BT) of 42 cal/cm2 and heat attenuation factor (HAF) of 94% when tested as per ASTM F1959/F1959M-14 which translated into an arc rating of 41 cal/cm2. This is equivalent to HRC level 4 ratings as per National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 70E standard (USA). Further, cut and sewn gloves (HM-100) developed using Savesplash® fabric reinforced with leather on palm area achieved ATPV of 63 cal/cm2 and HAF of 94.5% when tested as per ASTM F2675/F2675M-13.


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