Structural Performance Assessment of Innovative Hollow Cellular Panels for Modular Flooring System

Lightweight modular construction has become an increasing need to meet the housing requirements around the world today. The benefits of modular construction ranging from rapid production, consistency in quality, sustainability, and ease of use have widened the scope for the construction of residential, commercial, and even emergency preparedness facilities. This study introduces novel floor panels that can be flat-packed and built into modular housing components on-site with minimal labour and assistance. The flooring system uses hollow cellular panels made of various configurations of trapezoidal steel sheets. The structural performance of three different configurations of these hollow flooring systems as a modular component is presented in this study by analysing the failure modes, load-displacement parameters, and strain behaviour. The study confirms significant advantages of the proposed hollow floor systems, with multi-cells reporting higher load-carrying capacity. The hollow flooring system performed well in terms of structural performance and ease in fabrication as opposed to the conventional formworks and commercial temporary flooring systems. The proposed flooring system promises efficient application as working platforms or formworks in temporary infrastructural facilities and emergency construction activities.

Polishing Performance of a Recycled Grinding Wheel Using Grinding Wheel Scraps for the Wet Polishing of Stainless-Steel Sheets

The surfaces of large austenitic stainless-steel sheets, which have side lengths of at least 1 m a sheet thickness of at least 6 mm, used for food tanks and sliding plates in seismic isolation devices, must be finished to a mirror surface. Polishing is performed to improve the surface quality of such sheets and dry machining is typically applied. The problems associated with dry machining are the exhaust heat of machining and treatment of chips. A transition to wet machining is required to solve these problems. In our laboratory, we have developed a wet polishing machine and researched the selection of grinding wheels to develop wet polishing technology for large stainless-steel sheets. In this study, to reduce tool cost and reuse resources, we attempted to manufacture a recycled grinding wheel using snippets of grinding wheel scraps. A polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) aqueous solution was used as the bonding agent for the recycled grinding wheel to reduce environmental load. To overcome the ease of dissolution of PVA in water, we attempted to improve the water resistance of the PVA aqueous solution by incorporating an organic titanium compound. This is one of our efforts to contribute to sustainable development goals. The results are summarized below. (1) A recycled grinding wheel was fabricated by kneading crushed pieces of grinding wheel scrap with a bonding agent. (2) The maintenance of the shape of the recycled grinding wheel was controlled by the concentration of the bonding agent. (3) The recycled grinding wheel with a PVA bonding agent was vulnerable to water. In contrast, the recycled grinding wheel to which the organic titanium compound was added exhibited improved water resistance. (4) The polishing of stainless-steel sheets using the plain PVA recycled wheel was relatively ineffective, but polishing using the recycled wheel with the titanium additive was comparable to polishing with a new grinding wheel.

Effect of Minor Alloying Elements (C, Ni, Cr, Mo) on the Long-Term Corrosion Behaviors of Ultrahigh-Strength Automotive Steel Sheet in Neutral Aqueous Environment

This study examined the effects of minor alloying elements (C, Ni, Cr, and Mo) on the long-term corrosion behaviors of ultrahigh-strength automotive steel sheets with a tensile strength of more than 1800 MPa. A range of experimental and analytical results showed that the addition of Ni, Cr, and Mo decreased the corrosion current density and weight loss in electrochemical and immersion tests, respectively, in a neutral aqueous condition. This suggests that the minor addition of elements to steel can result in improved corrosion resistance even for long-term immersion periods. This is closely associated with the formation of thin and stable corrosion scale on the surface, which was enriched with the alloying elements (Ni, Cr, and Mo). On the other hand, their beneficial effects did not persist during the prolonged immersion periods in steel with a higher C content, suggesting that the beneficial effects of the minor addition of Ni, Cr, and Mo were overridden by the detrimental effects of a higher C content as the immersion time was increased. Based on these results, lower C and the optimal use of Ni, Cr, and Mo are suggested as a desirable alloy design strategy for developing ultrahigh-strength steel sheets that can be exposed frequently to a neutral aqueous environment.