An Experimental Study on Mechanical Properties of Self Compacting Concrete by using Fiber Reinforcement

The invention of Self Compacting Concrete has been tremendous and continuing growth in the working area over the past decade, culminating in its widespread usage in today’s reality. It outperforms regular cement in application and completion, cost, work reserve funds, and solidity. The addition of strands enhances its qualities, particularly those related to SCC’s post- break behaviour. The goal is to investigate the strength properties of SCC when mixed with various types of strands. Different strand types and filament speeds are among the variables studied. The essential characteristics of SCC, including strength, break energy, sturdiness, and sorptivity, must be controlled. The hydrated design and security development between fiber and blend will be examined using an electron microscope to examine the tiny building of several mixes. 12mm cut glass fiber, carbon fiber, and basalt fiber will be used in the request, as they have been for quite some time. 0.0 percent, 0.1 percent, 0.15 percent, 0.2 percent, 0.25 percent, and 0.3 percent of strands are removed based on volume. The request is broken down into two parts. The first half involves creating a planned blend for SCC of a detailed assessment, such as M30. The second half involves adding filaments such as glass, basalt, and carbon strands to the SCC blends and evaluating and verifying their plastic and hardened properties. The experiment demonstrates a modest improvement in SCC aspects by adding strands of various types and altering the volume. Carbon fiber is the most improved in the more challenging state, followed by Basalt fiber and Glass fiber, and the least improved in the plastic state due to its high-water absorption. Glass fiber fared better in the plastic state. Basalt fiber fared better in the present study regarding cost, appropriate amount, and overall viability.

An Experimental Study on Mechanical Properties of Self Compacting Concrete by using Fiber Reinforcement

The invention of Self Compacting Concrete has been tremendous and continuing growth in the working area over the past decade, culminating in its widespread usage in today's reality. It outperforms regular cement in application and completion,cost, work reserve funds, and solidity. The addition of strands enhances its qualities, particularly those related to SCC's post- break behaviour. The goal is to investigate the strength properties of SCC when mixed with various types of strands. Different strand types and filament speeds are among the variables studied. The essential characteristics of SCC, including strength, break energy, sturdiness, and sorptivity, must be controlled. The hydrated design and security development between fiber and blend will be examined using an electron microscope to examine the tiny building of several mixes. 12mm cut glass fiber, carbon fiber, and basalt fiber will be used in the request, as they have been for quite some time. 0.0 percent, 0.1 percent, 0.15 percent, 0.2 percent, 0.25 percent, and 0.3 percent of strands are removed based on volume. The request is broken down into two parts. The first half involves creating a planned blend for SCC of a detailed assessment, such as M30. The second half involves adding filaments such as glass, basalt, and carbon strands to the SCC blends and evaluating and verifying their plastic and hardened properties. The experiment demonstrates a modest improvement in SCC aspects by adding strands of various types and altering the volume. Carbon fiber is the most improved in the more challenging state, followed by Basalt fiber and Glass fiber, and the least improved in the plastic state due to its high-water absorption. Glass fiber fared better in the plastic state. Basalt fiber fared better in the present study regarding cost, appropriate amount, and overall viability

The Potential for Temporary Stand-Off Pads Integrated With Poplar and Willow Silvopastoral Systems for Managing Nitrogen Leaching

Intensive pastoral farming has been linked to adverse environmental effects such as soil degradation and increased fluxes of nitrogen, phosphorus, sediments, and pathogens into waterways, resulting in their degradation. Stand-off pads are engineered structures covered with bedding materials, available for occupation by stock to minimise those adverse effects to soil and water bodies. Wood chips are ideal for bedding due to their low cost, high water holding capacity, and stock preference as resting areas. While they reduce the mobility of both nutrients and pathogens, their effectiveness depends on the type of wood, size of the chips, pH, pad design, and feeding management used. Dissolved organic carbon, present in wood residue, may slow nitrogen mineralisation thereby decreasing loss via leachate. This effect depends on plant tannins and nutrients already stored within the plant tissue. Poplar and willow have high concentrations of tannins in leaves and bark with potential nitrification-inhibiting properties. When grown on-farm, these deep-rooted trees also reduce nitrogen leaching and prevent soil erosion. This review addresses the use of temporary stand-off pads within poplar or willow silvopastoral systems. Harvested trees can provide suitable wood chips for constructing the stand-off pad, while the deep rooting systems of the trees will reduce the moisture content of the pad, preventing waterlogging. A key objective is to discuss the feasibility and establishment of multiple temporary stand-off pads that allow for stock rotation from pad to pad, and subsequent on-site composting of wood-wastes into fertiliser, reducing both nutrient inputs and losses in agricultural systems. The review highlights the potential suitability of poplar and willow tree species for such a system.

Facile Synthesis of Fluorinated Polysilazanes and Their Durable Icephobicity on Rough Al Surfaces

Superhydrophobic Al surfaces with excellent durability and anti-icing properties were fabricated by coating dual-scale rough Al substrates with fluorinated polysilazane (FPSZ). Flat Al plates were etched using an acidic solution, followed by immersion in boiling water to generate hierarchical micro-nano structures on their surfaces. The FPSZ coatings were synthesized by grafting 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltrimethoxysilane (FAS-17), a fluoroalkyl silane), onto methylpolysilazane, an organopolysilazane (OPSZ) backbone. The high water contact angle (175°) and low sliding angle (1.6°) of the FPSZ-coated sample with an FAS-17 content of 17.3 wt% promoted the efficient removal of a frozen ice column with a low ice adhesion strength of 78 kPa at −20.0 °C (70% relative humidity), which was 4.3 times smaller than that of an OPSZ-coated surface. The FPSZ-coated Al surface suppressed ice nucleation, leading to a decrease in ice nucleation temperature from −19.5 to −21.9 °C and a delay in freezing time from 334 to 4914 s at −19.0 °C compared with the OPSZ-coated Al surface. Moreover, after 40 icing–melting cycles the freezing temperature of a water droplet on the FPSZ-coated Al surface remained unchanged, whereas that on the FAS-17-coated Al surface increased from −22.3 to −20.7 °C. Therefore, the durability of the polymeric FPSZ coating was superior to that of the FAS-17 monolayer coating.

Ultralow-temperature-driven water-based sorption refrigeration enabled by low-cost zeolite-like porous aluminophosphate

Thermally driven water-based sorption refrigeration is considered a promising strategy to realize near-zero-carbon cooling applications by addressing the urgent global climate challenge caused by conventional chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants. However, developing cost-effective and high-performance water-sorption porous materials driven by low-temperature thermal energy is still a significant challenge. Here, we propose a zeolite-like aluminophosphate with SFO topology (EMM-8) for water-sorption-driven refrigeration. The EMM-8 is characterized by 12-membered ring channels with large accessible pore volume and exhibits high water uptake of 0.28 g·g−1 at P/P0 = 0.2, low-temperature regeneration of 65 °C, fast adsorption kinetics, remarkable hydrothermal stability, and scalable fabrication. Importantly, the water-sorption-based chiller with EMM-8 shows the potential of achieving a record coefficient of performance (COP) of 0.85 at an ultralow-driven temperature of 63 °C. The working performance makes EMM-8 a practical alternative to realize high-efficient ultra-low-temperature-driven refrigeration.

Use of Hemp Fibres in 3D Printed Concrete

The use of fibres as reinforcement of 3D printed concrete is widely known and applicable in many situations. However, most of the applied fibres are not produced from renewable resources. Natural fibres are commonly considered as an ecological alternative for these fibres. In order to contribute to improvement of the sustainability of 3D printed concrete, natural fibres such as hemp can replace these synthetic fibres. The objective of this study is therefore to study the possibilities of adding hemp fibres for 3D printing purposes. Due to the comparable properties of hemp and synthetic fibres, natural fibres tend to be suitable for printing purposes. Mixes are made at laboratory scale using batches of 1 – 3 kg. The study examines the effect of adding hemp fibres for the mechanical and fresh state properties of hemp-based concrete. Mechanical properties from bending tests and direct tensile tests show comparable properties of mortars containing hemp fibres and mortars containing synthetic fibres. The fresh state behaviour of the designed concrete mix showed promising and comparable results for a mix based on 0.5wt% of hemp fibres. One of the major issues regarding the use of natural fibres is the irregularity and high water uptake of the fibres. Due to its high hydrophilicity natural hemp fibres take up much water and can therefore degrade. For this study the effect of water uptake did not have much influence on the mixing and printing purposes. By printing a wall element on laboratory scale the use of hemp fibre-reinforced 3D concrete is validated.

An Efficient Metaheuristic-Based Clustering with Routing Protocol for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years, the underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN) has received a significant interest among research communities for several applications, such as disaster management, water quality prediction, environmental observance, underwater navigation, etc. The UWSN comprises a massive number of sensors placed in rivers and oceans for observing the underwater environment. However, the underwater sensors are restricted to energy and it is tedious to recharge/replace batteries, resulting in energy efficiency being a major challenge. Clustering and multi-hop routing protocols are considered energy-efficient solutions for UWSN. However, the cluster-based routing protocols for traditional wireless networks could not be feasible for UWSN owing to the underwater current, low bandwidth, high water pressure, propagation delay, and error probability. To resolve these issues and achieve energy efficiency in UWSN, this study focuses on designing the metaheuristics-based clustering with a routing protocol for UWSN, named MCR-UWSN. The goal of the MCR-UWSN technique is to elect an efficient set of cluster heads (CHs) and route to destination. The MCR-UWSN technique involves the designing of cultural emperor penguin optimizer-based clustering (CEPOC) techniques to construct clusters. Besides, the multi-hop routing technique, alongside the grasshopper optimization (MHR-GOA) technique, is derived using multiple input parameters. The performance of the MCR-UWSN technique was validated, and the results are inspected in terms of different measures. The experimental results highlighted an enhanced performance of the MCR-UWSN technique over the recent state-of-art techniques.