Water Stabilization of Clay Bricks with Improved Tannin and Iron Mixes

Weak water resistance is a big obstacle for clay materials to overcome in modern construction industry. Compared to the hydraulic stabilized additives, bio-additives have a lower carbon footprint and have been used in many vernacular construction techniques to immobilize clay. In this work, the traditional recipes of tannin and iron have been revisited, in particular, the question of pH and iron solubility has been explored. Oak tannin and FeCl3 were chosen and their influence on the properties of clay materials in terms of rheological properties, compressive strength, and water resistance were characterized in the lab. Based on the results, tannin can reduce the yield stress of paste while with the addition of FeCl3, the yield stress of tannin dispersed pastes increased to a value similar to the reference sample but lower than the value contain only FeCl3. The increase was attributed to the complex reaction between tannin and Fe3+. The iron-tannin complexes can also increase the samples’ strength and water resistance. Although the complexes did not change the hydrophilic properties of the samples’ surface, they prevent the ingression of water. These results are very promising as they allow the production of a fluid earth material that is water-resistant. This opens a wide range of application potentials and can help to mainstream earth materials in construction.

Statistical Study Based on the Kriging Method and Geographic Mapping in Rigid Pavement Defects in Southern Chile

ASTM D6433 is used to assess the need for maintenance of pavement sections. Although the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) factor calculation method provides reliable values, this method analyzes sections and defects individually and indicates current maintenance needs, but it cannot be used to predict the occurrence of new defects. Therefore, it is necessary to complement this method by considering variables that influence the occurrence of faults, among which are the geospatial distribution and the specific characteristics of the slabs. This research focuses on the identification of multiple types of disturbances that exist in Portland Cement Pavements (PCC), located in a high traffic area in the city of Valdivia (Chile). A spatial geostatistical relationship is established through visual inspection using geographical maps, as well as distribution, using the kriging method. This technique makes use of variograms that allow quantifying the parameters used in this study, thus expressing the spatial autocorrelation of the faults analyzed. From the results obtained by spatial geostatistics and kriging, it is possible to generate a data correlation for the distribution and characteristics of the streets considered. In addition, a co-kriging method is established instead of an ordinary kriging method. The relationship between observed and predicted values improved from 0.3327 to 0.5770. The width of the slabs, as well as some streets, is shown in our analysis to be unimportant. For better model accuracy, the number of covariates associated with the type of vehicle traffic, the age and shape of the slabs, and the construction techniques used for the pavement needs to increase.

A Model for Performance Evaluation

As a result of the parallel element setting, performance assessment and model construction are constrained. Component functions should be observable without direct connections to programming language, for example. As a result of this, solutions that are constituted interactively at program execution necessitate recyclable performance-monitoring interactions. As a result of these restrictions, a quasi, coarse-grained Performance Evaluation (PE) approach is described in this paper. A performance framework for the application system can be polymerized from these data. To validate the evaluation and model construction techniques included in the validation framework, simplistic elements with well-known optimization models are employed.

Quantifying the Benefits and Ecosystem Services Provided by Green Roofs—A Review

Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) has been widely used in cities to mitigate the negative consequences of urbanization and climate change. One of the WSUD strategies that is becoming popular is green roofs (GR) which offer a wide range of ecosystem services. Research on this WSUD strategy has been continuously increasing in terms of both quantity and quality. This paper presents a comprehensive review quantifying the benefits of GRs in papers published since 2010. More precisely, this review aims to provide up-to-date information about each GR benefit and how they have improved over the last decade. In agreement with previous reviews, extensive GRs were considerably researched, as compared to very limited studies on intensive and semi-intensive GRs. Each GR ecosystem service was specifically quantified, and an imbalance of GR research focus was identified, wherein urban heat- and runoff-related benefits were outstandingly popular when compared to other benefits. The results also highlight the recent introduction of hybrid GRs, which demonstrated improvements in GR performance. Furthermore, limitations of GRs, obstacles to their uptake, and inconsistent research findings were also identified in this review. Accordingly, opportunities for future research were pointed out in this review. This paper also recommends future studies to improve upon well-known GR benefits by exploring and applying more innovative GR construction techniques and materials. At the same time, further studies need to be undertaken on inadequately studied GR benefits, such as reduced noise and air pollution. In spite of the existence of reliable modelling tools, their application to study the effects of large-scale implementations of GRs has been restricted. Insufficient information from such research is likely to restrict large-scale implementations of GRs. As a result, further studies are required to transform the GR concept into one of the widely accepted and implemented WSUD strategies.

A RESEARCH ON THE USE OF OTTOMAN-ISLAMIC HERITAGE AS A CONSUMPTION OBJECT IN CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

The Islamic heritage contains a rich cultural diversity with residential and public buildings such as traditional houses, mosques, palaces, and caravanserais that belong to the Ottoman Empire period. The character of the Islamic tradition is reflected in the environment-form-space organizations and construction techniques of these buildings. But today, the influence of the Islamic heritage has begun to be represented with the dominance of consumption-oriented culture and technology. The references taken from the architecture influenced by Islam are reduced to pure visuality and fashion. Especially, Ottoman architecture and its traditional elements become consumption objects that put visuality in the foreground in contemporary design practices. The Ottoman-Islamic heritage is referenced by imitating traditional buildings’ facades or copying structural elements. These new buildings produced with today’s technologies under the name of continuity of historical culture aim to fulfill the demands of the capitalist economy rather than conveying the essence of design. The study criticizes the transformation of Ottoman-Islamic architecture’s authenticity into “looking/pretending authentic” as a theme. In this context, this study discusses the Ottoman-Islamic heritage has become an object of consumption through a variety of examples that are located in Turkey such as hotels, shopping centers, residential buildings.

Analysis of the current scenario of Compressed Earth Block (CEB) production

The main objective of this study is to identify the parameters that influence the quality of the production of compressed earth blocks (CEB). Thus, an analysis of the performance of the materials that make up the final product was carried out, such as the binders that act as chemical stabilizers and the different types of soils, also the mechanical resistance and durability tests and finally the technical standards for its manufacturing. For this aim, a literature review was carried out in three electronic databases, Scopus, Web of Science and Scielo. The results showed environmental concerns with the use of Portland cement for stabilization, therefore, 18% of the studies used agricultural residues and 25% used mineral by-products, for partial or total replacement of Portland cement. Soils with plasticity indexes between 15% and 30% have a stabilization success rate of 69%, while soils with plasticity index less than 15% have a stabilization greater than 93%, which can be increased to 100% if the soil have a percentage of clay and silt between 21 and 35%. On the other hand, a plasticity index above 30% negatively affects stabilization. The compaction energy applied in the manufacture of CEB is an important parameter, as it influences the density, thermal conductivity and mechanical strength. Among the sustainable construction techniques, CEB is a great option, as it can be done locally and with ease of construction.

Traditional Architecture of Maaloula

Maaloula is a Christian village with exceptional architecture and location. It has a world reputation due to its dialect; people converse and write in the Aramaic language. It is one of the Qalamoun’s three villages with Bakhaa and Jabaden. Consequently, the village has attracted linguists worldwide; moreover, it has been the goal of many travellers since the 19th century. Like many of the traditional sites, Maaloula was affected by modern lifestyles and changing needs. These factors altered the village's architecture and construction techniques. This paper highlights the main characteristics that have been identified by Maaloula(s situation. The article will cover various traditional features and the main typology of houses that are starting to disappear. Finally, the difficulties that Maaloula faced before, during and after the Syrian crisis.

Green Buildings - A Solution to India’s High Energy Consumption

This paper is to bring into knowledge, a proficiency, which would help us to fight against energy crises using new construction techniques. It discusses the needs and benefits of sustainable Green buildings. It focuses on coming up with new ideas to build green buildings with minimum Embodied Energy. High energy conservation in buildings can be achieved by insulating materials (powerful device for designing and building) and by improving the construction envelope heat safety, which then controls the building envelope's transmissivity. Since the orientation of buildings and their protection from the sun cannot be implemented freely in the urban environment where it is densely built, heat insulation and adoption of bioclimatic architectural principles becomes the need. Green buildings, at the decreased ranges of consumption of resource and energy, the design of green buildings will meet the needs of users. This is a wise approach to use India’s energy in this period of crisis. These buildings will replace most of our present building methodologies. “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed”, hence application of this paper is aimed at utilizing the irrelevant energy consumed in building processes and providing comfort at the cost of sustainability.

New Archaeological Discoveries: Gates and Turrets of 16th century Burmese Royal Capital of Haṁsāvatī | ရှးေ ရောငး် သရု ေသနဆငုိ ှ် ာရေ့ေ ှခိေ ျကအ် သစမ် ျား - (၁၆) ှာစ ုလကှ် ာ ေသံ ာဝေမီ မုိ ့ရောမ် ေေခံ ါးရေါကန် ငေ ပ့် ေအးုိ များ

This paper explores the styles of construction and the city features of the sixteenth century royal capital of Haṁsāvatī, located in Bago, Myanmar. It was founded by King Bayinnaung in 1566 CE. Throughout its existence, the ancient city has been devastated by natural disasters, weak heritage conservation policies, and urban encroachments. Starting from 2018, excavation work on Haṁsāvatī wall was started and research was carried out on up to four excavation mounds. Archaeological excavations have revealed a wealth of evidence on architecture, including the city walls, gateways, and turrets. This research examines the architectural elements found during the excavations of the Haṁsāvatī wall, construction techniques, renovations and destructions throughout centuries. New hypotheses and discoveries from excavations, cross-examinations with historical records will also be presented. ဤစာတမ်းငယ်သည် မမန်မာနိုင်ငံ၊ ပဲခူးမမို့တွင် တည်ရှိသသာ (၁၆) ရာစုနှစ်လက်ရာ ဟံသာဝတီမမို့သတာ်၏ တည်သောက်မှုပုံစံနှင့် မမို့မပအင်္ဂါရပ်တို့ကို ရှာသွွသွာ်ထုတ်ထားပါသည်။ ဤမမို့သတာ်ကို ဘုရင့်သနာင်မင်းတရားကကီးက သအဒီ (၁၅၆၆) တွင် စတင်တည်သထာင်ခဲ့မခင်းမွစ်သည်။ ရာဇဝင်နှင့်မှတ်တမ်းများအရ မမို့သဟာင်းသည် သဘာဝသဘးအန္တရာယ်၊ ထိန်းသိမ်းမှုမူဝါဒညံ့ွျင်းမှုများနှင့် မမို့မပကျူးသကျာ်မှုများကို တည်ရှိလာသည့်ကာလတစ်သလှောက် များစွာခံစားခဲ့ရသသးသည်။ (၂၀၁၈) ခုနှစ်မှ စတင်၍ ဟံသာဝတီမမို့သဟာင်းတူးသွာ်မှုလုပ်ငန်းများကို စတင်နိုင်ခဲ့မပီး လက်ရှိအချနိ ်အထိ တူးသွာ်မှုကုန်းသလးခုအထိ သုသတသနမပုလုပ်နိုင်ခဲ့မပီးမွစ်ပါသည်။ မမို့ရိုး၊ မမို့တံခါးသပါက်၊ မပအိုးအစရှိသည့် များစွာသသာ ဗိသုကာေိုင်ရာအသထာက်အထားများကိုလည်း သရှး သဟာင်းသုသတသနေိုင်ရာတူးသွာ်မှုများမှတစ်ေင့် သွာ်ထုတ်နိုင်ခဲ့မပီးမွစ်ပါသည်။ ယခုသုသတသနသည် ဟံသာဝတီမမို့ရိုးတူးသွာ်မှုမှ သတွ့ရှိရသည့် ဗိသုကာေိုင်ရာ အင်္ဂါရပ်များ၊