An innovation for flat traditional conventional footing

Since their inception in the 1950s, shell foundations have grown in popularity over regular ones. In this paper, the ultimate load capacities of shell foundations on clay were determined by Numerical model tests. The results were compared with those for flat foundations with the same base. The model test results were found using finite element analysis using the program PLAXIS 2D. The experimental studies indicated that the ultimate load capacity of shell footing on clay is higher than that on flat-footing and the load settlement curves were significantly modified. The shell foundation over clay can be considered a good method to decrease the resulting settlement and material consumption at different thicknesses. Also, the rupture surface of the shell upright and inverted system was significantly deeper than both normal footings. The numerical analysis helps in understanding the deformation behavior of the studied systems and identifies the failure surface of upright and inverted shell footing.

EFFICIENCY OF A MODIFIED CONICAL METALLIC COOKING STOVE INCORPORATING CLAY FOR OPTIMAL CHARCOAL CONSUMPTION IN KARA REGION - TOGO

An acceptability survey of improved charcoal stoves conducted in some households in the Kara region in Togo revealed that 40% of households use the clay cookestove and 30% the conical cookestove. Unfortunately the configuration of the clay stove requires permanent maintenance. To combine the advantages of the two both types of stoves widely used, a modified conical cookestove model integrating clay with an optimized thickness of 4 centimeters is proposed and tested. The procedure used is similar to that proposed by a group of experts for the Household Energy and Health Program of the Shell Foundation. The results showed that thermal efficiency of modified conical cookestove is improved about 17.35% relatively to conical cooking stove but compared to the clay cookestove, the improvement about 5.18% only is reported. The specific consumption of the modified conical stove save 2.76% of charcoal relatively to conical cookestove while over consumption of 2.62% is reported relatively to the clay cooking stove. The study found that the modified conical cookestove offer an alternative to replace the clay cooking stove and can solve the problem of maintenance and durability. Modified conical cookestove or clay cookestove is suitable for long cooking while the conical cooking stove is better for short cooking.