In this paper, numerical and experimental studies on the elastic behavior of glass fiber reinforced ‎polymer (GFRP) with stiffeners in the GFRP section's web (to prevent local buckling) are presented. ‎The GFRP profiles‎ were connected to the concrete deck slab by shear connectors. Two full-scale simply supported ‎composite beams (with and without stiffeners) were tested under impact load (three-point load) to ‎assess its structural response. The results ‎proved that the maximum impact force, maximum ‎deflection, damping time, and ‎damping ratio of the composite beam were affected by the GFRP ‎stiffeners‎. The experimental results indicated that the damping ratio and deflection were diminished compare

Regression Discontinuity (RD) means a study that exposes a definite group to the effect of a treatment. The uniqueness of this design lies in classifying the study population into two groups based on a specific threshold limit or regression point, and this point is determined in advance according to the terms of the study and its requirements. Thus , thinking was focused on finding a solution to the issue of workers retirement and trying to propose a scenario to attract the idea of granting an end-of-service reward to fill the gap ( discontinuity point) if it had not been granted. The regression discontinuity method has been used to study and to estimate the effect of the end -service reward on the cutoff of insured workers as well as t

Polymers have the ability to extract water after they have been added to the mortar or concrete mixture. They provide the absorbed water during hydration functioning as internal water source. Absorption polymers can absorb up to hundred times of their own weight of pure water.This research deals with the use of water absorption polymer balls in concrete and study the volumetric change of these mixes and compared the results with reference mix (without polymers). Samples were cured both in air and in water for the mixes to compare results which show that samples in air behave for expansion while sample in water acted for shrinkage.

A new series polymers was synthesized from reaction starting material Bisacodyl A or [(2-Pyridinylmethylene) di-4, 1-phenylene di acetate] with hydrogen bromide, then the products were polymerized by addition polymerization from used adipoyl and glutaroyl chloride. The structure of these compounds was characterized by FT-IR, melting points, TLC, X-Ray, DSC and 1H-NMR for starting material. These compounds were also screened for their antibacterial activists?

Aim To develop a low-density polyethylene–hydroxyapatite (HA-PE) composite with properties tailored to function as a potential root canal filling material. Methodology Hydroxyapatite and polyethylene mixed with strontium oxide as a radiopacifier were extruded from a single screw extruder fitted with an appropriate die to form fibres. The composition of the composite was optimized with clinical handling and placement in the canal being the prime consideration. The fibres were characterized using infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and their thermal properties determined using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The tensile strength and elastic modulus of the composite fibres and gutta-percha were compared, dry and after 1 month storage in

Near surface mounted (NSM) carbon fibers reinforced polymer (CFRP) reinforcement is one of the techniques for reinforcing masonry structures and is considered to provide significant advantages. This paper is composed of two parts. The first part presents the experimental study of brick masonry walls reinforced with NSM CFRP strips under combined shear-compression loads. Masonry walls have been tested under vertical compression, with different bed joint orientations 90° and 45° relative to the loading direction. Different reinforcement orientations were used including vertical, horizontal, and a combination of both sides of the wall. The second part of this paper comprises a numerical analysis of unreinforced brick masonry (URM) wa

In Australia, most of the existing buildings were designed before the release of the Australian standard for earthquake actions in 2007. Therefore, many existing buildings in Australia lack adequate seismic design, and their seismic performance must be assessed. The recent earthquake that struck Mansfield, Victoria near Melbourne elevated the need to produce fragility curves for existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Australia. Fragility curves are frequently utilized to assess buildings’ seismic performance and it is defined as the demand probability surpassing capacity at a given intensity level. Numerous factors can influence the results of the fragility assessment of RC buildings. Among the most important factors that can affe

A three-stage learning algorithm for deep multilayer perceptron (DMLP) with effective weight initialisation based on sparse auto-encoder is proposed in this paper, which aims to overcome difficulties in training deep neural networks with limited training data in high-dimensional feature space. At the first stage, unsupervised learning is adopted using sparse auto-encoder to obtain the initial weights of the feature extraction layers of the DMLP. At the second stage, error back-propagation is used to train the DMLP by fixing the weights obtained at the first stage for its feature extraction layers. At the third stage, all the weights of the DMLP obtained at the second stage are refined by error back-propagation. Network structures an

Ab – initio restricted Hartree - Fock method within the framework of large unit cell (LUC) formalism is used to investigate the electronic structure of Si and Ge nanocrystals. The surface and core properties are investigated. A large unit cell of 8 atoms is used in the present analysis. Cohesive energy, energy gap, conduction and valence band widths are obtained from the electronic structure calculations. The results are compared with available experimental data and theoretical results of other investigators. The calculated lattice constant is found to be slightly larger than the corresponding experimental value because we use only 8 atoms and we compared the results with that of the bulk crystals, nanoclusters are expected to have str

Morphologies of ceramic hollow fiber membranes prepared by a combined phase-inversion and sintering method were studied. The organic binder spinning solution containing suspended Al₂O₃ powders was spun to a hollow fiber precursor, which was then sintered at elevated temperatures( 300 ˚C, 1400 ˚C, 25 ˚C) in order to obtain the Al₂O₃ hollow fiber membranes. The spinning solution consisted of polyether sulfone (PES), N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), which were used as polymer binder, solvent, respectively. The prepared Al₂O₃ hollow fiber membranes were characterized by a scanning electron microscope (SEM). It is believed that finger-like void formation in asymmetric ceramic membranes is initiated by hydrodynamically unstable vis