• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.17-28
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• 2017

Although concrete is a noncombustible material, high temperatures such as those experienced during a fire have a negative effect on the mechanical properties. This paper studies the effect of elevated temperatures on the mechanical properties of limestone, quartzite and granite concrete. Samples from three different concrete mixes with limestone, quartzite and granite coarse aggregates were prepared. The test samples were subjected to temperatures ranging from 25 to $650^{\circ}C$ for a duration of 2 h. Mechanical properties of concrete including the compressive and tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, and ultimate strain in compression were obtained. Effects of temperature on resistance to degradation, thermal expansion and phase compositions of the aggregates were investigated. The results indicated that the mechanical properties of concrete are largely affected from elevated temperatures and the type of coarse aggregate used. The compressive and split tensile strength, and modulus of elasticity decreased with increasing temperature, while the ultimate strain in compression increased. Concrete made of granite coarse aggregate showed higher mechanical properties at all temperatures, followed by quartzite and limestone concretes. In addition to decomposition of cement paste, the imparity in thermal expansion behavior between cement paste and aggregates, and degradation and phase decomposition (and/or transition) of aggregates under high temperature were considered as main factors impacting the mechanical properties of concrete. The novelty of this research stems from the fact that three different aggregate types are comparatively evaluated, mechanisms are systemically analyzed, and empirical relationships are established to predict the residual compressive and tensile strength, elastic modulus, and ultimate compressive strain for concretes subjected to high temperatures.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2021

To simulate a process model in the field of chemical engineering, it is very important to identify the physical properties of novel materials as well as existing materials. However, it is difficult to measure the physical properties throughout a set of experiments due to the potential risk and cost. To address this, this study aims to develop a property prediction model based on the group contribution method for aromatic chemical compounds including benzene rings. The benzene rings of aromatic materials have a significant impact on their physical properties. To establish the prediction model, 42 important functional groups that determine the physical properties are considered, and the total numbers of functional groups on 147 aromatic chemical compounds are counted to prepare a dataset. Support vector regression is employed to prepare a prediction model to handle sparse and high-dimensional data. To verify the efficacy of this study, the results of this study are compared with those of previous studies. Despite the different datasets in the previous studies, the comparison indicated the enhanced performance in this study. Moreover, there are few reports on predicting the physical properties of aromatic compounds. This study can provide an effective method to estimate the physical properties of unknown chemical compounds and contribute toward reducing the experimental efforts for measuring physical properties.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.101-105
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• 2008

Some physical properties of rapeseed such as geometric properties (linear dimensions, sphericity, seed volume, surface area) and gravimetric properties (the mass of one thousand seeds, bulk density) were analyzed at five levels of moisture content of 10.03, 14.91, 20.07, 25.06 and 30.12% (w.b.). The physical properties of rapeseed were evaluated as a function of seed moisture content. In the moisture range, when the moisture content increase, sphericity decreased from 0.946 to 0.927, and geometric mean diameter, seed volume and surface area increased from 2.17 to 2.31 mm, 5.58 to $6.88 \;mm^3$ and 14.76 to $16.77\;mm^2$ respectively. Mass of one thousand seeds increased from 5.04 to 6.46 g. Bulk density decreased from 579.3 to $549.2\;kg/m^3$ due to swelling of the seed.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.45-56
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• 2010

Polymer composite materials offer high strength and stiffness to weight ratio, corrosion resistance, and total life cost reductions that appeal to the marine industry. The advantages of composite construction have led to their incorporation in U.S. yacht hull structures over 46 meters (150 feet) in length. In order to construct even larger hull structures, higher quality composites with lower cost production techniques need to be developed. In this study, the effect of composite hull fabrication processes on mechanical properties of glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFRP) composites is presented. Fabrication techniques investigated during this study are hand lay-up (HL), vacuum infusion (VI), and hybrid (HL+VI) processes. Mechanical property testing includes: tensile, compressive, and ignition loss sample analysis. Results demonstrate that the vacuum pressure implemented dining composite fabrication has an effect on mechanical properties. The VI processed GFRP yields improved mechanical properties in tension/compression strengths and tensile modulus. The hybrid GFRP composites, however, failed in a sequential manor, due to dissimilar failure modes in the HL and VI processed sides. Fractography analysis was conducted to validate the mechanical property testing results.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.111-125
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• 2017

Swelling and shrinkage characteristics of expansive fine grained soil cause volumetric changes followed by distress and damage to the structures. Soil stabilization can be explained as the alteration of the soil properties by chemical, mechanical or any other means in order to enhance the engineering properties of the soil. Utilization of industrial wastes in soil stabilization is cost effective and environment friendly. This paper presents an experimental study on stabilization of expansive soil using industrial wastes, viz. fly ash and dolochar. The paper includes the evaluation of engineering properties like unconfined compressive strength and California bearing ratio (CBR) of expansive soil collected from Balasore district of Odisha stabilized with fly ash and dolochar in different proportions and to predict the influence of these additives on engineering properties and strength characteristics of expansive soil. Both fly ash and dolochar were found to increase the CBR and decrease many index properties such as liquid limit, plastic limit, plasticity index, swelling index and UCS, thus enhancing the strength parameters of expansive soil.

• International Journal of Ocean System Engineering
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.148-154
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• 2011

Generally, strength degradation is caused by the absorption of moisture in composites. For this reason, a fracture is generated in the composites and traces of glass fiber degrade human health and physical damage is generated. Therefore, in this research, we studied the mechanical properties change of composites by moistureabsorption. The composites were manufactured with and without the Gel-coating process and were immersed in a moisture absorption device at $80^{\circ}C$ for more than 100 days. The mechanical properties of the moistureabsorption composites and the composites which dry after moisture-absorption were compared. The mechanical properties degradation of basalt fiber composites according to the result of the measurement of moistureabsorption was smaller than that of glass fiber composites by about 20%. In addition, the coefficient of moisture absorption was lower for the case of Gel-coating processing than the composites without the Gel-coating process by about 2% and it was deduced that Gel-coating did not have a significant effect on the mechanical properties.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.155-170
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• 2020

Different parameters potentially affect the properties of corroded reinforced concrete beams. However, the high number of these parameters and their dependence cause that the effectiveness of the parameters could not be simply identified. In this study, an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was employed to determine the most influencing parameters on the properties of the corrosion-damaged reinforced concrete beams. 207 ANFIS models were developed to analyze the collected data from 107 reinforced concrete (RC) beams. The impact of 23 input parameters on nine output factors was investigated. The results of the paper showed the order of influence of each input parameter on the outputs and revealed that the input parameters regarding the uncorroded properties of concrete beams are the most influencing factors on the corresponding corroded properties of the beams.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.547-558
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• 2018

Studies of soil dynamic properties in Malaysia are still very limited. This study aims to investigate the dynamic properties of two selected tropical residual soils (i.e., Sandy Clay and Sandy Silt) and a sand mining trail (Silty Sand) in Peninsular Malaysia using 1g shaking table test. The use of 1g shaking table test for soil dynamic testing is often constrained to large strain level and small confining pressure only. Three new experimental setups, namely large laminar shear box test (LLSBT), small chamber test with positive air pressure (SCT), and small sample test with suction (SSTS) are attempted with the aims of these experimental setups are capable of evaluating the dynamic properties of soils covering a wider range of shear strain and confining pressure. The details of each experimental setup are described explicitly in this paper. Experimental results show that the combined use of the LLSBT and SCT is capable of rendering soil dynamic properties covering a strain range of 0.017%-1.48% under confining pressures of 5-100 kPa. The studied tropical residual soils in Malaysia behaved neither as pure sand nor clay, but show a relatively good agreement with the dynamic properties of residual soils in Singapore. Effects of confining pressure and plasticity index on the studied tropical residual soils are found to be insignificant in this particular study.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.625-633
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• 2023

The volume changes associated with moisture or suction variation in expansive soils are of geotechnical and geoenvironmental design concern. These changes can impact the performance of infrastructure projects and lightweight structures. Assessment of unsaturated function for these materials leads to better interpretation and understanding, as well as providing accurate and economic design. In this study, expansive soils from different regions of Saudi Arabia were studied for their basic properties including gradation, plasticity and shrinkage, swelling, and consolidation characteristics. The unsaturated soil functions of saturated water content, air-entry values, and residual states were determined by conducting the tests for the entire soil water characteristic curves (SWCC) using different techniques. An attempt has been made to provide a prediction model for unsaturated properties based on the basic properties of these soils. Once the profile of SWCC has been predicted the time and cost for many tests can be saved. These predictions can be utilized in practice for the application of unsaturated soil mechanics on geotechnical and geoenvironmental projects.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.175-179
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• 2022

The physical properties of biomaterials are important for their isolation and separation from body fluids. In particular, the precise evaluation of the multi-physical properties of single biomolecules is essential in that the correlation between physical and biological properties of specific biomolecule. However, the majority of scientific equipment, can only determine specific-physical properties of single nanoparticles, making the evaluation of the multi-physical properties difficult. The improvement of analytical techniques for the evaluation of multi-physical properties is therefore required in various research fields. In this study, we developed a motion-tracking algorithm to evaluate the multi-physical properties of single-nanoparticles by analyzing their behavior. We observed the Brownian motion and electric-field-induced drift of fluorescent nanoparticles injected in a microfluidic chip with two electrodes using confocal microscopy. The proposed algorithm is able to determine the size of the nanoparticles by i) removing the background noise from images, ii) tracking the motion of nanoparticles using the circular-Hough transform, iii) extracting the mean squared displacement (MSD) of the tracked nanoparticles, and iv) applying the MSD to the Stokes-Einstein equation. We compared the evaluated size of the nanoparticles with the size measured by SEM. We also determined the zeta-potential and surface-charge density of the nanoparticles using the extracted electrophoretic velocity and the Helmholtz-Smoluchowski equation. The proposed motion-tracking algorithm could be employed in various fields related to biomaterial analysis, such as exosome analysis.