• Computers and Concrete
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.739-748
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• 2014

In this article, by using experimental studies and artificial neural network has been tried to investigate the use of nano-silica as concrete admixture to reduce alkali-silica reaction. If there are reactive aggregates and alkali of cement with enough moisture in concrete, a gel will be formed. Then with high reactivity between alkali of cement and existence of silica in aggregates, this gel will expand by absorption of water, and causes expansive pressure and cracks be formed. At the time passes, this gel will reduce both durability and strength of the concrete. By reducing the size of silicate to nano, specific surface area of particles and number of atoms on the surface will be increased, which causes more pozzolanic activity of them. Nano-silica can react with calcium hydroxide ($Ca(OH)_2$) and produces C-S-H gel. In this study, accelerated mortar bar specimens according to ASTM C 1260 and ASTM C 1567, with different mix proportions were prepared using aggregates of Kerman, such as: none admixture and plasticizer, different proportions of nano-silica separately. By opening the moulds after 24 hour and curing in water at $80^{\circ}C$ for 24 hour, then curing in (1N NaOH) at $80^{\circ}C$ for 14 days, length expansion of mortar bars were measured and compared. It was noted that, the lowest length expansion of a specimens shows the best proportion of admixture based on alkali-silica reactivity. Then, prediction of alkali-silica reaction of concrete has been investigated by using artificial neural network. In this study the backpropagation network has been used and compared with different algorithms to train network. Finally, the best amount of nano silica for adding to mix proportion, also the best algorithm and number of neurons in hidden layer of artificial neural network have been offered.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.1-9
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• 2015

This paper proposes CAC method that is more efficient for RRM using game theory combined with Multiple Attribute Decision Making(MADM). Because users request services with different Quality of Service(QoS), the network preference values to alternative networks for each service are calculated by MADM methods such as Grey Relational Analysis(GRA), Simple Additive Weighting(SAW) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution(TOPSIS). According to a utility function representing preference value, non-cooperative game is played, and then network provider select the requested service that provide maximum payoff. The appropriate service is selected through Nash Equilibrium that is the solution of game and the game is played repeated. We analyze two overlaid networks among four Wireless LAN(WLAN) systems with different properties. Simulation results show that proposed MADM techniques have same outcomes for every game round.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.491-502
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• 2017

In this research, the application of ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) test as a nondestructive method for estimating some of the mechanical and dynamic properties of reactive powder concrete (RPC) containing steel and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibers, as well as their combination was explored. In doing so, ten different mix designs were prepared in 19 experimental groups of specimens containing three different volume contents of steel fibers (i.e., 1, 2, and 3 %) and PVA fibers (i.e., 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75 %), as well as hybrid fibers (i.e., 0.25-0.75, 0.5-0.5, and 0.75-0.25 %). The specimens in these groups were prepared under the two curing regimes of normal and heat treatment. Moreover, the UPV test results were employed to estimate the compressive strength, dynamic modulus, shear modulus, and Poisson's ratio of the RPC concrete and to investigate the quality level of the used concrete. At the end, the effect of the specimen shape and in fact the measuring distance length on the UPV results was explored. The results of this research suggest that the steel fiber-containing RPC specimens demonstrate the highest level of ultrasonic pulse velocity as well as the highest values of the mechanical and dynamic properties. Moreover, heat treatment has a positive effect on the density, UPV, dynamic modulus, Poisson's ratio, and compressive strength of the RPC specimens, whereas it leads to a negligible increase or decrease in the shear modulus and static modulus of elasticity. Furthermore, the specimen shape affects the UPV of fiber-lacking specimens while negligibly affecting that of fiber-reinforced specimens.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.459-468
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• 2019

The stability and safety of concrete plug structure of diversion tunnel is crucial for the impoundment of upstream reservoir in hydropower projects. The ongoing Wudongde hydropower plant in China plans to adopt straight column plugs and curved column plugs to replace the traditional expanded wedge-shaped plugs. The performance of the proposed new plug structures under high water head is then a critical issue and attracts the attentions of engineers. This paper firstly studied the joint bearing mechanism of plug and surrounding rock mass and found that the quality and mechanical properties of the interfaces among plug concrete, shotcrete, and surrounding rock mass play a key role in the performance of plug structures. By performing geophysical and mechanical experiments, the contact state and the mechanical parameters of the interfaces were analyzed in detail and provide numerical analysis with rational input parameters. The safety evaluation is carried out through numerical calculation of plug stability under both construction and operation period. The results indicate that the allowable water head acting on columnar plugs is 3.1 to 7.4 times of the designed water head. So the stability of the new plug structure meets the design code requirement. Based on above findings, it is concluded that for the studied project, it is feasible to adopt columnar plugs to replace the traditional expanded wedge-shaped plugs. It is hoped that this study can provide reference for other projects with similar engineering background and problems.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.787-799
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• 2016

Climate anomalies in recent years, numerous natural disasters caused by landslides and a large amount of entrained sands and stones in Taiwan have created significant disasters and greater difficulties in subsequent reconstruction. How to respond to these problems efficaciously is an important issue. In this study, the sands and stones were doped with recycled materials (waste LCD glass sand, slag powder), and material was mixed for recycled ready-mixed soil. The study is based on security and economic principles, using flowability test to determine the water-binder ratio (W/B=2.4, 2.6, and 2.8), a fixed soil: sand ratio of 6:4 and a soil: sand: glass ratio of 6:2:2 as fine aggregate. Slag (at concentrations of 0%, 20%, and 40%) replaced the cement. The following tests were conducted: flowability, initial setting time, unit weight, drop-weight and compressive strength. The results show that the slump values are 220 -290 mm, the slump flow values are 460 -1030 mm, and the tube flow values are 240-590 mm, all conforming to the objectives of the design. The initial setting times are 945-1695 min. The unit weight deviations are 0.1-0.6%. The three groups of mixtures conform to the specification, being below 7.6 cm in the drop-weight test. In the compressive strength test, the water-binder ratios for 2.4 are optimal ($13.78-17.84kgf/cm^2$). The results show that Recycled ready-mixed soil materials (RRMSM) possesses excellent flowability. The other properties, applied to backfill engineering, can effectively save costs and are conducive to environmental protection.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.801-814
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• 2016

An alternative type of building system with masonry units is extensively used nowadays to reduce the emission of CO2 and embodied energy. Long-term performance of such structures has become essential for sustaining the building technology. This study aims to assess the strength and durability properties of concrete prepared with unprocessed bagasse ash (BA) and silica fume (SF). A mix proportion of 1:3:3 was used to cast concrete cubes of size $100mm{\times}100mm{\times}100mm$ with various replacement levels of cement and tested. The cubes were cast with zero slump normally adopted in the manufacturing of hollow blocks. The cubes were exposed to acid attack, alkaline attack and sulphate attack to evaluate their durability. The mass loss and damages to concrete for all cases of exposures were determined at 30, 60, and 90 days, respectively. Then, the residual compressive strength for all cases was determined at the end of 90 days of durability test. The results showed that there was slight difference in mass loss before and after exposure to chemical attack in all the cases. Though the appearance was slightly different than the normal concrete the residual weight was not affected. The compressive strength of 10% bagasse ash (BA) as a replacement for cement, with 10% SF as admixture resulted in better strength than the normal concrete. Hence concrete with 10% replacement with BA along with 10% SF as admixture was considered to be durable. Besides solid concrete cubes, hollow blocks using the same concrete were casted and tested simultaneously to explore the possibility of production of masonry units.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.127-133
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• 2021

BACKGROUND: Dithiocarbamte fungicides have been used in crop cultivation for diseases protection and treatment. And cultivated agricultrual products were used as feedstuff, and residual pesticides are likely to be absorbed and transferred to livestock. But the maximum residue limits (MRLs) were not established for dithiocarbate fungicides in livestock products, and thus an analysis method was developed and validated for dithiocarbamate fungicides to establish MRLs. METHODS AND RESULTS: Samples were prepared using CS₂ trap method and detected with UV/VIS spectrophotometer. Calibration line (0.1 ~ 10 ㎍/mL) was linear with r² > 0.99. For validation, the recovery tests were carried out at three fortification levels (MLOQ, 10 MLOQ and 50 MLOQ) from livestock samples (egg, milk, beef, pork, and chicken). The results for mancozeb, propineb, and thiram ranged between 76.8 to 109.6%, 79.4 to 108.8%, and 80.2 to 107.8%, respectively and % RSD (relative standard deviation) values were below 9.5%. Furthermore, inter-laboratory analysis was performed to validate the method. CONCLUSION: All values were corresponded with the criteria ranges requested by both the CODEX (CAC/GL 40-1993, 2003) and MFDS guidelines (2016). This might be used as an official analytical method for determination of dithiocarbamate fungicides at established MRLs and monitoring.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.319-332
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• 2021

The performance of gene expression programming (GEP) in predicting the compressive strength of bacteria-incorporated geopolymer concrete (GPC) was examined in this study. Ground-granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS), new bacterial strains, fly ash (FA), silica fume (SF), metakaolin (MK), and manufactured sand were used as ingredients in the concrete mixture. For the geopolymer preparation, an 8 M sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution was used, and the ambient curing temperature (28℃) was maintained for all mixtures. The ratio of sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) to NaOH was 2.33, and the ratio of alkaline liquid to binder was 0.35. Based on experimental data collected from the literature, an evolutionary-based algorithm (GEP) was proposed to develop new predictive models for estimating the compressive strength of GPC containing bacteria. Data were classified into training and testing sets to obtain a closed-form solution using GEP. Independent variables for the model were the constituent materials of GPC, such as FA, MK, SF, and Bacillus bacteria. A total of six GEP formulations were developed for predicting the compressive strength of bacteria-incorporated GPC obtained at 1, 3, 7, 28, 56, and 90 days of curing. 80% and 20% of the data were used for training and testing the models, respectively. R2 values in the range of 0.9747 and 0.9950 (including train and test dataset) were obtained for the concrete samples, which showed that GEP can be used to predict the compressive strength of GPC containing bacteria with minimal error. Moreover, the GEP models were in good agreement with the experimental datasets and were robust and reliable. The models developed could serve as a tool for concrete constructors using geopolymers within the framework of this research.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.333-341
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• 2021

Steel slag, an industrial reject from the steel rolling process, has been identified as one of the suitable, environmentally friendly materials for concrete production. Given that the coarse aggregate portion represents about 70% of concrete constituents, other economic approaches have been found in the use of alternative materials such as steel slag in concrete. Unfortunately, a standard framework for its application is still lacking. Therefore, this study proposed functional model equations for the determination of strength properties (compression and splitting tensile) of steel slag aggregate concrete (SSAC), using gene expression programming (GEP). The study, in the experimental phase, utilized steel slag as a partial replacement of crushed rock, in steps 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100%, respectively. The predictor variables included in the analysis were cement, sand, granite, steel slag, water/cement ratio, and curing regime (age). For the model development, 60-75% of the dataset was used as the training set, while the remaining data was used for testing the model. Empirical results illustrate that steel aggregate could be used up to 100% replacement of conventional aggregate, while also yielding comparable results as the latter. The GEP-based functional relations were tested statistically. The minimum absolute percentage error (MAPE), and root mean square error (RMSE) for compressive strength are 6.9 and 1.4, and 12.52 and 0.91 for the train and test datasets, respectively. With the consistency of both the training and testing datasets, the model has shown a strong capacity to predict the strength properties of SSAC. The results showed that the proposed model equations are reliably suitable for estimating SSAC strength properties. The GEP-based formula is relatively simple and useful for pre-design applications.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.99-109
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• 2021

Experimental and discrete element methods were used to investigate the effects of echelon non-persistent joint on the failure behaviour of joint's bridge area under uniaxial compressive test. Concrete samples with dimension of 150 mm×100 mm×50 mm were prepared. Uniaxial compressive strength and tensile strength of concrete were 14 MPa and 1MPa, respectivly. Within the specimen, three echelon non-persistent notches were provided. These joints were distributed on the three diagonal plane. the angle of diagonal plane related to horizontal axis were 15°, 30° and 45°. The angle of joints related to diagonal plane were 30°, 45°, 60°. Totally, 9 different configuration systems were prepared for non-persistent joint. In these configurations, the length of joints were taken as 2 cm. Similar to those for joints configuration systems in the experimental tests, 9 models with different echelon non-persistent joint were prepared in numerical model. The axial load was applied to the model by rate of 0.05 mm/min. the results show that the failure process was mostly governed by both of the non-persistent joint angle and diagonal plane angle. The compressive strengths of the specimens were related to the fracture pattern and failure mechanism of the discontinuities. It was shown that the shear behaviour of discontinuities is related to the number of the induced tensile cracks which are increased by increasing the joint angle. The strength of samples increase by increasing both of the joint angle and diagonal plane angle. The failure pattern and failure strength are similar in both methods i.e. the experimental testing and the numerical simulation methods.