• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.83 no.3
• /
• pp.387-400
• /
• 2022

The practice of using encased steel-concrete columns in medium to high-rise structures has expanded dramatically in recent years. The study evaluates existing methodologies and codal guidelines for estimating the ultimate load-carrying characteristics of concrete-encased short columns experimentally. The present condition of composite column design methods was analyzed using the Egyptian code ECP203-2007, the American Institute of Steel Construction's AISC-LRFD-2010, Eurocode EC-4, the American Concrete Institute's ACI-318-2014, and the British Standard BS-5400-5. According to the codes, the axial load carrying characteristics of both the encased steel and concrete sections was examined. The effect of load-carrying capacities in different forms of encased steel sections on encased steel-concrete columns was studied experimentally. The axial load carrying capacity of twelve concrete-encased columns and four conventional reinforced columns were examined. The conclusion is that the confinement was not taken into account when forecasting the strength and ductility of the encased concrete, resulting in considerable disparities between codal provisions and experimental results. The configuration of the steel section influenced the confining effect. Better confinement is achieved with the laced and battened section than with the infilled steel tube reinforced and conventionally reinforced section. The ECP203-2007 code reported the most conservative results of all the codes used.

• Advances in Computational Design
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.1-11
• /
• 2020

Soil is the fundamental element in the construction process. Soil problems affect the safety of the structures, even so the high quality of the structures and so, bad soil found the structures will affect the lifetime or even destroy the structures built on it. Therefore, the study of soil is an important step in the construction process and the investigation of the most effective characteristics of a special kind of soil (shale soil), i.e. Atterberg limits, swelling pressure, swelling potential and unconfined compression strength, are the most effective soil properties. A big projects will be constructed in new urban extension areas with expansive shale soils, like at Al-Kawamil and new Akhmim shale soils which associated with soil problems, treatment system should be used to ensure the stability of the soil under the structures foundations one of the most effective methods is by adding lime solution to the soil by specific quantities, which affect on the properties of the shale soil by decreasing the swelling and increasing the compressive strength of the treatment soils. Experimenting with the soil added to the lime, it was found that the addition of lime solution 6% improve c j the properties of the soil. The results of the tests showed the high effectiveness of using lime in the treatment of Al-Kawamil soil

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.52 no.3
• /
• pp.469-476
• /
• 2020

Research reactors in-core experimental facilities are designed to provide the highest steady state flux for user's irradiation requirements. However, fuel conversion from highly enriched uranium (HEU) to low enriched uranium (LEU) driven by the ongoing effort to diminish proliferation risk, will impact reactor physics parameters. Preserving the reactor capability to produce the needed flux to perform its intended research functions, determines the conversion feasibility. This study investigates the neutron flux in the central experimental facility of two material test reactors (MTR), the IAEA generic10 MW benchmark reactor and the 22 MW s Egyptian Test and Research Reactor (ETRR-2). A 3D full core model with three uranium enrichment of 93%, 45%, and 20% was constructed utilizing the OpenMC particle transport Monte Carlo code. Neutronics calculations were performed for fresh fuel, the beginning of life cycle (BOL) and end of life cycle (EOL) for each of the three enrichments for both the IAEA 10 MW generic reactor and core 1/98 of the ETRR-2 reactor. Criticality calculations of the effective multiplication factor (K_eff) were executed for each of the twelve cases; results show a reasonable agreement with published benchmark values for both reactors. The thermal, epithermal and fast neutron fluxes were tallied across the core, utilizing the mesh tally capability of the code and are presented here. The axial flux in the central experimental facility was tallied at 1 cm intervals, for each of the cases; results for IAEA 10 MW show a maximum reduction of 14.32% in the thermal flux of LEU to that of the HEU, at EOL. The reduction of the thermal flux for fresh fuel was between 5.81% and 9.62%, with an average drop of 8.1%. At the BOL the thermal flux showed a larger reduction range of 6.92%-13.58% with an average drop of 10.73%. Furthermore, the fission reaction rate was calculated, results showed an increase in the peak fission rate of the LEU case compared to the HEU case. Results for the ETRR-2 reactor show an average increase of 62.31% in the thermal flux of LEU to that of the HEU due to the effect of spectrum hardening. The fission rate density increased with enrichment, resulting in 34% maximum increase in the HEU case compared to the LEU case at the assemblies surrounding the flux trap.