• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제50권5호
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• pp.575-588
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• 2014

Gel materials have recently gained more attention due to its unique capability of large and reversible volumetric changes. This study explores the possibility of mimicking the pattern formation of certain natural fruits during their growing process and leaves during drying processes through the swelling and de-swelling of gel materials. This will hopefully provide certain technical explanations on the morphology of fruits and plants. We adopt the inhomogeneous field gel theory to predict the deformation configurations of gel structures to describe the morphology of natural fruits and plants. The growing processes of apple and capsicum are simulated by imposing appropriate boundary conditions and field loading via varying the chemical potential from their immature to mature stages. The drying processes of three types of leaves with different vein structures are also investigated. The simulations lead to promising results and demonstrate that pattern formation of fruits and plants may be described from mechanical perspective by the behavior of gel materials based on the inhomogeneous field theory.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• 제7권3호
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• pp.175-181
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• 2019

Low-calcium fly ash (LCFA) were used to prepare cement/LCFA specimens in this study. The basic physical properties including water demand, fluidity, setting time, soundness and drying shrinkage of cement/LCFA paste were investigated. The effects of curing time, immersion time and wet-dry cycles in 3% $Na_2SO_4$ solution on the compressive strength and the microstructures of specimens were also discussed. The results show that LCFA increases the water demand, setting time, soundness of cement paste samples. 50% and 60% LCFA replacement ratio decrease the drying shrinkage of hardened cement paste. The compressive strength of plain cement specimens decreases at the later immersion stage in 3% $Na_2SO_4$ solution. The addition of LCFA can decrease this strength reduction of cement specimens. For all specimens with LCFA, the compressive strength increases with increasing immersion time. During the wet-dry cycles, the compressive strength of plain cement specimens decreases with increasing wet-dry cycles. However, the pores in the specimens with 30% and 40% LCFA at early ages could be large enough for the crystal of sodium sulfate, which leads to the compressive strength increase with the increase of wet-dry cycles in 3% $Na_2SO_4$ solution. The microstructures of cement/LCFA specimens are in good agreement with the compressive strength.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.139-151
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• 2022

Filling materials poured into precast member joint are subjected to restraint stress by the precast member and joint reinforcement. The induced stress will likely cause cracks at early ages and performance degradation of the entire structure. To prevent these issues and design reasonable joints, it is very important to analyze and evaluate the restrained shrinkage cracks of filling materials at various restraint conditions. In this study, a new time zero-that defines the shrinkage development time of a filling material-is proposed to calculate the accurate amount of shrinkage. The tensile stresses and strengths at different ages were compared through the ring test (AASHTO PP34) to evaluate the crack potential of the restrained filling materials at various restraint conditions. The mixture which contained an expansive additive and a shrinkage reducing agent exhibited high resistance to shrinkage cracking owing to the high-drying shrinkage compensation effect. The high-performance, fiber-reinforced cement composite, and ultra-high-performance, fiber-reinforced cement composite yielded very high resistance to shrinkage and cracking owing to the pull-out property of steel fibers. To this end, multiple nonlinear regression analyses were conducted based on the test results. Accordingly, a modified tensile stress equation that considered both the geometric shape of the specimen and the intrinsic properties of the material is proposed.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제30권5호
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• pp.461-469
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• 2022

One of the most important factors that should be considered for using any ground improvement technique is the stability of stabilized soil and the durability of the provided solution for getting the required engineering properties. Generally, most of the earth structures that are constructed on clayey soils are exposing movements due to the long periods of drying or wetting cycles. Over time, environmental changes may result in swells or settlements for these structures. In order to mitigate this problem, this research has been performed on mixtures of high plasticity clay with traditional additives such as lime, cement and non-traditional additives such as polypropylene fiber. The purpose of the research is to assess the most appropriate ground improvement technique by using commercially available additives for resisting the developed desiccation cracks during the drying process and resisting the volume changes that may result during wet/dry cycles as an attempt to simulate the changes of environmental conditions. The results show that the fiber-reinforced samples have the lowest volumetric deformation in comparision with cement and lime stabilized samples, and the optimum fiber content is identified as 0.38%. In addition, the desiccation cracks were not visible on the samples' surface for both unreinforced and chemically stabilized samples. Regarding cracks resistance resulting from the desiccation process, it is observed, that the resistance is connected with the fiber content and increases with the increase of the fiber inclusion, and the optimum content is between 1% and 1.5%.

• Advances in materials Research
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.331-349
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• 2023

Foam concrete can be considered as environmental friendly material due to its low weight, its minimal cost and a possibility to add waste materials in its production. This paper investigates the possibility of producing foam concrete with waste glass as powder and aggregate. Then, the effect of using waste glass on strength and drying shrinkage of foam concrete was examined. Also, the effect of incorporating polypropylene fibers (12 mm length and proportion of 0.5% of a mix volume) on distribution of waste glass as coarse particles within 1200 kg/m³ foam concrete mixes was evaluated. Waste glass was used as powder (20% of cement weight), as coarse particles (25%, 50% and 100% instead of sand volume) and as fine particles (25% instead of sand volume). From the results, the problem of non-uniform distribution of coarse glass particles was successfully solved by adding polypropylene fibers. It was found that using of waste glass as coarse aggregate led to reduce the strength of foam concrete mixes. However, using it with polypropylene fibers in combination helped in increasing the strength by about 29- 50% for compressive and 55- 71% for splitting tensile and reducing the drying shrinkage by about (31- 40%). In general, not only the fibers role but also the uniformly distributed coarse glass particles helped in improving and enhancing the strength and shrinkage of the investigated foam concrete mixes.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제11권6호
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• pp.739-756
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• 2016

The shear strength reduction finite element method (SSRFEM) is a powerful tool for slope stability analysis. The factor of safety (FOS) of the slope can be easily calculated only through reducing effective cohesion (c′) and tangent of effective friction angle ($tan{\varphi}^{\prime}$) in equal proportion. However, this method may not be applicable to soil slope under wetting-drying cycles (WDCs), because the influence of WDCs on c′ and $tan{\varphi}^{\prime}$ may be different. To research the method of estimating FOS of soil slopes under WDCs, this paper presents an experimental study firstly to investigate the effects of WDCs on the parameters of shear strength and stiffness. Twelve silty clay samples were subjected to different number of WDCs and then tested with triaxial test equipment. The test results show that WDCs have a degradation effect on shear strength (${\sigma}_1-{\sigma}_3)_f$, secant modulus of elasticity ($E_s$) and c′ while little influence on ${\varphi}^{\prime}$. Hence, conventional SSRFEM which reduces c′ and $tan{\varphi}^{\prime}$ in equal proportion cannot be adopted to compute the FOS of slope under conditions of WDCs. The SSRFEM should be modified. In detail, c′ is merely reduced among shear strength parameters, and elasticity modulus is reduced correspondingly. Besides, a new approach based on sudden substantial changes in the displacement of marked nodes is proposed to identify the slope failure in SSRFEM. Finally, the modified SSRFEM is applied to compute the FOS of a slope example.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제38권3호
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• pp.307-317
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• 2024

To get a better understanding of the effect of drying-wetting cycles (DWC) on the mechanical behaviors of silty clay hiving different initial moisture content (IMC), the direct shear tests were performed on sliding band soil taken from a reservoirinduced landslide at the Three Gorges Reservoir area. The results indicated that, as the increasing number of DWC, the shear stress-displacement curves type changed from strain-hardening to strain-softening, and both the soil peak strengths and strength parameters reduced first and then nearly remain unchanged after a certain number of DWC. The effects of DWC on the cohesion were predominated that on the internal friction angle. The IMC of 17% is regarding as the critical moisture content, and the evolution laws of both peak shear strength and strength parameters presented a reversed 'U' type with the rising of the IMC. Based on it, a strength deterioration evolution model incorporating the influence of IMC and DWC was developed to describe the total degradation degree and degradation rate of strength parameters, and the degradation of strength parameters caused by DWC could be counterbalanced to some extent as the soil IMC close to critical moisture content. The microscopic mechanism for the soil strength caused by the IMC and DWC were discussed separately. The research results are of great significance for further understanding the water-weakening mechanicals of the silty clay subjected to the water absorption/desorption.

• 동아시아식생활학회지
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• 제23권5호
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• pp.613-619
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• 2013

본 연구는 저칼로리 식품으로 알려져 있는 곤약과 약리작용이 뛰어난 쑥을 첨가한 곤약국수를 제조하고자 쑥의 건조방법에 따른 색도 변화와 곤약분말 농도, pH, 응고제의 종류에 따른 곤약 겔의 제조조건과 쑥의 첨가량에 따른 최적의 곤약국수의 제조방법을 조사하였다. 곤약국수에 사용할 쑥의 건조방법별 색도 변화 조사 결과, 1% $NaHCO_3$ 용액에 데친 후 건조한 방법(HADB, FDB)은 데치지 않은 방법(HAD, FD)에 비하여 쑥의 녹색유지에 효과적이었고 데친 후 동결건조한 방법(FDB)은 데친 후 열풍건조한 방법(HADB)에 비하여 선명한 녹색을 띄고 있었다. 따라서 쑥 가공처리에 있어서 1% $NaHCO_3$ 알칼리 용액에 데친 후, 동결건조방법이 쑥의 녹색을 유지하는데 가장 효과적이었다. 곤약 겔의 최적의 제조조건을 조사하고자 곤약분말의 농도, pH, 응고제의 종류에 따른 곤약 겔의 물성(견고성, 탄력성, 응집성, 점착성)을 측정하였으며, 그 결과, 분말농도는 9%, pH는 12, 응고제는 $Na_3PO_4$를 사용했을 때 물성치가 우수하게 나타났다. 쑥의 첨가량의 영향을 분석한 결과, 곤약분말에 대하여 1.5% 첨가가 색, 향, 맛 등 전반적인 기호도가 높게 나타나, 1.5% 첨가하는 것이 바람직할 것으로 판단되었다. 이상의 결과로부터 제시한 곤약의 제조 방법과 적절한 농도의 쑥을 첨가한 곤약국수를 제조하여 영양적, 물성적, 관능적으로 소비자들에게 긍정적인 반응을 보일 수 있는 제품이 제조될 수 있는 기초자료로 활용될 수 있다고 사료된다.

• Advances in materials Research
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• 제2권1호
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• pp.51-64
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• 2013

Enantioselective macromer of trimesic acid was prepared using S(-) menthol with trimesoyl chloride on polyimide (PI) ultrafiltration membrane. The chemical composition of macromer as well as polyimide ultrafiltration membrane was determined by ATR-FTIR Spectroscopy. The optical resolution of chiral alcohols was performed in pressure driven process. The effect of monomer solutions concentration, effect of air-drying time of S(-) menthol solution, effect of reaction time, effect of operating pressure, effect of feed concentration of racemate on the performance of macromer was studied. The synthesised material exhibits separation of chiral alcohols (menthol ~23% and sobrelol ~21%).

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• 제16권4호
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• pp.341-353
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• 2018

A reinforced concrete pedestrian tunnel is constructed under a four-track surface railway. Heavy rainfall and soil exposure to drying lead to soil with different water content throughout the year. A railway is an open utility that is subject to rainfall without control on the quantity of the water on it and when there is a tunnel under a railway, the water content of the soil around the tunnel is very influential. This research shows the effects of change of water content in the soil around a pedestrian tunnel under a four-track surface railway. The pedestrian tunnel and the soil block around the tunnel are modeled in 3D by the FEM and are studied under the vibrations induced by the moving trains on the four-track surface railway for different soil water contents and the effects of the soil water content on the dynamic behavior of the tunnel and the surrounding soil are demonstrated.