• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.191-202
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• 2023

Palm oil fuel ash (POFA) is a newly emerging pozzolanic material having high amount of silica content. Various forms of POFA were used in cement-based materials (CBMs) in replacement of cement in different dosages of low and high volume. Although, there are many researches on POFA to be used in concrete and mortar, however, this material was not practically used in the construction industry. Engineers and designers need to be confident to use any new developed materials by knowing all engineering properties at short and long terms. As durability concern, concrete pH value is one of the most important properties. Portland cement produces are alkaline initially, however, it may be reduced due to aging and its components. It is believed that by incorporation of supplementary cementitious materials in CBMs the pH value reduces due to utilization of Ca(OH)₂ in pozzolanic reaction. This study is the first attempts to understand the pH value of mortars containing up to 30% POFA under different curing conditions and its changes with time. The results were also compared with the pH of ground granulated ballast furnace slag (GGBFS) and fly ash (FA) content mortars. In addition, the compressive strength of different mortars under different curing conditions were also studied. The results showed that the pH value of control mix (without cementitious materials) was more than all the blended cement mortars indifferent curing conditions at the same ages. However, there was a reducing trend in the pH value of all mortar mixes containing POFA.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.167-181
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• 2015

"Mortar or concrete pneumatically projected at high velocity onto a surface" is called Shotcrete. Models that predict shotcrete design parameters (e.g. compressive strength, slump etc) from any mixing proportions of admixtures could save considerable experimentation time consumed during trial and error based procedures. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been widely used for similar purposes; however, such models have been rarely applied on shotcrete design. In this study 19 samples of shotcrete test panels with varying quantities of water, steel fibers and silica fume were used to determine their slump, cost and compressive strength at different ages. A number of 3-layer Back propagation Neural Network (BPNN) models of different network architectures were used to train the network using 15 samples, while 4 samples were randomly chosen to validate the model. The predicted compressive strength from linear regression lacked accuracy with $R^2$ value of 0.36. Whereas, outputs from 3-5-3 ANN architecture gave higher correlations of $R^2$ = 0.99, 0.95 and 0.98 for compressive strength, cost and slump parameters of the training data and corresponding $R^2$ values of 0.99, 0.99 and 0.90 for the validation dataset. Sensitivity analysis of output variables using ANN can unfold the nonlinear cause and effect relationship for otherwise obscure ANN model.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.99-113
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• 2017

The effects of different lightweight functional fillers on the properties of cement-based composites are investigated in this study. The fillers include fly ash cenospheres (FACs) and glass micro-spheres (GMS15 and GMS38) in various proportions. The developed composites were tested for compressive, flexural and tensile strengths at 10 and 28-day ages. The results indicated that both FACs and GMS38 are excellent candidates for producing strong lightweight composites. However, incorporation of GMS15 resulted in much lower specific strength values (only up to $13.64kPa/kg\;m^3$) due to its thinner shell thickness and lower isostatic crushing strength value (2.07 MPa). Microstructural analyses further revealed that GMS38 and GMS15 were better suited for thermal insulating applications. However, higher weight fraction of the fillers in composites leads to increased porosity which might be detrimental to their strength development.

• Advances in concrete construction
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.659-677
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• 2018

The use of some superplasticizers in the production of mortar or concrete influences the hydration kinetic and the amount of total heat. This results in a modification of some properties, namely mortar workability, mechanical strength and durability. Three superplasticizers were used; a polynaphthalenesulfonate (PNS), a melamine resin (PMS) and a polycarboxylate (PC). They have been incorporated into various amount in a standardized mortar based on limestone cement. The aim of this study was to evaluate the rheological, mechanical and Calorimeters properties of this mortar. This will select the most compatible product and more able to be used depending on the climate of the country and the cement used. The PNS is incompatible with this type of cement registering a decrease of strength but the PMS and the PC modify the kinetics of hydration with significant heat generation and improved mechanical strength. The measured heat flow is significantly influenced by the type and dosage of superplasticizer especially for low dosage. Hydration heat and compressive strength of the different mixtures can be evaluated by determining their ultimate values and ages to reach these values where the correlation coefficients are very satisfactory.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2019.11a
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• pp.33-34
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• 2019

Malaysia, as a tropical rainforest country, enjoys an abundance of bamboo plant that proliferate throughout the country. The application of geopolymer technology has become a trend and preserve the environment from harm. Fly ash geopolymer concrete has low early strength and requires 24 hours for the concrete to harden. Thus, the presence of calcium and potassium content in bamboo ash could remedy this problem. Besides, there is no research regarding the use of bamboo ash as a binder in geopolymer concrete. Therefore, the presence of bamboo ash could improve the research field with the use of agriculture waste in a building construction. This research aim is to use bamboo ash in the production of fly ash geopolymer concrete. The specimens were casted in $100mm{\times}100mm{\times}100mm$ cubes and sodium based activator were used as the alkaline solutions. The binders are formulated with different binder ratio. All test specimens were cured at ambient temperature ($23^{\circ}C-25^{\circ}C$) and 100% fly ash was chosen as control specimen. To determine the mechanical properties of fly sh geopolymer concrete with the presence of bamboo ash, compressive strength test was conducted. The test results depicted that as the percentage of bamboo ash decreases, compressive strength increases. Also, the addition of 5% of bamboo ash into fly ash geopolymer concrete could improve the early strength in 7 days. The results were proven with the result explained by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Therefore, it can be concluded that the addition of bamboo ash improved the properties of fly ash geopolymer concrete at early ages.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.385-390
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• 2002

Autogenous shrinkage of concrete has been defined as decrease in volume due to hydration cement, not due to other causes such as evaporation, temperature change and external load and so on. For ordinary concretes, autogenous shrinkage is so little compared to the other deformations that it has been dignored. It has recently been proved, however, that autogenous shrinkage considerably increase with decrease in water to cement ratio. And it has been reported that cracking can be caused by autogenous shrinkage, when high- strength concretes were used. In this study, we propose an analytical system to represent autogenous shrinkage in cement paste in order to control crack due to autogenous shrinkage. The system is composed with the hydration model and pore structure model. Contrary to the usual assumption of uniform properties in the hydration progress, the hydration model to refine Tomosawa's represents the situation that inner and outer products are made in cement paste. The pore structure model is based upon the physical phenomenon of ion diffusion in cement paste and chemical phenomenon of hydration in cement particle. The proposed model can predict the pore volume ratio and the pore structure in cement paste under variable environmental conditions satisfactorily The autogenous shrinkage prdiction system with regard to pore structure development and hydration at early ages for different mix-proportions shows a reasonable agreement with the experimental data.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.173-184
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• 2005

For reducing construction cost, two-plate-girder bridges are getting popular in Japan. This type of bridge employs a PC slab, which is often cast-in-place. In such a case, concrete is not usually cast over the whole slab at one time: some portions are constructed earlier than the rest. Therefore, a construction joint is inevitably created. Due to the drying shrinkage of concrete, tension stress may occur in concrete slab. High tensile stress can be expected near the construction joint where concretes with different ages meet. Moreover, prestressing is not applied over the whole length of slab at one time. This may also serve as a source of tensile stress in the slab. Thus there is a chance that cast-in-place PC slab, especially near the construction joint, may be subjected to tensile cracking. In the present study, stress states near the construction joint in the cast-in-place PC slab of a two-plate-girder bridge are investigated numerically. The finite element method is employed and the three-dimensional analysis is conducted to see the influence of dry shrinkage and prestressing. The stress states in the PC slab thus obtained are discussed. The simplified model of a plate girder for this class of analysis is also proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.202-209
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• 2019

The objective of this study is to examine the reproducibility for compressive strength development and mechanical properties of lightweight concrete made using bottom ash aggregates and foam(LWC-BF). Based on the mix proportions conducted by Ji et al., six identical mixes were prepared with different actual foam volume ratios from 0% to 25% and water-to-binder ratios from 25% to 30%. The presently measured properties, including initial slump, slurry density, compressive strength gains at different ages, splitting tensile strength, and modulus of rupture, were very close to those determined in the previous tests by Ji et al. Thus, the developed LWC-BF has a good potential in obtaining a reproducibility for compressive strength development and mechanical properties even though the troubles of mixing control owing to the addition of preformed foam.

• International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.225-238
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• 2013

In this study, a two-layer feed-forward neural network was constructed and applied to determine a mapping associating mix design and testing factors of cement-nano silica (NS)-rice husk ash ternary blended concrete samples with their performance in conductance to the water absorption properties. To generate data for the neural network model (NNM), a total of 174 field cores from 58 different mixes at three ages were tested in the laboratory for each of percentage, velocity and coefficient of water absorption and mix volumetric properties. The significant factors (six items) that affect the permeability properties of ternary blended concrete were identified by experimental studies which were: (1) percentage of cement; (2) content of rice husk ash; (3) percentage of 15 nm of $SiO_2$ particles; (4) content of NS particles with average size of 80 nm; (5) effect of curing medium and (6) curing time. The mentioned significant factors were then used to define the domain of a neural network which was trained based on the Levenberg-Marquardt back propagation algorithm using Matlab software. Excellent agreement was observed between simulation and laboratory data. It is believed that the novel developed NNM with three outputs will be a useful tool in the study of the permeability properties of ternary blended concrete and its maintenance.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.21 no.3 s.75
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• pp.94-100
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• 2006

The goal of this study is to show the way to increase the safety of deteriorated PSC beam bridges by the to-box reinforcing method. This method is to change the open girder section into the closed box section by connecting bottom flanges of neighboring PSC girders with the precast panels embedding PS tendons at the anchor block. The box section is composed of three concrete members with different casting ages, RC slab, PSC beam, precast panel. This different aging requires a time-dependent analysis considering construction sequences. Reliability index and failure probability are produced by the AFOSM reliability analysis. Transversely five schemes and longitudinally two schemes are considered. The full reinforcing scheme, transversely and longitudinally, shows the highest reliability index, but it requires more cost for retrofit. The partial reinforcing scheme 4, 4-1 are recommended in this study as the economically best scheme.