Compressive behaviour of laminated structural glass members

Several experimental investigations in the past few years have highlighted the fact that the compressive strength of glass was significantly higher than its tensile strength, allowing new applications of glass in compression members. However, due to the high slenderness of structural glass elements made of thin glass panels, they tend to fail in a brittle manner. A substantial amount of fundamental research has been carried out in the past few years to investigate the stability behaviour of structural glass elements. However, although buckling of glass panels has been quite well studied, a very poor amount of research has been addressed to glass columns, which by contrast represent the most interesting case due to their direct application in buildings. In this paper, the results of ten compressive tests on glass panels and columns are presented and discussed. The main variables considered were slenderness of panels and the shape of the cross-section for columns. The results of six bending tests on monolithic and laminated glass panels are also shown, and the level of connection between the glass sheets was evaluated. A review of the theoretical background is provided and the results achievable with existing analytical models are compared.     

Application of multi-way models to the time-resolved fluorescence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons mixtures in water

The time-resolved laser-induced fluorescence of a series of polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAHs) and mixtures of these latter in aqueous solution was measured by means of an apparatus equipped with optical fibers, which allows their real time in situ monitoring. The potential of such spectroscopic technique, yielding 4-way fluorescence data arrays, together with the application of multi-way models to the matricized data, was tested for the resolution of complex aqueous mixtures containing low concentrations of PAHs, as typical fluorescent pollutants in aquatic systems. PARAllel FACtors analysis was employed for the qualitative resolution of PAHs mixtures and for calculating the fluorescence lifetimes of single PAHs; n-way partial least squares analysis was applied for evaluating the concentration of the single PAHs in the aqueous mixtures.     

Optimised design of energy efficient building façades via Evolutionary Neural Networks

Buildings are required to be more and more energy efficient, in order to comply with restrictive requirements of building regulations and energy certifications. Optimisation algorithms have shown to be effective in identifying good solutions for the design of efficient building services. In this article Evolutionary Neural Network Design (ENN-Design) has been adopted to drive the design of a typical façade module for an office building. This application is significant, since façades play a major role in the definition of the energy performance of buildings. Both single-objective and multi-objective optimisations have been carried out. The aim of the article is to introduce an innovative approach for improving the performance of building envelopes by means of a reasonable amount of calculation time.     

Dynamic alongwind fatigue of slender vertical structures

The wind-excited vibrations of structures induce fluctuating stresses around mean deformation states that lead to fatigue damage accumulation and can determine structural failure without exceeding design wind actions. This paper proposes a mathematical model aimed at deriving a histogram of the stress cycles, the accumulated damage and the fatigue life of slender vertical structures (e.g. towers, chimneys, poles and masts) in alongwind vibrations. The formulation, integrally in closed form, is based on a probabilistic counting cycle method inspired by narrow-band processes. An example illustrates the proposed procedure and shows, through the comparison with Monte Carlo simulations, the entity of the approximations involved by treating the response as narrow-banded instead of broad-banded.     

Phytosterol oxidation in oil-in-water emulsions and bulk oil

Dietary plants sterols (phytosterols) have been shown to lower plasma cholesterol level in humans. Since phytosterols may protect against coronary heart diseases, they are being incorporated into functional foods. However, phytosterols are susceptible to oxidative degradation. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the formation of phytosterols oxidation products (POPs) in oil-in-water emulsions and bulk corn oil. The extent of lipid oxidation was monitored by measuring the lipid hydroperoxides and hexanal, whereas 7-keto derivatives of phytosterols were determined by gas chromatography to follow sterol oxidation. A higher POPs level and formation rate was found in the oil-in-water (o/w) emulsion than in the bulk oil. Interfacial tension measurements showed that phytosterols had a high degree of surface activity, which would allow them to migrate to the oil–water interface of the emulsion droplets where oxidative stress is high.     

Composition,preparation procedure and physical properties of linear homogeneous polyurethanes for membranes

Linear polyurethanes (PUs) were prepared in solution in two steps. In the first step, toluene‐diisocyanate (TDI) 80:20 (T) was reacted with a short‐chain poly(oxypropylene) diol (V) to obtain prepolymers characterized by various ratios of R = [T]°/[V]°. In the second step, the prepolymers were reacted with the extender 1,4‐cyclohexanedimethanol (E) with various extension ratios R_E = (R ? 1)[V]°/[E]°. The PU properties were analyzed by various techniques. In particular, the molecular weights determined by gel permeation chromatography (GPC), the thermal properties such as glass transition temperature T_g and specific heat variation ΔC_p measured by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), the chemical composition of the PUs and the various types of hydrogen bonds present in the polymers evidenced by Fourier‐transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, the monophasic structure evidenced by small‐angle X‐ray scattering (SAXS), and the existence of only one T_g confirmed that these PUs were linear, amorphous and monophasic. Positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) analysis showed that the mean volume of the nanoholes increased with increasing temperature, but was not dependent on the composition, as expected for a monophasic system. A stoichiometric semi‐empirical model was proposed that relates the PU blocks' micro‐composition to the R and R_E macro‐parameters, chosen for the synthesis. The polymer assumes various expressions of the general formula X? [(TV)_k? (TE)_n]_m? X for different values of the R and R_E ratios. The micro‐parameters k and m have a direct connection with the experimental mean molecular weights of the prepolymer and the polymer, respectively: n depends only on R. The model could foresee the density of hydrogen bonds and distinguished the bonds connected to either V or E, which could be shown by FTIR analysis. This paper shows that, when using stereo‐irregular diols and blends of 2,4‐ and 2,6‐TDI, non‐stereoregular PUs are obtained. If low‐molecular‐weight diols are used and R < 3.3, it is quite improbable that the PU blocks separate into macrophases and therefore monophasic amorphous PUs are obtained. Monophasic PUs can be useful for applications such as in the field of membrane gas and vapour separation. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

Optical emission spectroscopic study for diagnostics in high gravity DC-plasma CVD diamond growth

The effect of gravity on materials processing is rather complicated, and a large number of considerably unexpected results due to high gravity or sometimes centrifugation have been reported. The authors have been conducting high gravity diamond thin film growth by the DC-plasma CVD method up to 100 G. The effects of high gravity appeared in the nucleation site density, growth rate, grain size, uniformity, film coverage and morphology. With the increase in gravity, the nucleation site density, growth rate, grain size were all found to be increased, the uniformity and film coverage were improved, and {100} facet became dominant rather than {111} facet. To understand the deposition mechanism in these effects observed in high gravity, a diagnostic apparatus for spectroscopic study of the optical emission from the DC-plasma was developed, and the OES (optical emission spectroscopy) apparatus has been employed in high gravity CVD experiments. The influence of gravity on the most active species in the plasma, such as H, CH, C₂ was discussed together with the results from the Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction study.     

Wheel-flat diagnostic tool via wavelet transform

The detection and acknowledgement of signatures, for condition monitoring and fault diagnostics by wavelet transform, deserves increased attention, due to its property of variable time–frequency resolution, which overcomes limitations of classical time–frequency approaches.In the paper, a diagnostic tool is presented, based on the wavelet transform, able to detect and to quantify the wheel-flat defect of a test train at different speeds and to measure the train speed with proper accuracy. The designed diagnostic tool minimises the hardware requirements, since only one accelerometer is needed, and provides results in real time.The results, achieved by an exhaustive experimental campaign, permit to validate the effectiveness of the diagnostic tool and to demonstrate the advantages of wavelet-based detection of signatures.