Development of passive viscoelastic damper to attenuate excessive floor vibrations

Recent changes in the construction of building floors have included the use of light material composite systems and long span floor systems. Although these changes have many advantages, such floor systems can suffer from excessive vibration due to human activities. This problem is exacerbated in office buildings due to the reduction in inherent damping associated with modern fit outs. Excessive floor vibrations are often realised after the completion of construction or following structural modifications and normally arise due to inadequate knowledge of the damping values in the design process. Thus rectification measures are normally required to reduce floor accelerations. This paper proposes a new innovative passive viscoelastic damper to reduce floor vibrations. This damper can be easily tuned to the fundamental frequency of the floor and can be designed to achieve various damping values. The paper discusses the analytical development of the damper with experimental results presented on a prototype to demonstrate its effectiveness.     

Stable lead isotopes and lake sediments--a useful combination for the study of atmospheric lead pollution history

Analysis of stable lead isotopes and lead concentrations in lake-sediment deposits, not least in varved (annually-laminated) sediments, is a useful method to study lead pollution history. This paper presents details from a study of 31 lakes in Sweden. Using a strong acid digestion of sediment samples and ICP-MS analyses, we have found that Swedish lake sediments have a high natural (pre-pollution) 206[Pb]207[Pb] ratio (mean 1.52+/-0.18, range 1.28-2.01, n=31 lakes). In contrast, atmospheric lead pollution derived from metal smelting processes, coal burning and from alkyl-lead added to petrol has a lower ratio (< 1.2). Consequently, when pollution lead deposition began approximately 3500 years ago, the lead isotope ratio of the sediments started to decline, and in modern sediments it is typically < 1.2. Using the isotope and concentration values and a mixing model, the relative contribution of pollution and natural lead in sediment samples can be calculated. The pollution lead records of the Swedish lake sediments show a consistent picture of the atmospheric lead pollution history. Some noticeable features are the Roman peak (approx. 0 AD), the large and permanent Medieval increase (approx. 1000 AD), peaks at approximately 1200 and 1530 AD, the rapid increase after World War II, the peak in the 1970s, and the large modern decline.     

Long-term geophysical observations on the inguri dam rock foundation

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - It has been found that during construction of the dam, prior to the filling of the reservoir, compaction and loading of the rocks under the...     

Large bending of pipes

The computer model developed has been used successfully for studying the large pipe-bending problem frequently encountered in offshore structural engineering. The pipe-soil interaction is modelled by using the Coulomb friction law. The modified finite element approach coupled with a modified tangent stiffness procedure is used to handle the nonlinearities (geometric and material, etc.) in the problem. The material nonlinearity has been considered both by the plastic-hinge method and by an elastic-plastic method. Before studying the practical problems, sufficient check problems were analysed and a good agreement was found between theoretically exact solutions and the results obtained from the developed computer model.     

A contribution to the study of some greek marbles

The use of marble in Architecture began on the 7th century B.C. and continued to be used without stop untill today. Greece and especially the East Macedonia region is an extremely privileged area on marble deposits both in quantities and qualities and colours. In the present work the main physical and engineering properties of some varieties of greek marbles are given and a comparison with the international standards is made. The experimental material (marbles) was from East Macedonia, Argolida-Arcadia and Magnessia, three of the biggest marble deposit areas in Greece. From the results obtained, it is concluded that the marbles examined satisfy all the international standard codes and thus they can be used as building stones and decoration materials.     

Reliability of corrosion-damaged steel structures using interval probability theory

Engineering decisions concerning the performance of existing structures must be made in the presence of uncertainties. The remaining capacity of corroded steel structures provides a good example of different aspects of uncertainty. These include: an unknown or partially known extent of damage; a variability in loading and an uncertain reserve of structural capacity depending on the mode of failure. The theory of structural reliability has been developed to provide a method of analysis for structural safety. In this paper, methods are proposed to compute the component reliability of corrosion-damaged steel members. The application of a recently developed theory called interval probability theory for system reliability is illustrated using the data obtained from actual samples of corroded beams.     

Method of Determining Strength and Deformation Characteristics of Soils from Results of Deep Impression of Rod Plates

The possibility of determining strength and deformation characteristics of soils under field conditions using rod plates is discussed. The mutual relationship between these characteristics is established from results of deep impression of these rods.     

Relations of calculated and actual settlement of a thawing foundation bed

Conclusions 1. The dependence of relative compression of thawing soil on pressure is nonlinear, and it is in agreement with views on the nature of deformation of thawing soil. A dominance of natural pressure in the total load on a foundation bed permits one to use the method of unit summation in calculating settlement of nonlinearly deformable soil. Such calculations, as compared with the linear formulas employed in SNiP, give better agreement with actual settlement.2. In calculating settlement of thawing foundation beds, we need differential consideration of soil compressibility with depth, since the combination of genetic features of frozen ground and the increasing natural pressure with depth may create a different inhomogeneity in the foundation bed.Yakutniproalmaz, Mirnyi. Translated from Osnovaniya, Fundamenty i Mekhanika Gruntov, No. 1, pp. 18–21, January–February, 1975.     

Complexation of organic compounds in the presence of Al3+ during micellar flocculation

Complexes of Al and model pollutants phenol, benzoic acid, 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4-DB (2,4-dichlorophenoxybutiric acid) play a key role in the removal of organic pollutants by co-adsorption on micelles of anionic surfactants flocculated by means of Al(3+). This technique, known as adsorptive micellar flocculation (AMF), is related to removal of organic compounds by coagulation-precipitation with Al and Fe salts. Some of the stoichiometries found (6Al:1L and higher, with "L" the organic compound) indicate that complexes of a cationic nature form in the presence of high excesses of Al, possibly polyaluminium complexes related to the species [Al(13)O(4)(OH)(24)](7+). In the case of phenol it has been established by spectroscopic measures that in the range of [Al(2)(SO(4))(3)](tot) between 5 x 10(-5) and 3 x 10(-4)M and [phenol](tot) between 10(-3) and 6 x 10(-3)M complexes exist at pH as low as 2.4. The results show that AMF may be explained by the chemisorption of molecules of organic compounds able to incorporate into the polyaluminic complexes occurring within the Stern layer of flocculating micelles.