Concrete Composites

Steel-concrete composite systems for buildings are composed of concrete components that interact with structural steel components within the same system. By their integral behavior, these components give the required attributes of strength, stiffness and stability to the overall system. Composite members, as individual elements of a system, have been in use for a considerable number of years. In this paper, a review of the research carried out on composite columns with infills is given with emphasis on experimental work.

This paper will focus on construction defects analysis on different types of walling system for building. There are various types of construction building defects on the main structure of building. This study is conducted based on 3 buildings located at Universiti Sains Malaysia. The chosen buildings are Hamzah Sendut 3 Library, Aman Damai Hostel and Restu Hostel. Observation and monitoring the defects at the buildings are the methodologies used in this study. Information is recorded and supported by photographic and digital documentation. Furthermore, the interview with those expert and professional in this field will be another critical element of this study. Lastly, the analysis will be done according to the data collected through observation and monitoring, and interview. Based on the obtained information, there are three types of building defects took place which are crack, dampness and paint peeling. These defects are not dangerous as they do not affect the structure of the building and there is no symptom which shows that the building is going to collapse. This research provides the solution for the building defect of the existing building.

Self compacting self curing concrete is a new type of concrete which have the properties of self compaction as well as self curing. Self compacting concrete requires no external vibration to achieve consolidation and generally results in saving labour and time, improved workability, improved quality, higher durability and better surface finish. The strength and durability of concrete will be fully developed only if it is cured properly. To achieve good cure, excessive evaporation of water from fresh concrete should be avoided. Curing operations should ensure that adequate amount of water is available for cement hydration to occur. Concrete incorporating self-curing agents will represent a new trend in the concrete construction in the new millennium. Better understanding of the self-curing agents and the self compacting nature of concrete will definitely result in a new generation of concrete, which will be stronger, more durable, will have the desired stress-strain behavior and, possibly, with the whole range of newly introduced self curing self compacting properties. Curing compounds can be effectively used with improved strength and sustainability of water. Currently, one of the most active research areas dealing with cement and concrete is the understanding of the hydration of cement particles and achieving the optimum cure of concrete without the need for external curing methods.

This paper presents a study on the selection and optimization of the elevator system for commercial buildings. Since the elevator industry began in 1853, elevators become more and more common in people’s daily life. Now, elevator system design is an important part of commercial building service design. A good elevator system can contribute marks for the performance of commercial building. This study includes an assessment of the utilization of this vertical transportation to run the daily matters of the building productively and safely according to the regulations and standards. In addition, it will also look into the method to arrange the transportation in a building which has high-flow of people. 1st Avenue Penang, Malaysia is chosen as the observation site in this study. It is hoped that this study will provide some useful insight on the transportation system (elevators) in the commercial building.

Water is important ingredient of widely used construction material concrete. Most of the specifications recommend potable water for concrete, imposes a heavy burden on the cost of production. The present study was an attempt to study the possibility of usage of treated wastewater for concrete preparation, so that the shortage and cost using potable water can be greatly reduced by determining the influence of wastewater on the strength of concrete. Wastewater from a near by wastewater treatment plant were collected and analyzed in terms of their physicochemical properties along with potable water for comparison purposes. The study reveals that the consistency of cement remains same for all types of mixing wastewater. There is an increase in initial setting time with deteriorating quality of mixing wastewater but the final setting time remains same. The compressive strength of concrete of tertiary treated wastewater is close to that of tap water but higher than that of PTWW & STWW. The study indicates that the use of tertiary treated wastewater will be an alternate to save the precious fresh water and also the cost of concrete production may be reduced.

Different from other soda ash plants based on Solvay Process in the world, Mersin Soda plant applies a particular process in order to decrease the chloride concentration of the solid waste. The purpose of the current study is to investigate utilization of this solid waste with low chloride content in possible industrial applications. It is determined that using solid waste as a mineral additive in some of the cements produced in Mersin-Adana region, slightly reduces consistency of mortar and shortens setting time. However consistency and setting time of the samples including solid waste can be increased to the levels of the reference sample by using 0.05% of retarding admixture. It is observed that compressive strength of samples with 5% waste is similar to the reference sample. As a result, it has been found that 5 percent solid waste can be used in the cement as a minor constitute.

The difficulty of calculating transient heat transfer in foamed concrete panel is complex due to its porous and multi-phase material nature. This paper reports the basis of one-dimensional Finite Difference method to acquire thermal properties of foamed concrete. Additionally, this paper also incorporates the execution of the method and the validation of thermal properties model of foamed concrete. A one-dimensional finite difference heat conduction programme has been developed to predict the temperature development through the thickness of the foamed concrete slab, based on an initial estimate of the thermal conductivity-temperature relationship as a function of porosity and radiation within the voids. The accuracy of the model was evaluated by comparing predicted and experimental temperature profiles obtained from small scale heat transfer test on foamed concrete slabs, so that the temperature history of the specimen calculated by the programme closely matches those recorded during the experiment.

In this research, Investigation on FRP-cement mortar infilled-steel double-skin tubular member is carried out with emphasis on lateral and vertical load resistance located at seismically active regions. In this new structural member, three constituent materials are optimally combined. The outer tube is made of fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP), the inner tube is made of steel, and the space in-between is filled with cement mortar. These members are highly useful when they are used as columns in scaffolding. These members are cyclically loaded to their Ultimate load to study the behaviour of Double skin tubular short columns (DSTSCs) under increasing d/t ratio by parametric optimization approach using DOE (Design of Experiments). From this experimental research, following conclusions were drawn; As the length of the tube or column increases, load carrying capacity decreases for every particular D/T ratio. As D/T ratio increases, for a particular length of tube ultimate load decreases. As cement mortar ratio increases the ultimate load for d/t =10 &13.5 decreases but for the d/t 17.667 ultimate load decreased and suddenly shot up. As Gap (between the inner steel tube and outer frp) increases the ultimate load for each cement ratio decreases.

There are many socio-economic factors that affect the affordability level of house ownership such as household income, household expenditure, house prices, rental installment, type of occupations and others. If the income is sufficient to pay for a house and other household expenditures, then the person can be identified as having home affordability. The objectives of this research are to examine the housing affordability of Malaysian family student and to investigate the pattern of their expenses in Sheffield. The sample of this research comprises 30 Malaysian family students who rent in City Center, Tinsley and Firth Park. The convenience sampling technique is used for this research with regression method as its analytical tool. The findings indicate that Malaysian family students in Sheffield with 4 household members are afforded to rent a house with monthly instalment averaged at £435 if minimal £1,300 overall income obtainable either from the sponsors or through part time job. The pattern of their expenses in Sheffield shows that the significant monthly expenditures is housing rental with 35% allocation and 24% for food.

The principal objective of this paper is to investigate the behavior and load carrying capacity of reinforced concrete (indirectly loaded flanged deep beams) strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips in shear. Using three types of concrete (normal strength concrete, high strength concrete, light weight concrete) group three consists of five indirectly loaded flanged deep beams (with light weight concrete) to investigate the effect of different strengthening case on the behavior and load carrying capacity of the deep beam like, three sides strengthening with CFRP (V shape), and strengthening the two opposite sides of deep beam, one side strengthening of deep beam, (L shape) strengthening.