Civil Engineering

This paper employs widely used Water Quality Index (WQI), which is valuable and unique rating to depict the overall water quality status in a single term and simple (e.g., good or poor) for reporting to authorities management and the public in a consistent manner , that is helpful for the selection of appropriate treatment technique to meet the concerned issues. The water quality of Muthanna Province has been assessed from 2011 to 2014 to express the suitability of water for drinking purposes. Water quality data obtained from two sampling sites. According to the WQI values, the water quality at most of the sites was within an environmentally satisfactory condition during summer, and during the winter. Generally, the results showed that water quality varied from Excellent to Medium range during seasons. The results of the study confirm the suitability of all selected water sources for drinking purposes. Since this is unprecedented attempt to apply WQI on Muthanna , the used WQI proved to be a highly effective tool to assess the water quality of Muthanna in simple way, and its use is strongly recommended.

This paper studies the behavior of both green cement and Geopolymer concrete. Twenty-seven concrete mixes were prepared and tested in the fresh and hardened state. The properties of both Ordinary Portland Cement Concrete (OPCC) and Geopolymer concrete (GC) incorporating quarry limestone waste as a replacement of fine aggregate were studied. It was found that quarry waste fine aggregate increased the slump of fresh cement and Geopolymer concrete up to 50% as a replacement for fine aggregate. Improvements of properties of both cement and Geopolymer concrete were detected when quarry waste fine aggregate was replaced up to 50% of fine aggregate. The overall test results revealed that quarry limestone waste fine aggregate can be consumed efficiently in both cement and Geopolymer concrete up to 50%.

With the rapid technological growth in the computer industry over the last decades, spatial related problems and issues have found their way into computer-based systems used to store and manipulate geographically referenced data, these systems which are commonly referred as Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have become widely established in many disciplines. GIS is a powerful software tool, by using this technology it is very convenient to assemble maps quickly from predefined layers, add data from coverage, shape files, geo databases, preparation of models etc. The GIS can be used for identifying suitable locations for buffers. The use of technologies such as GIS can also be very effectively used for fixing the canal alignment. A buffer analysis tool in GIS is a proximity analysis used to create polygons based on a specified distance from the original geometric feature and the output is a large zone or region that surrounds and encompasses the feature. The Buffer output is often used to determine any feature that are within a specified distance of a point, line or polygon. Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools is an intelligent model based process which is very helpful for planning and designing purpose. The aim of this study is to present the applications of buffer analysis which is basically a GIS software tool along with BIM tools for comparing the proposed canal alignments in Somnala Minor Irrigation Scheme of Gosikhurd Indira Sagar Project.

Signal timing is the technique which traffic engineers use to determine who has the right-of-way at an intersection. Signal timing involves deciding how much green time the traffic lights shall provide at an intersection approach, how long the pedestrian walk signal should be, and many numerous other factors. Traffic volume studies are conducted to determine the number, movements, and classifications of roadway vehicles at a given location. The collected data is converted into PCU units. These data can help identify critical flow time periods, determine the influence of large vehicles or pedestrians on vehicular traffic flow, or document traffic volume trends. The length of the sampling period depends on the type of count being taken and the intended use of the data recorded. For example, an intersection count may be conducted during the peak flow period. If so, manual count with 15-minute intervals could be used to obtain the traffic volume data. Webster’s method is a rational approach for signal design. The design is simple and is totally based on formulae’s laid down by Webster. In this method, the total cycle of the signal is determined which forms a total least delay occurring at signal.

The watershed resources management (WRM) model is a basin-scale model for continuous simulation. It is applicable in planning, forecasting and operational hydrology. Hydrological simulation requires calibration to match reality. In automatic calibration, optimization is carried out using selected model parameters. WRM model originally calibrated heuristically in FORTRAN for Curley’s and Mayne’s sub-watersheds Canada was converted to C# (C sharp) to allow flexibility in programming and to enable Graphic User Interface (GUI) creation, and autocalibrated for tropical watersheds. The WRM model was repackaged to run in normal and autocalibration mode. Two software programs, WRMGA and WRMGUI, were successfully developed, tested and applied. Genetic algorithm (GA) was employed as optimization technique. Four parameters (genomes) namely, the Manning roughness coefficient for land surface (MANN1), Manning roughness coefficient for stream surface (MANN2), Manning roughness coefficient for terrace surface (MANN3) and surface retention parameter (KRET) with high sensitivity were used to adjust the four input files (FOR001.DAT, FOR003.DAT, FOR005.DAT, optimized.dat and WRM.DAT.optimized.dat) for the autocalibration. Genomes were generated using a random number generator within specified ranges. The generated values were stored in a file, Optimized.dat, which the program calls up and uses to compute the best fit. For MANN1, MANN2, MANN3 and KRET, minimum values of 0.10, 0.01, 0.00 and 0.01 and maximum values of 0.18, 0.05, 0.05 and 0.05 respectively were set and used for optimization process. The optimization process with up to 1000 trials using these sets of minimum and maximum values gave optimized values of 0.1272, 0.0214, 0.0201 and 0.0102 for MANN1, MANN2, MANN3 and KRET respectively, with a best fitness test of 0.9998. Hydrograph plots of both the originally heuristically calibrated simulations for the watersheds and the autocalibration simulations for the same watershed were compared with measured hydrographs and statistically validated. WRM originally calibrated to the watersheds gave a regression coefficient (R) of 34.8% while the autocalibrated model gave 37% showing an improvement in the autocalibration scheme. The WRM model was successfully repackaged for autocalibration in this paper and could be employed by non-expert in hydrologic modelling.

The concept of Soft storey has taken its place in the Indian urban environment due to the fact that it provides the parking facility in the soft storey of the building. The cost of construction of this type of building is much less than that of a building with basement parking. The collapse mechanism of such type of building is predominantly due to the formation of soft-storey behavior in the ground storey of this type of building. The sudden reduction in lateral stiffness and mass in the ground storey results in higher stresses in the columns of soft storey under seismic loading. The study of behaviour of RCC structure with change in soft storey location for that G+4 RCC structure with parameter define liner is modeled and analysis 6 times. In which case 1 is for the structure without infill wall where case 2 to case 6 is for the RCC structure with infill wall except soft storey at particular levels. The result are considered under maximum bending moments shear force, storey displacement, base shear value. From the analysis, it is observe very clearly that the displacement of structure without infill wall is considerable very high as that compared to structure with infill wall. Further it is observe that, when the soft storey at ground level the nodal displacement are more and as the location of soft storey moves to the upper floor of displacement value decrease when the soft storey at the top. The reaction value increase when the soft storey location changes from top to bottom. The nature in base shear distribution changes with the change in soft storey location from the study done

Frequent occurrence of recent earthquakes in South Asian region has inspired the civil engineers to become more concern about earthquake resistant building design. In order to construct a building in a high seismic zone, the flexural members like beams, must have adequate ductility along with enough strength. Ductility is a solid material's ability to deform under tensile stress. To evaluate the flexural ductility, it is necessary to conduct non-linear moment-curvature experiment or numerical analysis. Moment curvature is a method to determine the load-deflection behavior of a concrete section using nonlinear material stress-strain relationship. As experimental analysis is time consuming and costly, a quicker and cheaper approach numerical analysis can be performed. In this paper, results of a numerical program conducted on sectional ductility behavior of a rectangular concrete beam are presented. Eighteen cross sections, with three different reinforcement ratio (0.007, 0.010 and 0.013), two different yield strength of reinforcement (400MPa-nominal strength steel and 500MPa-high strength steel) and three different concrete compressive strengths (25MPa, 30MPa and 35MPa) have been built and analyzed. An effort is made to order the performance of the samples according to moment capacity and ductility. From the program it has been observed that, moment capacity is higher in highly reinforced section. But more ductility is obtained from a lower reinforced high strength steel beam. The use of higher strength steel helps to maintain minimum level of flexural ductility along with higher flexural strength. It also leads to reduce construction cost by reducing dimension of a concrete section and by reducing steel requirement.

It is important to make structure safe and secure for inhabitants till its useful life. Being part of construction designing it becomes upmost important to design structure safe and stable. A complete structure consisting of various element like beam, column, foundation as well as slabs one such member slab commonly considered as plate has studied over here for the change in behaviour with respect to thickness. Initially a plate is analyse using classical cosine series expansion method manually, it results is check with computational model analysis so as to find out % error. As the error is in permissible limit so further analysis work is done computationally using STAAD-PRO V8i software for 7 cases with a thickness of 5mm to 250mm of plate. On the basis of analysis related to bending moment, shear stresses, deflections, principal stresses comparative observation tables are prepare. Result shows that in thin plate forces are carried in the form of principal stresses and deflections are high. While in thick plate moment and shear stresses are predominant but deflection is very less. This study shows where to concentrate while designing the plate for practical purpose.

A brief review of the structural reliability design methodology and its applications at system level are compiled from various sources. The main objective of this study is to present the developments in the reliability based analysis and design of land based structures, marine structures specially a diaphragm wall of a berthing structures. The present paper discusses right from the basic concepts of risk, reliability, safety and the methodologies to define reliability in a quantitative manner to aid to design a structure for a given reliability and the reliability concepts applied to aging structures, creep, shrinkage and serviceability, application of reliability analysis in other fields such as geotechnical engineering, design of marine structures, etc.,. To avoid unforeseen failure, the structural designs often undertake the concept of a safety factor to reduce the probability of failure or to increase the reliability. Analysis need to be carried out using Monte Carlo simulation assessing the partial factors, levels of risk and degree of uncertainty.

River is a natural watercourse, flowing over the surface in extended hollow formations (i.e channels) which drain discrete areas of mainland with a natural gradient. In basic terms the existence of a river depends on three things: the availability of surface water, a channel in the ground and an inclined surface. In this sense, the term "river" includes all kinds of watercourses, from the tiniest of brooks to the largest of rivers. Importance of river to humanity cannot be neglected but as important as rivers are, they are also dangerous to lives and properties if they are not well monitored. Most rivers in Nigeria are not gauged, so their flows are not known. Ogbomosoo is a city in Oyo state, South Western Nigeria in which River Oba is located. It is one of the river with heavy flow in Ogbomoso and also with varying depth which when flowing it picks up debris caused by human activities in that area