Search results for "Structural Engineering"
showing 10 items of 1998 documents
Infilled frames: Developments in the evaluation of cyclic behaviour under lateral loads
2005
In order to consider the modified seismic response of framed structures in the presence of masonry infills, proper models have to be formulated. Because of the complexity of the problem, a careful definition of an equivalent diagonal pin-jointed strut, able to represent the horizontal force-interstorey displacement cyclic law of the actual infill, may be a solution. In this connection the present paper, continuing a previous work in which a generalised criterion for the determination of the ideal cross-section of the equivalent strut was formulated, analizes some models known in literature for the prediction of the lateral cyclic behaviour discussing their field of validity. As a support of…
Potentialities of a Highway Alignment Optimization Method in an I-BIM Environment
2019
The BIM (Building Information Modeling) approach potential in the civil engineering field opened novel scenarios in the design idea concept, from planning to executive and constructive phases. The related advantages are numerous and not only limited to a real-time interaction among the involved subjects, that can actually operate in an optimized 3D shared environment. Owing to the sharing information philosophy and to the features of various "smart objects" combined in the project, this innovation reduces potential errors and increases the effectiveness of the design solution in terms of both functionality and cost. Despite these advantages, the highway alignment design problem remains very…
Continuous 3-year outdoor operation of a flat-panel membrane photobioreactor to treat effluent from an anaerobic membrane bioreactor
2020
[EN] A membrane photobioreactor (MPBR) plant was operated continuously for 3 years to evaluate the separate effects of different factors, including: biomass and hydraulic retention times (BRT, HRT), light path (Lp), nitrification rate (NOxR), nutrient loading rates (NLR, PLR) and others. The overall effect of all these parameters which influence MPBR performance had not previously been assessed. The multivariate projection approach chosen for this study provided a good description of the collected data and facilitated their visualisation and interpretation. Forty variables used to control and assess MPBR performance were evaluated during three years of continuous outdoor operation by means …
Improving membrane photobioreactor performance by reducing light path: operating conditions and key performance indicators
2020
[EN] Microalgae cultivation has been receiving increasing interest in wastewater remediation due to their ability to assimilate nutrients present in wastewater streams. In this respect, cultivating microalgae in membrane photobioreactors (MPBRs) allows decoupling the solid retention time (SRT) from the hydraulic retention time (HRT), which enables to increase the nutrient load to the photobioreactors (PBRs) while avoiding the wash out of the microalgae biomass. The reduction of the PBR light path from 25 to 10 cm increased the nitrogen and phosphorus recovery rates, microalgae biomass productivity and photosynthetic efficiency by 150, 103, 194 and 67%, respectively.The areal biomass product…
Factors that affect the permeability of commercial hollow-fibre membranes in a submerged anaerobic MBR (HF-SAnMBR) system
2013
A demonstration plant with two commercial HF ultrafiltration membrane modules (PURON (R), Koch Membrane Systems, PUR-PSH31) was operated with urban wastewater. The effect of the main operating variables on membrane performance at sub-critical and supracritical filtration conditions was tested. The physical operating variables that affected membrane performance most were gas sparging intensity and back-flush (BF) frequency. Indeed, low gas sparging intensities (around 0.23 Nm(3) h(-1) m(-2)) and low BF frequencies (30s back-flush for every 10 basic filtration relaxation cycles) were enough to enable membranes to be operated sub-critically even when levels of mixed liquor total solids were hi…
Nitrite inhibition of microalgae induced by the competition between microalgae and nitrifying bacteria
2020
[EN] Outdoor microalgae cultivation systems treating anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) effluents usually present ammonium oxidising bacteria (AOB) competition with microalgae for ammonium uptake, which can cause nitrite accumulation. In literature, nitrite effects over microalgae have shown controversial results. The present study evaluates the nitrite inhibition role in a microalgae-nitrifying bacteria culture. For this purpose, pilot- and lab-scale assays were carried out. During the continuous outdoor operation of the membrane photobioreactor (MPBR) plant, biomass retention time (BRT) of 2 d favoured AOB activity, which caused nitrite accumulation. This nitrite was confirmed to inhib…
Bòvedas tabicadas: experimental and numerical analysis
2008
A class of thin vaults, the so-called “bovedas tabicadas”, which represent one of the most common Spanish traditional building techniques at the end of XIX century are studied here, treating the relevant analysis problem through a numerical, as well as an experimental, approach. At first the problem is studied by searching for the behaviour of the material effecting suitable experiments. Once the constitutive behaviour of the materials and the structural elements are experimentally characterized, a semi inverse method for the identification of the optimum mechanical parameters to assign to an equivalent homogeneous ideal material through analysis reproducing the executed experimental tests …
Assessment of the integrated urban water quality model complexity through identifiability analysis
2010
Urban sources of water pollution have often been cited as the primary cause of poor water quality in receiving water bodies (RWB), and recently many studies have been conducted to investigate both continuous sources, such as wastewater-treatment plant (WWTP) effluents, and intermittent sources, such as combined sewer overflows (CSOs). An urban drainage system must be considered jointly, i.e., by means of an integrated approach. However, although the benefits of an integrated approach have been widely demonstrated, several aspects have prevented its wide application, such as the scarcity of field data for not only the input and output variables but also parameters that govern intermediate st…
Image analysis for detecting aggregate gradation in asphalt mixture from planar images
2012
Abstract The mechanical properties of bituminous mixture strongly depend on the gradation of the aggregate that represents the mineral skeleton of the mixture, since for open and gap-graded mixtures, stresses due to vehicles in movement on the pavement are mainly transmitted through their contacts. Internal structure of bituminous mixture is, therefore, of great interest for road and infrastructure engineering and it is appropriate to study it with recently developed image analysis method. The purpose of this study was to finalize an effective analysis of asphalt section image for automatically extracting aggregate gradation without the need of separation of the bitumen from the aggregate. …
Impact analysis of MPL and PEM thickness on temperature distribution within PEFC operating at relatively higher temperature
2020
Abstract In Japan, it is recommended to operate Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell (PEFC) at temperature around 90 °C for stationary applications during the period from 2020 to 2025. However, the present PEFC is using Nafion polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) and operated within the temperature range from 60 °C to 80 °C. It is important to understand the temperature distribution in a cell of PEFC for improving the performance and to realize the long life span. This study focuses on use of micro porous layer (MPL), which can promote the moisture transfer in order to control the temperature distribution. The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of MPL on temperature distribution at reaction …