Performance of sand and shredded rubber tire mixture as a natural base isolator for earthquake protection

The performance of a well-designed layer of sand, and composites like layer of sand mixed with shredded rubber tire (RSM) as low cost base isolators, is studied in shake table tests in the laboratory. The building foundation is modeled by a 200 mm by 200 mm and 40 mm thick rigid plexi-glass block. The block is placed in the middle of a 1m by 1m tank filled with sand. The selected base isolator is placed between the block and the sand foundation. Accelerometers are placed on top of the footing and foundation sand layer. The displacement of the footing is also measured by LVDT. The whole setup is mounted on a shake table and subjected to sinusoidal motions with varying amplitude and frequency. Sand is found to be effective only at very high amplitude (> 0.65 g) of motions. The performance of a composite consisting of sand and 50% shredded rubber tire placed under the footing is found to be most promising as a low-cost effective base isolator.

Bearing capacity of circular footings on multi-layered sand-waste tire shreds reinforced with geogrids

The presence of waste tires poses an environmental challenge as they occupy a significant amount of land and are expensive to dispose in landfills.However,reusing waste tires can address this issue when waste tires are used in geotechnical applications.To determine the viability of this approach,laboratoryscale tests were conducted to investigate load-bearing capacity of circular footings on sand-tire shred(STS)mixtures with shredded waste tire contents of 5%e15%by weight and three different widths of shreds.The investigation focused on analyzing the thickness of layers composed of STS mixtures,the soil cap,and the impact of geogrids on bearing capacity.The results indicate that a specific mixture of sand and tire shreds provides the highest footing-bearing capacity.In addition,the optimal shred content and size were found to be 10%by weight and 2 cm×10 cm,respectively.Furthermore,for a given tire shred width,a particular length provides the largest bearing capacity.The results agree well with that of previous research conducted by the first author and his colleagues in direct shear and California bearing ratio(CBR)tests.The primary finding of this research is that the use of two-layered STS mixtures reinforced by geogrids significantly enhances the bearing capacity.

Atrazine Sorption by Biochar, Tire Chips, and Steel Slag as Media for Blind Inlets: A Kinetic and Isotherm Sorption Approach

Surface inlets are installed in subsurface drainage systems to reduce ponding duration and surface runoff, but can contribute to water quality concerns by allowing water to directly enter buried drains. Blind inlets consist of perforated pipes covered with gravel and are separated from an overlying sand layer by a geotextile membrane and have been shown to be more effective in reducing losses of sediment, nutrients, and pesticides than typical tile line risers. In this study, we investigated whether the effectiveness of blind inlets to sorb pollutants, with emphasis on the herbicide atrazine, could be further improved by amended them with materials other than limestone. The media, shredded tires (tire chips), electric arc steel furnace slag (steel slag), and oak-derived biochar were chosen because they are readily available, inexpensive, and do not present environmental concerns. Kinetic sorption and isotherms were determined to ascertain atrazine sorption by these materials, in addition to testing for potential metal leaching using the Synthetic Precipitation Leaching Procedure (SPLP) and the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP). The kinetic data were fitted using pseudo first- and second-order reaction equations and indicated that atrazine sorption rate was 38 times faster and equilibrium was reached 5 times earlier for biochar than tire chips. The 24-h sorption isotherm data were fitted to the Freundlich sorption equation. The sorption coefficient for biochar was higher than for tire chips, steel slag, and limestone. Per the SPLC and TLCP tests, there was no leaching of heavy metals at levels of environmental concern. Our results suggested that the effectiveness of blind inlets as well as other conservation practices that include filter media such as rain gardens and filter socks could be improved by incorporating more reactive materials than sand and gravel with biochar being a particularly effective alternative.

Use of Waste Plastic in Flexible Pavements-Green Roads

Wrappers of betel nuts, chocolates, chips, hand bags, cold drink bottles and all other forms of plastic create significant environmental and economic problem. They consume massive energy and other natural resources, depleting the environment in various ways. In manufacturing firms, construction industries and products delivery services, use of plastic is a priority to handle and pack things comfortably due to its light weight, cost effectiveness and strength. Plastics cannot be banned as it will result in usage of natural resources like paper, wood at a great extent. It is made up of various chemical elements and is regarded as a highly pestilent material which does not easily degrade in the natural environment after its usage. Waste plastics are made up of Polyethylene, Polystyrene and Polypropylene. Temperature varying between 120℃ - 160℃ gives the softening point of these plastics [5]. They do not produce any toxic gases during heating but the softened plastics have tendency to form a lamination or coating over the aggregate, when it is sprayed over the hot aggregate at 160℃. The main objective of this paper is to discuss the significance of plastic in terms of cost reduction, increase in strength and durability when these plastics are heated and coated upon the aggregates (160℃) to compensate the air voids with plastic and binds with aggregate to provide stability.

Design and Prototype Test of 9FQM1000 Branch and Straw Hammer Mill

[Objectives]To better design and test 9FQM1000 branch and straw hammer mill in view of the problems of large output,low utilization rate,traditional incineration and easily polluting environment of the new agricultural economic organization's straw and waste branches.[Methods]This hammer mill adopts dual-channel feeding method.It adopts the basic working principle of disc shredding and hammer crushing.Besides,it makes design of the structure and driving system of the branch and straw hammer mill.9FQM1000 type branch and straw hammer mill can finely crush the branches and straws.Finally,it makes a trial production of 9FQM1000 type branch and straw hammer mill.[Results]The prototype test showed that the combined crushing structure of 9FQM1000 type branch and straw hammer mill is reliable,and the production capacity is 3000 kg/h.[Conclusions]The automatic feeder makes the crushing operation more stable,the labor intensity is reduced,the structure is simple,and it can be moved by traction.It is environmentally friendly and pollution-free.It has the characteristics of high safety,automation and high production efficiency.Also,crushed materials can be used as edible fungus culture medium,animal feed,organic fertilizer,etc.,and can be further compressed into biomass fuel,and the crushed branches can also be returned to the field.

Research on Selective Shredding of Wasted Printed Circuit Boards

Electronic scrap, especially wasted printed circuit boards (PCBs), is regarded as an environmental challenge. At present, the physical separation is thought to be the environmental friendly and economical method of treating and reutilizing electronic waste. An effective liberation of metals from non metallic components is a crucial step towards mechanical separation and recycling of wasted PCBs. In this paper, the selective shredding theory and mechanics characteristics of wasted PCBs were analyzed, and the shredded experiments of wasted PCBs by hammer mill were investigated. The result shows that the selective shredding exists in the wasted PCBs shredded process by hammer mill. The shredding velocity of non metallic components is far greater than that of metals in the wasted PCBs shredding, which makes the metals concentrate in the coarser fraction. And the impact force of hammer mill is superior to metal liberation from non metallic components, a satisfied metal liberation degree can be achieved in the wasted PCBs shredding by hammer mill.

Tractable XML data exchange via relations

We consider data exchange for XML documents： given source and target schemas, a mapping between them, and a document conforming to the source schema, construct a target document and answer target queries in a way that is consistent with the source information. The problem has pri- marily been studied in the relational context, in which data- exchange systems have also been built. Since many XML documents are stored in relations, it is natural to consider using a relational system for XML data exchange. However, there is a complexity mismatch between query answering in relational and in XML data exchange. This indicates that to make the use of relational systems pos- sible, restrictions have to be imposed on XML schemas and mappings, as well as on XML shredding schemes. We isolate a set of five requirements that must be ful- filled in order to have a faithful representation of the XML data-exchange problem by a relational translation. We then demonstrate that these requirements naturally suggest the in- lining technique for data-exchange tasks. Our key contribu- tion is to provide shredding algorithms for schemas, docu- ments, mappings and queries, and demonstrate that they en- able us to correctly perform XML data-exchange tasks using a relational system.