Revista de Engenharia Civil e Ambiental

In recent years, due to exponential population growth and industrial progress, much of the air, water and land have become contaminated due to open dumps of municipal chemical and industrial wastes and effluents. All types of contamination have direct or indirect effects on ground soil properties. The oil, gas and petrochemical industry are considered as a potential source having complex and concentrated influence on the soil environment. The economic prosperity of a country is judged by its industrial capacity. Therefore, with more industries using more and more petroleum hydrocarbons as a fuel, the problems of soil pollution due to influence of industrial waste containing oils and greases has also increased. An analysis of the effects of the contaminated soil has to be carried out before any recommendation can be made for soil regarding its use in various construction activities. As the clays or colloids have so much surface area and are negatively charged at their outer particle perimeters, can attract and swell too many hundred times their original particle size with contaminants. Clayey soils also form a barrier and can trap hydrocarbons contaminants. The study was carried out by using engine oil as contaminant. The two types of clay samples (Natural clay and China clay + bentonite) with different plasticity were contaminated with different concentrations of engine oil ranging from 3% to 9% and the engineering properties of the soil samples were evaluated and compared.

The tailing management is a long term concern for environment and social security. Following the discovery of a new gold mineralization, a mining company aims at reusing one of tailings storage facility at the mining site. However, there is a small treated water reservoir (polishing pond) downstream of the Northwest dam. It is therefore important to know the present state of the Northwest dam’s internal structure. Geophysical methods of electrical resistivity and georadar were used for the auscultation of the Northwest dam. Numerical models were subsequently used to assess the geotechnical behavior of the dam in different deposition situations by simulating the restoration.

The image processing results of georadar data show a layered structure near the surface. Changes in electrical resistivity offer deeper information than georadar. The lateral variability of the electrical resistivity corresponds to heterogeneity within each layer. As we cannot collect samples for the characterization of materials, the geophysical interpretation results help to estimate the compositional structure of the dam; ultimately it helps in numerical modeling on the safety factor estimation.

An attempt made to develop water resource for micro watershed of Visakhapatnam Urban Area. The study area extends from 17° 47’ 02’’ N to 17° 48’ 38’’ N latitudes and 83° 11’ 51’’ E to 83° 14’ 45’’ E longitudes, covering an aerial extent of 9.18 km2. A detailed examination of the existing three tanks in the study area is carried out using both spatial technology and ground based observations. The alteration of the terrain topography is studied from the survey of India toposheets and Total Station survey conducted in the study area. The 3-Dimensional terrain model is generated and the drainage network is simulated to study its interaction with the results of the change detection analysis. For the quantification of surface water bodies, Total Station survey is carried out for the tanks. Geophysical explorations are carried out, which identifies the thicknesses of top soil, weathered rock, fractured rock, hard fractured rock and hard rock formations, to assess the volume of the groundwater that can be stored in the aquifer system.

Although, chemigation systems is usually used to ensure stable productivity of crop-unit area and improve yieldquality, but on the other hands, it represent a serious problem for applying such systems, as well as, its impact on either yield production and attributed quality parameters or agricultural physical resources. The abovementioned, corresponded problems could be avoided, even and even so, good management practices had been considered for all parts of chemigation systems, i.e. irrigation systems; water and agro-chemical injecting equipment; soil management and crop considerations. Management of a chemigation system requires a highly-qualitative database of the available resources and corresponding field status and conditions. Therefore, for solving the abovementioned problems, weighing-points technique may play a crucial role and can be an effective tool which can be used efficiently. Hereby, the aim of this study was to build, verify and validate a proto type-rule of weighing-point technique for managing chemigation systems under arid ecosystem conditions of Egyptian agriculture. Results indicated that there was a highly significant correlation degrees ranging from 86.39 up to 95% of the observed field data vs estimated one response to the variants in chemigation management. Hereby, weighing point technique has an integrity to observe a good chemigation practices in such extreme cases ad anticipated variables and qualifiers.

This study involves research on the behavior of cricket pitches in Pakistan. Cricket pitches that are constructed in Pakistan are slow and dead relative to fast pitches of other countries. Pakistan’s batsmen who are accustomed to play on slow pitches of Pakistan sometimes feel it challenging while playing on fast pitches of other countries. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to develop fast and bouncy pitches in Pakistan so that our batsmen may not face any hindrance out there on any fast pitch. For this purpose, Nandipur soil also known as The Black soil is used because this soil is rich in clay content and clay is the main factor that yields hardness to the pitch and consequently fast speed and bounce are acquired 2 Sample pitches of 5 X 5 ft. are prepared having varied amount of silt and clay content and maintained according to prescribed standards of Pakistan Cricket Board(PCB). A number of parameters including the hardness, ball rebound, pace and the spin of each pitch are determined over a period of time to account for the effect of aging. Then computer aided analysis is carried out to represent the outcome of the research study. The tests reveal that silt content has inverse relation with the pitch’s hardness and adding more clay leads to hard, fast and bouncy pitch. All the research study is indicative of the fact that fast and bouncy pitches can be developed

Being part of their identity, housing is accounted as the core of activity of the people. With regard to lifestyle as well as the more time spent at home, the issue is of multiple importances in Iran. The quality of recent mass housing developments in Iran however is affected by market, codes and lack of urban designers, consequently disregarding socio-cultural status of inhabitants. While being at the young population peak, the needs for mass affordable housing drove 9th government toward commencing a national wide policy called Mehr Housing Project in which large number of affordable housing units is built within a short period of time. The result of the accelerated project has exposed in various forms. It seems that the issues originate in ignoring socio-cultural trends of the users, especially cultural traditions and lifestyles. The paper presents findings from observations along with study of historical background of inhabitants of newly constructed units in Manzarieh (Shahre-Kord), the main compound occupied by Bakhtiary community in west of Iran. While the Mother city inhabitants are doing rather well socio-economically, the same cannot be said of Mehr dwellers. In terms of behavioral and socio-cultural background classification, results suggest that socio-cultural factors related to social cohesion, familiar design elements along with gender and economic support, are inadequately reflected in the location and design of the units and their public spaces as well, resulting in abandonment and modification. These findings have implications for future housing policies in the country.

Use of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models is progressively increasingly to predict waste water treatment plant variables. This forecasting helps the operators to take corrective action and manage the process accordingly as per the norms. It is a proved useful device to surmount a few of the limitations of usual mathematical models for wastewater treatment plants for the reason that of their complex mechanisms, changing aspects-dynamics and inconsistency. This analysis considers the relevance of ANN techniques to predict influent and effluent biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Total suspended solids (TSS) for effluent treatment process. Here, a feed forward ANN, using a back propagation learning algorithm, has been applied for predicting effluent BOD, COD, TSS. After collecting historical plant data from effluent treatment plant at Diary industry. The suitable architecture of the neural network models was ascertained after several steps of training and testing of the models. Efficiencies of the plant for BOD, COD, TSS were 85%,78%,75% respectively. The ANN based models were established to offer an efficient and a robust tool in prediction and modelling.

A mass-spring-series model was assembled and tested using displacement-controlled vibrations in order to validate the effectiveness of vibration mitigation in a floating slab track. A mass mounted with an accelerometer was isolated with a spring from the vibration source. The other end of the mass was also connected with a spring to the fixed end. The spring coefficients and natural frequencies of the mass-spring combinations were carefully measured and verified. The time histories of the vibration amplitude indicated that properly tuned combinations of mass and springs effectively retain vibrations in the designated mass and reduce propagation and reflection. It was determined that using a stiff spring to confront the excitation source and a soft spring as a foundation isolator may alleviate vibration propagation and reduce vibrations reflected to the excitation. The drawbacks of the experimental design were also discussed.