Procedia Engineering最新文献

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami prompted a relocation process of an unprecedented scale in Sri Lanka, relocating thousands beyond the government imposed coastal buffer zone. Amidst the relocatees were thousands of children whom were exposed to multiple risks and stresses. These impacts caused by relocation remain largely unexplored. This paper investigates the impact of involuntary relocation, experienced by children relocated to Cinnamon Garden settlement and Tea Garden settlement of Galle district, Sri Lake. The paper focuses on (a) what are the impacts children experienced due to forced relocation?, (b) What is the nature of those impacts?, (c) What is the possibility of using a risk model to identify these impacts? Case studies were conducted with a purposively selected sample of individuals whom were relocated as children. The findings suggests that children suffered from social impacts such as disruption of social relationships failing to develop new social networks, decline in education levels and victimized to bullying and discrimination. The study successfully employed the Michael Cernea’s (2000) impoverishments risks and reconstruction to identify key negative and positive impacts of forced relocation, initiating the development of a risk model that can specifically identify the impact of relocation on children.

Fuzzy integrated evaluation method is introduced based on the results of HAZOP, to compensate for the lack of HAZOP. The byproduct steam synthetic furnace system in a company’s technological process of preparing high concentration hydrochloric acid was taken as an example in this paper. To obtain more perfect safety condition index system of the byproduct steam synthetic furnace system, the HAZOP was applied to analyses the possible causes and consequences of parameter deviation during the device running. Then, according to this established index system, fuzzy integrated evaluation was employed. The results show that the combination of HAZOP and fuzzy integrated evaluation not only achieved semi-quantitative assessment of system, but also evaluated the degree of importance of the parameters at each node to the normal operation of the device and the integral safety of the node. Furthermore, resources and information were shared and the limited resources were distributed reasonably on the basis of HAZOP analysis results.

In the present work, the Fatemi-Socie approach is adopted in order to analyze the fatigue endurance of welded joints under multiaxial loads. This critical plane criterion has already been successfully applied to plain or notched components, however, it is not spread in the assessment of welded joints, yet. This work is focused on the practical implementation issues related to this particular application, which has not been discussed in the literature. The described procedure is adopted for the assessment of one hundred experimental tests and some preliminary results are shown. The specimen under investigation is a pipe-to-plate fillet joint made out of structural steel (S355JR). The tests were performed under both uniaxial and multiaxial, i.e. combined in-phase and out-of-phase bending and torsion, load conditions with a constant amplitude at the laboratories of the University of Pisa, Italy.

A damage-based design procedure has been developed by the authors to predict the damage evolution and the stiffness degradation in polymeric composite laminates under fatigue loading. For a safe and reliable design against fatigue degradation and failure, the initiation of the main damage mechanisms (off-axis cracks, delamination and fiber failure) as well as their evolution are considered and suitable models are proposed for the quantitative assessment of the lifetime associated to each mechanism. In parallel, the stiffness degradation deriving from the damage evolution over the fatigue life is properly described. After the illustration of the overall damage-based strategy, the paper discusses in details the analysis and modelling of the off-axis crack initiation and propagation. The initiation of cracks in the off axis plies has been proved to be the consequence of a damage process occurring at the microscopic scale since the early stages of fatigue. On this basis, crack initiation prediction is based on the use of local stress parameters: Local Hydrostatic Stress, LHS, and Local Maximum Principal Stress, LMPS, depending on the local degree of multiaxiality of the stress state and accounting for the statistical distribution of the local laminate strength. The propagation phase is then quantified by using a conventional fracture mechanics approach. The model has been implemented in a Matlab procedure for the quantitative evaluation of the crack density in each ply of a laminate during its entire fatigue life. The knowledge of the crack density trend allows the description of the laminate stiffness evolution taking advantage of another model recently developed by the authors, valid for a generic laminate configuration and accounting for the interaction between cracks in the neighbouring plies.

Resilient Health Infrastructure (RHI) is part of MERCY Malaysia’s Building Resilient Communities (BRC) initiative. It is a program focusing on advocating a planned preparation in strengthening hospitals’ in order to respond effectively during disasters as well as fast recovery from the impact of extreme events. Hospital management and its built environment representing building and infrastructure systems within a defined boundary should perform in a predictable manner during and after a hazard event and/or disaster. The failure of hospitals to absorb and accommodate pressures during disasters will cause performance degradation of services and health care of the hospital. This paper will discuss strategic approaches taken to increase the level of resiliency for health infrastructure, with focus on the criteria of robustness, redundancy and rapidity. The study of this paper will share the RHI/BRC initiatives in the investigation of health infrastructure’s (i) robustness through building codes and structure, architecture, planning and zoning; (ii) redundancy through planning and operations; and (iii) rapidity through communication, movement and risk assessment. The case studies conducted in partnership with the Kelantan State Health Department in Malaysia. This study will form a clear understanding of hospital resilience, and help in the understanding of drafting preliminary conceptual framework for a more resilient health infrastructure.

In this work, the fire behavior of two kinds of PVC membranes under radiation were studied by cone calorimeter. Through the experiments, the TTI, HRR, THR, MLR, TRP, CHF, concentrations of CO and CO₂ are got. The whole combustion process of membranes in the cone calorimeter test can be divided into five stages. The ignition time of S1 and S2 under the radiation flux of 30kw/m², 40 kw/m², 50 kw/m² are 33.3 s, 22.3 s, 14 s; 54.3 s, 26.3 s, 16.3 s respectively. Under the same radiation flux, the ignition time of S1 is shorter than the ignition time of S2 and the mass loss rate of S1 is greater than that of S2. The THR of S1 floats up and down below 14.5 MJ/m², while THR of S2 is about 17 MJ/m². The concentration of CO that was released after combustion by S2 is bigger than S1. This study can provide basic fire information for performance-based fire protection of membrane buildings.

A constructivist research methodology elucidated the evolved layers of risks in a sampaguita growing community in the Philippines. Integration of indigenous and scientific knowledge was a crucial process in livelihood disaster risk reduction and resilience building. Resilience processes empowered the marginalized community to escape chronic poverty and collectively act on other constraints including climate change-related risks. The resilience process of collective adaptation was a capability manifestation of making a choice to develop livelihood capitals in the face of disaster risks in a manner that does not degrade the natural resource base of the valued sampaguita livelihood.

In subway station fires, the most immediate threat to passengers’ life is not the direct exposure to fire, but the smoke inhalation with hot air and toxic gases. Thus, the study on efficient smoke control is of theoretical and practical significance. In this paper, the fire dynamics simulator (FDS) is used to study the effects of open mode of platform screen doors (PSDs) on mechanical smoke exhaust in subway station fire. The fires is located on the middle of the platform. And the results indicate that open platform screen doors on both sides of the platform, can not only reduce the gas temperature, but also improve the efficiency of mechanical smoke exhaust, which are beneficial to safety evacuation.