Investigating the Effect of Geocell Changes on Slope Stability in Unsaturated Soil

The purpose of this research is to investigate the performance and efficiency of reinforced slope in the stability of geocell layers in unsaturated soil conditions. Slope reinforced with geocell acts like a beam in the soil due to the geocell having a height (three-dimensional). Due to its flexural properties, it has moment of inertia as well as bending strength, which reduces the displacement and increases the safety factor of the slope. Taking into consideration unsaturated conditions of soil contributes a lot to making results close to reality. One of the well-known models among elastoplastic models for modeling unsaturated soils is Barcelona Basic Model, which has been added to the FLAC2D software by codification. Changes in thickness, length and number of geocell layers are remarkably effective on slope stability. The results show that the geocell\u27s reinforcing efficiency depends on the number of layers and depth of its placement. As the depth of the geocell\u27s first layer increases, the lateral and vertical side elevation of the upper part of the slope increases with respect to the elevation. Load capacity increases with increasing geocell length. By increasing the length of the geocell layer, the joint strength, the mobilized tensile strength, and the bending moment are increased. At u/H = 0.2, an increase in the bending momentum of about 20% occurs with increasing geocell thickness. In u/H = 1, the increase in bending momentum is 10.4%. In addition, by increasing the thickness of the geocell, the Value of moment of the inertia increases and, as a result, the amount of geocell reinforcement bending moment increases

Evaluation of ATC as an Orally Administered Drug in Treatment of Cadmium Toxicity of Rat Organs

The effect of N-tetramethylene dithiocarbamate (ATC) as a chelating agent on the excretion of cadmium was evaluated in cadmium-poisoned Wistar rats following administration through food and drink. The present research aimed to characterize the potential efficiency of ATC as an orally administered chelator drug after cadmium administration for 60 days. This chelator significantly enhanced the urinary and biliary excretion of cadmium and restored the altered levels of iron. Cadmium and iron concentrations in different tissues were determined by graphite furnace and flame atomic absorption spectrometry (GF AAS and F AAS) methods, respectively. The chelation therapy results show that ATC is able to remove cadmium ions from different tissues while iron concentration returned to the normal level and the clinical symptoms were also reduced. In summary, we conclude that ATC is able to mobilize and promote the excretion of cadmium in rat organs and reduce the side effects and general symptoms of toxicity caused by cadmium and might be useful for preliminary testing of the efficacy of chelating agents in human body. However, these results should be confirmed in different experimental models before extrapolation to other systems. This testing procedure of course does not provide all the relevant answers for evaluating the efficiency of chelating agents in cadmium toxicity