BIM-based safety design for emergency evacuation of metro stations

Metro stations are the hubs of urban rail transit, and large numbers of people usually gather inside them. Various types of emergency can lead to a need for evacuation. However, there are few studies on proactively reducing emergency evacuation risks through the design for safety (DFS) concept, and these risks pose serious threats to the operational safety of metro stations. Therefore, in this research, fragmented DFS pre-control measures for mitigating emergency evacuation risks were comprehensively identified and classified, and indicators for evaluating the evacuation design effect on reducing emergency evacuation risks in the operation phase were improved. Moreover, through the combination of the DFS application method and BIM platform, intelligent safety design tools were provided for metro station designers so that they may apply the DFS concept to emergency evacuation risk mitigation in real cases

Optical study of MgTi2_2O4_4: Evidence for an orbital-Peierls state

Dimension reduction due to the orbital ordering has recently been proposed to explain the exotic charge, magnetic and structural transitions in some three-dimensional (3D) transitional metal oxides. We present optical measurement on a spinel compound MgTi$_2$O$_4$ which undergoes a sharp metal-insulator transition at 240 K, and show that the spectral change across the transition can be well understood from the proposed picture of 1D Peierls transition driven by the ordering of $d_{yz}$ and $d_{zx}$ orbitals. We further elaborate that the orbital-driven instability picture applies also very well to the optical data of another spinel CuIr$_2$S$_4$ reported earlier.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Thermo-mechanical behaviour of a compacted swelling clay

Compacted unsaturated swelling clay is often considered as a possible buffer material for deep nuclear waste disposal. An isotropic cell permitting simultaneous control of suction, temperature and pressure was used to study the thermo-mechanical behaviour of this clay. Tests were performed at total suctions ranging from 9 to 110 MPa, temperature from 25 to 80 degrees C, isotropic pressure from 0.1 to 60 MPa. It was observed that heating at constant suction and pressure induces either swelling or contraction. The results from compression tests at constant suction and temperature evidenced that at lower suction, the yield pressure was lower, the elastic compressibility parameter and the plastic compressibility parameter were higher. On the other hand, at a similar suction, the yield pressure was slightly influenced by the temperature; and the compressibility parameters were insensitive to temperature changes. The thermal hardening phenomenon was equally evidenced by following a thermo-mechanical path of loading-heating-cooling-reloading

(4S)-Benzyl 4-isopropyl-5-oxo-1,3-oxazolidine-3-carboxyl­ate

In the crystal structure of the title compound, C14H17NO4, obtained by the reaction of N-benzoxycarbonyl-l-valine, paraformaldehyde and 4-methyl­benzene­sulfonic acid, mol­ecules are linked by C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, generating linear chains parallel to the a axis. C—H⋯π inter­actions of stacked benzene rings also provide stability for the crystal structure

Collapse of Stiff Polyelectrolytes due to Counterion Fluctuations

The effective elasticity of highly charged stiff polyelectrolytes is studied in the presence of counterions, with and without added salt. The rigid polymer conformations may become unstable due to an effective attraction induced by counterion density fluctuations. Instabilities at the longest, or intermediate length scales may signal collapse to globule, or necklace states, respectively. In the presence of added-salt, a generalized electrostatic persistence length is obtained, which has a nontrivial dependence on the Debye screening length.Comment: 4 pages RevTex, 3 ps figures included using epsf, final version as appeared in PR