The Development of Stabilised Clay-Hemp Building Material for Sustainability and Low Carbon Use

This paper reports on stabilised clay-hemp building material for sustainability and low carbon use. Ground Granulated Blast-furnace Slag (GGBS) was used as a partial substitute for conventional stabiliser (lime or Portland cement) to stabilise Lower Oxford Clay (LOC) incorporating industrial hemp. The development of stabilised clay-hemp building material is expected to underpin the potential of commercial production of non-fired stabilised hemp walls, hemp blocks and hemp bricks, with a potential to offer an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional concrete, fired clay bricks and cement bricks. The parameters considered in this study are: material characterisation, unconfined compressive strength, linear expansion and cost. The 50-day linear expansion results for the test specimens showed that the maximum overall expansion rate for all the stabilised mixtures was 2%. The expansion behaviour of all stabilised clay-hemp material was significantly reduced with the presence of GGBS. The cost analysis results showed that the stabilised clay-hemp material manufactured with lime – GGBS system had the lowest net present value

Durability of Concrete Containing PFA-GGBS By-products

Ground Granulated Blast-furnace Slag (GGBS) and Pulverised Fuel Ash (PFA) were used to replace up to 60% of Portland cement (PC) in concrete. The testing program of the concrete included the determination of the consistency of fresh concrete, the measurement of the density and compressive strength of the hardened products cured for up to 56 days and the evaluation of their durability via visual inspections and strength loss calculations after the freeze and thaw cycles. The results showed that the blend proportion and type had affected the consistency of the fresh concrete. Replacing the PC with 20% for PFA or 40% for GGBS had similar performances as the control mix. The durability of concrete subject to freeze and thaw had little effect on the concrete specimens. It was observed that the concrete without blends suffered the worst, resulting in chips along the edges of the cube and scaling of the faces compared to mixes with 20% GGBS and 20% PFA which resulted in increased durability. However, blended concrete exhibited more loss in strength compared to the concrete without cement blends

Avaliação das propriedades físicas e mecânicas de blocos de solo-cimento formulados com coprodutos siderúrgicos

RESUMO Este trabalho tem por objetivo caracterizar o desempenho de resistência mecânica e absorção de água de blocos solo-cimento para alvenaria, após 28 dias de cura, com a incorporação limite dos seguintes coprodutos siderúrgicos em substituição parcial ao solo: adições de até 20 % em massa do pó de balão coletado em alto-forno, até 10 % de poeiras de despoeiramento de aciaria elétrica, e até 20 % de escória granulada de forno elétrico a arco. As formulações propostas incluem adições simultâneas de pós obtidos do descarte da produção de blocos solo-cimento, onde a substituição parcial ao solo foi de até 20 % em massa. Os resultados obtidos sugerem a potencialidade de uso dos resíduos siderúrgicos em blocos intertravados de solo-cimento para alvenaria sustentável, como alternativa de aplicação para esses resíduos. Verificou-se a possibilidade de bons resultados confrontando os valores exigidos por norma (absorção de água < 20% e resistência mecânica > 2,0 MPa) com destaque quando se utilizou 20% pó de balão juntamente com 10% de reuso do bloco solo-cimento; 10% de escória de aciaria ou 20% de escória de aciaria juntamente com 10% de reuso do bloco solo-cimento; e 2,5% de pó de despoeiramento juntamente com 20% de reuso do bloco solo-cimento

Physical, mechanical and hygrothermal properties of lateritic building stones (LBS) from Burkina Faso

International audienc

Search for new resonances decaying to a WW or ZZ boson and a Higgs boson in the ℓ+ℓ−bbˉ\ell^+ \ell^- b\bar b, ℓνbbˉ\ell \nu b\bar b, and ννˉbbˉ\nu\bar{\nu} b\bar b channels with pppp collisions at s=13\sqrt s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

See paper for full list of authors, 18 pages (plus author list + cover pages: 36 pages total), 13 figures, 1 table. Submitted to PLB. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/EXOT-2015-18/International audienceA search is presented for new resonances decaying to a $W$ or $Z$ boson and a Higgs boson in the $\ell^+ \ell^- b\bar b$, $\ell\nu b\bar b$, and $\nu\bar{\nu} b\bar b$ channels in $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt s = 13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider using a total integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb$^{-1}$. The search is conducted by looking for a localized excess in the $WH$/$ZH$ invariant or transverse mass distribution. No significant excess is observed, and the results are interpreted in terms of constraints on a simplified model based on a phenomenological Lagrangian of heavy vector triplets