Performance of concrete with recycled plastic as a partial replacement for sand

Environmental concerns have led to severe restrictions on dredging for sand in much of India, including in the state of Goa, leading to direct impacts on the economics of concrete construction. At the same time, waste plastic is rarely recycled across India, with a large proportion of plastic simply exposed of into landfill presenting further environmental concerns.This paper describes a study seeking a solution to both problems by utilising processed waste plastic as a partial replacement for fine sand in concrete mixes.This initial work was supported through project funding from the British Council under the UKIERI (United Kingdom India Educational Research Initiative) programme. The compressive strength and performance of concrete mixes with plastic have been tested, and suggestions for suitable replacement percentages are proposed. Parameters including the size and aspect ratio of the plastic particles replacing the san aggregate and effects of chemical treatment are addressed. Results show that replacing sand with recycled plastic is viable and by using a suitable mix design the impact on the compressive strength of the concrete mix can be kept at acceptably low levels

Making judgements about students making work : lecturers’ assessment practices in art and design.

This research study explores the assessment practices in two higher education art and design departments. The key aim of this research was to explore art and design studio assessment practices as lived by and experienced by art and design lecturers. This work draws on two bodies of pre existing research. Firstly this study adopted innovative methodological approaches that have been employed to good effect to explore assessment in text based subjects (think aloud) and moderation mark agreement (observation). Secondly the study builds on existing research into the assessment of creative practice. By applying thinking aloud methodologies into a creative practice assessment context the authors seek to illuminate the ‘in practice’ rather than espoused assessment approaches adopted. The analysis suggests that lecturers in the study employed three macro conceptions of quality to support the judgement process. These were; the demonstration of significant learning over time, the demonstration of effective studentship and the presentation of meaningful art/design work

Fabric formed concrete: Physical modelling for assessment of digital form finding methods

Fabric formwork is a novel concrete construction method which replaces conventional prismatic moulds with lightweight, high strength sheets of fabric. The geometry of fabric formed structures is therefore dictated by the behaviour of fabric under hydrostatic loading. While there are numerous examples of digital and physical modelling of this problem, there have only been limited efforts to link the two through measurement. In this investigation, a number of small scale fabric formed beams were manufactured using both ‘free hanging’ and ‘keel mould’ methods, and the resulting forms were accurately measured with a digital 3D scanner. Computational form finding tools were also developed, enabling a comparison to be made between the predicted and build geometries. This allowed assessment of both the accuracy of the construction methods and the limitations of the form finding techniques used. The data collected provides a useful assessment of existing form finding techniques and will be used as a reference data set as these are developed further

Linear waves in sheared flows. Lower bound of the vorticity growth and propagation discontinuities in the parameters space

This study provides sufficient conditions for the temporal monotonic decay of enstrophy for two-dimensional perturbations traveling in the incompressible, viscous, plane Poiseuille and Couette flows. Extension of J. L. Synge's procedure (1938) to the initial-value problem allowed us to find the region of the wavenumber-Reynolds number map where the enstrophy of any initial disturbance cannot grow. This region is wider than the kinetic energy's one. We also show that the parameters space is split in two regions with clearly distinct propagation and dispersion properties