IMPLEMENTATION OF GENERAL PROVISIONS ON OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY IN THE FACTORY ORDINANCE (NO. 45 OF 1942) (A QUALITATIVE STUDY)

 In the late 1970s, Free Trade Zones were established in Sri Lanka as an important part of the economic development of the island. These zones were specially designated manufacturing areas which were set up to attract foreign investments to the country. In these places, occupational health and safety are vital features of the Human Resource Management. In the Sri Lankan context, studies regarding occupational health and safety are scarce. The general objective of this study was to explore the implementation of general provisions on occupational health, and safety in the Factory Ordinance (No. 45 of 1942) among workers in Katunayake Export Processing Zone. A qualitative approach was adapted to this study. The study consisted of two phases: in the first phase focus group discussion with workers were done, and in the second phase, ten in-depth interviews were conducted. Purposive sampling method was used to select participants from workers based on the inclusion criteria. Twenty workers (n=20) were selected from different factories in the zone. Saturation method was used as the guiding method of data collection. Data was analyzed using framework analysis. Study found that, implementation of general provisions on occupational health is remaining in a satisfactory level; implementing general provisions of occupational safety in work place is remaining at better status; however implementation of few provisions should be improved. A longitudinal study on occupational health and safety among factory workers and factory managers need to be conducted. In addition to that, improving awareness on Factories’ Ordinance (No. 45 of 1942) is recommended. Employers should also be empowered to intervene with managers for implementing general provisions and special provisions of occupational health and safety in the Factories’ Ordinance

Bolted and welded connectors for the rehabilitation of composite beams

Recent research studies revealed that blind-bolts can be used to strengthen existing composite steel-concrete beams more efficiently and effectively than welded stud connectors. In the general retrofitting operation procedure, the holes created in the concrete slab of composite beams to fix shear connectors are finally backfilled with grout. However, it is clear from a review of the open literature that very few studies have been conducted on the behaviour of shear connectors in grout in retrofitted composite beams. This paper investigates the load-slip behaviour of blind-bolt and welded stud connectors in grout under retrofitted conditions both experimentally and numerically. A series of push-out test experiments was carried out based on the Eurocode 4. The behaviour of retrofitted push-out test specimens during the testing was simulated using Finite Element (FE) models. The concrete and grout properties were modelled by specifying damage criteria using the concrete damage plasticity (CDP) option available in ABAQUS. The effects of height:diameter ratio of the connectors and grout strength on the shear capacity of blind-bolt and welded stud connectors were verified using parametric FE analyses. A modified design equation was proposed to estimate the ultimate shear capacity of bolted connectors in grout. The shear connector properties such as shear resistance, stiffness, ductility and failure modes have been compared and discussed in detail by using the experimental and FE results. These results provide an extended understanding of the feasibility of utilising blind-bolts for retrofitting substandard composite beams

Flexural behaviour of composite steel-concrete beams utilising blind bolt shear connectors

This paper investigates the feasibility of utilising blind bolts as shear connectors to develop demountable steel-concrete beams. The flexural behaviour of composite beams with two blind bolt types and welded stud connectors were experimentally investigated using full-scale beam specimens. A set of push-test specimens was tested based on the Eurocode 4 to compare the slip response of these connectors. The ultimate design loads of the test beams were calculated based on rigid plastic analysis (RPA) using the actual material properties. The beam experiments were simulated by using three-dimensional non-linear finite element models (FEMs). The material behaviour for concrete and steel in FEMs was described using concrete damage plasticity and steel plasticity models respectively. The FEMs were validated by comparing the load-midspan deflection curves of the beam specimens obtained from the experiments and modelling. The effects of the concrete compressive strength, steel yield strength and the shear connection ratio on the flexural behaviour of the composite beams were studied by utilising the validated FEMs. The experimental and numerical results suggest that the ability of the blind bolts to achieve and maintain composite action in steel-concrete beams under flexural loading is comparable to that of the welded stud connectors

Nutrients and metals interactions between water and sediment phases: An urban river case study

The provision of water to meet the needs of an ever increasing urban population is a significant challenge. This is because urban receiving waters are constantly at risk from pollutant inputs via stormwater runoff and wastewater discharge. This research study employed multiple approaches including principal component analysis, Bayesian Networks (BNs) modelling and geospatial analysis to identify patterns in the distributions of nutrients and metals in water and sediments in an urban river and the interactions between the two phases. In both, water and sediments, nutrient concentrations/loads varied in the order of total carbon (TC) > total nitrogen (TN) > total phosphorus (TP). The river sediments were found to contain the highest crustal metal loads, while in water, the marine-related metals had the highest concentrations. The BNs modelling of pollutant interactions between water and sediment phases indicated that nitrogen is more likely to be transferred from water to sediment than the opposite, while anthropogenic metals are more likely to be transferred from sediments to water. Further, geospatial analysis showed that TN, crustal metals and anthropogenic metal loads in sediments increased from upstream to downstream, while having a decreasing pattern in water. However, marine-related metals in both, water and sediments had increasing concentrations/loads from upstream to downstream. These spatial patterns are attributed to the interactions between water and sediment phases, sediment transport along the river and seawater intrusion in the estuarine area. The study outcomes are expected to contribute to enhancing the knowledge required for developing mitigation strategies to improve urban receiving water quality

Building a WordNet for Sinhala

Sinhala is one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and is used by over 19 million people. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the In-do-European languages and its origins date back to at least 2000 years. It has developed into its current form over a long period of time with influences from a wide variety of lan-guages including Tamil, Portuguese and Eng-lish. As for any other language, a WordNet is extremely important for Sinhala to take it into the digital era. This paper is based on the pro-ject to develop a WordNet for Sinhala based on the English (Princeton) WordNet. It de-scribes how we overcame the challenges in adding Sinhala specific characteristics which were deemed important by Sinhala language experts to the WordNet while keeping the structure of the original English WordNet. It also presents the details of the crowdsourcing system we developed as a part of the project - consisting of a NoSQL database in the backend and a web-based frontend. We con-clude by discussing the possibility of adapting this architecture for other languages and the road ahead for the Sinhala WordNet and Sin-hala NLP