Assessment of base capacity of open-ended tubular piles installed by the Rotary Cutting Press-in method

The ‘press-in’ method is a piling technique that installs piles with a static jacking force while obtaining a reaction force from previously installed piles. The applicable ground conditions of this method have been significantly expanded by the ‘Rotary Cutting Press-in (RCP)’ method, whereby a vertical jacking force and a torque are applied simultaneously onto a pile with cutting teeth on its base while water is injected around the pile base. In this paper, a method to estimate the base capacity of RCP piles is proposed based on UWA-05 framework. The proposed method utilizes CPT or SPT results as input parameters and estimates the plugging condition (Incremental Filling Ratio, IFR) from these results. Four static load tests on open-ended RCP piles were shown to be well-predicted by the proposed method in terms of the base capacity, regardless of the embedment depth into a bearing stratum.Giken Lt

Practical Application of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for Determining Rice Amylose Content at Grain Elevator

The major chemical constituent contents of rice are moisture, protein and starch (amylose and amylopectin). Those constituent contents associate with eating quality of rice. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is one of the non-destructive methods for determining grain chemical contents. At grain elevator, moisture and protein contents can be measured with high accuracy using an NIR spectrometer by the effort of our research activities in Japan. However, the accuracy to determine amylose content is not sufficient. Thus, the objective of this study was to develop non-destructive method to determine rice amylose content for practical use at grain elevator. Milled rice amylose content measurement was performed using an auto-analyzer for reference (chemical) analysis. Spectra data of milled rice were obtained using an NIR spectrometer with a wavelength range of 850 to 1048 nm. Calibration model to determine amylose content was developed using non-waxy Japonica-type rice samples. Partial least squares (PLS) regression analysis was used to develop calibration model. The accuracy of the model was validated and the validation statistics were shown: coefficient of determination (r2) was 0.72, bias was -0.04%, standard error of prediction (SEP) was 0.92%, and ratio of SEP to standard deviation of reference data (RPD) was 1.90. Production year of the validation set (2017) was different from that of the calibration set (2008 to 2016). This means the same condition as practical use of this method at grain elevator. The result obtained in this study indicated that this calibration model enables non-destructive determination of rice amylose content at grain elevator. &nbsp

Ordered phase and phase transitions in the three-dimensional generalized six-state clock model

We study the three-dimensional generalized six-state clock model at values of the energy parameters, at which the system is considered to have the same behavior as the stacked triangular antiferromagnetic Ising model and the three-state antiferromagnetic Potts model. First, we investigate ordered phases by using the Monte Carlo twist method (MCTM). We confirmed the existence of an incompletely ordered phase (IOP1) at intermediate temperature, besides the completely ordered phase (COP) at low-temperature. In this intermediate phase, two neighboring states of the six-state model mix, while one of them is selected in the low temperature phase. We examine the fluctuation the mixing rate of the two states in IOP1 and clarify that the mixing rate is very stable around 1:1. The high temperature phase transition is investigated by using non-equilibrium relaxation method (NERM). We estimate the critical exponents beta=0.34(1) and nu=0.66(4). These values are consistent with the 3D-XY universality class. The low temperature phase transition is found to be of first-order by using MCTM and the finite-size-scaling analysis

Development and operational experience of magnetic horn system for T2K experiment

A magnetic horn system to be operated at a pulsed current of 320 kA and to survive high-power proton beam operation at 750 kW was developed for the T2K experiment. The first set of T2K magnetic horns was operated for over 12 million pulses during the four years of operation from 2010 to 2013, under a maximum beam power of 230 kW, and $6.63\times10^{20}$ protons were exposed to the production target. No significant damage was observed throughout this period. This successful operation of the T2K magnetic horns led to the discovery of the $\nu_{\mu}\rightarrow\nu_e$ oscillation phenomenon in 2013 by the T2K experiment. In this paper, details of the design, construction, and operation experience of the T2K magnetic horns are described.Comment: 22 pages, 40 figures, also submitted to Nuclear Instrument and Methods in Physics Research,