Reinforced concrete wall critical zones are the responsive areas of dissipated earthquake loads. They are formed in the connection of the wall panels and the fixed restraints. The longitudinal and transversal steel reinforcements with certain spacing are designed according to the required nominal strength at the connections. Under certain conditions, the reinforcement distance becomes very tight, making working on castings using normal concrete difficult. This condition also occurs in boundary elements consisting of longitudinal and transversal reinforcements in tight spaces. A concrete material that flows easily and solidifies itself is required to avoid segregation. One type of this material is Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC). The SCC performance as a wall panel material that withstands gravity and cyclic lateral loads still require further research. This study aimed to analyze the hysteretic performance of reinforced SCC wall panels with variations of shear reinforcement in resisting cyclic lateral loads. The analysis used software based on numerical analysis. The drift ratios, hysteretic curves, stress patterns, ductility, and stiffness of the wall panels were analyzed. The SCC wall panel with ordinary shear reinforcement resisted lateral positive and negative loads of 152.32 kN and 143.09 kN, respectively. In comparison, the wall panel with boundary elements and tighter shear reinforcements could withstand the positive and negative lateral loads of 187.62 kN and 145.98 kN, respectively. The SCC wall panel reached the best ductility of 21.38 with ordinary shear reinforcement because the yield occurred faster than in other wall panels. The results showed that the boundary elements and shear reinforcements of reinforced SCC wall panels affected the performance in resisting cyclic lateral loads.

The increasing demand for good and improved polymeric composites has led to a surge in the number of researches on hybrid composites, strengthened and enforced with the natural fibres. This paper mainly analyses and presents the attributes of hybrid composites made from natural fibres and carbon nano-tube (CNT) nanoparticles. A novel hybrid composite considered in this research includes kenaf and coir fibres with CNT nanoparticles embedded in an epoxy matrix. The proposed hybrid nanocomposite’s elastic features are calculated by using different analytical models like Chamis, Mori-Tanaka, Nielson elastic models etc and also with the help of Representative Volume Element Analysis (RVE). The content of fibre volume is varied in four different samples and it is found that upon varying the content of fibre volume, the mechanical properties like longitudinal modulus and transverse modulus got affected. The results evaluated from different analytical models are observed to be in good agreement with each other and also with the results of RVE analysis.

Solution for a normally loaded infinite isotropic plate containing five cracks with coalesced yield zones is obtained using a complex variable method. Influence of coalesced yield zones on the load bearing capability of the infinite plate is analyzed. Analytical expressions for stress intensity factors, displacement components and crack opening displacement (COD) are obtained. Numerical study is carried out to determine the yield zone length, applied load ratio and COD. The numerical results are reported graphically between some important parameters.

The present work aims to investigate the effect of an edge crack on the stress concentration around the circular hole surrounded by Functionally Graded Material (FGM) in an infinite plate subjected to uniaxial tensile load. The numerical investigation has been carried out using Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM). Two cases have been analysed in this work, i.e. the whole plate made up of radial FGM and homogeneous material plate having radial FGM layer around the hole. Young’s modulus of FGM varies according to exponential and power law function. The relations of stress intensity factor (SIF) and stress concentration factor (SCF) with normalised crack length, Young’s modulus ratio, FGM layer thickness and power law index have been presented. It has been observed that the FGM layer case has low SCF around hole than FGM plate case in presence of an edge crack.

The number of types of wire welding that circulate on the market and the development of welding technology, especially related to current welding, create a lack of information related to the quality of welding results for several types of materials. This can cause the strength of the welding connection to not be maximized. Therefore, this study aims to optimize the use of three types of wire welding and three current welding on the strength of the welding connection in two types of material testing using the response surface methodology. Box-Behnken, coupled with the RSM and the desirability function, was used to optimize the strength of the welding connection of the wire types (RD-46, LB-52, and RB-26), and current welding (100, 130, and 160 A) against two types of material testing (IWF-150 and ASTM-A517-G70). The strength of the welding connection observed in response included the tensile strength, Charpy impact-absorbed energy, hardness values in the welding metal and the hardness values in the main metal. Optimization of the strength of the welding connection in this study recommends the application of wire types RB-26, current welding of 100 A, and ASTM-A517-G70 material testing with the highest desirability value of 71.6%. Optimization of tensile strength, Charpy impact-absorbed energy, hardness values in welding metal, and hardness values in main metal by applying this parameter are 575.64 MPa, 110.69 J, 216.75 (HV10) and 126.6 (HV10), respectively. The results proved that an appropriate welding connection strength could be achieved using wire welding types and current welding in material testing.

In this article, hyperelastic material models that state consistent polynomial expansions of the stored energy function are discussed. The approach follows from the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient. Some advantages of the third-order expansion model over the five-parameter Rivlin model using Treloar’s experimental data are shown. The models are qualitatively and quantitatively compared to highlight these advantages of the discussed model.

This study presents data on the development and research of cryogenic-vibration grinding process modes which would ensure an efficient grinding process of complex composite systems with a high degree of heterogeneity of components in their composition of products such as fluoroplast, bismuth oxide and tungsten carbide. The general regularities of low-temperature processing and grinding of non-degassed elastomers are established. A method has been tested that establishes the regularities of cryogenic grinding and ultrasonic homogenization of a complex mechanical system, the microstructure and dispersed compositions of the ground material have been determined.

The beam-column joints are designed to have sufficient capacity under earthquake loads. This requirement needs design details of reinforcement that fulfill the seismic criteria and adequate compaction of concrete. Using Self Compacting Concrete (SCC) material can solve the difficulty of compacting conventional concrete due to the close reinforcement distance. This study aimed to analyze the behavior of the Exterior Beam-column Joints (EBJ) using SCC as materials with a variation of shear reinforcements to withstand cyclic lateral loads. The analysis was carried out using the ANSYS software and the Finite Element Method. The analysis included hysteresis curves, stress contours, ductility, stiffness, and structural strength. The performance of an EBJ without shear reinforcement (EBJ-S1 model) was compared to other EBJs using horizontal (EBJ-S2 model) and diagonal (EBJ-S3 model) shear reinforcements in the joint zones. The results showed that horizontal and diagonal shear reinforcement in the joint zones affected the performance of the EBJs in resisting cyclic lateral loads as the representative of earthquake loads. The EBJ without shear reinforcement could withstand compressive stresses of 3.33 to 17.22 MPa, while both EBJs using horizontal and diagonal shear reinforcement achieved the same compressive stresses range of 3.33 to 20 MPa. The EBJ with diagonal reinforcement performed a wider compressive area of stress contour than the EBJ of horizontal reinforcement. The EBJ-S3 model achieved the highest ductility value of 4.733 with diagonal shear reinforcements because it achieved the highest ultimate displacement of the other EBJ models.

Peru is a country with plenty of renewable energy sources. However, its power demand depends on more than 50% of fossil fuels. Specifically, the power coming from the sun only represents 1% of the Peruvian energy matrix even though the territory has high radiation indexes. Therefore, the current analysis aims to search for the research situation of photovoltaic energy. Hence, this research looked for literature from RENATI and EBSCO, which provided 398 pieces of academic investigation. After applying the Prisma methodology to select the most relevant thesis and papers, we analyzed 48 elements. We found that the on-grid technology was the most viable in economic terms for projects related to business and electrification. At the same time, off-grid systems have been preferred for sanitation applications. Nonetheless, all the reviewed literature showed that photovoltaic technology positively impacted the environment and was as effective as conventional sources.

The corner point singularity of surface cracks by finite element method (FEM) has become a numerical concern decades ago. The literature showed that the stress intensity factors (SIFs) at the corner points were often excluded. Further, most SIFs were reported for larger ratios of the crack depth over cylinder diameter. This paper presents the SIFs (Modes I, II and III) of a semi-elliptical surface crack at a solid round bar under torsion. The tetrahedral and hexahedral elements were used in the finite element modelling. The effects of the loading mode and the crack aspect ratio on the corner point singularity were discussed. The tetrahedral meshing was generally observed to be more suitable for modelling relatively small surface cracks, particularly in respect to the corner point singularity. For all loading modes, the SIFs away from the corner points of using the tetrahedral meshing were found to have fairly good agreement with those by dual boundary element method (DBEM).