Trials for the construction of a cement solidified retaining structure in a domestic landfill site using deep soil mixing

This paper describes the trials undertaken within a domestic landfill site to assess the feasibility of constructing a cement solidified retaining structure using deep soil mixing. The trials consisted of individual columns extending to the full depth of the landfill, each using different concrete mixes and mixing auger configurations to assess the most successful combinations to achieve full depth, followed by the construction of two trial blocks incorporating several different concrete mixes. The trial blocks were constructed to evaluate the most effective concrete and auger combinations required to construct the retaining structure which if built would be approximately 150 m in length, 15 m deep and 10 m wide.

Grout cube strength has been measured during column installation and post construction the columns were exhumed and core samples taken for laboratory analysis of compressive strength, permeability, freeze/thaw and long-term immersion tests.

The trials have met with only moderate success and indicate that a combination of depth and a difficult substrate as is likely to be encountered in older landfills will severely hinder the process of column installation. No amount of previous characterisation can determine the conditions likely to be encountered at a particular location in such a heterogeneous material.

It is suggested that the calculation of likely success rate for column installation and construction of a large retaining structure can be based on the failure rate of cable percussion boreholes during site investigation. If the failure is greater than 15% the technique is unlikely to be viable.     

Influence of the spatial distribution of energy-dissipating bracing elements on the seismic response of multistorey frames

Several reinforced concrete frames with different dissipator distributions, and a conventional moment-resisting frame, are compared in order to select the best dissipator distribution from the point of view of seismic response and structural design. The structures with dissipators are designed according to a criterion proposed in the present paper. Each frame is excited with a set of eleven simulated accelerograms. The choice of the best dissipation distribution is based mainly on the differences between the mean of the maximum overturning moments developed at the base of the frames and between the weights of steel reinforcement and concrete resulting from the structural design of each frame. A comparison of initial construction costs of a building with dissipators and a conventional building shows that the former is 3·5 per cent more expensive.     

The evolution of basement gneiss domes of the Sergipano fold belt (NE Brazil) and its importance for the analysis of Proterozoic basins

Four ductilely reworked mantled basement gneiss domes are prominent structures inside the Neoproterozoic Sergipano fold belt. The belt is an ESE-WNW trending wedge comprising sediments, metasediments, metavolcanics, and meta-intrusive rocks, and is divided into a cratonic domain to the south, passing into highly deformed miogeoclinal and eugeoclinal domains to the north. A detailed stratigraphic and structural analysis around two of these domes, in a key area spreading over the three domains, revealed that the basement domes most likely began as extensional structures controlling the distribution of sedimentary lithofacies and the variations of their thicknesses in the precursor basin of the Sergipano fold belt. Closure of the basin led to the evolution of these extensional basement structures in the core of basement-cored fold nappes. The largest of the domes is capped by a thick quartzite sequence and controlled the partition of the contractional deformation of the belt. Combined with new geophysical data, such analysis indicates that the three lithotectonic domains are continuous parts of the basin. Therefore, detailed studies of the basement-cover interface allow us to characterize the tectonic evolution of Proterozoic basins in the same way as their Phanerozoic counterparts.     

Increasing the detail of European land use/cover data by combining heterogeneous data sets

ABSTRACT

Data on land use and land cover (LULC) are a vital input for policy-relevant research, such as modelling of the human population, socioeconomic activities, transportation, environment, and their interactions. In Europe, CORINE Land Cover has been the only data set covering the entire continent consistently, but with rather limited spatial detail. Other data sets have provided much better detail, but either have covered only a fraction of Europe (e.g. Urban Atlas) or have been thematically restricted (e.g. Copernicus High Resolution Layers). In this study, we processed and combined diverse LULC data to create a harmonised, ready-to-use map covering 41 countries. By doing so, we increased the spatial detail (from 25 to one hectare) and the thematic detail (by seven additional LULC classes) compared to the CORINE Land Cover. Importantly, we decomposed the class ‘Industrial and commercial units’ into ‘Production facilities’, ‘Commercial/service facilities’ and ‘Public facilities’ using machine learning to exploit a large database of points of interest. The overall accuracy of this thematic breakdown was 74%, despite the confusion between the production and commercial land uses, often attributable to noisy training data or mixed land uses. Lessons learnt from this exercise are discussed, and further research direction is proposed.     

Metallurgy at the Crossroads: New Analyses of Copper-based Objects at Tianshanbeilu, Eastern Xinjiang, China

Tianshanbeilu is the largest Bronze Age site in eastern Xinjiang, China. Stretching across the entire second millennium BC, it performed a prominent role in connecting the Hexi corridor, Central China and the steppe. A further insight into the metallurgical tradition and the metal supply network is of vital importance to improve our understanding of its multi-connected nature. This paper offers a new set of chemical and isotopic data on the copper-based objects at Tianshanbeilu, including alloying elements, trace elements (impurities) and lead isotopes. Combining the concentrations of arsenic and antimony reveals that arsenic was introduced to copper partially due to the use of specific minerals tethrahedrite-tennantite. Lead isotopes demonstrate that multiple sources of copper were employed at Tianshanbeilu and a majority of them are characterized by common lead, which appears rather different from those of the Central Plains and the Hexi corridor, but highly consistent with local ores. Surprisingly, one object at Tianshanbeilu contains the well-known highly radiogenic lead. This object undoubtedly marks the westernmost boundary of the distribution of the highly radiogenic lead. We also anticipate that more lead isotopic analyses in NW China will further contribute to the study of the highly radiogenic lead in Central China.     

The decay of coastal forts in southeast Brazil and its implications for the conservation of colonial built heritage

The 500th anniversary of European arrival in Brazil was celebrated in 2000 and highlighted the need to review the condition of the countrys remaining colonial built heritage. This revision is particularly apposite in the adjacent cities of Rio de Janeiro and Niterói, where the heritage that survived twentieth century reconstruction has done so largely because of ownership by the church or military. However, whilst this may have protected buildings from demolition, detailed fabric can be neglected or abused. This paper investigates this possibility through an examination of two forts, built primarily of local augen gneiss, that guard the entrance to Guanabara Bay. Natural outcrops exposed to the same humid sub-tropical maritime environment show that this rock is susceptible to slow disaggregation through salt weathering. Surveys suggest that stonework in the forts that is sheltered from rainwash is heavily loaded with salt and has passed a threshold, wherein stresses accumulated over centuries of apparent stability, combined with the effects of a more recent increase in atmospheric pollution and apparently inappropriate intervention (re-pointing), have triggered rapid breakdown that requires immediate intervention.     

Transcurrent continental tectonics model for the Ossa-Morena Zone Neoproterozoic–Paleozoic evolution,SW Iberian Massif,Portugal

The Ossa-Morena Zone (SW Iberian Massif) was affected by continuous orogen-parallel transcurrent continental tectonics from the Neoproterozoic to the Carboniferous times, involving transtension (TT) and transpression (TP) processes that co-existed together, occurred separately in neighbouring regions by the means of strain partitioning or even worked diachronically. A first stage of transpression TP1 took place during the Late Neoproterozoic–Lower Cambrian as a result of Cadomian arc-continent collisional processes. Structures generated by transtension TT1 from Cambrian to Lower Devonian were related to strong lithosphere stretching responsible for the development of basins controlled by major detachments, tilting, rifting and important tectono–thermal diachronic processes. Denudation phenomena and inhibition of sedimentation related with thermal uplift (asthenosphere upwelling) and consequent subsidence caused by isostatic equilibrium, involving generalized transgressions, were processes responsible for major unconformities. The Variscan TP2-TT2 episodes that followed diachronically TP1-TT1, by maintaining the orogen-parallel transport direction, were concomitant with syntectonic deposition of continental basins in the OMZ and foreland basins in the SPZ. TT2 local transtension and tectonic exhumation of deep crustal rocks along major shear zones, favoured the opening of tectonic troughs filled up by sediments and volcanism. TP2 shortening have generated fold axes parallel to the orogen-strike and composite dissymmetric flower structures.     

Temporal and spatial persistence in rainfall records from Northeast Brazil and Galicia (Spain)

Summary Temporal and spatial persistence effects in historical rainfall records are investigated for a large number of stations from Northwest Spain (Galicia) and Northeast Brazil. Quantitative results, expressed by the Hurst or roughness exponent, are obtained by two methods: the R/S analysis and the semi-variogram. Despite rather different climatic conditions and period of analysis for the two regions, the results indicate that persistence and anti-persistence for the temporal and spatial analyses, respectively, are found for both regions. Temporal persistence is known to occur with other climatic fields and in many different regions of the world. Antipersistence in spatial patterns of rainfall is a strong result of this work, despite its apparent contradiction with temporal persistence. The results for Northeast Brazil support previous indications of a geographic stratification of persistence: both temporal and spatial persistence increase as latitude decreases.     

Numerical and functional representations of regional heat flow in South America

A summary of heat flow data acquired over recent years in several areas in the eastern (Brazil and Paraguay) and western (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador) parts of South American continent are presented. The improvements in the database have allowed numerical representations of heat flow for southeastern and central segments of the Precambrian fold belts in Brazil, Central Andean cordilleras in Chile and Bolivia, Southern Volcanic arc in Peru, Neuquén Province in southwestern Argentina, Chaco basin in Paraguay, Oriente basin in Ecuador and the system of pericratonic basins in north central Colombia. The maps reveal considerable variability in heat flow, not only between the main tectonic units but also within them. The intra-regional variations seem to originate mainly from complexities in local geologic structures while the inter-regional ones seem to point to action of deep-seated tectonic processes. The cordilleran regions are, in general, characterized by relatively high heat flow (>70 mW/m²), compared with the coastal regions to the west and the Pre-cordilleran basins to the east. In the eastern part of the continent, heat flow is low to normal (<60 mW/m²), the exceptions being the Mesozoic rift basins, areas of Cenozoic alkaline intrusions and some isolated belts of overthrust tectonics in the central parts of Brazil. There are indications that heat flow is high in the Patagonian Platform relative to that found in the Brazilian Platform.In addition, polynomial methods were employed for examining large-scale variations of heat flow over the continent. Specifically, a general-purpose least square solution was used to determine the coefficients of up to fourth order in latitude and longitude. Some of the large-scale trends seen in low order polynomial representations seem to be indicative of the nature of deep-seated heat transfer processes. The systematic increase in regional heat flow in the north-south direction is an example. It is considered as the consequence of thermal blanketing effect of the continental segment of the South American lithosphere. Trends seen in higher order polynomials seem to be associated with regional tectonic patterns and subduction-related magmatism. Prominent among these are east-west trending belts of low heat flow in northern Peru and in central Chile, as well as the high heat flow belts in northern Chile, Altiplano of Bolivia and northwestern Argentina. Limitations arising from low data density and uneven geographic distribution warrant higher degree polynomial representations.