Properties of sediments deposited in a fluid with different pH

Abstract

The effect of pH on the physical and mechanical properties of a sediment was investigated through a set of experimental tests. The sediment was formed from deposition of suspended particles in a fluid. Two different types of clay soil were suspended in fluids with different pH (2, 4, 7, 9 and 11) in cylindrical tubes with volume of 1?liter and also in special cylindrical reservoirs. The height of the sediment was measured in the cylindrical tube until equilibrium was achieved. The sediment deposited in the reservoirs was dried in air and then Atterberg limit, compaction and unconfined compressive strength (UCS) tests were conducted on samples prepared from each sediment. The results showed that the final height of the settled sediment is a function of pH; the height of sediment is increased with increasing the pH. Also, the Atterberg limits increased with increasing the pH. The maximum dry unit weight and optimum water content decreased and increased with increasing the pH. The final strength of the sediment decreased with increasing pH. Based on the SEM analysis, it was found that the values of pH influence the properties of the formed sediments.     

On the relationship of regional meteorological drought with SOI and NAO over southwest Iran

A fuzzy hierarchical clustering technique using the pairwise similarity matrix is employed to find the homogenous climate subregions over southwest Iran, based on the similarity of meteorological drought characteristics (i.e., duration, intensity, onset, and ending dates). The representative subregions are recognized for different rainy seasons; for each, the regional rainfall anomalies are computed. To find appropriate drought predictors, the lag relationships of regional rainfall with seasonal Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are examined using a conditional probability approach. The results suggest a significant negative correlation between autumn rainfall and June–August SOI. The NAO is also negatively correlated with autumn rainfall such that it is least likely for an extreme autumn drought to occur when June–August NAO is negative. A spring drought is preceded by an October–December NAO greater than 0.5. However, winter droughts do not appear to be lag-correlated with either SOI or NAO. In addition to the findings for droughts, these indices also emerged having considerable influence on wet seasons. A wet autumn tends to occur when either May–July SOI is less than ?0.5 or June–August NAO is less than about ?0.3. It is also apparent that the extreme wet springs are absent when October–December NAO is positive. This season is influenced most by NAO in both dry and wet spells. However, similar to droughts, the wet winter seasons are not found to be associated with either SOI or NAO.     

The evolution of charged particles in a model of contracting cloud

The evolution of the charged particles are followed during contraction of a model of an interstellar cloud, with initial density number of n = 10 cm^–3. The contraction is followed up to density increase by five orders of magnitude. Special care is given to the details of the negative ions. In addition, we have tested the ambipolar diffusion according to the results of the ion density.The results predict the importance of atomic ions in the diffuse regions. H⁺ and C⁺ are distinctly enhanced in the beginning of contraction but decrease as contraction proceeds. Molecular ions enhance as contraction proceeds and becomes important in dense regions. The most enhanced molecular ions are HCO⁺, O₂ ⁺, C₂H₃ ⁺, H₃O⁺ and SO⁺, H₃ ⁺ is less abundant. The atomic ions (except metalic ions) decrease noticeably as density increases. In general the negative ions are of negligible fractional abundances. It has also been found that the time of ambipolar diffusion is shorter than the dynamical time, hence the magnetic field should be weakened in the central core as the central density increases to n = 10⁴ cm^–3.     

On analysis and forecasting of surges on the west coast of Great Britain

Summary. Surges are analysed by the regression technique. On the west coast of Britain surges are strongly correlated with meteorological variables such as barometric pressure and winds. The north—south component of wind is more effective than the east-west component in the generation of surges at Fish-guard and Portpatrick. The surge elevations at these ports are linearly proportional to the wind velocity. This pattern changes near Liverpool where the east—west component of wind dominates the development of surges. Here the surges are related to the square of the wind velocity. Moreover, the north-south component of wind over St George's Channel is marginally more effective than the north—south component of wind in the local area of the port, which suggests that a component of the surge near Liverpool is transported through St George's Channel. Spatial correlations of Fishguard, Holyhead and Liverpool surges also support this result. However, it is found that the forrnulation of a regression equation with simultaneous input of meteorological variables and spatial surges is ill-conditioned. Non-linearity resulting from surge-tide interaction is negligible at Fishguard and Portpatrick. The development of non-linearity starts when surges progress from Fishguard to Holy-head. The non-linear component is small near Holyhead but becomes a significant part of surges observed at Liverpool. The non-linear component may be represented as a modulation of the tide by a slow time-varying component of the surge. The component of surge variance which can be estimated by the regression model is over 70 per cent for Liverpool, 60 per cent for Holyhead and 50 per cent for Fishguard.     

Persistence of vinyl chloride in ground water at the Woodlawn landfill Superfund site,northeastern Maryland,USA

Since landfill operations ceased in the early 1980s at the Woodlawn landfill Superfund site in northeastern Maryland, USA, the carcinogen vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) has persisted in the site ground water at concentrations in places greater than 100 ppb. Investigations of VCM concentrations from monitoring well data from 1981 through 1991, which were published in 2001, concluded that concentrations were cyclic and were not dissipating. Data from 1991 to 2000 confirm VCM persistence, showing concentration peaks as late as 1997 in the eastern part of the site. These values are significantly above both drinking water standards (>MCL of 2 ppb) and lifetime excess cancer risk (E-6 risk level) from exposure since birth (>0.024 ppb). Sources for VCM are landfill wastes (PVC-sludge) and effluent from an on-site transfer station. In addition to direct release of VCM from wastes, other chlorinated hydrocarbons, trichloroethene and perchloroethene (TCE and PCE) are also present in the ground water, and these compounds can degrade into VCM. Persistence of VCM concentrations is the result of leachate generation, mostly from multi-source wastes in the vadose zone, with subsequent infiltration into the regional aquifer. Increases in VCM concentrations (new leachate generation) alternated with decreases in VCM concentrations (infiltration without leachate) in a cyclic fashion, during this 20-year period.     

Fuzzy Logic System for Road Identification Using Ikonos Images

Research into both extraction of man-made objects and automatic change detection from aerial and satellite images has made significant progress in recent years. This paper presents an approach, based on a fuzzy logic system, for the identification of suburban roads in Ikonos images. The linguistic variables are the mean and standard deviation (SD) of different objects with Gaussian membership function. After the roads have been identified provisionally and their skeleton extracted, the skeleton can be vectorised and then used as direct input to a GIS for further analysis. The method was tested on an Ikonos "Geo" image covering Bilesavar in north-western Iran. For the suburban area of Bilesavar, the results showed that grey scale values ranged from 20 to 190 for non-roads and 226 to 228 for roads, the optimum width of the Gaussian kernel function was 3 and the SD was 0.4. It was also found that about 91% of main roads with a width of 6 to 12 pixels could be extracted from high resolution satellite imagery by the algorithm. The computer program for this study has been developed in visual C++ based on Windows 98     

Hematite grains: Size and coercive force from AF demagnetization at high temperatures

The coercivity spectrum of low-field high-temperature partial thermoremanent magnetization (PTRM) of a synthetic hematite powder, extremely high at room temperature, decreases very slowly with increasing temperature up to 500°C then decreases rapidly, especially above 600°C. From the AF demagnetization curves at 600 and 650°C it is calculated, following the Néel's theory of single-domain particles that the grains carrying the PTRM have a mean coercive force of 23 ± 5 kOe and a mean grain size of 0.40 ± 0.15 μm, which is not significantly different from the mean grain size of 0.48 ± 0.03 μm from electron micrograph observations.     

Effect of confining pressure on dynamic soil properties using improved transfer function estimators

Three new estimators of the transfer function (H2, H3, and H4) in addition to the conventional estimator (H1) were utilized to determine damping and shear modulus of soils under random excitation conditions. The results of this study indicate that as confining pressure increases, the difference between damping values obtained by the various estimators decreases, whereas the shear moduli are not influenced by the variation in confining pressure.