Seismic strengthening of RC columns using external steel cage

Steel caging technique is commonly used for the seismic strengthening of reinforced concrete (RC) columns of rectangular cross‐section. The steel cage consists of angle sections placed at corners and held together by battens at intervals along the height. In the present study, a rational design method is developed to proportion the steel cage considering its confinement effect on the column concrete. An experimental study was carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed design method and detailing of steel cage battens within potential plastic hinge regions. One ordinary RC column and two strengthened columns were investigated experimentally under constant axial compressive load and gradually increasing reversed cyclic lateral displacements. Both strengthened columns showed excellent behavior in terms of flexural strength, lateral stiffness, energy dissipation and ductility due to the external confinement of the column concrete. The proposed model for confinement effect due to steel cage reasonably predicted moment capacities of the strengthened sections, which matched with the observed experimental values. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pn wave velocity and Moho geometry in north eastern India

Pn velocity has been computed across the NE India and Moho geometry constrained, using regional earthquake travel times recorded by a network of 30 seismological stations operated during February-May 1993. Using an appropriate velocity model and the arrival times at the network stations, preliminary hypocentres of 16 regional earthquakes provided by NEIC were also improved. The average Pn wave velocity in NE India has been found to be 8.5 ±0.2 km/s. It varies from 8.3 to 8.5 km/s beneath the Shillong Plateau, Mikhir hills and Assam valley, which is significantly higher than those in other parts of India. The crustal thickness in NE India is also high, varying from 45–49 km under the Shillong plateau and the adjoining region to 55–65 km in the convergence zone. The presence of a thick crust and high Pn velocity suggests that the lithosphere in NE India is colder, as also indicated by the observed deeper level (45-51 km) seismicity of the region.     

Aluminium shear-links for enhanced seismic resistance

An aluminium beam shear-link is developed for earthquake-resistant structures. The aluminium beam is designed to yield in shear mode to limit the maximum lateral force which is transmitted to primary structural members and to provide significant energy dissipation potential. Aluminium was chosen because of its low yield strength, which enables the use of thicker webs, reducing the problems of web buckling. Cyclic load tests on medium scale (1:4) models were conducted to study the hysteretic behaviour and energy dissipation potential of shear-links made of two alloys of aluminium (3003-O and 6061-O). The links were also tested at faster rates (cycling frequencies of 5, 10 and 17 Hz) to determine the effect of strain rate. The links exhibited very ductile shear yielding and excellent energy dissipation capacity. Unpinched and full hysteresis loops were observed until 10 per cent shear strain, and a relatively small influence of strain rates was observed on the link's performance. Simple design equations are developed to proportion these shear-links, using data from the cyclic load tests. In chevron-type braced systems, the shear-link is sandwiched between the tops of diagonal braces and a girder from the floor above, resulting in yielding at a lateral force less than that required to buckle the compression brace. A Shear-Link Braced Frame (SLBF) system was designed and its seismic performance was compared to that of an Ordinary Concentric Braced Frame (OCBF) with chevron braces. The SLBF system demonstrated more uniform distribution of storey drifts, reduced base shear, and a larger energy dissipation capacity per unit drift. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PSR B1237+25的强脉冲辐射特性的观测与研究

强脉冲是一种特殊的单脉冲辐射,表现为较强的射电爆发.利用新疆天文台南山25 m射电望远镜研究了PSR B1237+25的强脉冲辐射特性.发现探测到的793个强脉冲出现在积分轮廓的所有辐射成分中,峰值流量密度是平均脉冲的10.2至82.5倍.用对数正态分布对强脉冲的峰值流量密度比、信噪比和脉冲宽度的分布进行了拟合.在15...     

Reuse of Distillery Wastewater with Designed Dose and Pattern for Sugarcane Irrigation

The present investigation aims to optimize dose and pattern of distillery effluent for sugarcane irrigation. The postmethanated distillery effluent (PMDE) was recorded to have significant amount of micro‐ (Na, Zn, Fe) and macro‐ (Ca, Mg, N‐NO₃, P, K, S–SO) nutrients and so was utilized for sugarcane irrigation. Lysimetric studies were conducted to assess the impact of PMDE on sugarcane productivity with different concentrations (50 and 75%) and irrigation patterns (intermittent and pre‐sowing). The intermittent pattern of ferti‐irrigation with 50 and 75% effluent dose for sugarcane crop was found to enhance the growth and quality parameters of crop without impairing the groundwater quality. Results were more pronounced with 75% intermittent irrigation as the percent increase with respect to control for plant length, cane girth, cane weight, number of internodes per cane, dry matter accumulation, juice extraction, sucrose content, and available sugar were 28.0, 42.5, 14.6, 40.2, 54.4, 18.9, 44.9, 57.9, and 50.0%, respectively. It is suggested that PMDE can be used as an alternative of fresh water irrigation and also as a fertilizer for sugarcane, provided that the effluent quality and sugarcane quality is continuously monitored to avoid any contamination.     

Comparison of Measured and Numerically Simulated Turbulence Statistics in a Convective Boundary Layer Over Complex Terrain

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model can be used to simulate atmospheric processes ranging from quasi-global to tens of m in scale. Here we employ large-eddy simulation (LES) using the WRF model, with the LES-domain nested within a mesoscale WRF model domain with grid spacing decreasing from 12.15 km (mesoscale) to 0.03 km (LES). We simulate real-world conditions in the convective planetary boundary layer over an area of complex terrain. The WRF-LES model results are evaluated against observations collected during the US Department of Energy-supported Columbia Basin Wind Energy Study. Comparison of the first- and second-order moments, turbulence spectrum, and probability density function of wind speed shows good agreement between the simulations and observations. One key result is to demonstrate that a systematic methodology needs to be applied to select the grid spacing and refinement ratio used between domains, to avoid having a grid resolution that falls in the grey zone and to minimize artefacts in the WRF-LES model solutions. Furthermore, the WRF-LES model variables show large variability in space and time caused by the complex topography in the LES domain. Analyses of WRF-LES model results show that the flow structures, such as roll vortices and convective cells, vary depending on both the location and time of day as well as the distance from the inflow boundaries.     

Source parameters and scaling relations for small earthquakes in Kumaon Himalaya, India

We investigate the scaling relationships among earthquake source parameters using more than 300 good quality broad band seismograms from 30 small earthquakes in the Kumaon Himalaya from the spectral analysis of P and S waves. The average ratio of P/S wave corner frequency is found to be 1.13, which is suggestive of shift in the corner frequency. The estimated seismic moment range from 1.6?×?10¹³–5.8?×?10¹⁵ N?m, while the stress drop varies from 0.6 to 16 bars with 80 % of the events below 10 bars. An analysis of stress drop and apparent stress drop indicates the partial stress drop mechanism in the region. The source radii are between 0.17 and 0.88 km. The total seismic energy varies from 1.79?×?10⁸ to 7.30?×?10¹¹ J. We also observe the variation in seismic energy for a given seismic moment. The scaling relation between the seismic moment and stress drop suggests the breakdown of constant stress drop scaling for the range of seismic moments obtained here for the region. This shows the anomalous behavior of small earthquakes in the region. The study indicates that the stress drop is the dominant scaling factor for the moments studied here.     

The hemispheric asymmetry of solar activity during the last century and the solar dynamo

We believe the Babcock-Leighton process of poloidal field generation to be the main source of irregularity in the solar cycle. The random nature of this process may make the poloidal field in one hemisphere stronger than that in the other hemisphere at the end of a cycle. We expect this to induce an asymmetry in the next sunspot cycle. We look for evidence of this in the observational data and then model it theoretically with our dynamo code. Since actual polar field measurements exist only from the 1970s, we use the polar faculae number data recorded by Sheeley (1991, 2008) as a proxy of the polar field and estimate the hemispheric asymmetry of the polar field in different solar minima during the major part of the twentieth century. This asymmetry is found to have a reasonable correlation with the asymmetry of the next cycle. We then run our dynamo code by feeding information about this asymmetry at the successive minima and compare the results with observational data. We find that the theoretically computed asymmetries of different cycles compare favorably with the observational data, with the correlation co-efficient being 0.73. Due to the coupling between the two hemispheres, any hemispheric asymmetry tends to get attenuated with time. The hemispheric asymmetry of a cycle ei-ther from observational data or from theoretical calculations statistically tends to be less than the asymmetry in the polar field (as inferred from the faculae data) in the preceding minimum. This reduction factor turns out to be 0.43 and 0.51 respectively in observational data and theoretical simulations.