yes / Carpet waste fibres have a higher volume to weight ratios and once discarded into landfills, these fibres occupy a larger volume than other materials of similar weight. This research evaluates the efficiency of two types of carpet waste fibre as sustainable soil reinforcing materials to improve the shear strength of clay. A series of consolidated undrained (CU) triaxial compression tests were carried out to study the shear strength of reinforced clays with 1%, to 5% carpet waste fibres. The results indicated that carpet waste fibres improve the effective shear stress ratio and deviator stress of the host soil significantly. Addition of 1%, 3% and 5% carpet fibres could improve the effective stress ratio of the unreinforced soil by 17.6%, 53.5% and 70.6%, respectively at an initial effective consolidation stress of 200 kPa. In this study, a nonlinear regression model was developed based on a modified form of the hyperbolic model to predict the relationship between effective shear stress ratio, deviator stress and axial strain of fibre-reinforced soil samples with various fibre contents when subjected to various initial effective consolidation stresses. The proposed model was validated using the published experimental data, with predictions using this model found to be in excellent agreement.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第24262号 / 情博第806号 / 新制||情||136(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科先端数理科学専攻 / (主査)教授 木上 淳, 教授 磯 祐介, 准教授 白石 大典 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DFAM

No description available.

To acquire deeper understanding and insights into the mechanical behaviour of fibre reinforced saturated/unsaturated cohesive soils, a programme of work was designed and included. 1) Conducting standard Consolidation Undrained (CU) tests to investigate mechanical behaviour of non-reinforced fully saturated soil. 2) Studying the strength of fibre reinforced clay though unconfined compression tests. 3) Testing the behaviour of unsaturated reinforced soil in unsaturated triaxial tests. 4) Determining the soil-water characteristic curves (SWCC) on soil sample with different fibre content. The investigation was undertaken on a clay of low plasticity index. Samples tested with addition of 1, 3 and 5 % fibre content and different values of matric suction of 50, 100 and 200 kPa, one of the challenges that were encountered in this research are how to prepare homogenous samples. A method for prepared compacted fibre reinforced soils with improved fibre distribution and density profile has been proposed and examined. The test results indicated that waste carpet fibres increase the shear strength of unsaturated clay soils. It was also found that relative increase in strength is also a function of applied suction. An increase in waste carpet fibres was found to reduce the hysteresis of soil. A data analysis conducted on the results of unsaturated tests as a function of fibre content and matric suction. The behaviour modelled was shown to be a perfect fit with the experimental data.

No description available.

Yes / This paper provides results of a comprehensive investigation into the use of waste carpet fibres for reinforcement of clay soil slopes. The interaction between laboratory scale model slopes made of fibre reinforced clay soil and surface strip footing load was examined. Results for the influence of two variables namely fibre content and distance between the footing edge and the crest of the slope are presented and discussed. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technique was employed to study the deformation of the slope under the surface loading. The front side of the tank was made of a thick Perspex glass to facilitate taking accurate images during the loading stage. To study the stress induced in the slope under footing pressure, excess pore-water pressure and total stress increase were measured at predetermined locations within the slope. The results showed that fibre reinforcement increased the bearing resistance of the model slope significantly. For instance, inclusion of 5% waste carpet fibre increased the bearing pressure by 145% at 10% settlement ratio. / The post-print of this article will be released for public view when the version of record has been published by ASCE.

No / Municipalities and recycling and environmental authorities are concerned about the growing amount of carpet waste produced by household, commercial and industrial sectors. It is reported that 500,000 tonnes of carpet waste fibre are plunged into landfills annually in the UK. In the United States of America, around 10 million tonnes of textile waste was generated in 2003. In geotechnical engineering, expansive clay soils are categorised as problematic soils due to their swelling behaviour upon increase in the moisture content. The problematic nature of such soils is intensified with the increase in the plasticity index. This paper presents results of a comprehensive investigation into utilisation of carpet waste fibres in order to improve the swelling characteristics of compacted cohesive soils. Therefore, two different clay soils with markedly different plasticity indices (i.e. 17.0 and 31.5 %) were treated with two different types of carpet waste fibre. Waste fibres were added to prepare specimens with fibre content of 1, 3 and 5 % by dry weight of soil. Soil specimens with different dry unit weights and moisture contents were prepared so as to the swelling behaviour of fibre reinforced compacted clays is completely attained under various scenarios. The results indicated that the behaviour of the fibre reinforced soils seems highly dependent on the initial compaction state and secondary on the moisture content. It was found that the swelling pressure drops rapidly as the percentage of fibre increases in samples prepared at the maximum dry unit weight and optimum moisture content. Reducing the dry unit weight, while maintaining constant moisture content or increasing the moisture content at constant dry unit weight was found to reduce the swelling pressure.

no / This paper presents results of a comprehensive investigation on the utilization of carpet waste fibers in reinforcement of clay soils. Effects of adding proportionate quantities of two different types of shredded carpet waste fibers to clay soils (i.e., 1, 3, and 5% by dry weight of the soil) were investigated and evaluated. The investigation was conducted on specimens prepared at their maximum dry unit weight and optimum moisture content, as well on specimens prepared at variable conditions of dry unit weight and moisture content. A comparison was also made on specimens prepared at the same fiber content by changing dry unit weight while moisture content was kept unchanged or by changing both dry unit weight and moisture content. The investigation revealed that inclusion of carpet waste fibers into clay soils prepared at the same dry unit weight can significantly enhance the unconfined compression strength (UCS), reduce postpeak strength loss, and change the failure behavior from brittle to ductile. The results also showed that the relative benefit of fibers to increase the UCS of the clay soils is highly dependent on initial dry unit weight and moisture content of the soil. Failure patterns were gradually transformed from the apparent classical failure for unreinforced soil specimens to barrel-shaped failures for reinforced specimens at 5% fiber content.

Research on metamaterials has been growing ever since the first experimental realization of double negative media. The theory of transformation optics provides people with a perfect tool to make use of vast possibilities of the constitutive parameters for metamaterials. A lot of fascinating designs have been brought to us by transformation optics, with invisibility cloaks being the most intensely studied. The present thesis aims to develop the basic theory of transformation optics, and utilize it to design invisibility cloaks for various applications. After the background description of this field, the theory of transformation optics is first introduced. Formulas of transformation medium parameters and transformed fields are derived with every detail explained, so that the working knowledge of transformation optics can be grasped with minimal prerequisite mathematics. Proof of form invariance of full Maxwell’s equations with sources is presented. Design procedure of transformation optics is then demonstrated by creating perfect invisibility cloaks. The introduction to basic theory is followed by discussions on our works included in our published papers. As our first application, a method of designing two-dimensional reduced cloaks of complex shapes is proposed to relieve the difficulty of singularity occurring in perfect cloaks. The simple and intuitive method is the first way to design two-dimensional reduced cloaks of shapes other than cylindrical. Elliptical and bowtie shaped reduced cloaks are presented to verify the effectiveness of the method. Prominent scattering reduction is observed for both examples. Considering the practical realization, transformations continuous in the whole space must be the identity operation outside certain volume, and thus they can only manipulate fields locally. Discontinuous transformations are naturally considered to break the limitation. We study the possible reflections from such a transformation medium due to a discontinuous transformation by a new concept of inverse transformation. This way, the reflection falls into the framework of transformation optics as well. A necessary and sufficient condition for no reflection is derived as a special case. Unlike the invisibility realized by perfect cloaks, cloaking an object over a dielectric half-space has advantages in some particular applications. Starting from a perfect cloak, a half-space cloak is designed to achieve this. In our design, two matching strips embedded in the dielectric ground are used to induce proper reflection in the upper air space, so that the reflected field is the same as that from the bare dielectric ground. Cloaks obtained from singular transformations and even reduced models all have null principal value in their material parameters, making invisibility inherently very narrowband. In contrast, a carpet cloak designed by only coordinate deformation does not have the narrowband issue, and can perform well in a broad spectrum. The invisibility accomplished by the carpet cloak is also for the half-space case as our previous design. In this part, we extend the original version of a carpet cloak above a PEC sheet to a general dielectric ground. / QC 20110415

A membrane based treatment scheme was developed for the recovery of the print dyeing wastewaters (PDWs) and the acid dye bath wastewaters (ADBWs) of carpet manufacturing industry. The treatment schemes were developed by selecting the best pre-treatment and treatment processes among the alternatives of chemical precipitation (CP), microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF) and nanofiltration (NF). The best process train for PDW was CP+NF, where organic matter, color, turbidity and total hardness were removed at &gt / 95%. The alternative process train CP+UF also removed color and turbidity almost completely, however organic matter rejection was low, being 25% at highest. The quality of NF permeates were suitable for dyeing of light colors whereas UF permeates were suggested for washing of the printed carpets or dyeing of the dark colors. The best process train for ADBW was MF (1.0 mm)+NF, where organic matter rejection increased from 65% to 97% due to pH neutralization. Alternatively, sequential NF was required up to three stages in order to achieve similarly high rejections at the acidic pH of ADBW. Therefore, pH neutralization was realized to be a very important operational parameter affecting the treatment scheme. Although pH neutralization increased the flux declines by almost 5%, chemical cleaning was very effective to restore the original fluxes. Finally, ADBW was mixed with PDW, which already had a pH around neutral, so that the pH of ADBW would rise towards neutral without chemical consumption. The results suggested that these wastewaters could be treated together as long as they were mixed up to equal volumes at pH around neutral. Therefore, a final treatment scheme, which involved single NF for the mixture of PDW and ADBW, following their individual pre-treatment stages, was proposed as the most efficient process train.