Journal of The Institution of Engineers : Series A 

About: Journal of The Institution of Engineers : Series A is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Compressive strength & Flexural strength. Over the lifetime, 569 publications have been published receiving 1637 citations.

Studies on use of Copper Slag as Replacement Material for River Sand in Building Constructions

Abstract: This work focuses on the use of copper slag, as a partial replacement of sand for use in cement concrete and building construction. Cement mortar mixtures prepared with fine aggregate made up of different proportions of copper slag and sand were tested for use as masonry mortars and plastering. Three masonry wall panels of dimensions 1 × 1 m were plastered. The studies showed that although copper slag based mortar is suitable for plastering, with the increase in copper slag content, the wastage due to material rebounding from the plastered surfaces increases. It is therefore suggested that the copper slag can be used for plastering of floorings and horizontal up to 50 % by mass of the fine aggregate, and for vertical surfaces, such as, brick/block walls it can be used up to 25 %. In this study on concrete mixtures were prepared with two water cement ratios and different proportions of copper slag ranging from 0 % (for the control mix) to 100 % of fine aggregate. The Concrete mixes were evaluated for workability, density, and compressive strength.

Optimal Reservoir Operation for Hydropower Generation using Non-linear Programming Model

Abstract: Hydropower generation is one of the vital components of reservoir operation, especially for a large multi-purpose reservoir. Deriving optimal operational rules for such a large multi-purpose reservoir serving various purposes like irrigation, hydropower and flood control are complex, because of the large dimension of the problem and the complexity is more if the hydropower production is not an incidental. Thus optimizing the operations of a reservoir serving various purposes requires a systematic study. In the present study such a large multi-purpose reservoir, namely, Koyna reservoir operations are optimized for maximizing the hydropower production subject to the condition of satisfying the irrigation demands using a non-linear programming model. The hydropower production from the reservoir is analysed for three different dependable inflow conditions, representing wet, normal and dry years. For each dependable inflow conditions, various scenarios have been analyzed based on the constraints on the releases and the results are compared. The annual power production, combined monthly power production from all the powerhouses, end of month storage levels, evaporation losses and surplus are discussed. From different scenarios, it is observed that more hydropower can be generated for various dependable inflow conditions, if the restrictions on releases are slightly relaxed. The study shows that Koyna dam is having potential to generate more hydropower.

A Hybrid FEM–ANN Approach for Slope Instability Prediction

Abstract: Assessment of slope stability is one of the most critical aspects for the life of a slope. In any slope vulnerability appraisal, Factor Of Safety (FOS) is the widely accepted index to understand, how close or far a slope from the failure. In this work, an attempt has been made to simulate a road cut slope in a landslide prone area in Rudrapryag, Uttarakhand, India which lies near Himalayan geodynamic mountain belt. A combination of Finite Element Method (FEM) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been adopted to predict FOS of the slope. In ANN, a three layer, feed- forward back-propagation neural network with one input layer and one hidden layer with three neurons and one output layer has been considered and trained using datasets generated from numerical analysis of the slope and validated with new set of field slope data. Mean absolute percentage error estimated as 1.04 with coefficient of correlation between the FOS of FEM and ANN as 0.973, which indicates that the system is very vigorous and fast to predict FOS for any slope.

Investigations on Fresh and Hardened Properties of Recycled Aggregate Self Compacting Concrete

Abstract: In the recent years, construction and demolition waste management issues have attracted the attention from researchers around the world. In the present study, the potential usage of recycled aggregate obtained from crushed demolition waste for making self compacting concrete (SCC) was researched. The barriers in promoting the use of recycled material in new construction are also discussed. In addition, the results of an experimental study involving the use of recycled concrete aggregate as coarse aggregates for producing self-compacting concrete to study their flow and strength characteristics are also presented. Five series of mixture were prepared with 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100 % coarse recycled aggregate adopting Nan Su’s mix proportioning method. The fresh concrete properties were evaluated through the slump flow, J-ring and V-funnel tests. Compressive and tensile strengths were also determined. The results obtained showed that SCC could be successfully developed by incorporating recycled aggregates.

Improved Wastewater Treatment by Combined System of Microbial Fuel Cell with Activated Carbon/TiO 2 Cathode Catalyst and Membrane Bioreactor

Abstract: A two-stage continuous process was developed for treating medium-strength wastewater combining microbial fuel cell (MFC) using activated carbon (AC)/TiO2 composite as cathode catalyst and submerged membrane bioreactor (MBR). Synthetic wastewater, having total chemical oxygen demand (COD) of around 3 g/L, was introduced first in the anodic chamber of MFC in a continuous mode of operation followed by aerobic MBR. Submerged hollow-fibre ultra-filtration membrane assembly was attached to draw permeate from MBR. The electrical performance of MFC was evaluated by polarisation, which showed a maximum volumetric power density of 1.02 W/m3 with much lower whole-cell internal resistance of 10 Ω. The coulombic efficiency of MFC was estimated to be 0.31%, demonstrating AC/TiO2 composite as a promising cathode catalyst for applications in MFC. The permeate of MFC–MBR system showed 98.3 ± 0.3% and 81.9 ± 1.8% of COD and total Kjeldahl nitrogen removal efficiency, respectively, producing permeate with total suspended solids concentration of less than 5 mg/L. Thus, a two-stage reliable process for treatment of wastewater is demonstrated using integrated MFC–MBR for generating high-quality recyclable effluent and facilitating recovery of bio-electricity.