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Over 300 million tones of industrial wastes are being produced per annum by chemical and agricultural process in India. These materials pose problems of disposal and health hazards. The wastes like phosphogypsum, fluorogypsum and red mud contain obnoxious impurities which adversely affect the strength and other properties of building materials based on them. Out of several wastes being produced at present, the use of phosphogypsum, fluorogypsum, lime sludge, hypo sludge, red mud, and mine tailing is of paramount significance to protect the environment. Paper making generally produces a large amount of solid waste. Paper fibers can be recycled only a limited number of times before they become too short or weak to make high quality paper. It means that the broken, low-quality paper fibers are separated out to become waste sludge. All the inks, dyes, coatings, pigments, staples and ”stickies” (tape, plastic films, etc.) are also washed off the recycled fibers to join the waste solids. The shiny finish on glossy magazine-type paper is produced using a fine kaolin clay coating, which also becomes solid waste during recycling. This paper mill sludge consumes a large percentage of local landfill space for each and every year. Worse yet, some of the wastes are land spread on cropland as a disposal technique, raising concerns about trace contaminants building up in soil or running off into area lakes and streams. Some companies burn their sludge in incinerators, contributing to our serious air pollution problems. To reduce disposal and pollution problems emanating from these industrial wastes, it is most essential to develop profitable building materials from them. Keeping this in view, investigations were undertaken to produce low cast concrete by blending various ratios of cement with hypo sludge. This project is concerned with experimental investigation on strength of concrete and optimum percentage of the partial replacement by replacing cement via 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60% and 70% of Hypo Sludge.

Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPVs) are modern photovoltaic (PV) modules which are integrated into the building’s envelope. Usually, these devices replace the conventional roofing system, but they may be also integrated into the facade. The modules integration has a significant advantage in limiting the overall cost of the construction. Furthermore, building integrated photovoltaics, in comparison to non-integrated ones, don’t require stand-alone systems or allocation of land. This paper presents the state-of-the-art review regarding the existing BIPVs technologies. Also, in the second part of the paper, future research directions are discussed.

This paper deals with multi-story buildings erected mostly in interwar period in seismic areas and designed for gravitational actions only. The typical structural system is reinforced concrete frames and masonry infills. A usual multi-story interwar structure was chosen in order to evaluate its seismic resilience. There were made in situ measurements for its dynamic characteristics. The numerical model was calibrated according to in situ measurements. There were proposed two methods of increasing the seismic resilience. First method consists in improving the resilience by reshaping without reinforcing. The second method is additional to the first. It consists in reinforcing infilled frames in order to take over seismic loads.

Quality is a requirement of the 21st century, ranging from education to construction. Hence, this paper aims to treat in a theoretical but especially in an applied manner the set of concepts which lead to the achievement of quality in construction.

The paper presents aspects related to the verification of the general stability of the bridge superstructures on circular arches with rigid vertical hangers, bridges of open-type or free-standing, without upper bracing.

The paper presents the comparative analyses in terms of dynamic behavior of two scenarios of an RC frame structural system for a duplex house situated in Neamt, Romania a seismic zone with PGA 0.25g. The study shows the structural behavior in terms of vibration modes, horizontal displacements and efforts. The conclusions offer the best argument to chose the preferred structural system by owner.

The concept of energy is closely related to the building sector and the systems used for heating, implicitly energy saving which is a current problem of both old and new buildings. In this paper a series of numerical simulations were made in Autodesk CFD Simulation in order to study the influence of terminal heating systems over the thermal comfort in rooms. Three case solutions were analysed, as follows: heating a room using a steel radiator, heating a room using an aluminium radiator and heating a room using underfloor heating. The values resulted through numerical simulations for the average room temperature were compared with the values for ideal heating. It was observed that underfloor heating is the most efficient source of heating among those analysed. Compared to heating using radiators, the temperatures along the length and height of the room using underfloor heating are constant and close to the ideal heating. The human body feels the most comfortable due to the uniform distribution of temperature from ground level, on height.

In the present paper is analysed concrete behavior from strength structure elements, subjected to combined sulphatic and magnesian aggressive actions. In order to clearly relieve cement influence regarding corrosion behavior and to be as close as possible of concrete structural characteristics, tests are realized on standard mortars, which from compositional point of view are mocro-concretes. These were used different W/C ratios in order to obtain different structural characteristics, knowing that in the first period after casting, when concrete porosity is sensibly higher, corrosion process is more emphatic, with subsequent negative effects. It was taken into account the fact that sulphatic corrosion effect appears after a long duration of aggressive agent action, in the present paper proposing a three year duration for aggressive attack. In the same time it was considered the fact that usual cement for structural elements is composite cement type CEM II/A-S 32,5, studying combined sulphatic and magnesian corrosion evolution on a large type of micro-concrete compositions with different compactness and aggressive agent concentrations.

This paper is about the interpretation of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake as a historic accident. The paper is divided in two main parts: the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake in 2005 and the reaction to other times, as today. Especially a comparison is highlighted, the reaction to the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and Indian Ocean tsunami in 2005 and today, as, contrary to what happened immediately after, the 2004 event did not cause a discourse. Also compared to other historical events mentioned, the Lisbon earthquake remains the only historic accident, and one of the birth dates of modernity. Some key aspects are discussed, as the issue of ruins, or of rebuilding, in context of the 18th century and today. Overall, the accent lays on the view from the Humanities, not of earthquake engineering, and reviews such views at the events and publications about the earthquake.

Different strengthening techniques have been developed so far for the reinforced concrete slabs with or without cut-outs. The development of these methods was a necessity due to different causes, such as inadequate maintenance, overloading of the reinforced concrete member, corrosion of the steel reinforcement and other different situations that appeared in time. Each of the techniques that are presented in this paper is better suited for a given situation and come with their advantages and disadvantages. These techniques are considered to be traditional do to their long usage in time and that they involve only traditional construction materials such as concrete and steel. The five techniques from this paper have been and are the most effectively used, in the past and present days, worldwide and a short presentation of the methods and the way they are applied is presented in this paper. The selection of one of these methods is imposed by a sum of technological and economical factors.