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Turf is not a material frequently associated with construction. However, as a cheap, easily available, and versatile material it was used in antiquity (and has been used in various contexts since) to form unit-based and mass walls, embankments, and ramparts. Some of the best-preserved evidence for historical turf use comes from the Roman period, when it was a mainstay of military construction, being widely used in forts (e.g. along the Rhine and in Britain) and large-scale linear earthworks, most notably thewalls of Hadrian (northern England) and Antoninus Pius (central Scotland). To our knowledge, turf has never been examined as a construction material; its interest has, until now, been restricted to the soil and agricultural sciences and sports engineering. This paper presents the first exploration of turf water retention properties, assessed to understand whether turf behaviour can be collated with that of more traditionalearthen materials, for example cob or rammed earth. Tensiometer and psychrometer methods were used to estimate the water retention curves of turf, representative of that used for construction, harvested from two sites near Crieff, Scotland. The obtained data were analysed in terms of unimodal type functions to understand qualities of the full range of the soil water retention curve for Scottish turf. This work supports a larger project examining how engineering materials principles can explain ancient construction practices. In so doing, we will be well positioned to reintroduce this low-carbon material to the modern construction market.

With both the social and the economic development, air pollution has become a matter of high concern to both the public and the government. Vehicle exhaust emissions on traffic roads are the main source of urban air pollution in urban area, which poses a significant threat and impact on the health of urban residents. In order to solve the excessive urban pollutants in a better and more efficient way, reasonable and economic solutions should be investigated from the three aspects, including source identification, pollutant distribution and treatment measures. As for the distribution of pollutants in regional urban scale, this paper analyzes and summarizes the four influencing factors, including different urban layout schemes, meteorological conditions, roadside tree configurations and motor vehicle flows. The methods to study the distribution of air pollutants are summarized. Meanwhile, China has promulgated many standards and policies for the treatment of pollutants, which has achieved good results. To control urban pollutants from the root, it is necessary to look at the problem of urban pollutants from various aspects with appropriate methods, affordable human and material resources and reasonable relevant policies. This study provides a scientific support for control of traffic-related pollutants in urban area.

The Chinese government pledged to strive to peak carbon emission by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. In the context of the industrial sector’s deepening response to climate change and the overall promotion of green transformation, industrial parks have become the critical trouble-shooters in achieving scientific and precise targeted carbon emission reductions in the industrial sector during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period and even in the future. Based on big data analysis, this paper analyzed the carbon emission data of 213 national industrial parks. This paper identified challenges and opportunities underlying the low-carbon transition of China’s industrial parks, and quantified decarbonization targets, pathways and potentials of the industrial parks towards 2035 and 2050. During 2015-2050, China’s industrial parks are expected to reduce CO2 emission by 1.8 gigaton (dropped by more than 60%) via industrial structure optimization, energy efficiency improvement, energy structure decarbonization, and carbon capture, utilization and storage; specifically, 0.8 and 1.0 gigaton of CO2 emission could be reduced during 2015-2035 and 2035-2050, respectively.

Forecasting the capacity demand of underground space is the difficulty and a heat point in urban planning and urban underground space development. Through the survey data of Shanghai underground space capacity in 2006 and 2008, this paper conducts an empirical study on forecasting the capacity demand of underground space using thespatial regression model as the classical model by applying tools of STATA, SPSS and ArcGIS. The study indicates that the scale of underground space development and use is in a significant positive relationship with the population density and GDP per capita, but is not relevant with the price of real estate. The characteristics are apparently different in the underground space development and use in Shanghai between the central and the rural area. The underground space development in Shanghai is at the stage of rapid promotion, and will keep increasing at a high speed. The paper reveals the development law of Shanghai underground space development and the method of forecasting the capacity of underground space so as to provide theoretical analysis tool for development of underground space in Shanghai and other cities.

This article reviews the recent progress on predicting the adsorption properties of metal-organic framework by using classical density functional theory and focused on the application of the classical density functional theory to the high-throughput screening, which is accelerated by fast Fourier Transform. Comparing to the conventional molecular simulations, the advantage of the accelerated classical density functional theory is the calculation speed, especially for simple small molecule systems, which makes the high-throughput screening on MOF materials feasible. However, it appears that there is a lack of efficient method to deal with the complicated molecules. How to construct a reasonable free energy functional of complicated fluid is the main challenge to state of art classical density functional theory. In a word, the improvement of CDFT theory and the combination of CDFT and molecular simulation are the two main ways for CDFT to predict gas adsorption in MOF.

With the rapid development of economy, the number of buses and bus fire increases. This paper takes bus as the research object and uses software FDS to explore the fire smoke spread under different fire power conditions. The results show that: with the increase in fire power, the smoke in the compartment rapidly accumulates, and the heating rate is also accelerated. The visibility decreases with the diffusion of smoke in the compartment. The CO concentration increases with time. The greater the fire power, the higher the temperature which will eventually stabilize. Only the concentration of smoke near the entrance will be slightly reduced. This is also conducive to the escape of people inside the car.

In order to provide an accurate theoretical basis for the underground gasification model test of coal, the similar materials ratio of underground gasification’s overburden rock was studied by orthogonal experiment according to the similarity theory. The results show: the fifth group material ratio meets the model test requirements, the mass ratio of sand, cement and gypsum is 6:1:1, and the compressive strength is 1.36MPa; the material strength is most sensitive to sand as compared to cement and gypsum; the compressive strength decreases as the aggregate–binder ratio increases. When the aggregate–binder ratio remains the same, the compressive strength decreases as the cement-gypsum ratio increases; the compressive strength-elastic modulus curve of the specimen increases linearly and conforms to the sandstone fitting curve in the coal-bearing strata; the failure mode of similar materials is mainly shear failure.