Search

In this study, the effects of polypropylene fibre content and length on the mechanical properties of municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) bottom-ash-mixed (BA-mixed) clay soil were investigated through triaxial tests. By varying the fibre length and content, the stress-strain relationship and strength characteristics of polypropylene fibre-reinforced soil were analysed under different confining pressures. The main stress difference and shear resistance of polypropylene fibre-reinforced BA-mixed soil were discussed. The law of strength variation was used to analyse the reinforcing mechanism of fibres during the process of soil shearing. The results demonstrate that the strength and deformation resistance of polypropylene fibre-reinforced soil are significantly enhanced when compared with the original soil and pure BA-mixed soil. With the fibre content increases, the internal friction angle of the reinforced soil increases slightly, whereas the cohesion of the reinforced soil increases significantly. The sample can reach the maximum strength and have the best reinforcement effect when the control polypropylene fibre length is 2.5 cm, and fibre content is 0.3%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The utilization of fly ash (FA) produced from various thermal power plants and other industrial sources is a big challenge and an opportunity for material and civil engineers. This study aims to utilize FA for improving the engineering characteristics of Montmorillonitic Indian clay (BC) soil. A rigorous testing plan is designed and performed using different proportions of FA (5, 15, 25, and 35 %) to investigate the time-dependent deformation behavior of expansive BC soil and also to examine the influence of the wetting-drying cycle on the time-dependent swelling behavior of reconstituted soils in Oedometric free swell condition. It is proposed to evaluate the time-dependent parameters of the FA-BC matrix under wetting-drying cycles using the elastoviscoplastic considering swelling (EVPS) model. The mineralogical characteristics of both natural and reconstituted samples were investigated using the scanning electron microscope and X-ray diffraction. From the experimental result, it is observed that the time-dependent swelling coefficient decreases with the percentage of FA content increase. The FA used in the study results in decreasing not only the swelling potential of BC soil samples but also the swelling-shrinkage behavior of the soil. It is observed that the reconstituted soils are influenced by both the degree of FA content and the wetting-drying cycles. The swelling strain limit decreases exponentially with the increase of the FA content. The EVPS model works very well in predicting the long-term consolidation and swelling behavior of the FA-BC matrix under different stress states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1,1,2,3,4,5-Hexaphenylsilole (HPS) is a star building block of aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) in constructing OLED emitters. However, their development is obstructed by their complicated preparation and difficulty of achieving blue/deep-blue emission via structure modification and tuning. In this study, a benzo-group modification strategy was adopted to increase the skeleton rigidity and reduce the vibrational-rotational motion of peripheral substituted phenyl groups. The resulting building block, named tetraphenylbenzosilole (TPBS), was synthesized easily via a silyl radical cascade process with intermolecular radical cyclization. After the structure of the reaction substrate was tuned, four TPBS-based derivatives were obtained which not only inherited AIE characteristics from HPS but also exhibited high-efficiency deep-blue emission in the aggregated state thanks to their tuned HOMOs/LUMOs. Similar to HPS, propeller-like conformations in their single crystals were observed. In nondoped spin-coating OLEDs, these AIEgens all exhibited satisfactory performance with high EQEs (3.1-3.6%) at CIE coordinates of (0.15, 0.10), the best result reported so far for spin-coating-type AIEgens in blue nondoped OLEDs. All of the data showed the feasibility of our strategy for solving the shortage of AIEgens serving as building blocks for deep-blue emitters. We foresee the development of systems based on TPBS or its derivative materials inspired by this work.