Current Issue : April-June Volume : 2025 Issue Number : 2 Articles : 5 Articles
This study evaluates the effects of the initial situation of the site (slope and quality of the soil with its resistance characteristics), building loads, support and drainage/non-drainage on the safety and stability of sloping sites. The objective is to contribute to the stabilization of sloping sites under building loads. Considering a sloping site under building loads in the city of Bujumbura in Burundi facing the problem of instability, an experimental study of the site’s soils is first carried out in the laboratory. Secondly, an analysis by numerical simulation of stability is carried out based on 3 main simulation cases: By first considering an initial situation (unloaded), then a loaded situation without support and a loaded situation with support. The calculation is carried out in a drained state and in an undrained state, with a water table blocked at depth to simulate the reality on the ground. Three buildings of different levels are designed according to the existing buildings and their loads are determined for the loaded case simulations. The results of the analysis thus make it possible to assess the effect on safety and stability of: 1) the slope of the unloaded site and the quality of the soil with its resistance characteristics, 2) the loads of the buildings or their intensive increase, 3) the drained or undrained state of the soil on the site, 4) the support or non-support of the unloaded or loaded, drained or undrained sloping site....
With advancements in digital technology, the field of architectural design has increasingly embraced data and algorithms to enhance design efficiency and quality. Recent advancements in text-to-image (T2I) generation models have enabled the creation of images that correspond to textual descriptions. However, textual descriptions struggle to capture essential style characteristics in style images. In this study, we proposed a method for architectural facade design based on the stable diffusion model (SDM) that combined stylistic images or keywords as input with the structural conditions of content images to generate images with both stylistic and architectural features. By employing the constrastive language-image pre-training (CLIP) image encoder to convert the style image into its initial image embedding and feature extraction from multilayer cross-attention and training optimization to obtain a pretrained image embedding, the proposed method extracts stylistic features from style images and converts them into corresponding embeddings. This process enables the generated images to embody stylistic features and artistic semantic information. Furthermore, the T2I adapter model is employed to use the architectural structure of content images as conditional guidance, thereby ensuring that the generated images exhibit the corresponding structural features. By leveraging these two aspects, the proposed method can decorate architecture with stylistic features from stylistic images while preserving the architectural structure features of content images, resulting in images that reflect the content images after style transformation. Our method is mainly used in architectural design applications. It was capable of generating facade images from flat design drawings, three-dimensional (3D) architectural models, and hand-drawn sketches and has achieved commendable results....
The search for binders with a lower environmental impact has grown, especially for those with reduced clinker content or even for formulations not used due to the high CO2 emissions associated with their production. In this context, the steel industry, which generates a significant amount of waste and co-products, especially steel aggregates, such as blast furnace slag and basic oxygen slag, can be a source of raw materials for cement plants. For this reason, in search of an innovative alternative with low environmental impact, in this work, a clinker-free cement was developed by mixing waste from steel and civil construction. The results of this study demonstrated the possibility of producing a Portland clinker-free cement, using only solid waste, through a mixture of steel slag from blast furnaces, basic oxygen slag and gypsum residue from civil construction, presenting hydraulic properties compatible with national cement CPIII-32 and CPII E-32, and the European cement CSS 32.5 N. The cement mixtures were also characterized as resistant to sulfate attack. It was found that the basic oxygen slag acted as an alkaline activator, thus enhancing the hydration process of the mixture of blast furnace slag and gypsum....
Civil engineering works require the selection of soil-type materials and the assessment of their geomechanical characteristics. However, the lack of relevant geotechnical mapping to facilitate the prediction of granular material zones for civil engineering works in Benin means that very costly and sometimes inconclusive prospecting has to be undertaken for each project. The aim of this study is to contribute to the availability of geotechnical mapping in Benin. For this purpose, and in order to capitalize on the data, the proposed methodological approach is based on the systematic and controlled recording of data produced by laboratories during geotechnical and geological surveys for road construction projects. To this end, a web platform called ROAD MAT has been designed for data recording. This platform has been tested using data from test results from sixteen boreholes drilled in the Mono department. These results show a predominance of soil class G2 and CBR class P2. The database is steadily expanding, and its use by stakeholders will make it possible to collect and centralize vital data to define benchmarks for greater control of geotechnical risks. This work therefore constitutes a blueprint for the development of geotechnical mapping in Benin....
Masonry retaining walls used in civil engineering projects, such as highway embankments and slope protections, easily crack due to complex internal pore structures and exposure to harsh environmental conditions. To address these problems, practical reinforcement methods, including grouting reinforcement, concrete cover reinforcement, and combined reinforcement, were proposed to maintain retaining walls in this study. Nine cases of different reinforcement schemes were adopted to investigate the effects of grouting volumes, grouting hole numbers, and reinforcement methods. The results showed that as the grouting volume and grouting hole numbers increased, the cracks occurred at a lower height, showing a higher moment resistance capacity. In addition, the cracking moment was enhanced with a thicker concrete cover. Furthermore, combined grouting and concrete cover reinforcement improved the structural integrity and showed the best performance, in which the failure mode shifted from brittle to ductile. However, concrete cover reinforcement is associated with a higher price and longer construction cycle. Thus, decisions should be made depending on the engineering requirement....
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