Search results

This paper aims to discuss the evaluation of the compressive and splitting tensile strength of concrete mixes containing different proportions of up to 20 per cent glass aggregate. Portions of sand in concretes with and without admixtures were replaced with measurements of glass aggregates.

“Glascrete” is a term used for concrete in which crushed glass is used as a substitute for all or part of the aggregates. Glass can be recycled many times without changing its properties, making it an ideal material in concrete. Overall, 144 cubes and 144 cylinders of glascretes were prepared with different admixtures and subjected to compressive and splitting tensile strength test.

A comparison with a 21-day control mix indicated that glass aggregates are replacing sand in concrete ranging from 5 to 20 per cent by volume, resulting in 3.8-10.6 per cent and 3.9-16.4 per cent fall in compressive and tensile strength, respectively. However, the use of mineral admixture improved the properties of the mixes at 3, 7, 14 and 21 days.

Cities worldwide are congested, and even those with the best waste-management system would have issues with waste disposal after the year 2030. Consequently, waste management is a current issue for cities all over the world.

This study aims to evaluate the physical properties of mortar mixes that contain different volumes of waste glass as substitutes for fine aggregate with or without additives. Mineral additives are used to improve the mechanical properties of glascrete mixes in addition to its chemical resistance by absorbing the OH⁻ ions responsible for the possible alkali-silica reaction (ASR). It also reduces the adverse effects of mix-dimensional stability. Water-reducing admixtures are used to reduce the impact of the ASR by minimizing the amount of moisture in concrete, in effect decreasing the possible expansion of any produced gel. In this research, compressive and splitting tensile strength of concrete mortar containing waste glass of limited substitutions is evaluated.

Challenges associated with ensuring the accuracy and reliability of cost estimation of highway construction bid items are of significant interest to state highway transportation agencies. Even with the existing research undertaken on the subject, the problem of inaccurate estimation of highway bid items still exists. This paper aims to assess the accuracy of the cost estimation methods employed in the selected studies to provide insights into how well they perform empirically. Additionally, this research seeks to identify, synthesize and assess the impact of the factors affecting highway unit prices because they affect the total cost of highway construction costs.

This paper systematically searched, selected and reviewed 105 papers from Scopus, Google Scholar, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Transportation Research Board (TRB) and Science Direct (SD) on conceptual cost estimation of highway bid items. This study used content and nonparametric statistical analyses to determine research trends, identify, categorize the factors influencing highway unit prices and assess the combined performance of conceptual cost prediction models.

Findings from the trend analysis showed that between 1983 and 2019 North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East contributed the most to improving highway cost estimation research. Aggregating the quantitative results and weighting the findings using each study's sample size revealed that the average error between the actual and the estimated project costs of Monte-Carlo simulation models (5.49%) performed better compared to the Bayesian model (5.95%), support vector machines (6.03%), case-based reasoning (11.69%), artificial neural networks (12.62%) and regression models (13.96%). This paper identified 41 factors and was grouped into three categories, namely: (1) factors relating to project characteristics; (2) organizational factors and (3) estimate factors based on the common classification used in the selected papers. The mean ranking analysis showed that most of the selected papers used project-specific factors more when estimating highway construction bid items than the other factors.

This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by analyzing and comparing the performance of highway cost estimation models, identifying and categorizing a comprehensive list of cost drivers to stimulate future studies in improving highway construction cost estimates.

Environmental issues caused by the production of Portland cement have led to it being replaced by waste materials such as fly ash, which is more economical and safer for the environment. Also, fly ash is a material with sustainable properties. Therefore, this paper aims to focus on the development of sustainable construction materials using 100% high-calcium fly ash and potassium hydroxide (KOH)-based alkaline solution and study the engineering properties of the resulting fly ash-based geopolymer concrete. Laboratory tests were conducted to determine the mechanical properties of the geopolymer concrete such as compressive strength, flexural strength, curing time and slump. In phase I of the study, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were added to determine their effect on the strength of the geopolymer mortar. The results derived from the experiments indicate that mortar and concrete made with 100% fly ash C require an alkaline solution to produce similar (comparable) strength characteristics as Portland cement concrete. However, it was determined that increasing the amount of KOH generates a considerable amount of heat causing the concrete to cure too quickly; therefore, it is notable to forming a proper bond was unable to form a stronger bond. This study also determined that the addition of CNTs to the mix makes the geopolymer concrete tougher than the traditional concrete without CNT.

Tests were conducted to determine properties of the geopolymer concrete such as compressive strength, flexural strength, curing time and slump. In Phase I of the study, CNTs were studied to determine their effect on the strength of the geopolymer mortar.

The results derived from the experiments indicate that mortar and concrete made with 100% fly ash C require an alkaline solution to produce the same strength characteristics as Portland cement concrete. However, it was determined that increasing the amount of KOH generates too much heat causing the concrete to cure too quickly; therefore, it is notable to forming a proper bond. This study also determined that the addition of CNTs to the mix makes the concrete tougher than concrete without CNT.

This study was conducted at the construction engineering and management concrete laboratory at North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota. All the experiments were conducted and analyzed by the authors.

Background: Geostatistics focuses on spatial or spatiotemporal datasets. Geostatistics was initially developed to generate probability distribution predictions of ore grade in the mining industry; however, it has been successfully applied in diverse scientific disciplines. This technique includes univariate, multivariate, and simulations. Kriging geostatistical methods, simple, ordinary, and universal Kriging, are not multivariate models in the usual statistical function. Notwithstanding, simple, ordinary, and universal kriging techniques utilize random function models that include unlimited random variables while modeling one attribute. The coKriging technique is a multivariate estimation method that simultaneously models two or more attributes defined with the same domains as coregionalization.

Objective: This study investigates the impact of populations on traffic volumes as a variable. The additional variable determines the strength or accuracy obtained when data integration is adopted. In addition, this is to help improve the estimation of annual average daily traffic (AADT).

Methods procedures, process: The investigation adopts the coKriging technique with AADT data from 2009 to 2016 from Montana, Minnesota, and Washington as primary attributes and population as a controlling factor (second variable). CK is implemented for this study after reviewing the literature and work completed by comparing it with other geostatistical methods.

Results, observations, and conclusions: The Investigation employed two variables. The data integration methods employed in CK yield more reliable models because their strength is drawn from multiple variables. The cross-validation results of the model types explored with the CK technique successfully evaluate the interpolation technique's performance and help select optimal models for each state. The results from Montana and Minnesota models accurately represent the states' traffic and population density. The Washington model had a few exceptions. However, the secondary attribute helped yield an accurate interpretation. Consequently, the impact of tourism, shopping, recreation centers, and possible transiting patterns throughout the state is worth exploring.

Background: The annual average daily traffic (AADT) data from road segments are critical for roadway projects, especially with the decision-making processes about operations, travel demand, safety-performance evaluation, and maintenance. Regular updates help to determine traffic patterns for decision-making. Unfortunately, the luxury of having permanent recorders on all road segments, especially low-volume roads, is virtually impossible. Consequently, insufficient AADT information is acquired for planning and new developments. A growing number of statistical, mathematical, and machine-learning algorithms have helped estimate AADT data values accurately, to some extent, at both sampled and unsampled locations on low-volume roadways. In some cases, roads with no representative AADT data are resolved with information from roadways with similar traffic patterns.

Methods: This study adopted an integrative approach with a combined systematic literature review (SLR) and meta-analysis (MA) to identify and to evaluate the performance, the sources of error, and possible advantages and disadvantages of the techniques utilized most for estimating AADT data. As a result, an SLR of various peer-reviewed articles and reports was completed to answer four research questions.

Results: The study showed that the most frequent techniques utilized to estimate AADT data on low-volume roadways were regression, artificial neural-network techniques, travel-demand models, the traditional factor approach, and spatial interpolation techniques. These AADT data-estimating methods' performance was subjected to meta-analysis. Three studies were completed: R squared, root means square error, and mean absolute percentage error. The meta-analysis results indicated a mixed summary effect: 1. all studies were equal; 2. all studies were not comparable. However, the integrated qualitative and quantitative approach indicated that spatial-interpolation (Kriging) methods outperformed the others.

Conclusions: Spatial-interpolation methods may be selected over others to generate accurate AADT data by practitioners at all levels for decision making. Besides, the resulting cross-validation statistics give statistics like the other methods' performance measures.

This study investigates whether or not accounting and legal decision-makers at publicly traded US firms exhibit a professional affiliation bias with respect to their selection of business service providers. Executives at NYSE or NASDAQ firms who were affiliated with the accounting profession, the legal profession, or neither profession indicated their likelihood of using one of three randomly assigned types of firms (i.e., a CPA firm, a law firm, or a firm with both CPA and attorney partners) to provide five selected business services. The five business services represent the range of accounting and legal services that firms often outsource: audit, tax representation, mergers and acquisitions, trade regulation/interstate commerce, and litigation. We find that executive level decision-makers at publicly traded US firms do exhibit a professional affiliation bias in the selection of business service providers and that this professional affiliation bias is stronger in attorneys than in CPAs. The fact that all respondents were NYSE or NASDAQ executives, rather than students or another surrogate population, provides additional relevance and generalizability to our findings. Identifying this bias can help executives avoid suboptimal initial selection decisions and/or inaccurate performance evaluations of external business service providers.

The purpose of this paper is to describe challenges the manufacturing industry is currently facing when developing future assembly information systems. More specific, this paper focuses on the handling of assembly information from manufacturing engineering to the shop floor operators.

Multiple case studies have been conducted within one case company between 2014 and 2017. To broaden the perspective, interviews with additionally 17 large and global manufacturing companies and 3 industry experts have been held. Semi-structured interviews have been the main data collection method alongside observations and web questionnaires.

Six focus areas have been defined which address important challenges in the manufacturing industry. For manual assembly intense manufacturing company, challenges such as IT challenges, process challenges, assembly process disturbances, information availability, technology and process control, and assembly work instructions have been identified and hinder implementation of Industry 4.0 (I4.0).

This longitudinal study provides a current state analysis of the challenges the manufacturing industry is facing when handling assembly information. Despite the vast amount of initiatives within I4.0 and digitalization, this paper argues that the manufacturing industry needs to address the six defined focus areas to become more flexible and prepared for the transition toward a digitalized manufacturing industry.

We argue that by conducting systematic research with communities rather than on communities, community-based research (CBR) methods can both advance the study of human interaction and strengthen public understanding and appreciation of social sciences. CBR, among other methods, can also address social scientists’ ethical and social commitments. We recap the history of calls by leading sociologists for rigorous, empirical, community-engaged research. We introduce CBR methods as empirically grounded methods for conducting social research with social actors. We define terms and describe the range of methods that we include in the umbrella term, “community-based research.” After providing exemplars of community-based research, we review CBR’s advantages and challenges. We, next, summarize an intervention that we undertook as members of the Publication Committee of the URBAN Research Network’s Sociology section in which the committee developed and disseminated guidelines for peer review of community-based research. We also share initial responses from journal editors. In the conclusion, we revisit the potential of community-based research and note the consequences of neglecting community-based research traditions.

We are long overdue for a conversation about ethical treatment of student researchers. Ethical treatment of research participants has been carefully defined through decades of public conversation, and ethical practices have been institutionalized through mechanisms like mandatory ethics trainings and Institutional Review Boards. Student researchers deserve the same level of consideration. While there are many types of ethical violations of student labor in research projects, there are two that are of particular concern to social movements researchers: use of volunteer labor without clear academic or professional benefits, and failure to ensure the safety of student researchers. The first of these ethical violations is especially common in social movements research because of the emergent nature of protests: new rounds of protests begin and researchers seek to rapidly collect data on a tight timeframe, making grant funding to pay student researchers challenging. The second situation emerges when faculty researchers do not consider the ways students' race, gender identity, or other characteristics, or the nature of the protests themselves might create potential risks for students.

In this paper, I propose using the Belmont Report principles to create guidelines for ethical treatment of student researchers. While these principles were developed for the purposes of protecting research participants, the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice help us to clarify the risks and benefits for student researchers, to find ways to maximize the benefits of student research participation, and to understand and address the inequalities that plague graduate student training.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically compare managers with employees in other occupations on Big Five and narrow personality traits to identify a distinctive personality profile for managers.

An archival data set representing employees in a wide range of business sectors and organizations was utilized to compare trait scores of 9,138 managers with 76,577 non-managerial employees. Profile analysis (PA) with MANOVA and analysis of covariance was used to compare managers and non-managers on Big Five traits Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability; and narrow traits Assertiveness, Optimism, Work Drive, and Customer Service Orientation.

As hypothesized, compared to non-managers, managers had significantly higher scores across nine traits, all of which correlated significantly with managerial career satisfaction.

Although job tenure and managerial level are not examined, the findings align with managerial competence models, the Attraction-Selection-Attrition model, and vocational theory and raise questions for research on the adaptive value of these traits for managers’ satisfaction and effectiveness.

The results carry practical implications for selection, placement, training, career planning for managers, and particularly for their professional development.

A distinctive personality profile for managers clarifies the occupational identity of managers, which contributes to public and professional understanding of managers and their roles.

This study is original in reporting an empirical, theoretically grounded personality profile of managers that includes both Big Five and narrow traits.