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An important finding of the Safeguarding Adults Review into events at Cawston Park was that the views of patients and their families were systematically ignored by the hospital. The purpose of this paper is to report on a review of people’s experiences of residential and secure in-patient services in Norfolk for those with learning disabilities and autistic people. It discusses overall reported levels of satisfaction, how well people and their families felt they were listened to by services and what people valued most in services.

The main research tools were visits to services to talk to people and observe them receiving care, along with listening sessions outside homes and interviews with relatives.

Most people spoken to were happy with how they were listened to, but there is room for improvement. People particularly valued connections with staff based on reciprocity, long-term relationships and, for some, family-like relationships, and were unhappy when these were inconsistent or absent. People also enjoyed the opportunity to develop relationships with people outside their service, and especially with non-disabled people, something that was rare for most people. Relatives appreciated transparency of communication and openness to negotiation in home managers, especially when problems or disagreements arose.

The findings suggest that the severe problems with listening at Cawston Park are not more widespread across the sector in Norfolk. However, progress is needed to improve the consistency of listening across services and to develop services informed by what people value most in services around quality relationships, communication and social inclusion.

This paper presents the results from two supervised Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) developed for the spalling classification and failure prediction of high strength concrete columns (HSCC) subjected to fire. The experimental test data used for the ANN are based on the HSCC tests undertaken at the Fire Research Laboratories at the University of Ulster. 80% of the chosen experimental test data was used to train the network with the remaining 20% used for testing. In the spalling classification example the key ANN input parameters were; furnace temperature, restraint, loading level, force, spalling degree, failure time and spalling type. This was also the case for the failure prediction example except for spalling type. The networks were trained using the resilient propagation algorithm. A 6-10-3 and 5-10-1 ANN architecture gave the best results for the classification and failure prediction times respectively. The results demonstrate that HSCC can be assessed using ANN.

The paper aims to present an advanced 2 D transient heat transfer analysis capable of accounting for the effect of spalling in terms of amount, location and time. The model accounts for moving thermal boundary conditions to comply with the changing member cross section. The discussed numerical model provides a tool to quantify the effect of spalling on the flexural capacity of reinforced concrete beams.

The implementation of the presented numerical model in an in-house code and its validation has been discussed. The thermal subroutine has been sequentially coupled with the mechanical subroutine (sectional-analysis) to compute the variation of sectional moment carrying capacity with exposure time.

The temperatures predicted while considering spalling were in good agreement with experiments available in literature. The presented results also emphasise the importance of considering the time of spalling. The results also show that the fire rating of simply supported beams is also affected by spalling in the compression zone.

It should be acknowledged that the model does not predict spalling, rather is developed as a tool to study the effect of spalling. The model takes the information related to spalling in terms of the location, amount and time, as user input.

The paper quantitatively presents the effect of spalling on the predicted temperature variation across the beam cross section and the moment carrying capacity.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the spalling phenomenon in ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) beams on exposure to a standard fire curve (ISO 834) under a sustained load.

The variables in this study were steel fibre dosage, polypropylene (PP) fibres and loading levels. The research investigated seven beams – three of which contained steel fibres with 2 vol.%, another three had steel fibres with 4 vol.% dosage and the seventh beam had a combination of steel fibres (2 vol.%) and PP fibres (4 kg/m³). The beams were tested for 1 h under three loading levels (20, 40 and 60 per cent) based on the ambient temperature ultimate flexural strength of the beam.

Spalling was affected by the loading levels; it exacerbated under the load level of 40 per cent, whereas under the 60 per cent load level, significantly less spalling was recorded. Under similar loading conditions, the beams containing steel fibres with a dosage of 4 vol.% spalled less than the beams with fibre contents of 2 vol.%. This was attributed to the additional tensile strength provided by the excess steel fibres. The presence of PP fibres eliminated spalling completely.

There is insufficient research into the performance of UHPFRC beams at elevated temperature, as most studies have largely focussed on columns, slabs and smaller elements such as cubes and cylinders. This study provides invaluable information and insights of the influence of parameters such as steel fibre dosage, PP fibres, loading levels on the spalling behaviour and fire endurance of UHPFRC beams.

This study examines the effect of temperature-dependent material models for normal-strength (NSC) and high-strength concrete (HSC) on the thermal analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) walls.

The study performs an one-at-a-time (OAT) sensitivity analysis to assess the impact of variables defining the constitutive and parametric fire models on the wall's thermal response. Moreover, it extends the sensitivity analysis to a variance-based analysis to assess the effect of constitutive model type, fire model type and constitutive model uncertainty on the RC wall's thermal response variance. The study determines the wall’s thermal behaviour reliability considering the different constitutive models and their uncertainty.

It is found that the impact of the variability in concrete’s conductivity is determined by its temperature-dependent model, which differs for NSC and HSC. Therefore, more testing and improving material modelling are needed. Furthermore, the heating rate of the fire scenario is the dominant factor in deciding fire-resistance performance because it is a causal factor for spalling in HSC walls. And finally the reliability of wall's performance decreased sharply for HSC walls due to the expected spalling of the concrete and loss of cross-section integrity.

Limited studies in the current open literature quantified the impact of constitutive models on the behaviour of RC walls. No studies have examined the effect of material models' uncertainty on wall’s response reliability under fire. Furthermore, the study's results contribute to the ongoing attempts to shape performance-based structural fire engineering.

The causes of oil seal failures in the field have been itemized by the authors of these papers. In the case of Beer, who deals with the case of a Model C Tournapull, which is a 20 ton machine on the 200 + class with a tourmatic drive consisting of a six speed transmission with a single stage torque converter, and on which there are fifteen shaft type oil seals, he states as follows :—Providing transmission shafts are correct hardness and finish and bore concentricities and shaft run‐outs meet the minimum requirements, the seals failed because (1) Incorrect spring tension held the sealing lip too tightly against the shaft causing increased frictional heat which hardened the material and with existing shaft run‐out did not permit the seal to follow the shaft resulting in leakage. The grooves in the shafts could also be associated with tight springs. (2) High operating temperatures exceeded the temperature limits of the seal material thus causing it to harden and lose its sealing effectiveness.

In the present article, the authors have conducted a review on some of the recent developments given in the literature pertaining to the passive protection of concrete structures using intumescent coatings. Here, the main thrust is placed on the spalling phenomenon of concrete elements when exposed to elevated temperatures and fires.

In this context, it has been long established that prolonged thermal insult on concrete members will lead to egress of water, both physically bound as well as those present as water of hydration within the concrete matrix, in the form of steam through microchannels and associated pathways of least resistance, often resulting in the flaking of the surface of the structure. The latter process can ultimately lead to the exposure of the ferrous-based reenforcement elements, for instance, to higher temperatures, thus inducing melting. This, in turn, can result in substantial loss of strength and load-bearing capacity of the structural element that is already undergoing disintegration of its base matrix owing to heat/fire. Even though spalling of concrete structures has long been recognized as a serious problem that can often lead to catastrophic failure of infrastructures, such as buildings, bridges and tunnels, the utility of intumescent coating as a mitigation strategy is relatively new and has not been explored to its fullest possible extent. Therefore, in the latter parts of the review, the authors have endeavored to discuss the different types of intumescent coatings, their modes of actions and, in particular, their wider applicability in terms of protecting concrete elements from detrimental effects of severe or explosive spalling.

Given that spalling of concrete components is still a very serious issue that can result in loss of lives and destruction of critical infrastructures, there is an urgent need to formulate better mitigating strategies, through novel means and methods. The use of the intumescent coating in this context appears to be a promising way forward but is one that seems to be little explored so far. Therefore, a more systematic investigation is highly warranted in this area, especially, as the authors envisage a greater activity in the building and commissioning of more infrastructures worldwide incommensurate with augmented economic activities during the post-COVID recovery period.

The authors have conducted a review on some of the recent developments given in the literature pertaining to the passive protection of concrete structures using intumescent coatings. The authors have also included the results from some recent tests carried out at the facilities using a newly commissioned state-of-the-art furnace.

This paper presents the physical, mathematical and numerical models forming the main structure of the numerical analysis of the thermal, hydral and mechanical behaviour of normal, high‐performance concrete (HPC) and ultra‐high performance concrete (UHPC) structures subjected to heating. A fully coupled non‐linear formulation is designed to predict the behaviour, and potential for spalling, of heated concrete structures for fire and nuclear reactor applications. The physical model is described in more detail, with emphasis being placed upon the real processes occurring in concrete during heating based on tests carried out in several major laboratories around Europe as part of the wider high temperature concrete (HITECO) research programme. A number of experimental and modelling advances are presented in this paper. The stress‐strain behaviour of concrete in direct tension, determined experimentally, is input into the model. The hitherto unknown micro‐structural, hydral and mechanical behaviour of HPC/UHPC were determined experimentally and the information is also built into the model. Two examples of computer simulations concerning experimental validation of the model, i.e. temperature and gas pressure development in a radiatively heated HPC wall and hydro‐thermal and mechanical (damage) performance of a square HPC column during fire, are presented and discussed in the context of full scale fire tests done within the HITECO research programme.

This study aims to use a deterministic tourist walk to build a system that can identify wear particles. Wear particles provide detailed information about the wear processes taking place between mechanical components. Identification of the type of wear particles by image processing and pattern recognition is key to effective online monitoring algorithm. There are three kinds of particles that are particularly difficult to distinguish: severe sliding wear particles, fatigue spall particles and laminar particles.

In this study, an identification method is tested using the deterministic tourist walking (DTW) method. This study examined whether this algorithm can be used in particle identification. If it does, can it outperform the traditional texture analysis methods such as Discrete wavelet transform or co-occurrence matrix. Different parameters such as walk’s memory size, size of image samples, different inputting vectors and different classifiers were compared.

The DTW algorithm showed promising result compared to traditional texture extraction methods: discrete wavelet transform and co-occurrence matrix. The DTW method offers a higher identification accuracy and a simple feature vector. A conclusion can be drawn that the DTW method is suited for particle identification and can be put into practical use in condition monitoring systems.

This paper combined DTW algorithm with wear particle identification problem.