• Open Access close
• Dataset close

Having a significant economic impact in country's GDP and being a major workforce, construction industry is yet characterized by low production rate, low technological advancement, minimum automation and robotic usage, and so on. With the visionary idea of Industry 4.0 that focuses on digitization of the value chain of a product and improving productivity through a variety of technologies and automated manufacturing environment, this research aims to develop a framework to adopt Construction 4.0 within a construction company. Current state of the art of the technologies in construction associated with the notion of Industry 4.0 (e.g., Building Information Modelling, virtual reality, augmented reality, Drone, etc.) is explored through extensive literature studies. The proposed framework incorporates current technological advancement related to construction industry, legislative requirements, barriers, enterprise transformation requirements and so on. Construction 4.0 would make a great impact in construction industry through improved value chain of construction projects, productivity improvement, and safe and sustainable construction. Indeed, the proposed framework would contribute to the advancement of new knowledge in the worlds' construction companies and provide potentials of new research focuses.

Previous studies have established that early attention to maintainability during the early design stages of building projects provides for delivering high levels of comfort to building occupants and reducing maintenance budgets. This paper identifies and assesses the set of structural durability design defects that are attributed to lack of maintenance manager’s feedback to the design team. The research confirmed the importance of all the identified design defects based on the assessment of the maintenance experts in the 13 public Saudi Arabian universities that operate and maintain significant building stock in their campuses. The paper presents a set of validated maintainability design review checklist for consideration by design professionals, in order to reduce the likelihood of occurrence of the identified defects. This paper serves to promote awareness among the various stakeholders in the construction industry about the earned benefits of knowledge transfer from the operation and maintenance field to the design team. It is of significant value to design professionals endeavoring on designing maintainable, cost-effective building projects; and maintenance professionals aiming to provide effective services to occupants and property owners.

In recent years in Taiwan, some pedestrians were injured by falling external wall tiles. Exterior wall tile fell down for the temperature or other effects of seismic forces, becoming a potential public safety crisis. Office of Building Administration of Taoyuan City Government started inspecting high-rise buildings, which were over eleven stories and constructed before 1995 in Taoyuan city from 2015 to 2016. This study is a contract research. We inspected 298 high-rise buildings’ external wall tiles in Taoyuan City for city government. In this study, we classified the risk of buildings from Level A to E. D and E, which were regarded as the dangerous buildings and in need of repair immediately. D and E accounted for 41.6% percent of total buildings. We also concluded the data in the viewpoints of building age, story, exterior material, direction, and district. The authors hope the conclusion of this study could be submitted as reference material of inspection system, as well as give a significant suggestion to the periodic inspection approach in the future.

Coasts are cross-sections of the water and land environments, for thousands of years they formed under the factors of climate, geological, geomorphological, topographic and hydraulic and it has reached a natural balance. But increasingly this natural balance is disrupted due to human impact. Coasts, with their strategic position, are a wealth of resources for people with endless possibilities and mild climate. Therefore, coasts continuously have remained under great pressure just because of residential, transportation, energy, economy and tourism. These pressures can be minimized by applying the principles of science and engineering with a rational urban planning. It will be held after an urban planning at the macro level, as a part of that plan, it should be considered in the design of optimal engineering structures. Therefore, the structure of the planning and design engineering for optimal site selection should be done and compatible structures integrated with topography and bathymetry such as coastal hydrodynamics should be designed. In this paper, after briefly the occurrence and type of coasts, the strategic importance of coastal will be highlighted and coastal planning and engineering structures in Turkey will be examined in terms of sustainability by demonstrating some examples and solutions will be proposed for encountered problems.

The development of pavement performance model is an important step in prediction the future condition of pavement section and accordingly identifying the right road rehabilitation and maintenance in the right time for the right section. The first order Markov chain probabilistic model is used to predict the degradation of flexible pavement in Palestine. A pilot study is conducted on part of the road network in Nablus City. Visual road condition assessment is performed, and the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) is used in rating pavement sections by dividing the roads each 100 m length. The prediction of the pavement condition rating for each section in the first five to ten years of section age will enhance the applying of preventive maintenance strategy and consequently urges the Local Governmental Units to use the limited allocated budgets specified for pavement maintenance in a cost-effective manner by applying maintenance actions such as crack sealing, surface patching, micro-surfacing, milling and overlay, etc.

The use of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) for reinforcement and retrofit of structures has become common in recent years. Although considerable research exists on carbon, glass, and aramid fibers, new materials continue to emerge, requiring new knowledge to optimize their use and safe design. This study analyzed the behavior of continuous beams reinforced with FRP bars. The parameters studied were concrete type (normal-strength concrete (NSC) and ultra-high-performance fiber-reinforced concrete (UHPFRC)), fiber material (carbon, glass, and basalt), and environmental exposure (acid, alkaline, and saline environments). Finite element (FE) beam models were developed and validated with published experimental data. The validated models were used to study the aforementioned parameters. Although the basalt fibers provoked higher displacements when compared to carbon and glass fibers, they also provided better bond with the concrete and higher tensile strength, allowing the beams to reach higher load capacity. Exposure to aggressive environments diminished the adhesion between GFRP and BFRP bars and the concrete, but the reduction was not sufficient to initiate the debonding and the failure was governed by FRP bars rupture. However, it was concluded that the load-displacement response was not affected much by the environmental exposure. The UHPFRC provided superior bond strength between concrete and the reinforcement bars, which assured rupture of the fibers in these beams as well. The use of UHPFRC also resulted in an increase in the beams’ load carrying capacity.

The presence of high level of acoustic load especially in urban areas is becoming a serious problem in the present. In order to protect people against adverse effects of audio noise on health and personal well-being in buildings located in such areas, convenient construction materials with sophisticated geometric arrangement should be used. Bearing structures of new houses in the Czech Republic are widely made of different types of brick blocks. Such brick blocks consist of solid matrix and cavities designed in an optimized geometrical way in order to assure better thermal and hygric properties. Previous studies dealing both with acoustic properties in an empirical way and with the theoretical aspects of acoustic attenuation in building materials were not very numerous. Nevertheless, they gain constantly in importance with increasing acoustic load of the buildings surroundings. In this paper, a theoretical approach for the determination of acoustic properties, which is convenient for the description of sound waves propagation in building materials, is introduced.

Gene-gene (GXG) and gene-environment (GXE) interactions play important roles in pharmacogenetics study. Simultaneously incorporating multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and clinical factors is needed to explore the association of their interactions with drug response and toxicity phenotypes. We genotyped 504 SNPs in a total of 490 Chinese non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, and the correlation of GXG and GXE interactions with platinum-based chemotherapeutic efficacy and safety were analyzed. In this data descriptor, we shared our data set which could help others to reuse them. All kinds of file types needed for GXG and GXE analysis were supplied. The process of genotyping and data analysis was also introduced step by step. Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format)

Al-Fatha Bridge is constructed on Tigris River at Baiji town, about 220 km north of Baghdad. Beside its main purpose of connecting the main highway west of Tigris River with the Kirkuk city, its deck structure is purposely designed to carry pipes conveying crude oil from Kirkuk oil fields to Baiji refinery and to the oil exporting network of the country. During the war on Iraq in spring 2003, the bridge was subjected to an air strike. In addition to the damages caused by the impact and explosion of the munitions, the great fire of the crude oil erupted and lasted several days caused much heavier damages in different parts of the structure. The parts of the bridge damaged beyond repair, were replaced, while the parts which were found to have sufficient structural integrity were repaired. This paper addresses the repair and testing of the most affected span exposed to fire. The efficiency of the repair work had been evaluated by carrying out a load test on the above mentioned span. The deflection at different stages of loading were recorded at specified points and compared with theoretical results. Good agreement was obtained between the theoretical and measured deflections, which prove the adequacy of the repair work. This paper introduces briefly an assessment of damages of the bridge, the rehabilitation work, analysis and load test results.