Concrete is probably the most extensively used construction material in the world. However, environmental concerns regarding rapid consumption of natural resources and CO2 emission during cement manufacturing process have brought pressure to reduce cement consumption by the use of cement replacement materials (CRMs). The utilization of calcined clay (metakaolin) and silica fume in concrete has ...

This paper presents the buzzing issue of green brick technology with the promises to protect the environment against the multidimensional damage done by traditional brick system. Bangladesh now facing a flourish in real estate sector that stimulates the brick industry too, but the very traditional brick making system destroys the diminishing forest of this country intensifying the emission of c...

-Utilization of construction debris as recycled aggregates in the production of concrete is gaining momentum nowadays due to the availability of large quantity of demolition waste. The recycled brick aggregate (RBA) concrete is made used for the production of low grade recycled aggregate suitable for concrete production. The risk of concrete structures exposed to fire is also on the increase du...

In India, bricks as building materials are mainly prepared by clay using the deposited sediments of rivers, and the radionuclide contents in bricks and brick-making clays should vary with origin and geological condition. Primordial radionuclides in building materials are one of the sources of radiation hazard in dwellings made of these materials. It is important to measure the natural radioacti...

We examine nest construction in the ant Leptothorax tuberointerruptus at two levels: (1) the building behaviour of individual workers and (2) the collective properties (temporal and spatial) of the structures they create. We also explore, for the first time explicitly, the linkage between these two levels. Leptothorax tuberointerruptus nests occur in flat cavities which provide the roof and the...

In spite of the advent of new materials, clay bricks remain, arguably, the most popular construction materials today. Nevertheless the low cost and versatility of clay bricks cannot always be associated with high environmental and sustainable values, especially in terms of raw material sources and manufacturing processes. At the same time, the worldwide agricultural footprint is fast growing, w...

Abstract Canada employs a prescriptive-based code for residential buildings. The minimum requirements as prescribed in the 2015 National Building Code were developed based on historical climate which was assumed static. It is now evident that changing and it anticipated wind-driven rain events will be more frequent, of longer duration increased intensity. These changes may affect durability wal...

We generalize the brick polytope of V. Pilaud and F. Santos to spherical subword complexes for finite Coxeter groups. This construction provides polytopal realizations for a certain class of subword complexes containing all cluster complexes of finite types. For the latter, the brick polytopes turn out to coincide with the known realizations of generalized associahedra, thus opening new perspec...