Chloride ingress into marine exposed concrete: A comparison of empirical- and physically- based models

In establishing the reliability of performance-related design methods for concrete – which are relevant for resistance against chloride-induced corrosion - long-term experience of local materials and practices and detailed knowledge of the ambient and local micro-climate are critical. Furthermore, in the development of analytical models for performance-based design, calibration against test data representative of actual conditions in practice is required. To this end, the current study presents results from full-scale, concrete pier-stems under long-term exposure to a marine environment with work focussing on XS2 (below mid-tide level) in which the concrete is regarded as fully saturated and XS3 (tidal, splash and spray) in which the concrete is in an unsaturated condition. These exposures represent zones where concrete structures are most susceptible to ionic ingress and deterioration. Chloride profiles and chloride transport behaviour are studied using both an empirical model (erfc function) and a physical model (ClinConc). The time dependency of surface chloride concentration (Cs) and apparent diffusivity (Da) were established for the empirical model whereas, in the ClinConc model (originally based on saturated concrete), two new environmental factors were introduced for the XS3 environmental exposure zone. Although the XS3 is considered as one environmental exposure zone according to BS EN 206-1:2013, the work has highlighted that even within this zone, significant changes in chloride ingress are evident. This study aims to update the parameters of both models for predicting the long term transport behaviour of concrete subjected to environmental exposure classes XS2 and XS3.

Mucosal modulation of contractility in bladder strips from normal and overactive rat models and the effect of botulinum toxin A on overactive bladder strips

AIMS: To investigate the local, regulatory role of the mucosa on bladder strip contractility from normal and overactive bladders and to examine the effect of botulinum toxin A (BoNT-A).

METHODS: Bladder strips from spontaneously hyperactive rat (SHR) or normal rats (Sprague Dawley, SD) were dissected for myography as intact or mucosa-free preparations. Spontaneous, neurogenic and agonist-evoked contractions were investigated. SHR strips were incubated in BoNT-A (3 h) to assess effects on contractility.

RESULTS: Spontaneous contraction amplitude, force-integral or frequency were not significantly different in SHR mucosa-free strips compared with intacts. In contrast, spontaneous contraction amplitude and force-integral were smaller in SD mucosa-free strips than in intacts; frequency was not affected by the mucosa. Frequency of spontaneous contractions in SHR strips was significantly greater than in SD strips. Neurogenic contractions in mucosa-free SHR and SD strips at higher frequencies were smaller than in intact strips. The mucosa did not affect carbachol-evoked contractions in intact versus mucosa-free strips from SHR or SD bladders. BoNT-A reduced spontaneous contractions in SHR intact strips; this trend was also observed in mucosa-free strips but was not significant. Neurogenic and carbachol-evoked contractions were reduced by BoNT-A in mucosa-free but not intact strips. Depolarisation-induced contractions were smaller in BoNT-A-treated mucosa-free strips.

CONCLUSIONS: The mucosal layer positively modulates spontaneous contractions in strips from normal SD but not overactive SHR bladder strips. The novel finding of BoNT-A reduction of contractions in SHR mucosa-free strips indicates actions on the detrusor, independent of its classical action on neuronal SNARE complexes.

Constant wall heat flux boundary conditions in micro-channels filled with porous material with internal heat generation under local thermal non-equilibrium conditions

Forced convection heat transfer in a micro-channel filled with a porous material saturated with rarefied gas with internal heat generation is studied analytically in this work. The study is performed by analysing the boundary conditions for constant wall heat flux under local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) conditions. Invoking the velocity slip and temperature jump, the thermal behaviour of the porous-fluid system is studied by considering thermally and hydrodynamically fully-developed conditions. The flow inside the porous material is modelled by the Darcy–Brinkman equation. Exact solutions are obtained for both the fluid and solid temperature distributions for two primary approaches models A and B using constant wall heat flux boundary conditions. The temperature distributions and Nusselt numbers for models A and B are compared, and the limiting cases resulting in the convergence or divergence of the two models are also discussed. The effects of pertinent parameters such as fluid to solid effective thermal conductivity ratio, Biot number, Darcy number, velocity slip and temperature jump coefficients, and fluid and solid internal heat generations are also discussed. The results indicate that the Nusselt number decreases with the increase of thermal conductivity ratio for both models. This contrasts results from previous studies which for model A reported that the Nusselt number increases with the increase of thermal conductivity ratio. The Biot number and thermal conductivity ratio are found to have substantial effects on the role of temperature jump coefficient in controlling the Nusselt number for models A and B. The Nusselt numbers calculated using model A change drastically with the variation of solid internal heat generation. In contrast, the Nusselt numbers obtained for model B show a weak dependency on the variation of internal heat generation. The velocity slip coefficient has no noticeable effect on the Nusselt numbers for both models. The difference between the Nusselt numbers calculated using the two models decreases with an increase of the temperature jump coefficient.

Modeling of Turbulent Natural Gas and Biogas Flames of the Delft Jet-in-Hot-Coflow Burner: Effects of Coflow Temperature, Fuel Temperature and Fuel Composition on the Flame Lift-Off Height

The structure of a turbulent non-premixed flame of a biogas fuel in a hot and diluted coflow mimicking moderate and intense low dilution (MILD) combustion is studied numerically. Biogas fuel is obtained by dilution of Dutch natural gas (DNG) with CO2. The results of biogas combustion are compared with those of DNG combustion in the Delft Jet-in-Hot-Coflow (DJHC) burner. New experimental measurements of lift-off height and of velocity and temperature statistics have been made to provide a database for evaluating the capability of numerical methods in predicting the flame structure. Compared to the lift-off height of the DNG flame, addition of 30 % carbon dioxide to the fuel increases the lift-off height by less than 15 %. Numerical simulations are conducted by solving the RANS equations using Reynolds stress model (RSM) as turbulence model in combination with EDC (Eddy Dissipation Concept) and transported probability density function (PDF) as turbulence-chemistry interaction models. The DRM19 reduced mechanism is used as chemical kinetics with the EDC model. A tabulated chemistry model based on the Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) is adopted in the PDF method. The table describes a non-adiabatic three stream mixing problem between fuel, coflow and ambient air based on igniting counterflow diffusion flamelets. The results show that the EDC/DRM19 and PDF/FGM models predict the experimentally observed decreasing trend of lift-off height with increase of the coflow temperature. Although more detailed chemistry is used with EDC, the temperature fluctuations at the coflow inlet (approximately 100K) cannot be included resulting in a significant overprediction of the flame temperature. Only the PDF modeling results with temperature fluctuations predict the correct mean temperature profiles of the biogas case and compare well with the experimental temperature distributions.

Temperature fields in a channel partially filled with a porous material under local thermal non-equilibrium condition-an exact solution

This work examines analytically the forced convection in a channel partially filled with a porous material and subjected to constant wall heat flux. The Darcy–Brinkman–Forchheimer model is used to represent the fluid transport through the porous material. The local thermal non-equilibrium, two-equation model is further employed as the solid and fluid heat transport equations. Two fundamental models (models A and B) represent the thermal boundary conditions at the interface between the porous medium and the clear region. The governing equations of the problem are manipulated, and for each interface model, exact solutions, for the solid and fluid temperature fields, are developed. These solutions incorporate the porous material thickness, Biot number, fluid to solid thermal conductivity ratio and Darcy number as parameters. The results can be readily used to validate numerical simulations. They are, further, applicable to the analysis of enhanced heat transfer, using porous materials, in heat exchangers.

Stable oxygen isotopes in irish oaks: potential for reconstructing local and regional climate

The long Irish oak tree-ring chronology, developed for archaeological dating and radiocarbon calibration, is the longest of any in northwest maritime Europe, spanning most of the Holocene (7,272 years). Unfortunately, the rings widths do not carry a strong climate signal and the record hasnever been satisfactorily applied for dendroclimatic reconstruction. This pilot study explores the potential for extracting a climate signal from Irish oaks by comparing the stable oxygen isotopes ratios from 10 oak tree cores (Quercus robur and Quercus petraea L.) collected across the Armagh region of NE Ireland with local and regional climatic and stable isotopic data. Statistically significant correlations between isotope ratios and the amount of summer precipitation (r = -0.44) point to the isotopic composition of summer rainfall as the dominant signal. Including the Armagh data into an extended regional oxygen isotope series did not reduce the correlation coefficient with regional precipitation (r = -0.68, p < 0.01). Correlations of this magnitude in dendro-hydroclimatology are typically restricted to trees growing at their ecological limits. This research suggests that there is considerable potential for including living trees and ancient timbers from Ireland into a regional composite to reconstruct the summer hydroclimate of Britain and Ireland.