Volume 20 (2012): Issue 3 (September 2012)

It is necessary to treat water intended for drinking purposes in many cases to meet therequirements of the Regulation of the Government of the Slovak Republic No. 496/2010 onDrinking Water. There is a tendency to look for technology with new, more efficient andcost-effective materials and technologies. The goal of this study is to compare activatednatural zeolite known as clinoptilolite (rich deposits of clinoptilolite were found in theregion of East Slovakia Region in the 1980s) with the imported Greensand and Cullsorbmaterials in the removal of iron and manganese from water. The results obtained fromexperiments carried out at WTP Kúty prove that Klinopur-Mn is suitable for the removalof iron and manganese from water and is comparable with the imported materials.

The effect of moisture on materials leads to changes in their physical and chemicalproperties. Materials with different porosities are saturated by various mechanisms. Thispaper is focused on water transport or diffusion in various porous structures. The Hot-BallMethod is used for determining the water content in certain parts of a specimen. Theprocess of water transport or water diffusion is closely related to a porous structure.Porosity affects the transport properties of a material; therefore, knowledge of themechanisms distributing the water in materials with different porosities is very important.The measurements were carried out by thermal conductivity sensors (hot-ball sensor)located in different positions along the path of the water’s movement. The principle of thehot-ball sensor (thermal conductivity sensor) is based on the Hot-Ball Method formeasuring thermal conductivity. The local moisture content and local temperature ofa porous stone is inspected using the Hot-Ball Method, where the measured values of thethermal conductivity are correlated with the water content. The experimental set up for theinvestigation of the water diffusion in stones is described.

This paper presents the results of experimental investigations on six reinforced concretebeams, with three different shear span-to-depth ratios, which were tested under two-pointloading. The aim of the work was to study the efficacy of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer(CFRP) strips in enhancing shear capacity and/or changing the failure mode from brittleshear failure to ductile flexural failure. The results of the study indicate that while thereis a marginal increase in first crack and ultimate loads, it is possible to achieve a changein the failure mode, and the monitored strain gauge data can be used to explain the failurepattern observed.

The type of analysis we choose to use depends on exactly what we intend to explore. TheMonte Carlo (MCA) method, which can be applied to a sensitivity analysis (SA) and anuncertainty analysis (UA), is based on the random selection of a random variablegenerated by all the input parameters X. This paper discusses a realistic model ofa window and is focused on the uncertainties of the input and a sensitivity analysis of theoutput parameters - a window is a heat transfer coefficient. A case study is described toevaluate the necessity of the use of uncertainty and sensitivity analyses.

Risk modeling and analysis is one of the most important stages in a project`s success.There are many approaches for risk assessment, and an investigation of existing methodshelps in developing new models. This paper is an extensive literature survey in riskmodeling and analytic methods with a main focus on fuzzy risk assessment.