Since the dawn of history concrete has been, right behind stone and brick, one of the oldest building materials. The ancient Romans took advantage of its opportunities. They constructed amazing architectural objects, which survived centuries as whole buildings or parts of them. Concrete is so ubiquitous, that when we are walking in a newer districts of cities we are virtually surrounded by concrete from everywhere. Sometimes...

In general, the quantity of plastics of all types consumed annually all over the world has been growing in a phenomenal way. The manufacturing processes, service industries and municipal solid wastes (MSW) generate numerous waste plastic materials. The increasing awareness about the environment has tremendously contributed to the concerns related with disposal of the generated wastes. It is believed that the management of solid...

The subject of heat transfer and cooling systems is still a matter of contention in many different fields of science and industry. Infrigidation is much more difficult than warming, and so, much more needed in more and more different devices, starting from massive industrial machinery and air conditioning in commercial buildings, up to micro and nano-surgery tools. In fact, the size of many cooling systems is still a problem. It...

There is an ever growing industrial demand for quantitative assessment of fatigue endurance of critical structural details. Although FEA-based calculations have become a standard in engineering design, problems involving the Low-To-Medium cycle range (101-104) remain challenging. This paper presents an attempt to optimally choose material data, meshing density and other algorithm settings in the context of recent design of the...