Background Manual brick-manufacturing units in India engage a large number of female workers on a daily-wage basis for a period of 8 months per year. There are two groups of female workers in the brickfields: the brick molders and the brick carriers. These brickfields are mostly unorganized, and the workers are exposed to extreme conditions such as very high seasonal heat. The present trend of ...

Higher-order two-dimensional as well as low and higher-order threedimensional new Hybrid/Mixed (H/M) finite elements based on independently assumed displacement, and judiciously chosen strain fields, denoted by HMFEM-2, are developed here for applications in macro-mechanics. The idea of these new H/M finite elements is based on collocating the components of the independent strain field, with th...

This paper examines the effect of non-uniformmicrostructures on themacroscopic fracture properties of idealized brick and mortar composites, which consist of rigid bricks bonded with elastic–plastic mortar that ruptures at finite strain. A simulation tool that harnesses the parallel processing power of graphics processing units (GPUs) was used to simulate fracture in virtual specimens, whose mi...

This research deals with the nonlinear material and geometric behaviors of reinforced concrete deep beams resting on linear or nonlinear Winkler foundation. The finite elements through ANSYS (Release-11, 2007) computer software are used. The reinforced concrete deep beam is modeled using (SOLID 65) 8 node brick element and the soil is modeled using linear spring (COMBIN 14) element or nonlinear...

BACKGROUND Bricks have been manufactured in Nepal for hundreds of years and are seen as a component of Nepalese sculpture and architecture. Large quantities of hazardous materials including high concentrations of particulate matter are emitted on a daily basis from brick kilns. Exposure to these hazardous materials can lead to adverse consequences on the environment and human health. This study...

This paper describes a volume rendering system for unstructured data, especially finite element data, that creates images with very high accuracy. The system will currently handle meshes whose cells are either linear or quadratic tetrahedra. Compromises or approximations are not introduced for the sake of efficiency. Whenever possible, exact mathematical solutions for the radiance integrals inv...

This thesis presents a virtual disk cluster called END, the Expandable Network Disk. END aggregates storage on a cluster of servers into a single virtual disk. END'S main goals are to offer good performance during normal operation, and efficiently handle changes in the cluster membership. END achieves these goals using a two-layer design, in which storage "bricks," servers that consist of CPU, ...

During the summer of 2015, India was hit by a scorching heat wave that melted pavements in Delhi and caused thousands of deaths, mainly among the most marginalized populations. One such group facing growing heat risks from both occupational and meteorological causes are migrant brick kiln workers. This study evaluates both current heat risks and the potential future impacts of heat caused by cl...

Background: In brick kiln and construction industry the exposure to carbon monoxide and silica dust is the most common occupational hazard to the workers in these industries. A study on occupational health hazards of working women in these two unorganized sectors was undertaken by Lokmanya Medical Research Centre. Objectives: To study the effect of work site environment on the health of the wom...

An interesting subclass of Noun-noun combinations in English can take two meanings depending on whether the first or second word is stressed in speech. A BRICK factory is one that makes bricks, whereas a brick FACTORY is one made of brick. An explanation is offered in terms of a bias for nouns from particular ontological categories to trigger particular semantic interpretations for a combinatio...