Introduction Ingot products account for 8.3% of the total crude steel produced in the world. It is produced either by top pouring or bottom pouring of the liquid in the moulds. The increasing demand for quality steels led to the evolution of bottom pouring technology for casting of steel ingots. This process constitutes of a set up involving pouring sprue and runner system to deliver liquid ste...

Steel is the material of choice for a large number and very diverse industrial applications. Surface qualities along with other properties are the most important quality parameters, particularly for flat-rolled steel products. Traditional manual surface inspection procedures are awfully inadequate to ensure guaranteed quality-free surface. To ensure stringent requirements of customers, automate...

The Cuckoo search algorithm is a recent addition to metaheuristic techniques. It simulates the breeding behaviour of certain cuckoo species into a numerical optimization technique. Cuckoo birds lay their eggs in the nests of other host birds so that their chicks when hatched can be nurtured by the host birds. The optimum design algorithm presented for moment resisting steel frames is based on t...

As a new alternative design, plate-reinforced composite (PRC) coupling beam achieves enhanced strength and ductility by embedding a vertical steel plate into a conventionally reinforced concrete (RC) coupling beam. Based on a nonlinear finite element model developed in the authors' previous study, a parametric study presented in this paper has been carried out to investigate the influence of se...

The orientation of steel fibers in magnetically driven concrete and magnetically driven mortar was experimentally studied in this paper using a magnetic method. In the magnetically driven concrete, a steel slag was used to replace the coarse aggregate. In the magnetically driven mortar, steel slag and iron sand were used to replace the fine aggregate. A device was established to provide the mag...

The relationship between dissolved oxygen (DO) and corrosion behavior of X80 steel in acidic soil simulated solution was studied by potentiodynamic polarization curves, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), scanning Kelvin probe technique (SKP) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Results showed that the presence of DO accelerated the cathodic process of corrosion for X80 steel in the acidic so...

The steel frame reinforced with steel shear wall is a lateral load resisting system and has higher strength and shear performance than the concrete shear wall system. Especially, using corrugated steel plates in these shear wall systems improves out-of-plane stiffness and flexibility in the deformation along the corrugation. In this paper, a cyclic loading test of this steel frame reinforced wi...

This paper presents the results of an experimental study into the behavior of concrete-filled steel tube columns confined by fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP). Eleven columns were tested to investigate the effects of the FRP layer number, the thickness of the steel tube and concrete strength on their load capacity and axial deformation capacity. The experimental results indicated that the FRP wrap...

Compared to hot-rolled steel structures, cold-formed steel structures are susceptible to extreme winds because of the light weight of the building and its components. Many modern cold-formed steel structures have sustained significant structural damage ranging from loss of cladding to complete collapse in recent cyclones. This article first provides some real damage cases for light steel struct...

Steel-making and continuous/mould casting are the key processes of modern iron and steel enterprises. The continuous and mould casting schedule of mixed whole/half charging plan is the bottleneck for the steel-making and continuous/mould casting process. However, it is very difficult to find a solution against the characteristics and complicated environment. This paper proposed a heuristic batc...