The research was conducted at the Kwiatków site,1 in the Koło Basin (Central Poland). It included a fragment of a low terrace and the valley floor of the Warta river valley. The archaeological investigation documented over 100 wells that archaeological material indicates are associated with the Przeworsk culture. Geomorphological, lithological and geochemical studies were carried out at the archaeological sites and their surroundings. Selected for the presentation were two wells whose fillings were carefully tested and subjected to geochemical and lithological analyses. The wells showed a slightly different content of artifacts, as well as differences in their grain-size distributions, the structure of their filling deposits, and their geochemistry. This allows us to conclude that the two wells were used differently, but also probably about a different course for how each well was filled after the end of its operation.

Mine drainage and discharge of salt waters into water bodies belong to main environmental issues, which must be appropriately addressed by the underground coal mining industry. The large area of exploited and abandoned mine fields in the Upper Silesia Coal Basin, as well as the geological structure of the rock mass and its hydrogeological conditions require the draining and discharge of about 119 million m3/yr of mine waters. Increasing the depth of mining and the necessity of protection of mines against water hazard result in increased amounts of chlorides and sulphates in the mine waters, even by decreasing the total coal output and the number of mines. The majority of the salts are being discharged directly into rivers, partly under control of salt concentration, however from the point of the view of environment protection, the most favorable way of their utilization would be technologies allowing the bulk use of saline waters. Filling of underground voids represents a group of such methods, from which the filling of goaves (cavings) is the most effective. Due to large volume of voids resulting from the extraction of coal and taking the numerous limitations of this method into account, the potential capacity for filling reaches about 17.7 million m3/yr of cavings and unnecessary workings. Considering the limited availability of fly ash, which is the main component of slurries being in use for the filling of voids, the total volume of saline water and brines, which could be utilized, has been assessed as 3,5–6,5 million m3/yr

An experimental investigation was performed on the thermal performance and heat transfer characteristics of acetone/zirconia nanofluid in a straight (rod) gravity-assisted heat pipe. The heat pipe was fabricated from copper with a diameter of 15 mm, evaporator-condenser length of 100 mm and adiabatic length of 50 mm. The zirconia-acetone nanofluid was prepared at 0.05–0.15% wt. Influence of heat flux applied to the evaporator, filling ratio, tilt angle and mass concentration of nanofluid on the heat transfer coefficient of heat pipe was investigated. Results showed that the use of nanofluid increases the heat transfer coefficient while decreasing the thermal resistance of the heat pipe. However, for the filling ratio and tilt angle values, the heat transfer coefficient initially increases with an increase in both. However, from a specific value, which was 0.65 for filling ratio and 60–65 deg for tilt angle, the heat transfer coefficient was suppressed. This was attributed to the limitation in the internal space of the heat pipe and also the accumulation of working fluid inside the bottom of the heat pipe due to the large tilt angle. Overall, zirconia-acetone showed a great potential to increase the thermal performance of the heat pipe.

Performance parameter of a Bragg fiber waveguide based resonant sensor in presence of a defect layer in cladding regions is theoretically studied. The Bragg fiber waveguide consists of a liquid-core surrounded by alternate high and low refractive indices materials in cladding regions. Reflectivity of the proposed waveguide based resonant sensor is formulated using transfer matrix method for a non-homogeneous multilayer cylindrical system. The waveguide shows a band gap region with a narrow defect mode in the band gap region under the considered wavelength range. Instead of taking a whole band gap as a sensing signal, here the defect peak is taken as the sensing signal. It is observed that the intensity of defect mode is more sensitive for core refractive index than the intensity of traditional band gap region (lobe). This study shows that the higher sensitivity can be achieved by creating the defect at a position in cladding region where the intensity of transmitted light lies between 40% and 90%. Presence of a defect layer is able to increase the detection accuracy of the sensor and, hence increase the overall performance of this sensor.

The study investigates the axial load behaviour of concrete filled battened steel columns not covered by the design standards. A series of full scale tests on two I-sections connected together with intermediate batten plates and filled with concrete were carried out. The main parameters varied in the tests are length of the members and strength of the concrete filling. One bare steel member was also tested and results were compared with those filled with concrete. The tests results were illustrated by load-strain curves. The main objectives of these tests were twofold: first, to describe behaviour of new steel-concrete columns and second, to analyze the influence of slenderness on load-carrying capacity.

Every change in the bottle geometry aswell as every change of physical and rheological properties poses a risk of excessive gas entrainment during a filling process. To maintain satisfactory filling efficiency there is a need to optimise this process with respect to all adverse phenomena which affect the fluid flow, such as spluttering on the bottom, air caverns formation and air entrainment with incoming liquid. This paper comprises numerical simulations of two filling methods. The first method involves dosing with a pipe placed over the free liquid surface of a fully filled bottle. The second method covers filling with a pipe located near the bottom. Moreover, the influence of rheological properties and surface tension values is considered. The comprehensive analysis of amount of entrained air represented by air volume fraction in dispensed liquid let the authors define the influence of filling speed on the mechanism and amount of entrapped air.

The main objective of this study is to highlight the performance of beams composed of lightweight concretefilled steel tubes (square and circle sections) composite with reinforced concrete deck slab. A total of nine composite beams were tested included two circular and seven square concrete-filled steel tubes. Among the nine composite beams, one beam, S20-0-2000, was prepared without a deck slab to act as a reference specimen. The chief parameters investigated were the length of the specimen, the compressive strength of the concrete slab, and the effect of the steel tube section type. All beams were tested using the three-point bending test with a concentrated central point load and simple supports. The test results showed that the first crack in the concrete deck slab was recorded at load levels ranging from 50.9% to 77.2% of the ultimate load for composite beams with square steel tubes. The ultimate load increased with increasing the compressive strength of the concrete slab. Shorter specimens were more stiffness than the other specimens but were less ductile. The slip values were equal to zero until the loads reached their final stages, while the specimen S20-55-1100 (short specimen) exhibited zero slip at all stages of the load. The ultimate load of the hollow steel tube composite beam was 13.2% lower than that of the reference beam. Moreover, the ductility and stiffness of the beam were also higher for beams with composite-filled steel tubes.

The concrete-filled section of columns has been widely in construction used due to its structural elements. As a result, the usage of composite columns has recently increased all over the world. However, using foamed concrete alone does not result in much improvements in strength. Therefore, this paper examines the use of foamed concrete containing fibre to improve the strength of composite columns. Specifically, this study aims to determine the bond strength of concrete-filled hollow section (CFHS) with modified fibrous foamed concrete. Two types of fibre are used in this work, namely, steel fibre and polypropylene fibre, with rice husk ash (RHA) as a sand replacement to improve the compressive strength of foamed concrete. The CFHS with modified fibrous foamed concrete is tested by using the push-out method, and the results show that CFHS with steel fibre has a highest bond strength.