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Impact of Business and Industry on the Environment
Published in Titus De Silva, Integrating Business Management Processes, 2020
Environmental resources of the ecosystem provide a wide variety of services for all the economic activities of the planet. The concept of carrying capacity implies that there is a limit for the environment to absorb some form of activity, e.g. pollution, resource extraction, land use, etc. The resource base of the planet is finite. Economic development and population growth can take place, at least for short period of time through resource system management and resource conserving efforts. Such efforts can only be successful if warnings are generated to detect the reducing levels of resources. Resource depletion is only one aspect of carrying capacity. There is also a limit for the environment to absorb pollution. The environment may accumulate pollution to a point where adverse effects are felt. For example, if an artificial wetland is created to absorb pollutants from contaminating water, over time accumulated pollutants may start leaching from the wetland. There is no fixed formula for determining the carrying capacity in nature. Some of the factors that contribute to the carrying capacity are technical performance, level of production and consumption of resources, and the changing state of interactions between the physical and biotic environment (Arrow et al., 1995; Farmer, 1997).
Cumulative and Transboundary Impact Assessment
Published in Karlheinz Spitz, John Trudinger, Mining and the Environment, 2019
Karlheinz Spitz, John Trudinger
More so than an ESIA, a CIA is an exercise in incremental understanding, constant learning, and adaptation. It can be argued that conducting cumulative impact assessments is the responsibility of governments, not of mine developers, given their broader economic, environmental and social responsibilities and their unique role to articulate public interest. Numerous environmental laws embrace this understanding, requiring government authorities to commit to assessing the carrying capacity for geographical regions under their responsibility. Carrying capacity is the maximum level of use or activity that a system can sustain without undesirable consequences.
Landscape as Infrastructure
Published in Spiro N. Pollalis, Planning Sustainable Cities, 2016
Sustainable landscape management finally adopts as a strategy enhancing landscape productivity, the creation of new resources both for humans and for other species, and thus increasing a landscape’s carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is defined as “the amount of activity or use that can be handled by a system before it begins to deteriorate”: the use that can be absorbed by a given setting.16
Assessment of bearing capacity and failure mechanism of single and interfering strip footings on sloping ground
Published in International Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, 2021
Bearing capacity (qu) of footing defines the maximum load that the foundation can carry without failure within allowable limits of settlement. The load-carrying capacity of foundation depends on geotechnical and geometrical characteristics. Geotechnical characteristics comprise the shear strength and deformation parameters of soil. Geometrical characteristics include the size, depth and shape of the footing. To design an adequate foundation for superstructures, bearing capacity is the key for geotechnical engineers. In this regard, based on several assumptions, Terzaghi (1943) had provided the first expressions to assess the bearing capacity of a strip footing resting over a semi-infinite horizontal ground surface. Meyerhof (1951) further extended the proposition by assuming that the developed failure surface in the passive zone extends up to the ground surface, thus providing a different set of bearing capacity factors (Nc, Nq and Nγ). Later, based on theory, field and laboratory investigations, Skempton (1951) provided modified expressions for Nc considering footings of different shapes, sizes and embedment depths within a saturated clay medium. Thereafter, based on the work of several researchers (Hansen 1970; Vesic 1973), a general bearing capacity expression had been formulated, including all possible contributions of shape, size, embedment depth, load inclination and compressibility of the founding medium.
A new approach for Modelling pile settlement of concrete piles under uplift loading using an evolutionary LM training algorithm
Published in Ships and Offshore Structures, 2021
Ameer A. Jebur, William Atherton, Zeinab I. Alattar, Rafid M. Al Khaddar
Pile foundations have been widely used as an effective system to deliver essential structural integrity for offshore structures such as oil platforms and wind turbines (Doherty et al. 2015; Jebur et al. 2017). The accurate geotechnical evaluation of the load carrying capacity of a pile subjected to uplift loads is an important safety aspect; it plays a key role in the pile foundation design process and continues to gain growing attention in the field of geotechnical engineering (Fattah and Al-Soudani 2016; Jebur et al. 2018b). In the offshore environment, to address issues around uplift loads, it is recommended that piles are driven deeper into the ground in order to develop sufficient resistance to uplift loads. Uplift loads have a substantial effect on the supporting piles if heavy structures like offshore structures, basements, pumping stations and dry docks are constructed in situ in the presence of a water table. Furthermore, transition tower, masts, tall chimneys, jetting structures, etc., are commonly design to resist uplift loads induced form the overturning moments and/or changing in water table level (Reddy and Ayothiraman 2015).
A research on similarity law for combined ultimate bending and torsional strength
Published in Ships and Offshore Structures, 2023
Zhiyong Pei, Qingning Yuan, Lei Ao, Weiguo Wu
The arrangement of strain gauges in the model test is shown in Figure 9. The model is loaded and unloaded several times to eliminate the welding residual stress before the collapse test. During the test, the ratio of two set loading systems is kept constant by hydraulic servo control. The loads increase gradually, and the corresponding structural response is recorded at each step. With the increase of the combined bending and torsional moments, the inner stress of the test model increases until it collapses. The maximum load-carrying capacity can be regarded as the structural ultimate strength.