Hydraulic fracturing has made the production of gas more economical. Shale gas possesses the potential to arise as a main natural gas source worldwide. It has been assessed that the top 42 countries, including the U.S., are predicted to own 7299 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of technically recoverable shale gas resources. The main goal of this paper is to serve as a guide of different shale gas extraction methods. The significance of these methods and possible pros and cons are determined. Each technique was explained with the support of literature review. Specifically, this paper revealed that some fracking methods such as pulsed arc electrohydraulic discharges (PAED), plasma stimulation and fracturing technology (PSF), thermal (cryogenic) fracturing, enhanced bacterial methanogenesis, and heating of rock mass are at the concept stage for conventional and other unconventional resources. Thus, these found to be significant for stimulating natural gas wells, which provides very good production results. This paper also discovered that fracking remains the recommended technique used by the oil and gas industries.

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Offshore and onshore structures continuously experience hydrocarbon fire accidents almost every year. To secured structure against extreme fire conditions, passive fire protection (PFP) is applied. However, PFP is a costly material which is applied only on critical structural members. Any unprotected surface can cause major structural damages during fire incidence if the behaviour of an unprotected surface is unknown. Usually, PFP applied easily around the column, but for beams, the application varies with the beam locations. In this paper the behaviours of steel beam compared with three different common scenarios such as fully protected, unprotected and partially protected under hydrocarbon fire. Fully protected beam has tremendous fire resisting capability compared to partially protected beams or unprotected beams. The study revealed that temperature of the top flange in partially protected beam exceeds more 600°C in less than 10 minutes which caused rapid failure in less than 30 minutes. Under extreme fire conditions the strength and stiffness of a beam affected which cause instability of structure during fire accident.

In relation to the use of retrofit materials on damaged constructions, application on earthquake-resistant buildings, and for the strengthening and rehabilitation on weakened regions, there is a need for a more superior material than concrete. Application sites include beam-column joints, corbels, link-slabs, deep beams, support regions and dapped-end areas. Fiber reinforced engineered cementitious composites (FR-ECC) can address this issue, because FR-ECC is one of the composite materials that has high strength, ductility and durability. In order to develop FR-ECC, this study was done to investigate the effect of adding quartz powder on the compressive strength capacity and properties of FR-ECC through the use of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and steel fibers. The volume fraction of fiber was set to 0%–2%. To support the friendly environment, FR-ECC uses by-product materials such as fly ash and silica fume, with a cement content less than 600 kg/m3. In terms of the experimental investigation on FR-ECC, this work conducted the fresh property tests showing that PVA fibers have quite an influence on ECC workability, due to their hydrophilic behavior. By adjusting the superplasticizer (SP) content, the consistency and high workability of the ECC mixes have been achieved and maintained. The test results indicated that the PVA and steel fibers-based ECC mixes can be classified as self-compacting composites and high early compressive strength composites. Significantly, addition of quartz powder into the ECC mixes increased the compressive strength ratio of the ECC samples up to 1.0747. Furthermore, the steel fiber-based ECC samples exhibited greater compressive strength than the PVA fibers-based ECC samples with the strength ratio of 1.1760. Due to effect of the pozzolanic reaction, the fibers dispersion and orientation in the fresh ECC mixes, so that the cementitious matrices provided the high strength on the FR-ECC samples. During the compression loading, the bulging effect always occurred before the failures of the fibers-based ECC samples. No spalling occurred at the time of rupture and the collapse occurred slowly. Thus, FR-ECC has provided unique characteristics, which will reduce the high cost of maintenance.

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