The soil profile in many coastal areas often consists of very loose sandy soil extending to a depth of 3 to 4 m from ground level underlain by clayey soils of medium consistency. The very low shearing resistance of the foundation bed causes local as well as punching shear failure of soil. Structures built on these soils, may also suffer from excessive settlements. This paper discusses grouting as one of the possible solutions to the foundation problems by improving the properties of loose sandy soil at shallow depths.

<p>The demand for extruded HVDC cable systems for higher voltages has been increasing in different fields. This demand comes from the need for higher transmission capacity in applications such as integration of wind power, power system interconnectors and connection of offshore oil and gas platforms to land. Prefabricated joints are used to connect the cable delivery lengths. If badly designed, the possibility of breakdown in the joints is higher than in other parts of the system because of the number of interfaces and triple points between different materials. Due to the huge potential costs and the down-time imposed to the system in case of a joint failure, the robustness of the joints is of great importance. Two main approaches in the design of prefabricated joints for extruded cables exist in which the more recent one takes advantage of the nonlinear properties of modern field grading materials. In this work, we have examined the design challenges with focus on robustness issues in a 150 kV classical joint design without field grading material. The results show that with this approach, there are serious robustness issues which are challenging to overcome without field grading material.</p>

The investigation of radiation damage in Si microelectronic circuitry and devices are being carried out by various research groups globally. In particular the Si Bipolar junction transistors are very sensitive to high energetic radiation. In the present study, radiation response of NPN Bipolar junction transistor (2N3773) has been examined for 60 MeV B 4+ ion. Key electrical properties like Gummel, dc current gain and capacitancevoltage (C-V) characteristics of 60 MeV B 4+ ion irradiated transistor were studied before and after irradiation. Ion irradiation and subsequent electrical characterizations were performed at room temperature. Current voltage (I-V) measurements showed the increase in collector current for V BE ≤ 0.4 V as a function of fluence, which is due to B 4+ ion induced surface leakage currents. Base current is observed to be more sensitive than collector current and gain appears to be degraded with ion fluence. Also, C-V measurements shows that both built in potential and doping concentration increased significantly after irradiation.