Clay is found in some countries all over the world. It usually has low compressive strength and cannot be used as a bearing material for subgrade soil. In this paper, the influence of basicity on a metakaolin-based polymer binder to improve clay was studied. The effects of the molar concentration of the alkali activator, different concentration of the metakaolin-based geopolymer and curing time on unconfined compressive strength were studied. The alkali activator-to-ash ratio was maintained at 0.7. The percentage of metakaolin added to the soil relative to metakaolin and soil mixture was 6%, 8%, 10% and 12%. The sodium hydroxide concentrations are 2M, 4M, 6M and 8M. Unconfined compressive strength (UCS) was tested on days 3, 7, 14 and 28, respectively. Compared with original clay, the results show that the unconfined compressive strength increases with the increase in metakaolin content and molar concentration of NaOH. The maximum compressive strength of the sample with NaOH concentration of 8M and percentage of 12% was 4109 kPa on the 28th day, which is about 112% higher than that of the original clay. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) results showed that the cementing compound covered the clay particles due to the reaction of the geopolymer with the clay, resulting in the formation of adhesive particles. The main purpose of this study is to verify the effectiveness and stability of metakaolin-based geopolymer binder polymerization under normal temperature and a strong alkali environment. The results can provide parameters for the application and promotion of metakaolin-based geopolymers in soil improvement engineering.

A decentralized control scheme can effectively solve the control problem of civil engineering structure vibration under earthquake. This paper takes a research into the decentralized control scheme of adjacent buildings when the earthquake happens. It combines overlapping decentralized control method and linear matrix inequality (LMI) with H ∞ control algorithm and puts forward the overlapping decentralized H ∞ control method. A simplified dynamical model of structural vibration control has been established considering the topology structural features of adjacent buildings. The H ∞ control algorithm is applied into each dynamically different subsystems and can be also served as the decentralized H ∞ controllers. Therefore, by contracting decentralized H ∞ controllers to original state space, overlapping decentralized H ∞ controllers are obtained. In this manner, the adjacent buildings’ structure model is analyzed in terms of simulation and calculation which provides a comprehensive insight into vibration control. The results show that the centralized control, the decentralized control, and the overlapping decentralized control, based on linear matrix inequality, can be nearly effective in cases above satisfactorily. Besides, it can also reduce the computational cost as well as increase the flexibility of controller design.

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The robust control for uncertain variable fractional order time‐varying delayed differential systems with nonlinear perturbations are concerned in this article. Firstly, by introducing a novel form of the control law which is inspired by the sliding mode design, a new state feedback controller is built. Besides, a specific and comprehensive Lyapunov–Krasovskii function is adopted to deduce the sufficient conditions for the stability and robust stabilization of the system by using some linear matrix inequalities. In addition, the controller gain matrix can also be derived from the point of stability. Finally, two comparison examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control technique. The simulation results show that this method can make the state variables converge to the steady ones more quickly and stably.