Diagnosis and Control of Alkali-Aggregate Reactions in Concrete
Aggregates containing certain constituents can react with alkali hydroxides in concrete. The reactivity is potentially harmful only when it produces significant expansion.(1)** This alkali-aggregate reactivity (AAR) has two forms—alkali-silica reaction (ASR) and alkali-carbonate reaction (ACR, sometimes called alkali-carbonate rock reaction, or ACRR). ASR is of more concern than ACR because the occurrence of aggregates containing reactive silica minerals is more common. Alkali-reactive carbonate aggregates have a specific composition that is not very common. Alkali-silica reactivity has been recognized as a potential source of distress in concrete since the late 1930s.(2,3) Even though potentially reactive aggregates exist throughout North America, ASR distress in structural concrete is not common. There are a number of reasons for this:
Ettringite Formation and the Performance of Concrete
concrete pavements and precast members gained notoriety because of uncertainty over the cause of their distress. Because of the unexplained and complex nature of several of these cases, considerable debate and controversy have arisen in the research and consulting community. To a great extent, this has led to a misperception that the problems are more prevalent than actual case studies would indicate. However, irrespective of the fact that cases of premature deterioration are limited, it is essential to address those that have occurred and provide practical, technically sound solutions so that users can confidently specify concrete in their structures.
New method for analysis of enzymatic reactions: Thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of aspartame precursor
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which is 200 times sweeter than sucrose. A precursor of aspartame, N-(benzyloxycarbonyl)-l-aspartyl-l-phenylalanine methyl ester (Z-APM) was synthesized and hydrolyzed with thermolysin in an aqueous monophasic system. Graphical plotting methods and/or nonlinear regression have been used to analyze enzymatic reactions because of the nonlinearity of enzymatic rate equations. There are, however, problems: the former require accurate measurement of the initial reaction rate and the latter gives no analytical information. The authors proposed a method to solve the nonlinear enzymatic rate equations with respect to the concentration of a product with the Taylor expansion, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism (Murakami, Y., Hirata, M., and Hirata, A., J. Ferment. Bioeng., 82, 246–252, 1996). This solution, however, is complex for practical use. In this paper, a simpler solution to explain the thermolysin-catalyzed synthesis of Z-APM is obtained. New methods to determine the kinetic parameters, especially for the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism, based on the approximated solution are proposed. The results calculated using the obtained kinetic parameters can satisfactorily explain the experimental results, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed analysis. We must know the relation between the concentrations of substrates and a product, and accurately evaluate of the result obtained using Taylor expansion when we determine the kinetic parameters using our newly developed methods. The methods to determine the kinetic parameters of the reversible Theorell-Chance mechanism described in this paper is, however, expected to be applied to general enzymatic reactions.