Faculty of Engineering, Civil Engineering

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item: Thesis-Abstract
Cost calculation and monitoring for a multi-divisional organization
Jazeel, MII; Bandara, JMSJ
Road Construction & Development Co. (Pvt) Ltd is one of biggest companies in the highway sector in Sri Lanka. It works throughout the island. Presently it has a costing system but it has several shortcomings. Because of the shortcomings the management is unable to find out the actual project cost at sites. Delay in processing cost record is one disadvantage of the present system. A study was conducted to find out the shortcomings in order to reduce them by improving the system. From this study, it is decided that a computer-based program will provide solutions to some of the problem. A computer program was done in EXCEL 2000. Different types of workbooks are available for use by different types of construction and production units, From all the data, a final report summary can be obtained. This will help the management to get a feedback from sites.
item: Thesis-Abstract
Cost effective method to develop national road inventory database
(2014-08-07) Kumara, AMTIS; Bandara, JMSJ
This research was focused to find out a method to develop or update the National Road Inventory Database in a cost effective manner. The main cost sensitive factor for the development of Inventory Database was identified as the Inventory Survey. Any revision on existing Inventory Databases or originating New Databases should be done with the completion of an inventory survey. The method adopted to do the survey will determine the accuracy of the data and the cost. For the complete Road Inventory Database, the inventory survey should be carried out to cover all links in the network. In general the road networks are complicated and it is difficult to find a method to travel on each and every link without having to back track. Sometimes survey team compelled to travel several times on same road section just to reach other links without collecting any data (i.e. idle traveling). It was experienced that a survey trip can be carried out in two different ways such as the origin and destinations as the same point or origin and destination as two different points. According to the inventory survey carried out by Transportation Engineering Division of University of Moratuwa, it was found that approximately half of the total cost of inventory survey occurred for the idle traveling. If the road inventory survey can be carried out with minimum idle traveling that method will be the most effective method to carry out the survey. Hence under this research, it was found a method which minimizes the 'idle traveling' by considering the both cases of survey trip patterns.
item: Thesis-Abstract
Development of rule based expert system for design guidelines of domestic buildings
Premasiri, KW; Dias, WPS
Use of expert systems for Engineering applications is still in very primitive stages in Sri Lanka. However it is being used satisfactorily in many developed countries over several areas of the Engineering applications. In Medical diagnostic applications it had been used successfully over many decades. Later it has been spreaded over some other disciplines such as Engineering fault diagnosis and selecting bad ones from production lines etc. Further it has been reported that attempts are being done to carry out Engineering designs. Algorithmic methods are still prevalent in structural Engineering designs and these are mainly data driven and non-availability of any single data will stop the running of design process. Expert systems are knowledge driven and non-availability of piece of knowledge will not stop the process. Rule based expert system approach is very popular among the system builders due to its flexibility in applications. In this assignment rule based method was utilized in the process of developing a proto type computer model "BUILD GUIDE" on the design guidelines for domestic buildings, operating in the DOS environment. Chapter I of this report is dealing with the background details of the study including objectives of the study and methodology used and aspects of the Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. Chapter 2 of this report is on the literature review of the Expert systems and various aspects of them including structure of them, advantages, disadvantages, uncertainty of data and reasoning and methods of developing expert systems etc. Chapter 3 of this report is reserved to discuss about the structuring of design guidelines for domestic buildings, usefulness of design guidelines of domestic buildings and related topics. For this purpose the design entity was considered in three basic stages namely, preliminary design, outline or conceptual design and detailed design stages. Further a description about the expert system development software is available. An output of a sample session for a small domestic building is included in the chapter 3.5 to illustrate about the output report of the BUILD GUIDE system. Finally a comprehensive comparison of design and diagnosis processes is provided, as it is necessary to understand it clearly before developing an expert system on design and diagnosis. The "CONFAULT" system, which has been formulated to diagnose the faults of Reinforced Concrete structures by identifying sub fault types, is used with the BUILD GUIDE system for the comparison. Further, this report consists with a chapter on brief description of the expert systems for design applications.
item: Thesis-Abstract
Evaluating "Gamisariya" rural bus service programme
(2015-02-28) Fernando, PAN; Kumarage, AS
“Public Passenger Transport (PPT) is very often associated with subsidies in almost all countries in the world”. When consider Sri Lanka, as a developing country, this statement is true with the PPT for Rural communities. Rural Passenger Services are making loss due to different reasons. As a result of this fact private bus owners are reluctant to operate bus services in uneconomic rural routes. But as an agricultural base country, over 70% of Sri Lanka’s population lives in rural areas. Therefore rural passenger transport services are very important for the commercial, industrial, social and educational activities in rural communities and such services can provide several benefits to the rural societies. The National Transport Commission (NTC) is implementing the project called “Gamisariya” to subsidize the identified uneconomic rural routes. Under this project transport services are provided for more than 1014 rural villages and for more than 77000 rural passengers. The objective of the study was “To find out social & economical benefits created by “Gamisariya” project to the rural communities and to find out whether operators get sufficient subsidy amount to provide a reliable service to the villages.” To achieve the objective following methods were used to collect data;  Interview with bus passengers/villagers and operators in selected routes  Interview with village committees who investigate the service.  Discussion with the officers in NTC who are involving with Gamisariya Project. According to the results of analysis, the Gamisariya Rural Bus service (GRBS) Programme has increased the number of social and economical trips of the rural people. Further, the villagers are gaining more income for their production due to less transportation cost and higher volume of production. The project has higher economic benefit level to the society and road development and increasing land value are some indirect benefits that have been taken place due to the project. Although several advantages are gained through this project the operators are not provided subsidies on time and some operators are not provided enough subsidy amounts to maintain their services. G.R.B.S has a significant impact on school trips of the children in selected villages and employment trips of the people. Further, to provide more useful service the time table of GRBS is needed to be coordinated with the timetables of buses, trains which have a grater demand from the passengers.
item: Thesis-Abstract
Feasibility study on waste oil disposal in cement kilns for Sri Lanka
(2014-06-06) Thiruchelvam, AT; De Alwis, AP
1. Main Objective To study the feasibility of disposing the waste oil in the existing Puttalam Cement Kilns for Sri Lanka. To achieve this objective, the current situation in terms of technologies (manufacturing, fuel firing, process control, dust emission equipment and performance, etc.) of Puttalam Cement and the financial viability was evaluated. 2. Introduction Disposing of waste oil in Cement Kilns will give three fold benefits: getting rid of waste oil, almost without any residue, complete energy recovery which contribute to the economy of a country and special disposal facilities are not needed as an existing facility is utilised High flame temperatures and the nature of the product make cement kilns attractive for the destruction of a variety of hazardous organic materials. With proper management, kilns constitute a much less costly alternative to dedicated waste incinerators. Tests by USEPA and others have demonstrated that destruction of organic compounds including, PCBs and organochlorine and organophosphorus pesticides, equals or surpasses that achieved in hazardous waste incinerators tl1at operate at l wer temperatures. Many toxic metallic compounds can also be burned in cement kilns in quantities that are small enough not to adversely affect product quality or safety, since they are bonded to the clinker and become part of the product. 3. Waste Oil It refers to lubricating oils, hydraulic, transmission & heat transfer fluids and insulants that have gone tl1rough their intended use cycle and must be either disposed of or treated and re-used. In this thesis, waste oil from automotive transport sector is only considered. Other transport (aviation and maritime) sector and spent industrial oils are not included here as waste oil since these oils are contaminated with unknown pollutants. 4. Waste Oil Generation and Properties in Sri lanka A pilot survey was carried out to estimate the waste oil generation and centrally collectable amount. According to tl1e survey results, in 1999 around 24,000 - 27,000 ton waste oil was generated by automotive transport sector in Sri Lanka. However, tl1e known collectable amount is 4,500 (about 18% of the generated amount) while the estimated amount is around 17,400 ton per year in 1999 as given in Table 23. With time, awareness, incentives, and enforcement of regulation, the estimated amount can be collected. The laboratory test results show that our waste oil property is within the literature values in terms of physical property and tl1e contaminants such as heavy metals. However, it is interesting to note tl1at tl1e ASTM distillation curve of tl1e waste oil distillate resembles kerosene oil and the quantity distilled also only 63%. This shows that the best option in World of waste oil disposal by rerefining back to lube base may not be possible in Sri Lanka and therefore, tl1e best option for our waste oil is using as alternate fuel which is well supported by tl1e high calorific test results (> 44,000 kJ/kg). However, with the limited number of tests it is difficult to come to a firm conclusion. This is only an indication. 5. Puttalam Cement Cement is manufactured by grinding an artificial rock called "clinker" very finely (to a few microns) mixing with a small amount of gypsum (approximately 4%). Clinker is produced by heating limestone (77%) and some other ingredients (23%) to around 1450°C in a kiln. At Puttalam Cement Factory, there are two identical rotary kilns. The length of a kiln is 54 m. The burner of the kilns were change recently by Rotaflam kiln burner which has an additional jacket tube for a waste oil gun. A complete actual material balance could not be done with the current on line measured and recorded data at Puttalam Cement. Therefore, some assumptions were made using the equipment specifications and international norms 1n domg the material balance. The average amount.......x·ffffff_·raw materials used for one
item: Thesis-Abstract
A Study on factors affecting stress and its level of manageability among construction project managers in Northen and Eastern provinces
(2014-07-03) Rajagopalasingam, V; Senaratne, S
Although a number of studies of stress in occupational settings have been conducted over the past decades, there are relatively few studies relating to stress of construction project management. The present study examines to identify the critical stressors causing stress, to assess the level of stress and to explore the impact of stress on performance of construction project managers (CPMs). Primary data was collected through use of a written questionnaire distributed by postal mailing and hand delivered to 155 samples of CPMs who work in a variety of construction entities (sector wise) using stratified simple random sampling.115 questionnaires were returned in a usable form giving an overall response rate of 74%. An analysis of the data collection for this study was determined in three ways. As a first step Relative Important Indices and mean score were generated to identify the sources of stress. Besides, factor analysis has been conducted including reliability analysis to confirm the sources of stress. Next, Descriptive statistics of scoring mean and standard deviation were generated for required variables to assess the level of stress and then correlation calculation was generated to assess the impact of stress on performance of CPMs. Finally Chi Square tests were conducted to test the significance of these correlations. Four kinds of stressors (Task stressors, organizational stressors, physical stressors and personal stressors) and seven sources of stresses including work overload, poor role congruence, poor organizational structure, career development environment, poor work environment, work group cooperation and type A behavior of personality were identified among CPMs. Four types of stress were identified in this research: objective stress, subjective stress, burn out and physiological stress. From the analysis, low level of objective stress, moderate level of subjective stress, high level of burnout and moderate level of physiological stress were found among the CPMs. This study confirms the impacts of four types of stress on performance (task, interpersonal & organizational) of CPMs. Limitation and implication of these research findings were also discussed in this study. Finally it is recommended to hold stress management workshops for the CPMs to relax their stresses and employers are recommended to keep reviewing and monitoring the abilities of the CPMs and allocate the responsibilities and work load accordingly. Direction for further studies is also suggested.

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