The practice of subcontracting selection emphasizes two important goals: the company's strategic goal to maximize profits by partnering with subcontractors and the project's operational goal for obtaining qualified subcontractors. Both goals are achieved by formulating the best multi-criteria weights. This is not easy to implement due to differences in subjectivity, viewpoint, and other consideration of assessors, but prioritizing the criterion weights can reduce these differences. This study presents an ANN (Artificial Neural Network) with the ability to generalize data. The purpose of the study is to develop an ANN model for subcontracting selection and to identify significant criteria related to the company's strategic goal. The initial training of the proposed ANN model utilized 40 subcontractor selection datasets containing data in the form of a subcontractor selection scheme consisting of 20 criteria and 5 major groups. Training of ANN model was successful with MSE learning at 1.37269e -7 , MSE validation at 0.07985, and epoch 600 to 800. The quotation price is the significant criterion of the selection, and it has a great outcome for the contractor strategic goal. The interaction between the subcontractor selection practice and the ANN model shows that the ANN has an important role in the subcontractor selection practice.
Clay soil behavior often becomes problematic with building construction, it is about the shrink-swell behavior in clay when influenced by water content. Coconut husk fiber (coir fiber), in general, is an industrial waste which is still infrequent to be re-used. This study aims are to determine the effect of coir fiber addition for mechanical stabilization of clay soil in terms of CBR (California Bearing Ratio) value. Soil samples used for laboratory tests were collected from Ulee Glee area of Pidie Jaya Regency. According to AASHTO classification, the soil category is A-7-5 (25) while for USCS classification, the soil is OH (Organic High). The percentage of added coir fiber was 0%, 0.2%, 0.4% and 0.6% of the dry weight of the soil with a coir fiber length of 2 and 3 cm. Two treatments of clay-coir fiber mixing method were applied namely direct mixing and mixing by layers. The results of natural soil compaction test obtained that OMC (Optimum Moisture Content) value and dry soil weight (γdmax) was 26.8% and 1.34 gr/cm3 respectively. The highest CBR results were obtained for clay soil with 0.4% coir fiber 3 cm (direct mix) with CBR value = 17.7%. Furthermore, the lowest CBR value is 10% for percentage of 0.2% with coir fiber length 2 cm (by layer). In general, high organic clay soil with coir fiber mixture addition is able to increase the CBR values if compared to CBR of natural soil which is 8.15%. Thus, the use of coir fiber in this study is able to improve soil bearing capacity which is useful for construction material in the site.
Due to repeated loads, the pavement structures will experience repeated stresses and strains resulting in permanent deformation even though the working loads are still smaller than the design load. The permanent deformation will lead to cracking and fatigue failure with the life of the pavement. This phenomenon can be reduced by increasing the stiffness, flexibility, durability, stability and water absorption of the pavement. Material modification including the utilization of waste tire rubber (WTR) and natural zeolite is one of the efforts to increase those parameters in semi flexible pavement (SFP). The aim of this study therefore, to assess the deformation and fatigue failure of SFP incorporating WTR and natural zeolite under cyclic loading. The WTR was used as an additive at the level of 3% of asphalt content while natural zeolite was used as cement replacement at the 0, 5, 15 and 25% replacement levels. Permanent deformation tests were conducted by applying wheel tracking loads with the pressure of 6.4 ± 0.15 kg/cm2 on the surface of the specimens with 1260 cycles per hour while fatigue tests were conducted on the simple supported beams with the span length of 30 cm by applying forth point loading at the frequency of 10 Hz. The test results showed that the best performance in sustaining cyclic loading was achieved at the zeolite content of 5%.
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