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At this moment, there is substantial anxiety surrounding the fire safety of huge reinforced concrete (RC) constructions. The limitations enforced by test facilities, technology, and high costs have significantly limited both full-scale and scaled-down structural fire experiments. The behavior of an individual structural component can have an impact on the entire structural system when it is connected to it. This paper addresses the development and testing of a self-straining preloading setup that is used to perform thermomechanical action in RC beams and slabs.

Thermomechanical action is a combination of both structural loads and a high-temperature effect. Buildings undergo thermomechanical action when it is exposed to fire. RC beams and slabs are one of the predominant structural members. The conventional method of testing the beams and slabs under high temperatures will be performed by heating the specimens separately under the desired temperature, and then mechanical loading will be performed. This gives the residual strength of the beams and slabs under high temperatures. This method does not show the real-time behavior of the element under fire. In real-time, a fire occurs simultaneously when the structure is subjected to desired loads and this condition is called thermomechanical action. To satisfy this condition, a unique self-training test setup was prepared. The setup is based on the concept of a prestressing condition where the load is applied through the bolts.

To validate the test setup, two RC beams and slabs were used. The test setup was tested in service load range and a temperature of 300 °C. One of the beams and slabs was tested conventionally with four-point bending and point loading on the slab, and another beam and slab were tested using the preloading setup. The results indicate the successful operation of the developed self-strain preloading setup under thermomechanical action.

Gaining insight into the unpredictable reaction of structural systems to fire is crucial for designing resilient structures that can withstand disasters. However, comprehending the instantaneous behavior might be a daunting undertaking as it necessitates extensive testing resources. Therefore, a thorough quantitative and qualitative numerical analysis could effectively evaluate the significance of this research.

The study was performed to validate the thermomechanical load setup for beams and slabs on a single-bay single-storey RC frame with and without slab under various fire possible scenarios. The thermomechanical load setup for RC members is found to be scarce.

This study delineates the effect of cover thickness on reinforced concrete (RC) columns and beams under an elevated fire scenario. Columns and beams are important load-carrying structural members of buildings. Under all circumstances, the columns and beams were set to be free from damage to avoid structural failure. Under the high-temperature scenario, the RC element may fail because of the material deterioration that occurs owing to the thermal effect. This study attempts to determine the optimum cover thickness for beams and columns under extreme loads and fire conditions.

Cover thicknesses of 30, 40, 45, 50, 60 and 70 mm for the columns and 10, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 50, 60 and 70 mm for the beams were adopted in this study. Both steady-state and transient-state conditions under thermomechanical analysis were performed using the finite element method to determine the heat transfer through the RC section and to determine the effect of thermal stresses.

The results show that the RC elements have a greater influence on the additional cover thickness at extreme temperatures and higher load ratios than at the service stages. The safe limits of the structural members were obtained under the combined effects of elevated temperatures and structural loads. The results also indicate that the compression members have a better thermal performance than the flexural members.

Numerical investigations concerning the high-temperature behavior of structural elements are useful. The lack of an experimental setup encourages researchers to perform numerical investigations. In this study, the finite element models were validated with existing finite element models and experimental results.

The obtained safe limit for the structural members could help to understand their resistance to fire in a real-time scenario. From the safe limit, a suitable design can be preferred while designing the structural members. This could probably save the structure from collapse.

There is a lack of both numerical and experimental research works. In numerical modeling, the research works found in the literature had difficulties in developing a numerical model that satisfactorily represents the structural members under fire, not being able to adequately understand their behavior at high temperatures. None of them considered the influence of the cover thickness under extreme fire and loading conditions. In this paper, this influence was evaluated and discussed.

This paper delineates a literature review on fire-induced progressive collapse on structures and the effect of high temperature on structures and elements. After the occurrences of fire in the World Trade Center in the USA, the researchers started concentrating on the progressive collapse that happens due to high temperature. Currently, most of the researchers are working on fire-induced progressive collapse on structures using high-temperature behavior on materials which are used for construction. The researchers have been doing an intensive study to find a better strategy to prevent the building from structural fire damage or collapse with available codes and guidelines throughout the world. This paper aims to provide a better understanding and analytical solutions on the basis of the recent works done by researchers in fire-induced progressive collapse and methods adopted to find the collapse mechanism.

This paper is written by studying different literature papers of 109 related to progressive collapse on structures and fire-induced progressive collapse.

The behavior of structures due to high temperature and collapse conditions due to fire in different scenarios is identified.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how the structure can withstand high-temperature conditions in our day-to-day lives.

Purpose: This chapter discusses the role and use of chatbots adopted by the different categories of banks (private and public sector banks) in India. The chapter presents brief essential services offered by Indian chatbots regarding accuracy, technology providers and virtual assistance, ways to connect, etc. This chapter concluded that most of the questions answered by the Indian chatbots are already available on the banks’ websites, and there is a need for enhancement in the capabilities of Indian chatbots.

Need for the Study: The need for the study is based on the working of banking chatbots, customer query handling, and the efficiency of the chatbots in India. The chapter helps to analyze the services offered by various banks.

Methodology: This chapter is based on secondary data collected from banks’ websites and articles from various journals. The study is based on nine banks (both private and public sectors) those are having working chatbots (SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, IndusInd Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, Andhra Bank, Bank of Baroda). The present study is focused on chatbots, their services, and software applications for various customer-handling capacities.

Findings: The research concluded that Indian banks are investing a small amount in using chatbots, yet Indian chatbots are deficient regarding far too provincial administrations as they are adequate just for standard and basic inquiries. Also, Indian customers are not properly aware of chatbots and virtual assistance.

Practical Implications: This study provides an overview of the working chatbots in India (for both public and private sector banks) and their functions, as well as the capacities of these chatbots. The previous conducted studies are based on the uses, importance, and working of chatbots/artificial intelligence (AI) in banking. In this study, after discussing the different services, it is found that Indian banks need to update their AI/Virtual assistance with more features.

In structural fire engineering, the design of columns is done either by prescriptive approaches or by empirical equations derived from experimental research. Performance-based design is the emerging methodology for designing structures under fire, which is case-specific. There is a need to develop design equations from first principles to design/find the residual strength of the column at elevated temperatures. The present study aims to develop equations from stress block parameters to find the residual strength of reinforced concrete (RC) columns subjected to elevated temperatures.

The stress-strain variation across the cross-section of the RC column is determined at elevated temperatures. Based on the updated stress distribution diagram, stress block parameters are derived for various depths of neutral axis (NA) and different temperatures. Using updated stress block parameters, Pu-Mu interaction curves are generated for elevated temperatures. The results are verified against conventional methods and experimental results.

The load-carrying capacity calculated from the proposed methodology is analogous to the experimental results. The methodology can be utilized to estimate the residual strength of RC columns subjected to elevated temperatures.

The work done here attempts to develop the equations to estimate the residual strength of the column. The work involves calculating the strength of columns subjected to fire curves.

This paper presents the performance analysis of the automatic ticket vending machine (ATVM) through the functioning of its different hardware and software failures.

Frequent failures in the working of ATVM have been observed; therefore, the authors of the paper intend to analyze the performance measures of the same. Authors have developed a mathematical model based on different hardware and software failures/repairs, which may occur during the operation, with the help of the Markov process. The developed model has been solved for two kinds of failure/repair rates namely variable failures (very much similar to real-time failure) and constant failures. Lagrange's method and Laplace transformation are used for the solution of the developed model.

Reliability and mean time to failure of the ATVM are determined. Sensitivity analysis for ATVM is also carried out in the paper. Critical components of the ATVM, which affect the performance of the same, in terms of reliability and MTTF are also identified.

A mathematical model based on different hardware and software failures/repairs of ATVM has been developed to analyze its performance, which has not been done in the past.

Entrepreneurship in emerging markets; the planning of survival and competition strategies of small businesses run by entrepreneurs against well established larger brands.

The case can be used at the post graduate level in principles of marketing, entrepreneurship or emerging markets courses.

The case looks at the antecedents and process of transformation of a small-scale firm into a marketing-oriented organization, through the lens of holistic marketing. The case focuses on a small-scale Bangalore based Indian company, Vishaal Natural Food Products (I) Pvt. Ltd that had used the concept of marketing orientation and holistic marketing to effectively make use of the advantages of its “smallness” and the characteristics of its entrepreneurial setup.

How can an entrepreneur survive in a dynamic environment? How should the company conceptually finalize its growth avenues? How can holistic marketing have an impact on the entire functioning of the organization when radical changes to handle the environmental changes, are made? How does the concept of holistic marketing which in textbooks fits in with the complexities of large corporations when they plan their strategies, have an impact on the functioning of these small businesses. The case delves into the conceptual linkages posed by these questions.

Teaching notes are available, please consult your librarian for access.

The purpose of this study is to present a systematic literature review of academic peer-reviewed articles in English published between 2005 and 2021. The articles were reviewed based on the following features: research topic, conceptual and theoretical characterization, artificial intelligence (AI) methods and techniques.

This study examines the extent to which AI features within academic research in retail industry and aims to consolidate existing knowledge, analyse the development on this topic, clarify key trends and highlight gaps in the scientific literature concerning the role of AI in retail.

The findings of this study indicate an increase in AI literature within the field of retailing in the past five years. However, this research field is fairly fragmented in scope and limited in methodologies, and it has several gaps. On the basis of a structured topic allocation, a total of eight priority topics were identified and highlighted that (1) optimizing the retail value chain and (2) improving customer expectations with the help of AI are key topics in published research in this field.

This study is based on academic peer-reviewed articles published before July 2021; hence, scientific outputs published after the moment of writing have not been included.

This study contributes to the in-depth and systematic exploration of the extent to which retail scholars are aware of and working on AI. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first systematic literature review within retailing research dealing with AI technology.

This study aims to evaluate the financial performance of the textile industry in Haryana located in the northern part of India.

Input-oriented Cooper, Charnes and Rhodes (CCR) and Banker, Charnes and Cooper (BCC) techniques of data envelopment analysis, as well as the return to scale (RTS) technique, were used to conduct the analysis.

The findings show that textile units in Haryana have hugely underperformed financially with a consolidated technical efficiency score of only 0.35. Both private and public limited textile companies with respective scores of 0.46 and 0.24 are technically efficient. Public limited textile companies are more efficient than private limited companies. Private limited textile companies need to increase their input scale because they are operating at an increasing return to scale while public limited textile companies have to lower their input scale because most companies are operating at a decreasing return to scale to enhance their efficiency.

The study can assist in decision-making to all key stakeholders (Shareholders, management, government, tax authorities, debtors and creditors, among others) by identifying efficient and inefficient companies. Appropriate policies can be framed based on that knowledge.