As a common industrial solid waste, iron ore tailing sand (IOTS) has a large amount of storage, and the treatment efficiency is unsatisfactory. Scientific and reasonable incorporation of IOTS waste into concrete is one of the critical ways to realize bulk utilization and sustainable development. This paper first summarizes the basic material characteristics of IOTS, and the similarities and differences between IOTS and natural sand (NS) are compared and analyzed. Followed with a presentation of research findings on properties of IOTS concrete with respect to mix ratio, workability, mechanical properties, drying shrinkage and durability. Subsequently, the mechanical behaviors of IOTS concrete members are analyzed and summarized in terms of experimental research, theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. Eventually, the future research directions of material and component levels of IOTS concrete are reasonably prospected. These conclusions may inform the sustainable technical application of IOTS in concrete.

In this study, a multi-parameter perturbation method is used for the solution of a functionally-graded, thin, circular piezoelectric plate. First, by assuming that elastic, piezoelectric, and dielectric coefficients of the functionally-graded materials vary in the form of the same exponential function, the basic equation expressed in terms of two stress functions and one electrical potential function are established in cylindrical coordinate system. Three piezoelectric coefficients are selected as perturbation parameters, and the established equations are solved by the multi-parameter perturbation method, thus obtaining up to first-order perturbation solutions. The validity of the perturbation solution obtained is verified by numerical simulations, based on layer-wise theory. The perturbation process indicates that adopting three piezoelectric coefficients as perturbation parameters follows the basic idea of perturbation theory—i.e., if the piezoelectricity may be regarded as a kind of introduced disturbance, the zero-order solution of the disturbance system corresponds exactly to the solution of functionally-graded plates without piezoelectricity. The result also indicates that the deformation magnitude of piezoelectric plates is smaller than that of plates without piezoelectricity, due to the well-known piezoelectric stiffening effect.

In this study, based on the pressure blister test technique, a theoretical study on the synchronous characterization of surface and interfacial mechanical properties of thin-film/substrate systems with residual stress was presented, where the problem of axisymmetric deformation of a blistering film with initial stress was analytically solved and its closed-form solution was presented. The expressions to determine Poisson’s ratios, Young’s modulus, and residual stress of surface thin films were derived; the work done by the applied external load and the elastic energy stored in the blistering thin film were analyzed in detail and their expressions were derived; and the interfacial adhesion energy released per unit delamination area of thin-film/substrate (i.e., energy release rate) was finally presented. The synchronous characterization technique presented here has theoretically made a big step forward, due to the consideration for the residual stress in surface thin films.

As an intelligent material, piezoelectric materials have been widely used in many intelligent fields, especially in the analysis and design of sensors and actuators; however, the vibration problems of the corresponding structures made of the piezoelectric materials are often difficult to solve analytically, because of their force–electric coupling characteristics. In this paper, the biparametric perturbation method was used to solve the free damping vibration problem of piezoelectric cantilever beams, and the perturbation solution of the problem solved here was given. A numerical example was given to discuss the influence of the piezoelectric properties on the vibration of piezoelectric cantilever beams. In addition, related vibration experiments of the piezoelectric cantilever beams were carried out, and the experimental results were in good agreement with the theoretical results. The results indicated that the biparametric perturbation solution obtained in this study is effective, and it may serve as a theoretical reference for the design of sensors and actuators made of piezoelectric materials.