The Use of Symbolic Signs in Modern Ukrainian Monumental Church Painting: Classification and Hidden Semantics

Monumental church paintings are often perceived either as the interior decoration of the temple or as the "Gospel for the illiterate," as the temple painting often contains scenes from Holy Scripture. In science the painting of the Orthodox Church is mainly the subject of study of art critics, but from the point of view of culturology and semiotics, it is insufficiently studied. The symbolism of monumental church painting is insufficiently revealed. The aim of this paper is to give a description of symbolic signs, to classify them, to give examples for each type of sign from the paintings of modern temples of Eastern Ukraine, on the basis of semiotic analysis of iconographic plots used in monumental church painting. We offer own classification of symbols of monumental church painting, using examples from the murals of modern Orthodox churches in Eastern Ukraine, mainly from the Donetsk region. When analyzing the semantics of symbolic signs, the following methods of the culturological approach were used: semiotic, iconological, iconographic, hermeneutic, culturological, descriptive, comparative-historical, visual-analytical. When interpreting the meanings of symbolic signs, scientific, cultural and theological literature were used. Photos taken by the author have been added to the article.

An Improved Tie Force Method for Progressive Collapse Resistance of Precast Concrete Cross Wall Structures

Progressive collapse of buildings typically occurs  when abnormal loading conditions cause local damages, which leads  to a chain reaction of failure and ultimately catastrophic collapse. The  tie force (TF) method is one of the main design approaches for  progressive collapse. As the TF method is a simplified method, further  investigations on the reliability of the method is necessary. This study  aims to develop an improved TF method to design the cross wall  structures for progressive collapse. To this end, the pullout behavior of  strands in grout was firstly analyzed; and then, by considering the tie  force-slip relationship in the friction stage together with the catenary  action mechanism, a comprehensive analytical method was developed.  The reliability of this approach is verified by the experimental results  of concrete block pullout tests and full scale floor-to-floor joints tests  undertaken by Portland Cement Association (PCA). Discrepancies in  the tie force between the analytical results and codified specifications  have suggested the deficiency of TF method, hence an improved  model based on the analytical results has been proposed to address this  concern.  

Unsteady Reversed Stagnation-Point Flow over a Flat Plate

This paper investigates the nature of the development of two-dimensional laminar flow of an incompressible fluid at the reversed stagnation-point. ". In this study, we revisit the problem of reversed stagnation-point flow over a flat plate. Proudman and Johnson (1962) first studied the flow and obtained an asymptotic solution by neglecting the viscous terms. This is no true in neglecting the viscous terms within the total flow field. In particular it is pointed out that for a plate impulsively accelerated from rest to a constant velocity V0 that a similarity solution to the self-similar ODE is obtained which is noteworthy completely analytical.