Basrah Journal for Engineering Sciences

A proper ventilation offered warranty for a perfect indoor environment. Indoor air environment includes indoor thermal environment and indoor air quality (IAQ). In this paper a numerical investigation of the indoor environment in different ventilations was accomplished. The Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) in Al-Rifai hospital in Thi-Qar governorate was chosen to be investigated, and its thermal achievement and indoor air quality in the hot summer weather were simulated. For the numerical study, the fluent technique used to set up the physical and numerical model of CCU. An attention has been paid carefully to considerate the distributions of the temperature and the velocity fields, followed by an argument of two different ventilation patterns; up-in and up-out ventilation (UV) and displacement ventilation (DV). After making the comparison, it was noticed that the displacement ventilation (DV) is clearly super than that of the up-in and up-out ventilation (UV) due to improvement in the indoor air quality.

In the present research, a Matlab program with a graphical user interface (GUI) has been established for studying the performance of a solar tower power plant (STPP). The program gives the ability for predicting the performance of STPP for different tower dimensions, ambient operating conditions and locations. The program is based on the solution of a mathematical model derived from the heat and mass balance for the tower components. The GUI program inputs are; tower dimensions, solar radiation, ambient temperature, pressure, wind velocity, turbine efficiency, emissivity and absorptivity for collector and ground and thermal conductivity and thickness for ground. However, the GUI program outputs are; temperature and pressure differences across the collector and tower, velocity in the tower, density of air in collector outlet, mass flowrate of air, efficiency for collector and tower, the overall efficiency and output power of STPP. The effect of the geometrical dimensions of STPP and some climatic variables on the plant performance was also studied. The results show that the output power increases with increasing the collector diameter, chimney diameter and solar radiation by an increasing of 0.282 kW/m, 0.204 kW/m and 0.046 kW/(W/m2) respectively.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of heat treatments on the impact properties of hot rolled high strength steel and describes the effect of tempering temperature and quenching media on the microstructure, hardness, and impact resistance of plates. In the present study a high strength steel was austenitized at 900 °C with different quenching medium and followed by tempering at 300 °C, 500 °C. After thermal treatments, the values of Charpy impact resistance, hardness, and microscopic structure were evaluated from mechanical and metallographic analysis of metals respectively. The change of mechanical properties and microstructure of the metal with the existence of heat treatment with the ballistic performance of high-strength steel. Experimental results showed that tempering at 500 °C for 2 hours after water quenching medium it provides the best mechanical properties in conjunct on with an improved in microstructure.

A method based on experimentally calibrated rotor model is proposed in this work for unbalance identification of flexible rotors without trial runs. Influence coefficient balancing method especially when applied to flexible rotors is disadvantaged by its low efficiency and lengthy procedure, whilst the proposed method has the advantage of being efficient, applicable to multi-operating spin speeds and do not need trial runs. An accurate model for the rotor and its supports based on rotor dynamics and finite elements analysis combined with experimental modal analysis, is produced to identify the unbalance distribution on the rotor. To create digital model of the rotor, frequency response functions (FRFs) are determined from excitation and response data, and then modal parameters (natural frequencies and mode shapes) are extracted and compared with experimental analogies. Unbalance response is measured traditionally on rotor supports, in this work the response measured from rotating disks instead. The obtained results show that the proposed approach provides an effective alternative in rotor balancing. Increasing the number of balancing disks on balancing quality is investigated as well.

In this study, loading was carried out for several types of perforated plates, such as circular, rhombic and rectangular holes, where the holes were arranged in two types, namely straight arrangement and alternating arrangement. The stress intensity factor and shape factor were calculated for each case, taking into account the diameter of the holes. So, it is found the SIF increases significantly when the plate is perforated, and the same applies to the shape factor, also increases. In the case of circular holes, the increases in the average value of (SIF) reached to (80.88 %) when the plate was perforated with alternated arranged of circular holes, while the straight arrangement of circular holes the increases of average values of SIF reach to (67.55 %). Either in the case of rhombus holes: the SIF values are increases to (51.07 %) when the plate was perforated with the alternated arrangement, while in the straight arrangement of holes the (SIF) increase to (35.43 %). It was observed through this study, the increases of stress intensity factor and the shape factor with different crack lengths were more stable in the plate that perforated with an alternated arrangement of holes than the straight arrangement. The higher values of stress intensity factor obtained when the plates were perforated with circular holes, due to the circular shape has more stiffness, so the Absorption of force will be small Compared with the rhombus and rectangular shape that will be less stiffness which the absorption of strength is greater.

Vibration in rotating machines and structures is normally measured using accelerometers and other vibration sensors. For large machines and structures, the process of collecting vibration data is tedious and time-consuming due to the large number of points where vibration data must be measured. In this paper, a novel non-contact vibration measurement method has been introduced by using a high-speed camera as a vibration measurement device. This method has many advantages compared with the others. It has a low cost, easy to setup, and high automation. It also can be used for full-field measurement. Many tests have been accomplished to prove the validation of this method. The verification test has been accomplished by using the machinery faults simulator. It presented a reasonable validation that the operation deflection shapes (ODS) and the phase difference of any object can be successfully measured by using a high-speed camera. The mode shape tests have been accomplished by using the whirling of shaft apparatus device to extract the time domain, frequency domain, ODS, and phase differences for many points on the shaft at the first two critical speeds. The results proved that the high-speed camera can be used to detect the vibration signal in many different fault cases. It also proved that the high-speed camera can be used to detect the ODS and the phase angle difference. That gives the proposed method more robust and acceptance.

This experimental research depicts the role of coating hot surfaces by graphite and graphene on the process of heat dissipation from these hot surfaces. Three aluminum specimens have been prepared for test, one of theme is coated by graphite, another one by graphene a while the third is left free of coating for comparison purpose. Each specimen is tested separately in a home-made wind tunnel. A plate electrical heater is adhered on the bottom of the specimen to simulate the generated energy by a heat sink. A heat sink composed of high thermal conductivity was applied between the heater plate and the base plate of heat sink to reduce the contact resistance to heat flow. The experiments are conducted with four turbulent Reynolds number. The results reveal that the sample coated by graphene exhibits the best thermal dissipation while the uncoated specimen shows the worst thermal performance.

During the pouring of concrete deck, the installation of external bracing between the inner and outer girders may be necessary when the bridge has sharp curve in order to control the deflection and rotation of the girders. However, it is important to minimize the number of external bracing members, as they have expensive cost and they also have opposite effects for the fatigue features of the steel tub girders. The analysis of curved box girder bridges is carried out numerically by the use of finite element method through (ANSYS 19.2) software. The curved box girder with the intermediate external diaphragms was modeled and the analysis was carried out for many parameters like external bracing sections, girders with or without concrete deck, girders with end diaphragms or without them. The study concluded that ANSYS program has a good ability in evaluating the external bracing force comparing with code equations.