Engineering and Technology Journal

There are many methods to measure the suction and saturation point of any soil and the most used is Tensiometer. The objective of this research is to investigate a new trend to measure the saturation point and suction by using soil moisture content sensors (SMCS) and compare the procedure with tensiometer for the granular soil. The soil in this study has been prepared at three relative densities (5%, 35% and 75%) used. The results show that the readings of SMCS become stable when the water content is more than 20% with different relative densities. The relative density did not affect the SMCS reading when approximately reaching the saturation point.

Digital Elevation Models (DEM) are now being used in several geospatial applications. DEMs play an important role in the preliminary surveys for constructing dams and reservoirs, highways, canals, and projects in which earth work is essential. In many remote sensing applications, DEMs have become a significant tool for InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) processing, ground cover classification and images ortho-rectification. In this study, the accuracy of DEMs obtained from ALOS V1.1, ASTER V2, SRTM V3 and other obtained from a pair of Pleiades high-resolution (PHR) 1B satellites in a study area were evaluated after comparing them with high accuracy GNSS/RTK checkpoints. The SRTM3, ALOS V1.1, ASTER V2 DEM revealed a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of 2.234m, 0.838m, and 15.116m respectively; while the DEM which is produced from a 0.5m resolution of Pleiades 0.5m shows an RMSE of 0.642m. The correct bias Linear transformation algorithm was used and the RMSE results were: SRTM V3 (1.319m), ALOS V1.1 (0.830m), ASTER V2 (3.815m), and PHR (0.433m). The results showed that the ALOS V1.1 model is the most accurate of the open source models followed by the SRTM V3 model and then followed by ASTER V2. The results obtained

This research studied the influence of cutting fluids and cutting parameters on the surface roughness for stainless steel worked by turning machine in dry and wet cutting cases. The work was done with different cutting speeds, and feed rates with a fixed depth of cutting. During the machining process, heat was generated and effects of higher surface roughness of work material. In this study, the effects of some cutting fluids, and dry cutting on surface roughness have been examined in turning of AISI316 stainless steel material. Sodium Lauryl Ether Sulfate (SLES) instead of other soluble oils has been used and compared to dry machining processes. Experiments have been performed at four cutting speeds (60, 95, 155, 240) m/min, feed rates (0.065, 0.08, 0.096, 0.114) mm/rev. and constant depth of cut (0.5) mm. The amount of decrease in Ra after the used suggested mixture arrived at (0.21μm), while Ra exceeded (1μm) in case of soluble oils This means the suggested mixture gave the best results of lubricating properties than other cases.

In the present work, agricultural waste, (Iraqi rice husk A’anbar type) was developed with thermal and chemical treatments for using as an adsorbent to remove phosphate anion from aqueous solution and the thermal treatment at 500oC was the best.
Batch experiments were conducted to obtain the maximum removal of phosphate via changing the parameters of the process, such as contact time, pH, adsorbent dose, initial solute concentration, and the existence of competitive anions upon the removal of phosphate and was investigated. The adsorbent characterization was performed employing Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning electron microscope (SEM), the BET surface area and pore volume, and X-ray diffraction spectrophotometric analysis (XRD).
The maximum removal of phosphate was achieved as (98.37 %), at contact time 140 min., pH 2.0, adsorbent dose 20 g/L, and initial concentration 5 mg/L at room temperature. The effects of competing ions of CO3-2, NO-3, and SO4-2 anions were studied. The experimental data manifested the best fit for the Langmuir isotherm model (R2 = 0.99) and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model (R2 = 0.99). Rice husk ash was found efficient for phosphate removal from the industrial wastewater and aqueous sol

Corrosion of reinforcement has been identified as the deterioration mechanism of reinforced concrete structures, which seriously affects the safety and integrity of structures. The corrosion of the embedded reinforcing steel in concrete is a major problem facing civil engineers today, which initiates 80% of the reinforced concrete structures deterioration. This paper reveals the outcomes of an experimental investigation on the mechanical performance (residual strength) of circular steel reinforced columns which have been damaged by corrosion of the steel rebar. Small scale circular reinforced concrete columns with a diameter of 100 mm and 300 mm in height were adopted. Different rates of steel reinforcement mass loss (corrosion damage) ranged between 10%, 20% to 30 % were created in the columns by using a galvanostatic accelerated corrosion method combined with wetting-drying cycles. The uniaxial compression test was implemented for damaged columns up to failure. Based on the experimental outcomes, it was revealed that the corrosion damage had substantially reduced the performance of columns. The decrement of the load capacity of corroded columns ranged between 19% to 40% and for corrosion level ranged from 10% to 30%, respectively. The decrement of the final deformation of corroded columns ranged between 15% to 30% and for corrosion level ranged from 10% to 30%, respectively. Likewise, the failure mode and relationship between the stress and strain for corroded columns had been adversely affected by corrosion

Currently, the use of high-volume fly ash lightweight concrete, HVFALWC, has acquired popularity as a durable, resource-efficient, and an option of sustainability for varying concrete applications. Electrochemical characteristics such as half- cell potential, AC resistance, chloride penetration, free chloride, and pH value, up to 180 days were investigated for this type of concrete that uses 50% and 60% of fly ash as a replacement of Portland cement. The effect of using 10% hydrated lime powder as a partial substitute for the weight of cementitious materials for HVFALWC on electrochemical properties was also studied. The results in this study showed the possibility of producing friendly environmental structural lightweight concrete by using high volume fly ash (50% and 60%) as partial replacement by weight of cement. Furthermore, using 10% hydrated lime as partial replacement by weight of cementitious materials could be considered as a reliable measure to reduce the effect of chloride ions in the corrosion process

The technology of indoor positioning has pulled in the consideration of researchers the expanding capability of smartphones and the advancement of sensor innovation, alongside the increase the time people spend working inside the building or being indoors. Sensor innovation, which is one of the most generally utilized information hotspots for indoor setting, has a favorable position that sensors can receive information from a cell phone without introducing any additional device. The idea of the proposed system is to use the Wi-Fi access points, inside the building, together with a Smartphone Wi-Fi sensor which lets the building administrator locate those carrying smartphones, wherever they exist inside the building. The proposed system consists of two-stage the testing stage (or preparation phase) and, the second stage is the training stage (or positioning phase). The data is collected and selected for accurate readings; a router is used, which is the Mikrotik access point type from which we can read the RSS value. The RSS value represents the Wi-Fi signal strength of the target device. The proposed IPS detection system is independent and can work in unconstrained environments. The database used to measure the performance of the proposed IPS detection system is collected from 14 locations (different in size). The number of readings obtained from the collected database is 1199 readings consist of received signal strength value from five access points. The proposed IPS accuracy is 96.8595% and the mean error is about 1.2 meters are achieved when using, K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN), used the classifier to make a decision in the last stage of IPS. The K-NN classifier was built by FPGA Model using Xilinx system generator and implemented on Spartan-3A 700 A Kit

An experimental study on four types of coarse aggregate was conducted to produce lightweight concrete. These four types are namely; white limestone, red limestone, clay brick fragments, and pumice. Ordinary Portland cement was used for all examined mixes. Water to cement ratio (w/c) was modified according to the effect of coarse aggregate type on the workability of the resulted concrete for each mix. The reference concrete mix, which is normal concrete, water to cement ratio used was (0.5). The investigated characteristics for all concrete mixes were workability, compressive strength, dry density, absorption, and thermal conductivity. Results indicated that the aggregate type significantly affects most of the properties of lightweight concrete mixes such as workability, density, and thermal insulation for all tested types of concrete. All investigated specimens indicated improvement in terms of density, workability, and thermal conductivity when compared to the reference concrete mix. Yet, it was derived from the testing results that using pumice in lightweight concrete production is the optimum option among the other examined types. When compared to normal concrete, this type of lightweight concrete showed a 41% decrease in dry density, nearly 72.54% decrease in thermal conductivity, and about 12% increase in workability. However, it is vital to notice that due to the low compressive strength and the relatively high absorption capability for all the examined types of lightweight concrete, it is suggested to use these types of concrete for non

In this literature review, steel fibers reinforced self-compacting concrete properties in fresh and hardened states and factors affecting them were reviewed. In spite of the high workability of self- compacting concrete, using steel fibers depending on their length, aspect ratio, shapes and volume fraction can cause detrimental effects on it. Using steel fibers improves hardened properties especially flexural and post-peak performance, and this improvement depends on how fibers can distribute and orientate in the fresh state. The better hardened properties can be obtained when fibres aligned and orientated in the direction parallel to tensile stress

Erosion-Corrosion behavior of NiCrAlY coatings deposited on 446 stainless steel samples by flame thermal spraying was performed in this research. The hardness of uncoated and coated sample is measured, using HVS-1000 Digital Micro hardness Tester. The results of hardness show that the coated samples have higher hardness than uncoated samples. Microstructure and phase analysis of the coating layer was observed by using optical microscope, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and SEM respectively. Erosion –Corrosion test was performed in different period of time (6, 12, and 18 hr.) using the erosion-corrosion system. The result shows that because of uniform distribution and homogeneous of coating layer, weight loss was very low and approximately equal in all period of testing time

Iris recognition indicates the procedure of recognizing humans based on their both left and right iris patterns. Nowadays there is rapid progress in realizing an old dream of developing a user-friendly recognition system. Most of the new projects became a nightmare of security of the system. The prosperity of iris recognition aside from its attractive physical characteristics is led to developing an efficient feature extractor to attain the required objective of recognition. Fingerprint, facial, and iris biometric techniques are developed widely for identifying processing most boarded management points, access control, and military checkpoints. Hybridization between Daugman’s Integro Differential Operator (IDO) with edge base methods was realized through taking the advantages of the good qualities of both methods so as to enhance the precision and reduce the required time. The proposed hybrid recognition system is very reliable and accurate. UBIRIS version 1 dataset was utilized in the conducted simulation which indicates the distinctions of the hybrid method in providing good performance and accuracy with reducing the time consuming of iris localization by approximately 99% compared with IDO and edge based methods

Self-healing is the ability of a distribution system to automatically restore power after permanent faults. This paper investigates the impact of outages in the distribution network elements following the occurrence of a fault. The work aims to restore maximum available power to consumers in the affected areas, after the isolation of faulted parts, by optimal procedure of switching operations. In this work, CYMDIST software was used for the simulation and analyses of a distribution network in Samawa City. MATLAB 2017b/Simulink was used to implement self-healing, through the simulation of smart protection system that is controlled remotely by a central control unit. The results of implementing the proposed self-healing system on Samawa a New 11 kV network show a maximum power restoration with a minimum number of switching operations that have been achieved after fault isolation without violating constraints.

The purpose of this work is to investigate the possibility to recycled and reused of waste clay brick and waste plastic as constituents in the production of green Geopolymer concrete paving bricks. Powder of clay brick waste (WBP) was used as a partial replacement of Metakaolin (MK) in Geopolymer binder. Moreover, recycled clay brick waste aggregate (BA) and plastic waste aggregate (PL) were incorporated as coarse aggregate in mixtures of Metakaolin based Geopolymer concrete (MK-GPC) pavement bricks. Six types of mixtures were prepared and cast as pavement bricks with dimensions of 150×150×100 mm. All samples have been tested for compressive strength, water absorption and abrasion resistance at age of 28 days; and compared the results with the requirements of Iraqi specification No.1606-2006. The MK-GPC pavement bricks present a compressive strength of 31-47MPa, water absorption of 3.66% to5.32% and abrasion resistance with groove length between 21.78mm to 18.91 mm. These types of pavement bricks are classified as a medium to light capacity for weight loading, and it is possible to be used in wide range of paving applications, especially in aggressive wearing environment

Most psychologists believe that facial behavior through depression differs from facial behavior in the absence of depression, so facial behavior can be utilized as a dependable indicator for spotting depression. Visual depression diagnosis system (VDD) establishes dependents on expressions of the face that are expense-effective and movable. At this work, the VDD system is designed according to the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to extract features of the face. The key concept of the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) to explain the whole face behavior utilizing Action Units (AUs), every AU is linked to the motion of unique or maybe further face muscles. Six AUs have utilized as depression features; those action units are AUs 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 12. The datasets that employed to evaluate the performance of the proposed system are gathered for 125 participants (30 males, 95 females); many of them are among 17-60 years of age. At the final step of the current system, four kinds of classification techniques were applied separately; those classifiers algorithms are KNN, SVM, PCA, and LDA. The outcomes of the simulation indicate that the best outcomes are achieved utilizing the KNN and LDA classifiers, where the success rate is 85%. New classification methods in the VDD system are the key contributions of this research, gather real databases that can utilize to compute the performance of every other VDD system based on face emotions, and choose appropriate features of the face

Contemporary researches offer that most researchers have concentrated on either network reconfiguration or Distributed Generation (DG) units insertion for boosting the performance of the distribution system (DS). However, very few researchers have been studied optimum simultaneous distributed generation units insertion and distribution networks reconfiguration (OSDGIR). In this paper, the stochastic meta-heuristic technique belong to swarm intelligence algorithms is proposed. Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA) is inspired by the behavior of salps when navigating and foraging in the depth of the ocean. It utilized in solving OSDGIR. The objective function is to reduce power loss and voltage deviation in the Distribution System. The SSA is carried out on two different systems: IEEE 33-bus and local Iraqi radial (AL-Fuhood distribution network). Three cases are implemented; only reconfiguration, only DG units insertion, and OSDGIR. Promising results were obtained, where that power loss reduced by 93.1% and recovery voltage index enhanced by 5.4% for the test system and by 78.77% reduction in power loss and 8.2% improvement in recovery voltage for AL-Fuhood distribution network after applying OSDGIR using SSA. Finally, SSA proved effectiveness after an increase in test system loads by different levels in terms of reduced power loss and voltage deviation comparison with other methods