Al-Nahrain Journal for Engineering Sciences

This paper proposes the design and simulation
of Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Control using
MATLAB/Simulink to control the position of the
bucket of the backhoe excavator robot during
digging operations. In order to reach accurate
position responses with minimum overshoot and
minimum steady state error, Ant Colony
Optimization (ACO) algorithm is used to tune the
gains of the position and force parts for the forceposition controllers to obtain the best position
responses. The joints are actuated by the electrohydraulic actuators. The force-position control
incorporating two-Mamdani type-ProportionalDerivative-Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic
Controllers for position control and 3-
Proportional-Derivative Controllers for force
control. The nonlinearity and uncertainty in the
model that inherit in the electro hydraulic actuator
system are also studied. The nonlinearity includes
oil leakage and frictions in the joints. The friction
model is represented as a Modified LuGre friction
model in actuators. The excavator robot joints are
subjected to Coulomb, viscous and stribeck
friction. The uncertainty is represented by the
variation of bulk modulus. It can be shown from
the results that the ACO obtain the best gains of
the controllers which enhances the position
responses within the range of (19, 23 %)
compared with the controllers tuned manually.

In this study a numerical examples and
solutions has been obtained by using three system
of beam resting on elastic foundation (BOEF)
which was adopted previously by three different
engineering software. The first part of this paper
was related to verify the model of (BOEF) by
using ETABS2015 by make a comparison with
previous results by determination the maximum
settlements at the mid of span which show a good
agreement between ETABS2015 and other
results, where the total differences was vary from
2.13 % to 3.27%. . The second part of this study
was highlighted on the settlement of BOEF with
different parametric study (beam thickness, soil
subgrade reaction(KS) and the load location), case
(1) was selected for this goal. In this paper it is
found that the differential settlement along the
beam are decrease as increasing in the beam
stiffness in addition to possibility to obtain uplift
(positive settlement ) for some type of changing
in the load location specially for higher thick
beam . It was noticed that the settlement are
increased significantly as reducing in the (KS).
Finally this study show a different form of
deflection by combination two of parametric
study

Improving the ability of asphalt pavement to
survive the heavily repeated axle loads and
weathering challenges in Iraq has been the subject
of research for many years. The critical need for
such data in the design and construction of more
durable flexible pavement in bridge deck material
is paramount. One of new possible steps is the
epoxy asphalt concrete, which is classified as a
superior asphalt concrete in roads and greatly
imparts the level of design and construction. This
paper describes a study on 40-50 penetration
graded asphalt cement mixed with epoxy to
produce asphalt concrete mixtures. The tests
carried out are the Marshall properties, permanent
deformation, flexural fatigue cracking and
moisture damage. Epoxy asphalt mixes performed
better on resistance to fatigue and permanent
deformation. They also performed significantly
better on low-temperature properties and
resistance to moisture damage. The addition of 30
percent of epoxy (by weight of asphalt cement)
resulted in increase of Marshall stability by 39.8
percent, improve the tensile strength ratio by 22.9
percent, lowering both the rate of permanent
deformation by 26.8 percent and the fatigue
accumulation coefficient by 53.5 percent, in
comparison with control HMA. Based on the
above findings, it is recommended to use epoxy
asphalt mixes as an optimal material for paving
bridges deck in Iraq since it showed good
prospects for this application due to the v

The present work was designed on producing
nanohydroxyapatite layers using electrophoretic
deposition (EPD) on 316L stainless steel
substrate. The EPD coatings were prepared by
the deposition of hydroxyapatite (HA)-chitosan
nanocomposites on different substrate roughness
(polish surface, 220 grit SiC grind, and sand blast
surfaces). Depositions were performed using the
suspensions of HA nano particles (3 g/L) in the
mixture of alcohol and distilled water (ethanol, 5
vol. %water and containing 0.5 g/L of chitosan
dissolved in 1 vol.% acetic acid. Coatings were
achieved on the cathode at constant voltage, time
and temperature (90 V, 5 min and 40 °C
respectively); the pH value was performed and
fitted at 4. After deposition, the coated samples
were dried at room temperature for 24 h. The
surface topography of coatings was analyzed
using atomic force microscopy (AFM). SEM was
used to postulate both the surface and the cross
section morphology of the coatings. The
adhesion bonding between the deposited coatings
and substrate were measured using tape tester to
evaluate the adhesion bonding between the
coating and substrate. The results showed the
deposited coatings on sand blasted substrate has
less porosity compared with the polish surface
and 220 emery paper SiC grinding substrate
respectively. The coating on the sand blasted
substrate showed higher nanoroughness (122 nm),
better adhesion bonding (removal area 15%) and
higher thickness layer (12 µm) than that of the
polish substrate and 220 emery paper SiC
grinding substrate.

In the present work, the agricultural wastes
which are wheat bran and raw okra waste used as
adsorbent material for adsorption of cadmium
and copper ions from wastewater .The effect of
adsorption variable which include initial pH of
solution , agitation speed, agitation time, initial
concentration of cadmium and copper ions, and
amount of adsorbent material were investigated
in a batch process in order to obtain the
maximum ions removal from wastewater .The
results obtained from experimental investigation
show that the percentage removal of metal ions
increases with increasing pH and agitation speed
until a maximize value after that it decreased with
increasing pH and agitation speed. Also increases
with increasing amount of adsorbent material and
agitation time until a maximize value then reach a
constant value approximately , and decreasing
with increasing metal ions concentration .The
maximum removal percent of cadmium and
copper ions were 85.8% and 52.7 % respectively
which obtained at pH equal 5.0, agitation speed
150 revolution per minute, agitation time 105
minute , metal ion concentration 40mg /L ,and
adsorbent amount 1.5gm when using wheat bran
as adsorbent material ,while obtained the
maximum removal percent of cadmium and
copper ions were 81.7% and 47.8 % which
obtained at pH equal 6.0, and pH equal 5.0
respectively , agitation speed 150 revolution per
minute, agitation time 90 minute ,metal ion
concentration 40 mg /L ,and adsorbent amount
1.5gm when using okra waste as adsorbent
material. From above result the wheat bran and
okra waste was a best adsorbent material for
removal cadmium and copper ions from
wastewater but wheat bran slightly more effective
than okra waste.

In this paper, we suppose a method for
reducing the dispersion in the plastic optical fiber
(POF) Bragg gratings based on optimizing the
grating coupling-strength (ξ) using genetic
algorithms. The effects of average refractive
index (δn) and temperature (T) change on the
dispersion properties are investigated numerically.
It is found that the amplitude of the δn for low
dispersion performance needs to be reduced at the
cost of the design complexity of the POF Bragg
gratings. Owing to the unusually large and
negative thermo-optic coefficient of the POF, the
dispersion due to the wavelength shift induced by
the temperature variation will be reduced by
operating at high ξ value. Results showed that by
optimizing the ξ value a very large dispersion
reduction range has been obtained, from 1178 to
11.5 ps/nm at 30 mm grating length

In this paper, the robustness properties of
sliding mode control (SMC) which is designed to
produce a dynamic output feedback controller to
achieve robustness for trajectory tracking of the
nonlinear human swing leg system is presented.
The human swing leg represents the support of
human leg or the humanoid robot leg which is
usually modeled as a double pendulum. The thigh
and shank of a human leg will respect the
pendulum links, hip and knee will connect the
upper body to thigh and then shank respectively.
The total moments required to move the muscles
of thigh and shank are denoted by two external
(servomotors) torques applied at the hip and knee
joints. The mathematical model of the system is
developed. The results show that the proposed
controller can robustly stabilize the system and
achieve a desirable time response specification

One of the barriers that the developer
community face once turning to the newly, highly
distributable, schema agnostic and non-relational
database, called NoSQL, which is how to migrate
their legacy relational database (which is already
filled with a large amount of data) into this new
class of database management systems. This
paper presents a new approach for converting the
already filled relational database of any database
management system to any type of NoSQL
databases in the most optimized data structure
form without bothering of specifying the schema
of tables and relations between them. In addition,
a simplified software as a prototype based on this
algorithm is built to show the results of the output
for testing the validity of the algorithm

Unconfined compressive strength represents
an important parameter for soil investigation
report test results because the values of cohesion
and allowable bearing capacity can directly
obtained from the relevant test especially if the
clayey soil layers are found at sufficient enough
depth above water table level.
This paper deals with simple comparison
(based on (31) soil samples) between unconfined
compressive strength (qu) obtained by using the
pocket soil penetrometer tool and the unconfined
compressive strength using the conventional test
for the same sample penetrated by the pocket
penetrometer with different soil moisture
contents. Two triaxial specimens, sample type-1-
with dimensions 38 X 79mm and type-2- with
dimensions 33 X 79mm(diam. X height))
prepared in the libratory.
It was found that the results refers that soil
pocket penetrometer readings are closed enough
to the results that obtained from the unconfined
compression test result with certain conditions.
The average percentage of difference between
penetrometer readings and unconfined
compression test result values was (1.103%) for
sample type-1- and (1.53%) for sample type -2-.
The maximum moisture content for all tests
samples was (27.3%) and the minimum was
(14.7%) while the average moisture content
was(20.9%)

The present work deals with direct
diffusion bonding welding without interlayer of
austenitic stainless steel type AISI 304L with
Oxygen Free High Conductivity pure copper
(OFHC) in vacuum atmosphere (1.5 *10-5 mbr.).
The optimum bonding conditions are temperature
of 650 ◦
C, duration time of 45 min. and the
applied stress of 30 MPa, in order to secure a
tight contact between the mating surfaces. The
corrosion behavior of diffusion bonding joints in
3.5% Nacl is studied to evaluate the corrosion
resistance of welding joints by using
Potentiodynamic method. The observed
microstructure of corroded specimen of optimum
diffusion bonding joint shows that the corrosion
current density has low value as compared with
base materials used. During polarization, galvanic
coupling is observed between two materials used.
At passivity region, inverse polarity is occurred at
450mV. Therefore, passive stainless steel 304 L
behaves as cathode respective to pure copper, the
corrosion behavior of the diffusion bonding joint
was mostly by copper side. The corrosion results
indicate the presence of galvanic effect. The
corrosion current density of copper, stainless steel
304L and bond joints condition were (3.66
µA/cm2
, 1.62 µA/cm2 and 1.85µA/cm2
)
respectively. A SEM examination of corroded
diffusion bonding joint indicates that the galvanic
corrosion happened on copper side. The corrosion
rate of bonding joint conditions was 0.85 mpy,
which is less than 1%. This means that corrosion
resistance of bond joint is more than excellent

The Electrodeposition process has been used to
prepare Nickel-Tungsten alloys on low carbon steel
substrate by using ammonical citrate bath. The
influence of deposition condition by variation of
current density (0.04-0.2 A/cm2
) and solution
temperature (60-70 °C), on the microstructure was
studied. The optical microscope and the scanning
electron microscopy (SEM) were used to study the
morphology of the deposit while the energy
dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) was used to
approximate the composition, in addition to X-Ray
diffraction examination. The results show that the
current efficiency has the major influence on the
tungsten content in the alloys due to the formation
of ternary complex which reflected into the
properties of the deposit.

This paper presents a simple strut and tie
model to calculate the shear strength of reinforced
concrete deep beams. The proposed model
assumes that the shear strength is the algebraic
sum of three strength components: concrete
diagonal strut, vertical stirrups, and horizontal
web reinforcements. The contribution of each
strength components was calibrated with the test
results of 305 deep beams compiled from
previous studies with wide range of geometrical
and material properties. The predictions of the
proposed model were compared with those of the
current codes of practice (ACI-318-14 and
ASHTOO 2014) and those of existing model in
the literature. Comparisons revealed that the
proposed model provided better predictions than
other models. The mean of predicted strength to
test of the proposed model, the ACI-318-14
model, the ASHTOO 2014 model were 0.98,
0.79, and 0.75, respectively. The corresponding
standard deviations were 0.17, 0.28, and 0.49,
respectively.

This study investigated numerically and
experimentally fluid flow and heat transfer in the
desktop PC. Three patterns of the positions of air
inlet and outlet were tested to find the best one for
cooling. The computer components in the present
study are CPU, finned heat sink, power supply,
motherboard, CD, HDD and fans. Three
components which were generate heat are CPU,
motherboard and power supply and there were
two openings for air inlet and two for air outlet.
The air inlet velocities were 1.2, 1.8, 2.4 m/s with
constant CPU fan velocity. The studied
parameters were the changed of inlet air velocity,
powers of CPU, motherboard and PSU and the
positions of inlet air. The numerical results
obtained are found in a good agreement with the
experimental results. The experimental results
show that the maximum temperature was 81℃ at
16.5 W and 1.2 m/s. Numerical results showed
that the CPU temperature reaches 89.6 ℃ at 18.5
W and 1.2 m/s. From the results, it was found
that; the temperatures of the main components
(PSU and motherboard) affected little by CPU
power and vice versa, the finned heat sink has
higher cooling efficiency and the pattern 1 was
the best pattern for CPU cooling

Incremental forming is a flexible sheet metal
forming process which performed by utilizes
simple tools to locally deform a sheet of metal
along a predefined tool path without using of dies.
One limitations of single point incremental
forming (SPIF) process is the error occur between
the CAD design and the product profile. This
work presents the single point incremental
forming process for produced pyramid geometry
and studied the effect of tool geometry, tool
diameter, wall angle, and spindle speed on the
dimensional accuracy. Three geometries of
forming tools were used in experimental work:
ball end tool, hemispherical tool, and flat with
round corner tool. The sheet material used was
pure Aluminum (Al 1050) with thickness of (0.9
mm). The experimental tests in this work were
done on the computer numerical control (CNC)
vertical milling machine. The products
dimensions were measured by utilized the
dimensional sensor measuring instrument. The
extracted results from the single point incremental
forming process indicated the best acceptance
between the CAD profile and product profile was
found with the ball end tool and diameter of (10
mm), wall angle (50°) and the rotational speed of
the tool was (800 rpm).

This study was devoted in investigating the
optimum geometric parameters for underactuated
linkage three phalanges robotic finger. New
kinematic and kinetic equations of grasping were
derived in this research taking into account the
angle for the ternary solid links of the four-bar
linkages. To obtain the target of optimization, a
gradient descent method was used which consists
of three stages to find the optimal geometric
parameters with high accuracy. Five criteria were
selected to find the optimal solution by using
multi objectives function algorithm, these are
percentage of the grasping stability, the grasp
forces, squeezing force, Mimic function for
grasping task, and transmission angle for grasping
operation. Gradient descent method starts by
detecting the optimal geometric parameters for
each criterion and choosing the best geometric
parameters from the five criteria functions. At the
optimum solution, the underactuated robotic
finger prototype was built from hard Polylactic
acid (PLA) plastic using rapid prototyping and
was tested performance by grasping objects.
Finally, the results have been shown that the
robotic finger adapts to the wanted configurations.

The corrosion behavior of martensite phase in
Cu-Al-Be shape memory alloy with aging at
150℃ at time 2,4and 6 hour and quenching ice
water with salt, water at room temperature and oil
media study by open circuit potential, tafal
polarization and cyclic polarization. The
microstructure of martensite study by optical
microscope and x-ray diffraction(XRD) and
transformation temperature was determined by
Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC).the
result show aging martensite at 150℃ at 2 and 4
hour have high open circuit potential, low
corrosion current density , high corrosion
potential and pitting potential than martensite
without aging.

alvanic corrosion of Nickel-Chrome alloy (NiCr alloy) and Copper (Cu) coupled in 5% sulfuric
acid solution was investigated. The effects of
agitation velocity, temperature, and time on the
galvanic corrosion current and the weight loss of
both metals in both free corrosion and galvanic
corrosion were investigated. The trends of open
circuit potential (OCP) of each metal and galvanic
potential (Eg) of the couple were also determined.
The results showed that Cu was cathodic relative to
Ni-Cr alloy in galvanic couple and the corrosion
potential of the couple (Ni- Cr alloy /Cu) was
between the values of the two single components
because the OCP of copper shifted to positive with
the increase in velocity. Under stagnant conditions
initially the galvanic current was more negative
then shifted to the positive with time. The corrosion
of Ni-Cr alloy decreased with time because the
passivation layer was formed on the surface. Under
flow conditions, the galvanic current sharply
shifted to the negative direction (increase galvanic
current from Ni-Cr alloy (anode) to Cu (cathode)
during the first few minutes

Improving fatigue life is one of the most
important issues in mechanical design; an
investigation has been conducted on Al 2017-T4.
Group of samples have been machined and
prepared, some of specimens have been treated
using the ultrasonic impact treatment (UIT) with
one line peening. The fatigue tests were carried
out under constant and variable amplitude (R=-1)
at ambient temperature, in order to find out the
fatigue life S-N curve and strength after
treatment. It has been found significant increasing
in strength after it was treated by (UIT). The
fatigue strength is improved after treatment up to
4.16% at 107 cycles, enhancement are present
with 24% and 18.78% for the cumulative fatigue
lives low-high and high–low respectively. These
results also show a strong tendency of increasing
of fatigue strength after application of (UIT) with
increase in mechanical properties of material
used.

This work covers mixing of unsaturated
polyester (un- polyester) with starch powders as
polymer blends and study the effects of irradiation
by UV-acceleration on mechanical properties of
its. The unsaturated polyester was mixing by
starch powders at particle size less than (45 µm)
at selected weight fraction of (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5
and 3%). These properties involve ultimate tensile
strength, modulus of elasticity, elongation
percentage, flexural modulus, flexural strength,
fracture toughness, impact strength and hardness.
The results illustrate decrease in the ultimate
tensile strength at and elongation percentage,
while increasing modulus of elasticity, with
increasing the weight ratio of starch powder to 3
% weight fraction, whereas the maximum value
of hardness and flexural, impact properties
happened at 1 % weight fraction for types of
polymer blends.

The free vibration analysis of rotating multilayered cylindrical shell is investigated based on
the first order shear deformation theory (FSDT) of
shell. Cylindrical shell consists of three layers;
outer and inner layers are isotropic material and
the middle layer is a functionally graded material
(FGM). The material properties for middle layer
are assumed to be graded in the thickness
direction. Based on Hamilton’s principle, the
equilibrium equations and the equations of motion
are derived and then solved by using the
differential quadrature method (DQM) as a
numerical tool. MATLAB software was adopted
for programming the equations and the related
boundary condition. The effect of (FGM) layer
thickness, angular speed, index power law,
circumferential wave number on the natural
frequency of the clamped-clamped rotating
cylindrical shell were examined. The numerical
results showed that a reasonable agreement
between the present study and analytical data
available in the literature

Abstract
In this work chopped carbon fibers are used to
improve tensile strength of Porcelanite
lightweight aggregate concrete. Silica fume was
added in order to improve the mixes compressive
strength. Silica fume increase water demand and
using fibers reduce workability, to improve
workability and decrease water demand high rang
super plasticizers are used. The results showed
that compressive strength, splitting tensile
strength, modulus of elasticity of carbon fibers
Porcelanite lightweight aggregate concrete
increase with increasing of carbon fiber up to 2%
compared to reference Porcelanite lightweight
aggregate concrete without fibers. The
percentages of increasing were 14.40%, 68.00%,
and 10.66% for compressive strength, splitting
tensile strength, and modulus of elasticity,
respectively. Flexural Strength continues in
increase with increase of fibers. The dry unite
weight of mixes with chopped fiber decrease with
increase of fiber percentage. Besides the chopped
carbon improved the ductility of Porcelanite
lightweight aggregate concrete and that clear from
stress-strain relationship.