Engineering and Technology Journal

Nylon 6 / (0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5) wt. % NaCl solutions were prepared for electrospinning technique. The electrical conductivity of polymeric solution increases directly with NaCl concentration from 3.8 (mS/ cm) for pure nylon solution to 12.7 mS/cm at nylon 6/ 2.5 wt. % NaCl, and slight decreasing the viscosity and the surface tension of the solution . Increasing the polymeric solution conductivity cause more electrical charges carried by the electrospinning jet. Prepared films morphology tested by SEM and the average fibers diameters measured for each concentration. In this research, it was proved that the nanofibers film shows decreasing the average diameter by increasing NaCl concentration

Laser peening (LP) is a surface treatment technology for metallic materials. LP has shown a great improvement in the fatigue strength and life. A study of fatigue under constant rotating bending stress programs has been conducted on 7049 AL alloy at a stress ratio (R=-1) and room temperature using laser peening technique .Four groups of tests have been designed. The first group (15 specimens) tested under unpeened condition. The second group (15 specimens) tested under air laser peening (ALP) while the third group (15 specimens) tested under water laser peening (WLP). The last group was designed to examine the fatigue behavior under black paint laser peening (BPLP). All the above groups were designed to establish the S-N curve. The results show no effect of laser peening LP at higher stresses (above 300 MPa), while this effect appears clearly at low stresses (200 and 250 MPa). The results also indicated that the WLP is more effective than the ALP. The fatigue life improvement factor (FLIF%) was 39, 18.9 and 4.65 under WLP for 200 MPa, 250 MPa and 300 MPa stress levels respectively. while a clear effect was observed for black paint laser peening (BPLP),it was found that the FLIF % was 93.25 at 300 MPa , 103.24 at 250 MPa and 116 at 200 MPa compared to unpeened data

In this work, the Al-Si/Mg2Si in-situ composites were fabricated using casting technique, followed by repetitive equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) to refine the microstructure. (ECAP) as sever deformation was carried out through a die made of high chromium carbon steel at250ºC for four passes of deformation. Microstructures investigation was conducted using an optical microscope, electron back scattering, EDS, elemental mapping and electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD). After sever deformation , the results showed fragmentation of eutectic Mg2Si and eutectic Si , reduction of the primary Mg2Si particle size , and fragmentation of the dendrite of Mg2Si particles to smaller ones. On other hand, the columnar α-Al phase changed to nearly equiaxed grains after severe deformation. The results of (EBSD)revealed that the grain size of the in site composite matrix showed decrease to less than5μm after four passes ,and the grains after deformation have more orientation of homogenization, and there are fine grains less than1μmin size surrounded by high angled boundaries

A total of fourteen beams, 100×150 mm in cross-section were tested in the laboratory over an effective span of 2000 mm. Two of them were used as reference beams. Twelve fiber reinforced concrete beams were provided with externally bonded CFRP laminates at the soffit of the beam. The variables considered included number of CFRP layers, yield strength of steel reinforcement (fy) and steel reinforcement ratio (). All the beams were tested until failure. The test results showed that the ultimate load carrying capacity increased by 56% as average by increasing of the ratio of steel reinforcement from (0.0127 to 0.0324). The deflection ductility index DDI values averaged (1.80) and (1.75) for one-layer strengthened beams and two-layer ones, respectively. The corresponding energy ductility index EDI values averaged (1.75) and (1.73), respectively. The DDI and EDI for the control beams were 4.61 and 6.24, respectively. With the exception of the control beams, all of the beams exhibited poor ductility. Failures in all strengthened beams were accompanied by the release of large amounts of energy (known as elastic energy) relative to inelastic energy. Therefore, a reasonable factor of safety should be used in the design of FRP strengthened reinforced concrete members

Expansive soils are generally found in arid and semiarid regions. These soils undergo volumetric changes upon wetting and drying, thereby causing ground heave and settlement problems. This characteristic causes considerable construction defects if not adequately taken care of. Solving the unsaturated soil problems needs the assessment of suction variation in time and space as a response to the variation of environmental factors such as rainfall and evaporation.
To investigate the effect of the changes of the soil suction on the volume changes, expansion index, swelling pressure, shear strength and the coefficient of permeability, small scale experiments were conducted using pure bentonite and the bentonite mixed with sand in proportion of: 30%, 40% and 50% at different initial water contents and dry unit weights was chosen from the compaction curves. The study shows that the swelling-potential, swelling-pressure, the soil-suction, the soil-strength and the coefficient of permeability are affected by the initial-conditions (water-content and dry-unit weight), where all these parameters except the permeability-coefficient marginally decrease with the increase in soil-water content, while the coefficient-of permeability increases with increasing the water-content.

In this present study, Pulsed Laser Ablation in Liquid (PLAL) experiment setup for synthesis colloidal solution of silver-NPs. The laser system was used in this study, a (Nd-YAG) nanosecond laser system with optimal pulse duration of 10 ns and repetition rate 1-6 Hz. The Laser wavelengths were: 1064 nm, 532 nm and 355 nm. The spot size of the laser beam on the surface of metal plate was varied in the range of 1.4-1.5 mm in diameter by changing the distance between the focusing lens and the metal plate. The ablation process was typically done for 1 minute. The average particle size has been characterized by TEM, SEM and UV Vis investigation. From morphology results for colloidal silver nanoparticles images were spherical shape and average size of the particles is 55 60 nm at wavelength (λ =1064 nm), average size of the particles is 35-40 nm at (λ =532 nm) and average size of the particles is 28 nm at (λ =355 nm).

This paper presents an experimental study to investigate the change of plug length for pipe pile under different state of saturation and investigate the effect of number of pipe piles on plug length. The influence of matric suction (i.e., capillary stresses) in unsaturated zone is typically considered on the plug length of pipe piles.
The experimental work consist of testing 20 models of pipe piles, these models divided into 4 different configuration of pipe piles; single pipe pile, group of double pipe piles, group of triple pipe piles and group of six pipe piles. All these models are loaded and tested under three different states; dry condition, fully saturated condition (i.e., matric suction equals to 0 kPa) and unsaturated conditions with three different matric suction values (6, 8 and 10 kPa), which are achieved by predetermined lowering of water table. The relationship between matric suction and depth of ground water table was measured in suction profile set by using three Tensiometers (IRROMETER). The soil, water characteristic curve (SWCC) was estimated by applying fitting methods through the program (Soil Vision).
The results of experimental work demonstrate that the values of plug length decreased with increase in value of matric suction for the same configuration of pipe piles, and the values of plug length decreased with increase in number of pipe piles

Cantor fractal geometry and its variants are found attractive for microwave antenna designers seeking for compact size multiband antennas. This paper presents the design of a new microstrip fed printed monopole antenna for use in dual-band wireless applications. The radiating element of the monopole antenna is in the form of Cantor fractal geometry of the second iteration as applied on rectangular patch. The monopole radiating element has been etched on a substrate with relative permittivity of 4.4 and 1.6 mm thickness and is fed with a 50 ohm microstrip line. A reduced ground plane has been etched on the reverse side of the substrate. Modeling and performance evaluation of the proposed antenna have been carried out using the commercially available EM simulator, IE3D. Simulation results reveal that the proposed antenna offers dual-band resonant behavior with –10 dB impedance bandwidths and radiation characteristics suitable for almost most of the recently available services in the 1-6 GHz range. A parametric study has been carried out to
explor e the effect the aspect ratio of the proposed antenna radiating element on its performance. The
study reveals that the radiating element aspect ratio has a considerable effect on the coupling of the
two resonant bands. Besides the simple design, the antenna offers reasonable radiation characteristics. Simulated–10 dB impedance bandwidths for the lower and the upper resonant bands are (2.30–2.84 GHz) and (5.56–6.01 GHz) respectively. This makes the proposed antenna suitable to cover numbers of operating bands of the wireless communication systems (2.4 GHz-Bluetooth, 2.4 GHz ISM, 2.5/5.8 GHz-WLAN, 5.8 GHz-ITS).

This paper proposes multi-neural networks structure for solving the inverse kinematic problem of the robot manipulator end-effector position. It offers an opportunity to reduce substantially the error of the solution. This error frequently arises when only one neural network is used. In this structure, each neural network is a multilayer perceptron (MLP) trained by the back propagation algorithm. The proposed approach verified by including it within an overall Cartesian trajectory planning system. This structure could produce the robot joint variables that are not included in the training data with an average error ±0.06º, and ±0.15º, ±0.05º for joint angles , and respectively. From the simulation results, the proposed structure of multi-neural network has superior performance for modeling the complex robot kinematics

The main aim of the study is to demonstrate the qualitative risk analysis method by using failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) in the construction industry in Iraq .The questionnaires considered as an important method of gathering field information about the risk management in the Iraqi construction industry .The numbers of the questionnaire forms which was distributed between the private and state sectors were 75 forms which consider the sample size. A total numbers of 69 forms from the distributed forms were returned with a returning percentage of (92%). Results show that 21.15% of the the risk factors are categorized as a Low risks. Also, a percentage of 44.23% shows that gathered risks factors of the construction projects are categorized as Moderate risks while a percentage of 21.15% are classified as major risk factors .Also, a percentage of 13.46% are classified as significant risk factors .Extreme risk factors are found to be only 0% from the data obtained by analyzing the questionnaire results.

This research aims to study the effect of RSW parameters on the sheer force of the spot welded for two materials {AISI 304L and AA 6061-T6} with (0.5 and 0.7 mm) thickness. Three values for each welding parameters (welding current, electrode force, squeeze time and welding time) are to be used. The effect of those parameters has been analyzed by using design of experiments (DOE) in order to determine and reduce the number of the tested specimens.
The experimental tests have been done that are; shear, micro hardness tests and microstructure examination. It was found that the maximum shear force in welding of similar material AISI 304L is (F = 4.78 KN for t = 0.7 mm), while in the joint of dissimilar material (AA 6061-T6 with AISI 304L), the maximum shear force is (F = 1.42 KN for t = 0.7 mm). These values have been optimized to reach (F =5.13 KN & F =1.54 KN) respectively by using DOE. The minimum shear force was (F = 0.07 KN in t = 0.5 mm).
It was found that, increasing the welding current and sheet thickness gave an increase in the shear force, but at the same time the reduction in shear force has occurred during the increasing in electrode force, squeeze time and welding time. From micro hardness tests, it was found that the maximum value of hardness was at the center of nugget zone (NZ) and it reduces slightly until reaching constant values away from nugget zone

In the present study, composites were prepared by Hand lay-up molding. The composites constituents were epoxy resin as the matrix, 3% volume fractions of Glass Fibers (G.F) as re enforcement and 2%, 4%, 6% volume fraction of micro powder (Aluminum Oxide Al2O3, Silicon Oxide SiO2 and Titanium Oxide TiO2) as filler. Studied the, hardness test, flexural strength, density, water absorption measurements and tests were conducted to reveal their values for each type of composite material. The results showed that the non – reinforced epoxy have lower properties than nano composites material. Measured density results had show an incremental increase with volume fraction increase and water absorption, hardness, and flexural strength had show an incremental increase with volume fraction increase and with smaller particle size

To expand and to achieve a market share, companies must have a clear policy to achieve their goals, and that cannot be done without measuring their performance from different perspectives and views because the financial perspective only cannot give a right view.
Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is one of the performance measurement systems, and it is suitable measurement system that determines the performance, by the integration of all the financial and nonfinancial measures.
The BSC was implementing in “Baghdad Soft Drinks Company” with its four perspectives for three years (2011 to 2013). The conclusions of BSC showed that for financial perspective the company has a clear growth according to the financial perspective measure's percentages, for customer perspective: the irregular percentage values of customer perspective measures indicate that the company needs to be more interactive with their customer requirements. But for internal business process perspective the company almost committed to the planned production, and has a good utilization and efficiency percentages, and for learning and Growth perspective the percentages explain the company does not commit to the budget-costs as planned.

High bit rates optical communication systems pose the challenge of their tolerance to linear and nonlinear fiber impairments.The techniques processing of linear and nonlinear impairments involve which balance between linear and nonlinear impairments. Optical Solitons are the special breed of wave packets which can propagate over long distance without changing in their shape and velocity. Effective transmission distance could be increased by proper circuit designing and balancing Group velocity dispersion (GVD) with its counterpart Self phase modulation (SPM. The comparison between the results of single channel soliton source and CW laser 33% RZ_DPSK modulatiom formats shows that the soliton source has the better performance than the CW. Soliton source which has a Q factor of 98.4 at distance of 60Km, while the CW laser with 33% RZ-DPSK has 70.01 at distance at 60Km, when power lunch is (10) dBm. On other hand the BER is (-11.2) when SNR (5) dB at 60km, while CW laser with 33% RZ-DPSK has BER (-20) at SNR (5) dB at distance 60Km.The soliton system at multichannel (8x40Gb/s) with 50 GHz channel spacing has BER (-15) while 33%RZ-DPSK has BER (-9) at SNR (6.87) dB at 60Km distance

Laser shock processing technique was performed on red brass alloy type C83300 specimens for the purpose of study its effect on the mechanical properties such as micro-hardness and surface roughness. LSP experimental setup system involved Q-switched Nd:YaG laser of wavelength of 1064nm and 10 ns laser pulse . Double distilled deionized water (DDDW) is used as the transparent confining layer. The effects of the LSP parameters as laser pulse energy, number of laser pulses and thickness of confinement layer on the surface micro-hardness, and surface roughness were investigated. The experimental results show that, the surface roughness and micro-hardness values increased when the laser parameters (mentioned above) have been increased and the maximum value of micro-hardness generated near the surface due to LSP. The optimum thickness of DDDW layer was 4mm. After this thickness (4mm) ,the results of microhardness and surface roughness are reduced due to the absorption of laser pulse energy by the confinement layer

The main aim of this work is to produce hexagonal cup drawn from flat sheet (blank Ø80) and effect of wall corner radii of die on drawing process. The dimension of diagonal and side hexagonal cup are (41,36mm) and (36 mm) respectively, and (0.7mm) thickness made from low carbon steel (1006–AISI), has been produced. A commercially available finite element program code (ANSYS11.0), was used to perform the numerical simulation of drawing operation. Two types of wall corner radii of die (
=0.7, 4 mm) with constant punch profile radius equal to (
=4) mm and die profile radius equal to (
=8 mm( were used to investigate the effect of die corner radius on punch force, variation of cup wall thickness and the strain distribution over the cup wall. The numerical results of this model were compared with experimental results and the results show that, the greatest thinning occurs when used wall corner radius of die equal to (
= 0.7mm) due to great stretching of the metal over the corner radius. The best strain and thickness distribution over all zones in produced cup obtained when using wall corner radius of die is equal to
= 4 mm).

This research presents microstructural characterization of the Co Ni Al shape memory alloy with focus on understanding the significant properties as well as the relation between the physical properties and microstructure of this alloy. Melting technique were used to prepare Co Al Ni shape memory alloys, where scanning electron microscope, light optical microscopy and x-ray diffraction investigations showed that structure of this alloy is polycrystalline double phase (β and γ) structure, and it found that the grain size and phase fraction of β phase was ranged from 9 to 16 μm and (50-80) % respectively. It was found that by increasing the heat treatment time the phase fraction of hard β phase increased and phase fraction of ductile γ phase decreased, and consequently the grain size and the hardness of β phase increased. Differential Scanning Calorimeter results showed that transformation temperature decreased by increasing Al/Co, that Co content affected on transformation temperature. Tafel Curves showed the corrosion behavior in simulation body fluid, where the corrosion rate was ranged from 0.13 to 0.47 mpy and increased with each of increasing the annealing time and Co content, and from cyclic curves, the pitting corrosion possibility is not observed due to the formation of a protective layer that formed by Al element. According to these properties and behavior, it was found that this alloy could be a good choice to be used for biomedical applications, especially in surgical, catheter tools and medical instruments

The present work deals with the mathematical modeling and analysis of machining response such as the surface roughness in the milling of aluminum alloy (AA6061). There are several machining variables like rotational speed, depth of cut and feed rate used to find the quality of surface quality.
Simulated Annealing Algorithm (SAA) is utilized to develop an effective mathematical model to predict optimum level. In simulated annealing algorithm (SAA), an exponential cooling program depending on Newtonian cooling is applied and experimentation is done on choosing the number of iterations for each step. The SAA is used to predict the cutting variables (rotational speed, feed rate and depth of cut) on product quality in dry milling of Al 6061 based on Taguchi„s orthogonal array of L9 and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were apply to determination the important factors that effect on surface quality.
At last, tests were conducted to confirm by making a comparison between the experimental results and the model developed. The experimental results have shown the performance of machining in the milling can be improved effectively using this algorithm

The recycling asphalt paving creates a cycle for the use of materials that improve the use of natural resources, as it reduces the use of new materials from the aggregate and asphalt, which can be a rare commodity in some areas. The increasing in the use of milling machines nowadays led to the production of large amount of wasted materials, recycling is consider an important solution that can take them into consideration when creating a network of new roads or rehabilitation of damaged networks. This process has many advantages. It is reduce the environmental pollution and preserves natural resources as well as economic benefit. The main objective of this study is to evaluate recycling material through Marshall test and knowing their validity and can be used in hot mix asphalt in the construction and maintenance of road networks in Iraq, with finding the best ratio of mixing with the new material. Where it was planned to use old materials from one of the streets of Mosul city, while the new material consisting of asphalt Grade (50-60) are included within the aggregate of binder course and cement as a filler. Optimum value of the asphalt content was found by Marshall method through the preparation of a mixture of new material and use this value in the preparation of mixtures of recycled where it was the use of five percentages of recycled materials, namely, (0%, 20%, 30%, 50% and 100%). These mixtures were exposed to : the Marshall test to find their characteristics. The results show that recycling rates up to 50% of recycled materials were perform well within specification limits for use, while 30% was considered as the ideal ratio showed better performance in all characterstics. Showed 30% increase in Marshall stability of the mix for the base mix to more than 41% and other characteristics are within the specification limits.

One of the points that must be taken into account during the planning of the appropriate resource management and especially construction materials management is Transportation problem. the research goal is to find a solution for this problem based on the scientific basis of project management by using modern techniques that work to facilitate and accelerate the pace of work. The Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and the analytic tool (Solver) of MS Excel were used in the research to put a solution for the transportation problem.
The application of the proposed methodology steps in the research has contributed to find the distribution process for construction materials, (gravel, sand, reinforcement bars and cement) to the 10 project which were taken to be samples for the study that achieves the optimal transportation cost.