Journal of Engineering

In the recent years, some of the newly constructed asphalt concrete pavements in Baghdad as well as other cities across Iraq showed premature failures with consequential negative impact on both roadway safety and economy. Frequently, load associated mode of failure (rutting and fatigue) as well as, occasionally, moisture damage in some poorly drained sections are the main failure types found in those newly constructed road.
In this research, hydrated lime was introduced into asphalt concrete mixtures of wearing course in two methods. The first one was the addition of dry lime on dry aggregate and the second one was the addition of dry lime on saturated surface dry aggregate moisturized by 2.0 to 3.0 percent of water. For each type of addition, five different percentages of lime as a partial replacement of ordinary limestone mineral filler were used; these were; 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, and 3 percent by weight of aggregate besides a control mixture that did not contain lime. Marshall Mix design method was used and the performance properties of moisture damage, resilient modulus, permanent deformation and fatigue characteristics were evaluated using indirect tensile strength, uniaxial repeated loading and repeated flexural beam tests. Also, VESYS5W software was implemented to evaluate the pavements performance in terms of rut depth and fatigue area for a typical pavement structure. The main conclusion withdrawn from this research revealed that the use of 2.5 percent hydrated lime in dry addition method and wet addition method showed an improved fatigue and permanent deformation characteristics, lower moisture susceptibility and high resilient modulus.

Roller-Compacted Concrete is a no-slump concrete, with no reinforcing steel, no forms, no finishing and wet enough to support compaction by vibratory rollers. Due to the effect of curing on properties and durability of concrete, the main purpose of this research is to study the effect of various curing methods (air curing, 7 days water curing, and permanent water curing) and porcelanite (local material used as an Internal Curing agent) with different replacement percentages of fine aggregate (volumetric replacement) on some properties of Roller-Compacted Concrete and to explore the possibility of introducing practical Roller-Compacted Concrete for road pavement with minimum requirement of curing. Specimens were sawed from slabs of (380*380*100) mm for determination of Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) and Voids volume. Results show that using (5) % porcelanite improved the results of UPV and Voids volume of Roller-Compacted Concrete (with air curing) as compared with reference Roller-Compacted Concrete (with permanent water curing) by percentages ranging from(3.6 to 28.9)% and (-8 to -15.5)% respectively.

Test results of nine reinforced concrete one way slab with and without lacing reinforcement are reported. The tests were designed to study the effect of the lacing reinforcement on the flexural response of one way slabs. The test parameters were considered is the lacing steel ratios of (0, 0200.0, 0.0045, and 0.0065), flexural steel ratios of (0200.0, 0.0045, and 0.0065) and span to the effective depth ratios of (11, 13, and 16). Two specimens had no lacing reinforcement and the remaining seven specimens had the lacing reinforcement. Four point bending test were carried out, one of the specimens was tested under the static load applied gradually up to failure and the other specimens were tested under repeated load (5 cycles) loading-unloading to 80% of the ultimate load of the control specimen then loaded manually by the hydraulic jack up to failure. The specimens showed an improving in ultimate load capacity ranged between (54.54% - 100%) as a result of increasing the lacing steel ratio to (0.0065) and decreasing the span to effective depth ratio by 31.25% respectively with respect to the control specimen. Additionally the using of lacing steel reinforcement leads to reducing the residual deflection by about (57.24%) for the specimen with the largest lacing reinforcement compared with the control specimen (without lacing reinforcement).

Impact of buildings in Iraq and other countries on the environment is obvious; this problem began to take scientific and humanitarian dimensions in order to reduce and eliminate this problem. This impact can be seen through the energy, water and raw materials consumed for the establishment, operation and maintenance of these buildings, as well as the emissions of hazardous gases and generations of solid wastes.
This work was conducted to assess the current maintenance managerial practice for the governmental buildings to stand on the main obstacle and extrapolation of measures by means of interviews with experts to determine the effective factors and closed questionnaire to state the features and the need for new building maintenance management system which may assist for modeling new building maintenance management system which may help to reduce the deterioration levels of governmental buildings and the emission of hazardous gases and solid waste with cost efficient approach.

Iron is one of the abundant elements on earth that is an essential element for humans and may be a troublesome element in water supplies. In this research an AAN model was developed to predict iron concentrations in the location of Al- Wahda water treatment plant in Baghdad city by water quality assessment of iron concentrations at seven WTPs up stream Tigris River. SPSS software was used to build the ANN model. The input data were iron concentrations in the raw water for the period 2004-2011. The results indicated the best model predicted Iron concentrations at Al-Wahda WTP with a coefficient of determination 0.9142. The model used one hidden layer with two nodes and the testing error was 0.834. The ANN model could be used to predict future iron concentrations as the results from the verification of the ANN model for years 2012 and 2013 indicated good accuracy with a coefficient of determination R2 = 0.8965.

The aim of present work is to study the removal of phenol present in aqueous feed solution by the emulsion liquid membrane technique using kerosene as a diluent, sodium hydroxide as a stripping agent, and sorbitan monooleate (Span 80) as a surfactant. The parameters studied were: surfactant concentration, volume ratio of membrane phase to internal phase, and stirring speed. It was found that more than 98% of phenol can be removed at the conditions were surfactant concentration 2% (v/v), volume ratio of membrane phase to internal phase 5:1 and stirring speed 400 rpm. Maximum phenol extraction efficiency at 7 minutes of process time was observed. It was found that there was a good agreement between the standard kerosene and the upper layer that resulted after the demulsification of the remaining waste by applying centrifuge. Thus, it is possible to reuse this layer to prepare a new emulsion of the membrane phase.

Trickle irrigation is one of the most conservative irrigation techniques since it implies supplying water directly on the soil through emitters. Emitters dissipate energy of water at the end of the trickle irrigation system and provide water at emission points. The area wetted by an emitter depends upon the discharge of emitter, soil texture, initial soil water content, and soil permeability. The objectives of this research were to predict water distribution profiles through different soils for different conditions and quantify the distribution profiles in terms of main characteristics of soil and emitter. The wetting patterns were simulated at the end of each hour for a total time of application of 12 hrs, emitter discharges of 0.5, 0.75, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 lph, and five initial volumetric soil water contents. Simulation of water flow from a single surface emitter was carried out by using the numerically-based software Hydrus-2D/3D, Version 2.04. Two approaches were used in developing formulas to predict the domains of the wetted pattern. In order to verify the results obtained by implementing the software Hydrus-2D/3D a field experiment was conducted to measure the wetted diameter and compare measured values with simulated ones. The results of the research showed that the developed formulas to express the wetted diameter and depth in terms of emitter discharge, time of application, and initial soil water content are very general and can be used with very good accuracy.

The purpose of this paper is to gain a good understanding about wake region behind the car body due to the aerodynamic effect when the air flows over the road vehicle during its movement. The main goal of this study is to discuss the effect of the geometry on the wake region and the aerodynamic drag coefficient. Results will be achieved by using two different shapes, which are the fastback and the notchback. The study will be implemented by the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) by using STAR-CCM+® software for the simulation. This study investigates the steady turbulent flow using k-epsilon turbulence model. The results obtained from the simulation show that the region of the air separation behind the vehicle varies with the variation of the body design. The minimum drag coefficient can be achieved with notch-back since the separation of the air is less as compared with fastback end. These results are demonstrated by pressure distribution and velocity distribution which offer a good understanding of the flow behavior around the vehicle bodies.

Active vibration control is the main problem in different structure. Smart material like piezoelectric make a structure smart, adaptive and self-controlling so, they are effective in active vibration control. In this paper piezoelectric elements are used as sensors and actuators in flexible structures for sensing and actuating purposes, and to control the vibration of a cantilever beam by using sliding mode control. The sliding mode controller (SMC) is designed to attenuate the vibration induced by initial tip displacement which is equal to 15 mm. It is designed based on the balance realization reduction method where three states are selected for the reduced model from the 24th states that describe the cantilever beam according to the FEM. These states are most controllable and observable. The stability and control performance for the proposed SMC are proved using candidate Lyapunov function and the equivalent control concept. The control spillover, which is the sources of instability, is completely avoided as ensured within the control performance proof.
Numerical simulations are preformed to test the vibration attenuation ability of the proposed SMC. For 15 mm initial tip displacement, the piezoelectric actuator was found able to reduce the tip displacement to about (0.2) mm within (2.5 s), while it is equal to (3.5) mm with the open loop case. Moreover, the induced chattering in system response, due to the discontinuous control action, is removed by approximating the signum function by a continuous arctan function. As a result a smoother response are obtained with the same control performance as can be shown in the sliding variable, the control input voltage and the tip displacement plots.

The permeability determination in the reservoirs that are anisotropic and heterogeneous is a complicated problem due to the limited number of wells that contain core samples and well test data. This paper presents hydraulic flow units and flow zone indicator for predicting permeability of rock mass from core for Nahr-Umr reservoir/ Subba field. The Permeability measurement is better found in the laboratory work on the cored rock that taken from the formation. Nahr-Umr Formation is the main lower cretaceous sandstone reservoir in southern of Iraq. This formation is made up mainly of sandstone. Nahr-Umr formation was deposited on a gradually rising basin floor. The digenesis of Nahr-Umr sediments is very important due to its direct relation to the porosity and permeability.
In this study permeability has been predicated by using the flow zone indicator methods. This method attempts to identify the flow zone indicator in un-cored wells using log records. Once the flow zone indicator is calculated from the core data, a relationship between this FZI value and the well logs can be obtained.
Three relationships have been found for Nahr-Umr reservoir/Subba field by FZI method.
By plotting the permeability of the core versus the permeability that is predicted by FZI method the parameter R2 was found (0.905) which is very good for predict the permeability.

Many problems are facing the installation of piles group in laboratory testing and the errors in results of load and settlement are measured experimentally may be happened due to select inadequate method of installation of piles group. There are three main methods of installation in-flight, pre-jacking and hammering methods. In order to find the correction factor between these methods the laboratory model tests were conducted on small-scale models. The parameters studied were the methods of installation (in-flight, pre-jacking and hammering method), the number of piles and in sandy soil in loose state. The results of experimental work show that the increase in the number of piles value led to increase in load carrying capacity of piled raft and decrease in settlement value for three methods of installation. The response of increases load capacity for hammering method is the same value of pre-jacking method at the number of piles less than (N=2), while when the number of piles are beyond (N=3 to 9). The load capacity of hammering method is more than pre-jacking method and the correction factor of method of installation depend on the type of method of installation and the piles number. The increase in carrying capacity by hammering method is due to mobilize the dynamic soil structure interaction (soil-pile and pile-pile interaction) and the change in properties for surrounding soil for loose state of sand is more effective than static soil structure interaction mobilize by pre-jacking method. The correction factor of increase in load capacity and the correction factor of the percentage of settlement reduction for pre-jacking and hammering methods are compared with in-flight method of installation are changed with the number of piles and these values are increased with increasing the number of piles.

Numerous regions in the city of Baghdad experience the congestion and traffic problems. Due to the religious and economic significance, Al-Kadhimiya city (inside the metropolitan range of Baghdad) was chosen as study area. The data gathering stage was separated into two branches: the questionnaire method which is utilized to estimate the traffic volumes for the chosen roads and field data collection method which included video recording and manual counting for the volumes entering the selected signal intersections. The stage of analysis and evaluation for the seventeen urban roads, one highway, and three intersections was performed by HCS-2000 software.The presented work plots a system for assessing the level of service for roads network within the study region. Moreover, several improvement alternatives were proposed to overcome the traffic movement operations issues. This work shows that traffic facilities currently undergoing serious degradation causing a traffic jam. Therefore, the implementation of some remedial action is necessary to improve the level of service for these facilities.

The influence and hazard of fire flame are one of the most important parameters that affecting the durability and strength of structural members. This research studied the influence of fire flame on the behavior of reinforced concrete beams affected by repeated load. Nine self- compacted reinforced concrete beams were castellated, all have the same geometric layout (0.15x0.15x1.00) m, reinforcement details and compressive strength (50 Mpa).
To estimate the effect of fire flame disaster, four temperatures were adopted (200, 300, 400 and 500) oC and two method of cooling were used (graduated and sudden). In the first cooling method, graduated, the tested beams were leaved to cool in air while in the second method, sudden, water splash was used to reduce the temperature. Eight of the tested beams were divided in to four groups, each were burned to one of the adopted temperature for about half an hour and cooled by the adopted cooling methods (one by sudden cooling and the other by graduated cooling). After burning and cooling the beams were tested under the effect of repeated load (loading – unloading) for five cycle and then up to failure.
As a compared with the non- burned beam, the results indicated that the ultimate load capacity of the tested beams were reduced by (16, 23, 54 and 71)% after being burned to (200, 300, 400 and 500) oC , respectively, for a case of sudden cooling and by (8, 14, 36 and 64)% , respectively, for a case of graduated cooling. It was also found that the effect of sudden cooling was greater than that in a case of graduated cooling.
Regarding the failure mode, there was a different between the non-burred beam and the other ones even that all of them had the same geometric layout, compressive strength and reinforcement details. The failure mode for all burned beams was combined shear- flexure failure which was belong to the reduction in the compressive strength of the concrete due to the effect of the temperature rising , while the failure mode of the non-burned beam was flexure failure which was compatible with the preliminary design. It was also detected that the residual deflection proportion directly with the temperature, as the temperature increase to (200, 300, 400 and 500) oC the residual deflection compared with the non-burned beam increased by (32, 48, 326 and 358)% for a case of sudden cooling and by (13, 29, 303 and 332)% for a case of graduated cooling. Another effect was appear represented by the method of cooling, the results showed that the sudden cooling had more effect on the residual deflection than the graduated cooling by (15-6)% approximately. To vanish the residual deflection, numbers of cycle (loading-unloading) were required. It was found that this number increase as the temperature of burning increased and it’s also larger in a case of sudden cooling.