KUFA JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING

Open-ended steel pipe piles are widely used for foundations both on land and offshore because of low cost compare with other types of piles and it does not need a high effort for driving. During driving process of these piles into the soil, a soil column known as the soil plug is formed inside the pile. As the penetration continues, the frictional resistance between the inner pile shaft and the soil plug may be developed and in turn may prevent further soil intrusion. Depending on the relative movement between the pile and the soil plug, the pile is considered to be perfectly plugged, imperfectly plugged or unplugged.

The direction of bolts and its effect on the bearing capacity of double shear bolted connections has been examined in this paper. Sixteen specimens with up to four bolts have been tested under tensile load. These specimens have been sorted into two series (L, T) according to the bolt direction with applied loads. The experimental results have clearly indicated that the bearing capacity of connections had been considerably affected by changing the direction of bolts. With tear-out failure, All specimens of L series showed high bearing capacity and good ductility while block shear failure was the distinguishing feature of specimens of T series.

The aim of this paper  is to use an economical technology to built the liquid tank level control the liquid level using arudino UNO microcontroller as data acquisition with LabView software interfacing with ultrasonic sensor. The ultrasonic sensor is used for better accuracy and stability in different conditions. The front panel of labview is display the liquid level in the tank, and the status of motor, (ON or OFF) depending on the level of the liquid. The developed system is highly flexible and easy in controlling the liquid tank level. The mathematical model of the system, MATLAB simulation results have been achieved using software.

Water absorbent polymers (WAP) are new component in producing building materials. They provide internal curing which reduces autogenous cracking, eliminates autogenous shrinkage, mortar strength increased, enhance early age strength to withstand strain, improve the durability, introduce higher early age compressive strength, have higher performance and reduce the effect of insufficient external curing. This research used different percent of polymer balls to choose the percent that provides good development in compressive strength with time for both water and air curing. The water absorption polymer balls in this research have the ability to absorb water and after usage in concrete they spill out the water (internal curing) and shrink leaving voids of their own diameter before shrinking, thus leads to have internal curing with air voids to reduce the samples weight .The required quantity of water for the mixes reduced due to the addition of water from the absorption polymers

This research represents an experimental work to study the effect of temperature and curing time on the shear strength of adhesive joints by polyvinyl pyrrolidone PVP k30. In this work, shear strength of the adhesive made from dissolving 8 grams of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (k30) in 50 ml of ethanol alcohol high purity 99.9% was studied. This study focused on the effect of temperature and curing time under pressure of a fixed rate of 5 MPa. Therefore, the effect of five temperatures (200, 215, 225, 235 and 250) °C for different times (10, 20 and 30) minutes under the influence of the same pressure in all cases was studied by taking pictures of samples using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). It was inferred that the best resistance obtained at a temperature of 225 °C and time of 10 minutes, reaching overhead hanging to 1669 N, that there is an increase in the resistance of the adhesive with the increase in temperature and up to 225 °C, and then there is a decrease in the resistance and up to 250 °C at the time of 10 minutes.

(D2D) Device to Device communications is a new approach which proposes the separation of data planes and control, thus revolutionizing the traditional methods of communication. This approach is capable of increasing the capacity of the system significantly by providing three types of gain: proximity gain, hop gain and reuse gain, thus it is considered as an approach for the next generation of cellular networks. However, this type of communications can cause interference within the cellular network if not properly designed. To investigate the possible increase in the system capacity and reduce the effect of interference, a three-step algorithm was proposed and evaluated against three matrices: throughput gain, user capacity and access rate. Â The simulation results showed that as the D2D pair gets closer to each other the access rate increases and it can reach up to 98%. Also the throughput gain is directly effected by the distance between the D2D pair as it can reach up to 100% when placing the D2D at an area of 100 m2 and decreases gradually when increasing the distance, while placing the D2D pair at the edge of the cell will result in higher throughput gain as it can reach up to 130% at D2D to CU ratio equals to 1. Finally, the simulation results proved that it is possible to add an extra 60% of the already existed users when using the D2D communication within the cell.

In this study, laboratory experiments were conducted to evaluate the local scour around piers. Effects of many parameters on the maximum depth of scour and scour pattern around piers have been studied. The study considered the effects of upstream flow conditions, shape of pier, side slope angles, and type of soil. Three cross sections for pier (circular, elliptical and oblong) were used for different velocities and discharges to find the scour depth. Two types of uniform cohesionless soil with median grain sizes of d50=0.25 (bed soil of Al-Kufa river), and d50=0.66 were used as bed material. Four angles of pier side slope were selected 0° (prismatic pier) and 5°, 10° and 15° (non-prismatic piers). It has been observed that for circular cross section pier, the maximum reduction for the scour depth at the upstream of the pier with a side slope of 15° for the soil of d50=0.25mm was about 63.64% and for the soil of d50=0.66mm was about 54.55%. The reduction value was increased up to 80% and 75% for the same angle of pier side slope (Ɵ=15°) with oblong cross section for the soil of d50=0.25mm and d50=0.66mm respectively.

Concentration of 2 heavy metals; lead and mercury (Pb and Hg) in rivers and sediments soil were studied at different sites in Basrah. In this study, the effect of lead and mercury pollutions is studied together with determining their locations in the surface water and sediments at some areas in the South of Iraq (Basrah Governorate) particularly in the upper areas of the Arabian Gulf and in its northern part. These seven locations are: Qurnah, Madinah, Deir, Ashar, Abo Al–Khasib, Zubair and Um Qasir. The effect of the lead and mercury concentration on surface water and sediments analysed during 2014-2015 quarterly. Standardized method have been followed in analysing and comparison the surface water standards and sediment soil just to determine the percentage of lead and mercury pollution and assesse the values with standard pollution index.
Overall concentrations of Pb in the rivers ranged from 0.44-4.5 mg/l for surface water and soil sediment samples ranged from 0.0-7.36 mg/kg, and for Hg in the rivers from 0.0003-0.006 mg/l and soil sediment samples ranged from 0.0005-0.009 mg/kg. The concentration of heavy metals in the surface water and soil display the following decreasing trend: Pb>Hg. From this result, found that levels of heavy metal in surface water and soil near industrial areas give higher value compared with other locations in Basrah. The Pollution index revealed that Pb and Hg give low contamination. The highest concentrations values are recorded in Abo Al-Khasib (7.63 ppm) for the underground sediments, the lowest concentrations values are recorded in Madina for the depth sediments. The highest concentrations are recorded in Al-Deer (0.009 ppm) for the mercury pollution. Results of combined heavy metal concentration and heavy metal assessment indicate that industrial activities and traffic emission represent most important sources for Hg and Pb. The pollution Index were calculated for the two pollutants concentrations at the rivers and soils.

Hydrophobic membrane was fabricated using 15% of Polysulfone (PSF) as a polymer and 85% of dimethylformamide (DMF) as a solvent by phase inversion method. Distilled  water was used to test water flux and membrane permeation. Scanning electron microscope was used to study the structural changes on the membrane surface. Synthetic wastewater was used to test the efficiency of the hydrophobic membrane. Membrane efficiency examined by chemical oxygen demand (COD) percentage removal. The results showed that the pure water flux dropped from 85 L/m2.hr to 75 L/m2.hr. for the first run and from 86 L/m2.hr to 82 L/m2.hr for the second and third runs. For synthetic wastewater the flux dropped from 75 to 38 L/m2.hr, 75 L/m2.hr to 52 L/m2.hr and 75 to 45 L/m2.hr for the first, second and third runs, respectively. Removal efficiency of COD was 90% after 10 days, then it dropped down to 70 %, after cleaning the membrane, the removing increased up to 90% after 8 days.

As human communities grow larger and larger, the problem of waste management becomes one of urgent need that should be solved. Recycling and reusing of the waste materials is an efficient measure in management of the waste materials, which in addition to preventing the pollution, it conserves natural resources. Plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), constitutes a major fraction of household wastes. They are classified as non- biodegradable waste materials which are harmful for public health. So making use of PET in concrete production can be useful method to get rid of plastics solid waste damage on environment.
In this research, effect of using waste PET that was converted to granules in concrete has been studied experimentally. Different proportion of sand ranging from 1% to 8%, were replaced by granulated plastic. The resulting concrete was compared with normal concrete without any addition of granulated plastic. Then the specimen were tested at 7 and 28 days after curing, and some engineering properties of the mixtures including slump test, fresh and dry density, compressive, and slip strength have been investigated. Analyzing experimental results of this work indicated that optimum dosage of waste bottles replacement is 2% as fine aggregate- substitution aggregate to get maximum compressive strength and slip strength.