Journal of Engineering

The Asphalt cement is produced as a by-product from the oil industry; the asphalt must practice further processing to control the percentage of its different ingredients so that it will be suitable for paving process. The objective of this work is to prepare different types of modified Asphalt cement using locally available additives, and subjecting the prepared modified Asphalt cement to testing procedures usually adopted for Asphalt cement, and compare the test results with the specification requirements for the modified Asphalt cement to fulfill the paving process requirements. An attempt was made to prepare the modified Asphalt cement for pavement construction in the laboratory by digesting each of the two penetration grade Asphalt cement (40-50 and 60-70) with sulfur, fly ash, silica fumes. Three different percentages of each of the above mentioned additives have been tried using continuous stirring and heating at 150 ºC for 30 minutes.


The prepared modified Asphalt specimens were subjected to physical properties determination; the penetration, softening point, ductility before and after laboratory aging. It was concluded that all percentage of additives has reduced the penetration value of asphalt cement, an exception to that could be noticed when using asphalt cement (40-50) and when adding sulfur. Softening point was increased with the addition of all percentage of additives except that with 7% sulfur by wt. of asphalt cement (40-50) it decreased by 8%.


After aging in general, the penetration decreased by about 37% for control specimens and the softening point increased by about 8% for control specimens.


For asphalt cement 40-50 after aging, Sulfur has the least impact on ductility since it reduces it by 20%. Silica fumes have moderate effect on ductility when it reduces it by 35%, while fly ash shows the highest impact of 36%.


For asphalt cement 60-70 after aging, sulfur was able to almost retain its ductility, while fly ash shows moderate reduction in ductility within a range of 20-36% and silica fumes shows high impact on ductility in the range of 30-50%.

In this study, a three-dimensional finite element analysis using ANSYS 12.1 program had been employed to simulate simply supported reinforced concrete (RC) T-beams with multiple web circular openings subjected to an impact loading. Three design parameters were considered, including size, location and number of the web openings. Twelve models of simply supported RC T-beams were subjected to one point of transient (impact) loading at mid span. Beams were simulated and analysis results were obtained in terms of mid span deflection-time histories and compared with the results of the solid reference one. The maximum mid span deflection is an important index for evaluating damage levels of the RC beams subjected to impact loading. Three experimental T-beams were considered in this study for calibration of the program. All models had an identical cross-section and span similar to those of the experimental beams. The diameter of the openings of the experimental beams was 110 mm. Three other diameters were varied (50, 80 and 130) mm. The location of the face of the opening with respect to the location of impact loading was investigated (the face of the opening at distance varied 0d, 0.5d, 1d and 1.5d from the location of loading, where d is the effective depth) and the number of web openings was varied (2,4 and 6) openings. All modeled beams subjected to dropping mass of 24.5 kg with height of drop of 250 mm (as for the experimental beams). Results obtained from this study showed that the behavior of beams with circular openings of diameter equal to 22% the web depth has a small effect on the response of the RC T-beams. On the other hand, introducing circular openings with a diameter equal to 35% and 57% of the web depth (80 and 130 mm) increases the maximum mid span deflection by 23% and 43% respectively. Results also showed that, openings with a distance greater than or equal to 1.5 d from the location of impact loading have no effect on the deflection of the RC beams.

The thermal and electrical performance of different designs of air based hybrid photovoltaic/thermal collectors is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The circulating air is used to cool PV panels and to collect the absorbed energy to improve their performance. Four different collectors have been designed, manufactured and instrumented namely; double PV panels without cooling (model I), single duct double pass collector (model II), double duct single pass (model III), and single duct single pass (model IV) . Each collector consists of: channel duct, glass cover, axial fan to circulate air and two PV panel in parallel connection. The temperature of the upper and lower surfaces of PV panels, air temperature, air flow rate, air pressure drop, wind speed, solar radiation and ambient temperature were measured. The power produced by solar cells is measured also. A theoretical model has been developed for the collector model IV based on energy balance principle. The prediction of the thermal and hydraulic performance was obtained for the fourth model of PV/T collector by developing a Matlab computer program to solve the numerical model. The experimental results show that the combined efficiency of model III is higher than that of models II and IV. The pressure drop of model III is less than that of models I and IV, by (43.67% and 49%). The average percentage error between the theoretical and experimental results was 9.67%.

When employing shorter (sub picosecond) laser pulses, in ablation kinetics the features appear which can no longer be described in the context of the conventional thermal model. Meanwhile, the ablation of materials with the aid of ultra-short (sub picosecond) laser pulses is applied for micromechanical processing. Physical mechanisms and theoretical models of laser ablation are discussed. Typical associated phenomena are qualitatively regarded and methods for studying them quantitatively are considered. Calculated results relevant to ablation kinetics for a number of substances are presented and compared with experimental data. Ultra-short laser ablation with two-temperature model was quantitatively investigated. A two-temperature model for the description of transition phenomena in a non-equilibrium electron gas and a lattice under picosecond laser irradiation is proposed. Some characteristics are hard to measure directly at all. That is why the analysis of physical mechanisms involved in the ablation process by ultra-short laser pulses has to be performed on the basis of a theoretical consideration of `indirect' experimental data. For Copper and Nickel metal targets, the two-temperature model calculations explain that the temperature of the electron subsystem increased suddenly and approached a peak value at the end of laser pulse. In addition, the temperature profile of lattice temperature subsystem evolution slowly, and still increasing after the end of laser pulse. A good agreement prevails when a comparison between the present results and published results.

Energy use is second to staffing in building operating costs. Sustainable technology in the energy sector is based on utilizing renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind, glazing systems, insulation. Other areas of focus include heating, ventilation and air conditioning; novel materials and construction methods; improved sensors and monitoring systems; and advanced simulation tools that can help building designers make more energy efficient choices. The objective of this research is studying the effect of insulations on energy consumption of buildings in Iraq and identifying the amount of energy savings from application the insulations in buildings. HAP (Hourly Analysis Program) is used to calculate the thermal loads and the amount of energy needed. It is concluded that the use of the thermal insulation in the roof, walls, floors, and double glazing system for windows in building effectively reduces the energy required for air conditioning.

The problem of soil contamination is increased recently due to increasing the industrial wastes such as petroleum hydrocarbon, organic solvents, and heavy metals as well as maximizing the use of agricultural fertilizers. During this period, wide development of data collection methods, using remote sensing techniques in the field of soil and environment applications appear and state the suitable technique for remediation. This study deals with the application of remote sensing techniques in geoenvironmental engineering through a field spectral reflectance measurements at nine spots of naturally hydrocarbons contaminated soil in Al-Daura Refinery Company site which is located to the south west of Baghdad using radiometer device to get standard curves of wavelengths and analyzing the satellite imagery of the site to get the spectral reflectance curves using GIS technique and EARDAS software package which help in producing thematic maps for the spatial distribution and concentration of contaminants. The comparison of results showed a good correlation between the spectral reflectance from field measurements and the spectral reflectance obtained from analyzing the satellite imagery. The study also improves a method to save cost, time, efforts and staff.

In this work, the effect of ceramic coating on performance, exhaust gas temperature and gases emissions of diesel engine operated on diesel fuel and biodiesel blends was investigated. A conventional four stroke, direct injected, single cylinder, diesel engine was tested at constant speed and at different load conditions using diesel fuel and biodiesel blends. The inlet and exhaust valves, the head of piston and cylinder head of the engine were coated by ceramic materials. Ceramic layers were made of (210-240) μm of Al2O3 and (30-60) μm of 4NiCr5Al as a bond coat for inlet and exhaust valves and (350-400) μm of YSZ and (50-100) μm of 4NiCr5Al as a bond coat for head of piston and (280-320) μm of Sic and (40-80) μm of 4NiCr5Al as a bond coat for cylinder head. The coating technique adapted in this work is the flame spray method. The engine with valves, piston and cylinder head ceramic coated research was tested for the same operation conditions of the engine (without coating). The results showed that a reduction in brake specific fuel consumption of 19.29%, 15.91%, 14.65% and 7.06%, an increase in brake thermal efficiency of 23.68%, 19.77%, 16.51% and 6.32%, the increase in exhaust gas temperature of 9.01%, 7.22%, 15.7% and 11.42%, the reduction of CO emission of 18.57%, 20%, 20.5% and 27.77%, the reduction of HC emission of 28.97%, 43.9%, 38.88% and 36.41% for diesel, B5,B10 and B100 respectively.

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is an important physiological signal for cardiac disease diagnosis. With the increasing use of modern electrocardiogram monitoring devices that generate vast amount of data requiring huge storage capacity. In order to decrease storage costs or make ECG signals suitable and ready for transmission through common communication channels, the ECG data
volume must be reduced. So an effective data compression method is required. This paper presents an efficient technique for the compression of ECG signals. In this technique, different transforms have been used to compress the ECG signals. At first, a 1-D ECG data was segmented and aligned to a 2-D data array, then 2-D mixed transform was implemented to compress the ECG data in the 2-
D form. The compression algorithms were implemented and tested using multiwavelet, wavelet and slantlet transforms to form the proposed method based on mixed transforms. Then vector quantization technique was employed to extract the mixed transform coefficients. Some selected records from MIT/BIH arrhythmia database were tested contrastively and the performance of the
proposed methods was analyzed and evaluated using MATLAB package. Simulation results showed that the proposed methods gave a high compression ratio (CR) for the ECG signals comparing with other available methods. For example, the compression of one record (record 100) yielded CR of 24.4 associated with percent root mean square difference (PRD) of 2.56% was achieved.

This study aims to investigate the effect of changing skins material on the strength of sandwich plates with circular hole when subjected to mechanical loads. Theoretical, numerical and experimental analyses are done for sandwich plates with hole and with two face sheet materials. Theoretical analysis is performed by using sandwich plate theory which depends on the first order shear deformation theory for plates subjected to tension and bending separately. Finite element method was used to analyse numerically all cases by ANSYS program.


The sandwich plates were investigated experimentally under bending and buckling load separately. The relationship between stresses and the ratio of hole diameter to plate width (d/b) are built, by studying the effect of hole size on strength of sandwich plates. The maximum stress were developed at the hole region in sandwich plates clarified the dropped in their strength. So, the experimental maximum stress was found by means of multiplying the experimental nominal stress obtained from Stress-strain curve by the stress concentration factor.


All results which obtained, theoretically, numerically and experimentally are compared to find that the hole weaken the strength of sandwich plates because of the stress concentration and that weakness is depending on the hole size and the face sheets materials.

This research presents the kinetics of the saponification reaction using mixed fats of olein and stearin [in the ratio (3:1)] with NaOH solution. In this reaction, excess solution of NaOH was used to ensure the reaction being irreversible. Three parameters were varied to show their effects on the reaction rate .They are: percentage excess of NaOH solution (10 % - 100 %) , temperature (100-150)oC , and stirring speed (400-1100) rpm. It was noticed that increasing the percentage excess of NaOH solution enhances the rate of reaction while increasing temperature decreases the reaction rate since it is exothermic reaction. Increasing stirring speed also improves the reaction rate because it is mass transfer controlled .Calculations of the activation energy and the frequency factor was also performed.


A new mathematical model for calculation of the reaction – rate constant was derived. It is shown that a good approximation was obtained between the experimental and calculated values of the reaction – rate constant k .

Single phase capacitor-run induction motors (IMs) are used in various applications such as home appliances and machine tools; they are affected by the sags or swells and any fault that can lead to disturb the supply and make it produce rms voltage below or above the rated motor voltage, which is 220V. A control system is designed to regulate the output voltage of the converter irrespective to the variation of the load and within a specific range of supply voltage variation. The steady-state equivalent circuit of the Buck-Boost chopper type AC voltage regulator, as well as the analysis of this circuit are presented in this paper. Switching device for the regulator is an IGBT Module. The proposed chopper uses pulse width modulation (PWM) control technique to chop the input voltage into segments in order to guarantee rated rms voltage supplied to the load, which is capacitor-run induction motor. Proportional integral (PI) controller is used to obtain very small steady state error, stable and fast dynamic response, and robustness against variations in the line voltage. The complete system is simulated using software package, and the results are obtained to verify the proposed control method.

Numerical study of separation control on symmetrical airfoil, four digits (NACA


0012) by using rotating cylinder with double steps on its upper surface based on the computation of Reynolds-average Navier- Stokes equations was carried out to find the optimum configuration of unconventional airfoil for best aerodynamics performance. A model based on collocated Finite Volume Method was developed to solve the governing equations on a body-fitted coordinate system. A revised (k-w) model was proposed as a known turbulence model. This model was adapted to simulate the control effects of rotating cylinder. Numerical solutions were performed for flow around unconventional airfoil with cylinder to main stream velocities ratio in the range of 1 to 4 and for various positions of the steps on the airfoil from the leading edge, 0.1c, 0.2c, 0.3c, 0.4c, 0.5c for the first step and 0.5c, 0.6c, 0.7c, 0.8c for the second step with constant step depth and length of 0.03c and 0.125c respectively. Reynolds number of 700,000 which was based on the cord length (c), with angle of attacks 0, 5, 8, 10, 12, 15 degrees was considered for the assessment of the unconventional airfoil performance. The numerical investigation showed that the optimum configuration for the unconventional airfoil was found to be at velocities ratio (U/U∞=4) with the steps positions at 0.5c and 0.8c for best airfoil performance.