Journal of Engineering

The need for participants’ performance assessments in academia and industry has been a growing concern. It has attendance, among other metrics, is a key factor in engendering a holistic approach to decision-making. For institutions or organizations where managing people is an important yet challenging task, attendance tracking and management could be employed to improve this seemingly time-consuming process while keeping an accurate attendance record. The manual/quasi-analog approach of taking attendance in some institutions could be unreliable and inefficient, leading to inaccurate computation of attendance rates and data loss. This work, therefore, proposes a system that employs embedded technology and a biometric/ web-based application to enhance attendance management. The hardware encompasses the integration of an ESP8266 NodeMCU and the biometric AS608 fingerprint sensor interfaced with the database for which the front-end and back-end integration was through the React framework. The system uses a web application that displays the attendance results and scheduled course data from its database, provides feedback to lecturers on which student missed classes and calculates a student’s average attendance for the semester. By implementing this system, the accuracy of student attendance is expected to experience an appreciable improvement, eliminate proxy signing, provide a more secure alternative for attendance recording, curtail tardiness to classes, and ultimately improve student productivity on execution.

Efficient operations and output of outstanding quality distinguish superior manufacturing sectors. The manufacturing process production of bending sheet metal is a form of fabrication in the industry of manufacture in which the plate is bent using punches and dies to the angle of the work design. Product quality is influenced by plate material selection, which includes thickness, type, dimensions, and material. Because no prior research has concentrated on this methodology, this research aims to determine V-bending capacity limits utilizing the press bending method. The inquiry employed finite element analysis (FEA), along with Solidworks was the tool of choice to develop drawings of design and simulations. The ASTM E290 standard guides this study. The software in this package may combine CAD (Computer-Aided Design) and CAE (Computer-Aided Engineering) without requiring extra design applications. This study tested SPCC and SPHC plate materials with five thickness variations. The findings embrace the number of failure risks associated with press bending exhibited on the von Mises stress diagram, which is directly proportional to showing the thickness limit of each material type throughout the bending process. The study's findings lay the groundwork for improving manufacturing quality by lowering the number of faulty goods produced by trial and error. Because the maximum allowable die width is 12 mm, the thickness limit of the press bending process is 2 mm. However, due to the greater intensity of the SPCC material, it has a reduced defect rate compared to SPHC material.

Article received: 08 /08/2023

Despite recent attempts to improve safety in the construction sector, this sector is considered dangerous and unsafe. Iraq is one of the emerging nations that suffers from a lack of construction safety management. In 2018, the construction sector in Iraq was responsible for 38% of all industrial accidents. Creating a safety program minimizes this problem by making safety an intrinsic part of construction projects. As a result, this article aims to identify the crucial safety factors that affect the safety performance in Iraqi construction projects. After conducting a critical literature review of the related literature, a list of 35 sub-factors classified into nine categories of main factors was chosen to rank each factor according to significance. A total of 100 sets of questionnaires were delivered to respondents in various construction projects. It was discovered that the \"Management Practices\" factor was considered the most key safety performance factor among all the main factors. The results also showed that among all the sub-factors, \"Personal protective equipment,\" \"First aid and medical care,\" and \"Contractor\'s site safety program\" were considered the most influential sub-factors. Furthermore, \"drug and alcohol tests for workers\" are the least important safety sub-factors. On the other hand, five sub-factors were excluded as being unimportant and not affecting safety performance.

This research utilized natural asphalt (NA) deposits from sulfur springs in western Iraq. Laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of an asphalt mixture incorporating NA and verify its suitability for local pavement applications. To achieve this, a combination of two types of NA, namely soft SNA and hard HNA, was blended to create a binder known as Type HSNA. The resulting HSNA exhibited a penetration grade that adhered to Iraqi specifications. Various percentages of NA (20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%) were added to petroleum asphalt. The findings revealed enhanced physical properties of HSNA, which also satisfied the requirements outlined in the Iraqi specifications for asphalt cement.


Consequently, HSNA can serve as an asphalt binder to produce asphalt mixtures for flexible paving construction. Notably, HSNA mixtures exhibited greater Marshall stability and stiffness index when compared to traditional mixtures. The results from indirect tensile strength (ITS) and tensile strength ratio (TSR) tests indicated that the 80NA mixture displayed the highest ITS values and a TSR of 81.36%, surpassing the TSR of the mixture incorporating petroleum asphalt by 0.57%.

Universities are among spaces where it's important to ensure thermal comfort in indoor spaces, improving the occupants' well-being and productivity. The problem of the research was to study appropriate glazing systems for the spaces of the University of Baghdad because glazing systems are one of the most important elements of the indoor environments, and it has a major impact on the thermal performance of buildings. Glass is one of the most seasoned materials that are most utilized in the design. Since it is a diaphanous material, it allows sunlight to enter the building, increasing the space's temperature, cooling loads, and energy consumption in summer. The research followed the experimental method by studying and testing(conventional, advanced, and photovoltaic glazing)by Revit and Onyx Solar analysis in the Architectural Department classes to find the appropriate type of glazing in the spaces of hot, dry areas. The results showed that advanced glazing is the best by reducing the cooling loads andincreasingthermal performance quality. Photovoltaic glazing showed its efficiency in filling part of the electrical energy needs within the spaces of the Architectural department.

Integrated project delivery is collaboratively applying the skills and knowledge of all participants to optimize the project's results, increase owner value, decrease waste, and maximize efficiency during the design, fabrication, and construction processes. This study aims to determine IPD criteria positively impacting value engineering. To do this, the study has considered 9 main criteria according to PMP classification that already covers all project phases and 183 sub-criteria obtained from theoretical study and expert interviews (fieldwork). In this study, the SPSS (V26) program was used to analyze the main criteria and sub-criteria priorities from top to bottom according to their values of the Relative Importance Index. The results of this study have clarified the) Project stockholders Management ( as the most significant main criteria with RII (74%) and (Stakeholders, work team, customers, suppliers, and project managers' support improve the probability of project implementation on the ground) as the most significant sub-criteria with (RII) (91%)

Gender classification is a critical task in computer vision. This task holds substantial importance in various domains, including surveillance, marketing, and human-computer interaction. In this work, the face gender classification model proposed consists of three main phases: the first phase involves applying the Viola-Jones algorithm to detect facial images, which includes four steps: 1) Haar-like features, 2) Integral Image, 3) Adaboost Learning, and 4) Cascade Classifier. In the second phase, four pre-processing operations are employed, namely cropping, resizing, converting the image from(RGB) Color Space to (LAB) color space, and enhancing the images using (HE, CLAHE). The final phase involves utilizing Transfer learning, a powerful deep learning technique that can be effectively employed to Face gender classification using the Alex-Net architecture. The performance evaluation of the proposed gender classification model encompassed three datasets: the LFW dataset, which contained 1,200 facial images. The Faces94 dataset contained 400 facial images, and the family dataset had 400. The Transfer Learning with the Alex-Net model achieved an accuracy of 98.77% on the LFW dataset.


Furthermore, the model attained an accuracy rate of 100% on both the Faces94 and family datasets. Thus, the proposed system emphasizes the significance of employing pre-processing techniques and transfer learning with the Alex-Net model. These methods contribute to more accurate results in gender classification. Where, the results achieved by applying image contrast enhancement techniques, such as HE and CLAHE, were compared. CLAHE achieved the best facial classification accuracy compared to HE.

Modified asphalt is considered one of the alternatives to address the problems of deficiencies in traditional asphalt concrete, as modified asphalt addresses many of the issues that appear on the pavement layers in asphalt concrete, resulting from heavy traffic and vehicles loaded with loads that exceed the design loads and the large fluctuations in the daily and seasonal temperatures of asphalt concrete. The current study examined the role of polyphosphoric acid (PPA) as a modified material for virgin asphalt when it was added in different proportions (1%, 2%, 3%, 4%) of the asphalt weight. The experimental program includes the volumetric characteristics associated with the Marshall test, the physical properties, and the FTIR spectroscopy examination of virgin asphalt and polyphosphoric acid (PPA) modified asphalt. This study showed that mixtures with modified asphalt using polyphosphoric acid (PPA) by 3% achieved the typical Marshall properties at the optimal asphalt content of 4.8%, recording a 10% decrease in the optimum asphalt content for the mixtures made with virgin (unmodified) asphalt, whose proportion was 4.9% is the optimum asphalt content. PPA is available in the local markets and is considered cheaper than polymers. It is also regarded as economical as it reduces the optimum content of asphalt.

This experimental study focuses on scouring in box culvert inlets under steady-state conditions and at different percentages of blockage ranging from 0% to 65%, and also looks at the hydraulics of water in the culvert. The investigation shows that the blockage of the culverts has influenced the scouring pattern at the blocked culverts' entrances. Ten experiments were carried out at the laboratory to see how blockage impacts the scouring pattern upstream of a box culvert during steady flow. Both partially blocked and unblocked cases were implemented in this study. The experimental tests were done until the equilibrium scour occurred, which took about 3.5 hours of water flow to reach equilibrium conditions. The results revealed that the blockage will increase the water depth at the inlet by about 30%–50%, which may affect the safety of structures or cause culvert failure. In addition, the results discovered that the maximum scour depth, which inversely correlated with the obstruction upstream of the box culvert, increased with increasing discharge.

Using fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) could effectively improve the strength and endurance of reinforced concrete (RC) constructions. This study evaluated the flexural behavior of one-way concrete slabs with openings reinforced with glass fiber-reinforced polymers (GFRP) bars. It strengthened using carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets around the openings. The experimental program of this study is adopted by casting and testing four one-way concrete slabs with dimensions of (150*750*2650) mm. These slabs are divided into two groups based on whether they were strengthened or un-strengthened. For each group, two different openings (either one rectangular or two square) measured 250*500 mm and 250*250 mm, respectively, were fabricated within the pure flexural zone of the specimens. The experimental results indicate that using CFRP strips increases the maximum load capacity by around 29% for the slab with one rectangular opening and 21% for the slab with two square openings compared to the un-strengthened slabs. On the other hand, the deflection at a service load is decreased by about 35% and 37% for the slabs mentioned above, respectively.

The improvement in Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation when the received signals impinge on Active-Parasitic Antenna (APA) arrays will be studied in this work. An APA array consists of several active antennas; others are parasitic antennas. The responses to the received signals are measured at the loaded terminals of the active element. The terminals of the parasitic element are shorted. The effect of the received signals on the parasites, i.e., the induced short-circuit current, is mutually coupled to the active elements. Eigen decomposition of the covariance matrix of the measurements of the APA array generates a third subspace in addition to the traditional signal and noise subspaces generated by the all-active antenna receiving array. This additional subspace, the parasitic subspace, is accompanied by very small eigenvalues (approaching zero). Hence, a complete orthogonality between this subspace and the column space of the steering matrix of the array can be obtained. As a result, better resolution in estimating the DOA can be achieved. Several simulations in conjunction with the MUSIC algorithm, which have been conducted in this work, depict that the APA array outperforms the all-active antenna array as a direction finder, regardless of the size of the array, the number of active elements, or the number of measurement snapshots. Furthermore, super-resolution DOA estimation can be achieved when a subset of the parasitic subspace is used as if the measurement were noiseless. Also, the APA array contributes to very small RMSE values over a wide range of S/N of the received signals.

One of the most essential components of asphalt pavements is the filler. It serves two purposes. First, this fine-grained material (diameter less than 0.075 mm) improves the cohesiveness of aggregate with bitumen. Second, produce a dense mixture by filling the voids between the particles. Aluminum dross (AD), which is a by-product of aluminum re-melting, is formed all over the world. This material causes damage to humans and the environment; stockpiling AD in landfills is not the best solution. This research studies the possibility of replacing part of the conventional filler with aluminum dross. Three percent of dross was used, 10, 20, and 30% by filler weight. The MarshallMix design method was adopted to obtain the optimum asphalt content for the selected aggregate gradation. After that, the mixture was used to evaluate the moisture damage for controlandimproved mixtures. The compressive strength and tensile strength tests were used to estimate the moisture damage to the asphalt mixtures. It was observed that replacing a part of the limestone dust filler with aluminum dross would improve moisture damage resistance. This was approved since the maximum increase in tensile strength ratio (TSR)was found to be 13.42% at 20% of AD, and the maximum increase in the index of retained strength (IRS)was found to be 8.73% at the same AD percent.