Journal of Engineering

Phase change materials are known to be good in use in latent heat thermal energy storage (LHTES) systems, but one of their drawbacks is the slow melting and solidification processes. So that, in this work, enhancing heat transfer of phase change material is studied experimentally for in charging and discharging processes by the addition of high thermal conductive material such as copper in the form of brushes, which were added in both PCM and air sides. The additions of brushes have been carried out with different void fractions (97%, 94% and 90%) and the effect of four different air velocities was tested. The results indicate that the minimum brush void fraction gave the maximum heat transfer in PCM and reduced the time for melting for (ϵ=90%) up to 4.49 times as compare with the case of no brush. It can be seen that the addition of brushes in air side helped to reduce the solidification time and increase the convection heat transfer coefficient as the brush void fraction decreased. Also the minimum velocity (v = 1 m/s) gave maximum outlet temperature.

Buildings such as malls, offices, airports and hospitals nowadays have become very complicated which increases the need for a solution that helps people to find their locations in these buildings. GPS or cell signals are commonly used for positioning in an outdoor environment and are not accurate in indoor environment. Smartphones are becoming a common presence in our daily life, also the existing infrastructure, the Wi-Fi access points, which is commonly available in most buildings, has motivated this work to build hybrid mechanism that combines the APs fingerprint together with smartphone barometer sensor readings, to accurately determine the user position inside building floor relative to well-known landmarks in the floor. Also the proposed system offers a monitoring activity which lets the administrator to watch and locate certain user inside the building.The system is tested in a big building indoor environment and achieved positioning accuracies of approximately 2.1 meters.

As asphalt concrete wearing course (ACWC) is the top layer in the pavement structure, the material should be able to sustain stresses caused by direct traffic loading. The objective of this study is to evaluate the influence of aggregate gradation and mineral filler type on Marshall Properties. A detailed laboratory study is carried out by preparing asphalt mixtures specimens using locally available materials including asphalt binder (40-50) penetration grade, two types of aggregate gradation representing SCRB and ROAD NOTE 31 specifications and two types of mineral filler including limestone dust and coal fly ash. Four types of mixtures were prepared and tested. The first type included SCRB specification and limestone dust, the second type included SCRB specification and coal fly ash, the third types included ROAD NOTE 31 specification and limestone dust and the fourth type included ROAD NOTE 31 specification and coal fly ash. The optimum asphalt content of each type of mixtures was determined using Marshall Method of mix design. 60 specimen were prepared and tested with dimension of 10.16 cm in diameter and 6.35 cm in height. Results of this study indicated that aggregate gradation and filler type have a significant effect on optimum asphalt content and Marshall Properties. From the experimental data, it was observed that the value of Marshall Stability is comparatively higher when using fly ash as filler as compared to limestone dust.

Sewer network is one of the important utilities in modern cities which discharge the sewage from all facilities. The increase of population numbers consequently leads to the increase in water consumption; hence waste water generation. Sewer networks work is very expensive and need to be designed accurately. Thus construction effective sewer network system with minimum cost is very necessary to handle waste water generation.


In this study trunk mains networks design was applied which connect the pump stations together by underground pipes for too long distances. They usually have large diameters with varying depths which consequently need excavations and gathering from pump stations and transport the sewage to final waste water treatment plant. This situation urges to decrease the cost to minimum with efficient design of its performance. The aim of this research is minimizing the cost of all sewer components of trunk mains which are lengths, diameters, and volume of excavation with maintaining its performance.


In this research, the utilization of GIS (Geographical Information System) software and VBA (Visual Basic for Application) which is integrated with GIS was used to implement the MST (Minimum Spanning Tree) algorithm to create a visual basic computer program that was used to find the minimum total lengths of the trunk mains in a sewer network.


This method was applied on selected areas in Al-Mansour municipality where there is an existing sewer system containing trunk mains and pump stations. Total lengths of the existing trunk mains are calculated and later, the proposed method was implemented to find the minimum total lengths, with a difference in total lengths of (12601 m).


The new network used to design a proposed sewer system using the computer program SewerGemsV8i, which can be integrated with GIS. New pipes diameters and slopes were calculated by supplying the necessary information that is needed by the computer program.


New sewer system was designed which gave more reliable and economical aspects than the existing one. These results clearly show that when comparing the costs.

Autonomous systems are these systems which power themselves from the available ambient energies in addition to their duties. In the next few years, autonomous systems will pervade society and they will find their ways into different applications related to health, security, comfort and entertainment. Piezoelectric harvesters are possible energy converters which can be used to convert the available ambient vibration energy into electrical energy. In this contribution, an energy harvesting cantilever array with magnetic tuning including three piezoelectric bimorphs is investigated theoretically and experimentally. Other than harvester designs proposed before, this array is easy to manufacture and insensitive to manufacturing tolerances because its optimum operation frequency can be re-adjusted after fabrication. In this array, each bimorph has its own rectification circuit in order to prevent the interference of its operation with the others. Two electrical connections are investigated: the series connection and the parallel connection. These connections are tested under several cases such as moderate and high excitation level and large and small connected load. The theoretical and experimental works show that each connection has characteristics and can be used to enhance the harvester output power and/or its frequency bandwidth. These characteristics are highly related to the excitation level and the connected load together.

Mixed convection heat transfer in a vertical concentric annulus packed with a metallic porous media and heated at a constant heat flux is experimentally investigated with water as the working fluid. A series of experiments have been carried out with a Rayleigh number range from Ra=122418.92 to 372579.31 and Reynolds number that based on the particles diameter of Red=14.62, 19.48 and 24.36. Under steady state condition, the measured data were collected and analyzed. Results show that the wall surface temperatures are affected by the imposed heat flux variation and Reynolds number variation. The variation of the local heat transfer coefficient and the mean Nusselt number are presented and analyzed. An empirical correlation has been proposed for computing the Nusselt number for the geometry and boundary conditions under investigation.

Reduction of noise and vibration in spur gear experimentally by using asymmetric teeth profiles with tip relief was presented. Both of classical (symmetric) and asymmetric (with and without tip relief) spur gears are used in this work. Gear test rig was constructed to achieve torsional vibration measuring, and two modified cutters are designed and manufactured to achieve tooth profile modifications. First to cut asymmetric gear tooth with pressure angles (14.5o/25 o) without tip relief for loaded and unloaded tooth sides respectively, and second to cut asymmetric gear tooth with pressure angles (14.5o/25 o) for loaded and unloaded tooth sides respectively with tip relief to achieve best dynamic performance. Dynamic load factor, transmission error and noise level are carried out in this work. Final results showed improvement in dynamic load factor and noise level for asymmetric gear (with and without tip relief) compared with classical spur gear .

This work involves the calculation of the cooling load in Iraqi building constructions taking in account the effect of the convective heat transfer inside the buildings. ASHRAE assumptions are compared with the Fisher and Pedersen model of estimation of internal convective heat transfer coefficient when the high rate of ventilation from ceiling inlet configuration is used. Theoretical calculation of cooling load using the Radiant Time Series Method (RTSM) is implemented on the actual tested spaces. Also the theoretical calculated cooling loads are experimentally compared by measuring the cooling load in these tested spaces. The comparison appears that using the modified Fisher and Pedersen model when large ventilation rate is used; modify the results accuracy to about 10%.

In this work , an effective procedure of Box-Behnken based-ANN (Artificial Neural Network) and GA (Genetic Algorithm) has been utilized for finding the optimum conditions of wt.% of doping elements (Ce,Y, and Ge) doped-aluminizing-chromizing of Incoloy 800H . ANN and Box-Behnken design method have been implanted for minimizing hot corrosion rate kp (10-12g2.cm-4.s-1) in Incoloy 800H at 900oC . ANN was used for estimating the predicted values of hot corrosion rate kp (10-12g2.cm-4.s-1) . The optimal wt.% of doping elements combination to obtain minimum hot corrosion rate was calculated using genetic algorithm approach . The predicted optimal values for minimizing hot corrosion rate for Incoloy 800H coated by (Ce-Y-Ge) doped-aluminizing-chromizing are (3wt.%Ce, 3wt.%Y, and 3wt.%Ge) , the hot corrosion rate kp (10-12g2.cm-4.s-1) value at these conditions was found to be 71.701 . The results have been verified by confirmation experiment , results obtained by GA method match closely with experimental values (R2=98.30) . EDS and XRD results show that the formation of protective layers Al2O3 and Cr2O3 during hot corrosion tests.

Fluid-structure interaction method is performed to predict the dynamic characteristics of axial fan system. A fluid-structure interface physical environment method (monolithic method) is used to couple the fluid flow solver with the structural solver. The integration of the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations is performed in the time Doman, simultaneously to the integration of the three dimensional structural model. The aerodynamic loads are transfer from the flow to structure and the coupling step is repeated within each time step, until the flow solution and the structural solution have converged to yield a coupled solution of the aeroelastic set of equations. Finite element method is applied to solve numerically the Navier-Stockes equations coupled with the structural equations The first ten eigenvalue (natural frequency), the first ten eigenvector (mode shape) and effective stress for each part of a rotor system and complete system assembly are predicted.


The validity of the predicted dynamic characteristics of duct fan system was confirmed experimentally by investigating geometrically similar fan system test rig. Good agreement of dynamic characteristics is observed between experimental and numerical results.

The uniform flow distrbiution in the multi-outlets pipe highly depends on the several parameters act togather. Therefor, there is no general method to achieve this goal. The goal of this study is to investigate the proposed approach that can provide significant relief of the maldistribution. The method is based on re-circulating portion of flow from the end of the header to reduce pressure at this region . The physical model consists of main manifold with uniform longitudinal section having diameter of 152.4 mm (6 in), five laterals with diameter of 76.2 mm (3 in), and spacing of 300 mm. At first, The experiment is carried out with conventional manifold, which is a closed-end. Then, small amount of water is allowed by controling the valve located at the end of the manifold slowly. The pressure and the flow distribution among the lateral pipes were recorded. Different inlet flows have been tested and the values of these flows are (625, 790, and 950) l/min. The result reveals that the conventional header give high non-uniform flow distrbution and the distribution of flow is greatly improved by using the perposed methods . When the recircluting ratio is of 15%, the non-uniform coefficient (the stander devation) is reduced from 0.48 to 0.13 which means improves in the flow distribution by 75%.

Anumerical solutions is presented to investigate the effect of inclination angle (θ) , perforation ratio (m) and wall temperature of the plate (Tw) on the heat transfer in natural convection from isothermal square flat plate up surface heated (with and without concentrated hole). The flat plate with dimensions of (128 mm) length × (64 mm) width has been used five with square models of the flat plate that gave a rectangular perforation of (m=0.03, 0.06, 0.13, 0.25, 0.5). The values of angle of inclination were (0o, 15o 30o 45o 60o) from horizontal position and the values of wall temperature (50oC, 60 oC, 70 oC, 90 oC, 100oC). To investigate the temperature, boundary layer thickness and heat flux distributions; the numerical computation is carried out using a very efficient integral method to solve the governing equation. The results show increase in the temperature gradient with increase in the angle of inclination and the high gradient and high heat transfer coefficients located in the external edges of the plate, for both cases: with and without holed plate. There are two separation regions of heat transfer in the external edge and the internal edges. The boundary layer thickness is small in the external edge and high in the center of the plate and it decreases as the inclination angle of plate increases. Theoretical results are compared with previous result and it is found that the Nusslet numbers in the present study are higher by (22 %) than that in the previous studies. And the results show good agreement in range of Raleigh number from 105 to 106.