Journal of Engineering and Sustainable Development (JEASD)

There are various obstacles in Ethiopia's construction industry when managing construction and demolition waste. This paper aims to investigate the main barriers to managing construction and demolition waste in Ethiopia's construction industry. The diffusion of innovations theory and institutional theory served as the paper's theoretical foundations. A Delphi procedure was used after a systematic literature review as part of a multi-method qualitative strategy. Twenty-three documents were selected for additional review through a systematic literature review. A thematic analysis of the various barriers in the screened publications was conducted using ATLASti23. After that, a Delphi was held with 15 panelists with sufficient construction industry experience and knowledge. After every three rounds, Kendall's coefficient of concordance was calculated to assess the experts' agreement on the barriers. The absence of commitment and interest by project stakeholders, lack of integration among stakeholders, Inadequate waste disposal procedures, lack of government support and incentives, and insufficient planning on waste management were among the top ten major barriers explored. Addressing the highlighted barriers is vital to moving closer to a future with a more environmentally conscious construction industry.

This work provides a thorough comparative analysis of the green extraction process, viz. supercritical carbon dioxide and subcritical water extraction methods for Sabah Coffea canephora. Rigorous experiments were conducted using supercritical carbon dioxide (temperature ranging from 40 °C to 80 °C and pressure from 10 to 30 MPa) and subcritical water (temperature ranging from 120 to 180 °C with extraction times from 5 to 15 min). The optimum conditions for supercritical carbon dioxide extraction were obtained at 79 °C and 30 MPa at the maximum extract yield (8.549%), total phenolic content (4.563 mg/g gallic acid equivalent), total flavonoid content (0.763 mg/g quercetin equivalent) and antioxidant activity (63.34%). Meanwhile, subcritical water extraction is the best extraction method for Coffea canephora, which was obtained optimum conditions at 180 °C and 15 min of extraction time with a maximum extract yield of 44.477%, total phenolic content of 6.481 mg/g gallic acid equivalent, total flavonoid content of 13.816 mg/g quercetin equivalent and 77.586% of antioxidant activity. In conclusion, this understanding contributes to developing optimized conditions for green extraction methods, expanding the potential applications of Sabah Coffea canephora in industries, including pharmaceuticals and functional foods.

The majority of electrical power generation systems in Iraq are gas turbine stations that cause many economic and environmental problems since they are based on fossil fuel sources. Renewable energy, specifically wind, can be a solution (besides solar energy) to produce clean energy. Throughout this work, specific wind turbines can be suggested within certain dimensions and hub heights to satisfy viable rated power for available wind density. Many regions in Iraq, especially eastern and western regions, seem promising locations for installing wind turbines for electricity generation. The results showed that these locations have a power density between 700-1200 kWh/m2 annually at an elevation of 80 m as a critical height. The suggested horizontal axis turbine can offer rated power of up to 200 kW, reaching 350 kW in some locations, especially in Hay district and around. Other locations (southern and internal regions) can produce less power, and they are suitable for vertical axis turbines with rated power of 10-20 kW. However, some locations are not recommended for large-scale turbines due to the long time off-design period. Micro-turbines that produce 5 kW are suitable for the northern region of Iraq.

Network ports, essential for communication, become susceptible to port scanning techniques employed by cybersecurity professionals, network administrators, and malicious hackers. The study digs into the specific characteristics of Nmap-generated port scan traffic, examining patterns, behaviors, and data relations throughout the packets. Also, researchers investigate the relationships between various port scan features and approaches to provide insightful information for developing more effective intrusion detection systems. The tool Nmap, which is widely employed for reconnaissance attacks in current network security, is the subject of this paper, and the Metasploit tool is also used to illustrate specific behavior and how it differs from the Nmap tool. The paper's contribution is summarized by introducing features like source ports, destination port distribution, statistics, and time-related attributes, which can be used as distinguishable features to detect the scan traffic. The term "Indicator of Scan" (IoS), as used by the authors, refers to a broad category that includes any useful indicators for scan detection. IoS can also be useful in determining which specific scanning tool is utilized in addition to scan detection.

Identifying the most hazardous intersections is essential in road safety management to prioritize road safety interventions. The equivalent property damage only (EPDO) measure is highly recommended because it reflects the severity levels of road crashes. The main challenge in using this measure is the estimation of crash cost. In Iraq, there has yet to be any previous attempt to estimate the crash cost according to their severity level. Therefore, this research aims to identify the most hazardous intersections according to a developed EPDO for Iraq conditions. The methodology of the work is divided into two stages. The first stage is an estimation of the crash’s cost. Three methods have been used for gathering crash cost data: the willing-to-pay approach for estimating the life quality cost, the human capital for finding the production loss costs, and the restitution approach for estimating medical treatment costs, vehicle damage costs, and administrative costs. In the second stage, the EPDO (Iraq) is developed. The results show a significant correlation between the rank of intersections according to the EPDO scores and crash frequency.

The bearing capacity of footing with and without a skirt has been investigated using a series of finite element analyses using the Geo-slope program. Several models were conducted with varying skirt depths and slope crest lactations. The impact of slope inclination b, height H, and soil undrained shear strength Cu were also covered. The paper findings demonstrated that several factors significantly change the estimate of bearing capacity with great effectiveness that is ranging between 16.7% and 52.7% for D/B = 0.5, 1 and 1.5, and L/B (distance from edge slope/width of footing) = 0, 1, 4 and 8 respectively, and 18.2%, 36.4, 57.6%; 11.6%, 17.6%; 27.9% kPa, for D/B (depth of skirt/width of footing) = 0.5, 1 and 1.5 and L/B = 0, 1, 4 and 8 respectively in case β=10° slope inclination with H/B =2 and Cu=60 kPa for D/B = 0.5, 1 and 1.5 and L/B = 0, 1, 4 and 8 with Cu=20 kPa respectively in case β=10° slope inclination with H/B =2, also the critical L/ B ratio is 4. Beyond this value, the increase in bearing capacity became constant.

Object detection is a major area of computer vision work, particularly for aerial surveillance and traffic control applications, where detecting vehicles from aerial images is essential. However, such images often lack semantic detail and struggle to identify small, densely packed objects accurately. This paper proposes improvements to the You Only Look Once version 5 (YOLOv5) model to enhance small object detection. Key modifications include adding a new prediction head with a 160×160 feature map, replacing the Sigmoid Linear Unit (SiLU) activation function with the Exponential Linear Unit (ELU), and swapping the Spatial Pyramid Pooling – Fast (SPPF) module with the Spatial Pyramid Pooling (SPP) module. The enhanced model was tested on two datasets: Dataset for Object Detection in Aerial Images (DOTA) v1.5 and CarJet, which focused on vehicle and plane detection. Results showed a 7.1% increase in mean Average Precision (mAP) on the DOTA dataset and a 2.3% improvement on the CarJet dataset, measured with an Intersection over Union (IoU) threshold of 0.5. These architectural changes to YOLOv5 notably improve small object detection accuracy, offering valuable potential for aerial surveillance and traffic control tasks.

Solar water heating uses solar collectors to capture sunlight and convert it into heat energy. It has grown remarkably and is now widely used for water heating in homes and manufacturing plants worldwide. Various techniques have been employed to enhance heat transfer in collectors, such as enlarging the collector's surface area or inducing fluid turbulence in the tubes. This article aims to boost the effectiveness of a flat plate solar collector through the use of a twisted strip to generate turbulence in the flow. Three twisted tapes, made of Aluminum and copper, were placed inside the collector's tubes, each with a different shape. All the twisted tape shapes - square, rectangle, and triangle - were identical in size, measuring 1000 mm in length and 1 mm in thickness. Both experimental tests and a numerical study were conducted on these three shapes of twisted tape. For each shape, three pitches were used: 2,3 and 4 cm. The results indicated that the efficiency of the collector using the double-cutting rectangular twisted tape with a 2 cm pitch was superior to other collector shapes. Moreover, the copper tapes exhibited greater efficiency than the aluminum tapes.

This study uses laminated composite materials made of hybrid glass and carbon fibers to determine the mechanical characteristics of the foot. Tensile, bending, and fatigue of composite material were evaluated and applied to the ANSYS model. The volume fraction for carbon and glass fibers was 22.5% and 10.04%, respectively. The mechanical property results: σy = 40 MPa, σult = 150 MPa, and E = 1.2 GPa. The patient is a 30-year-old male with a left amputation side, 1.60 meters tall, and weighs 74 kg. The analysis was carried out for the two scenarios (toe-off and heel contact) as boundary conditions. The overall deformation, equivalent stresses, and foot safety factor have been calculated using ANSYS17.2 software. In the end, it appears that the foot is secure based on equivalent stress calculations and the Von-Mises hypothesis. The computed safety factor for the foot is constructed of a chosen composite material with the subsequent layers. When the heel (stance phase) is fixed at 1.3449, and the metatarsal (toe off) is fixed at 1.259, the safety factor for a force of 860 N is reached. The foot is secure, according to the Von-Mises hypothesis.

The number of amputees worldwide is increasing for different reasons, such as diseases, accidents, and acts of violence. In developing countries, conventional prosthetic feet like the Solid Ankle Cushion Heel (SACH) foot are commonly used because of their affordability, ease of maintenance, and use. To improve the features of the SACH foot, a new prosthetic foot was developed that resembles it but has a flexible keel. The new foot consists of a wooden keel, carbon fiber reinforced polymer support, and a flexible filler material, silicone rubber, that provides flexibility to the foot's movement. The process of pouring liquid silicone rubber and rice husk ash into a metal mold. The new foot was tested for fatigue foot life and dorsiflexion angle using devices such as the Fatigue Foot Tester and dorsiflexion tester to estimate its expected life. The outcomes were relative to those of the SACH feet, and it was found that the new foot has a better fatigue life of 510,382 steps compared to 473,241 steps for the SACH foot. Additionally, the new foot has a higher dorsiflexion angle of 5.7° compared to 2.3° for the SACH foot.

Flow turbulization is one of the most commonly used techniques for improving heat transfer. This study uses numerical simulation and experimental tests to examine ball turbulators' effect on fluid friction and heat transfer characteristics in a circular pipe. Ball turbulators with different diameters of 10, 15, and 20 mm and spacer lengths of 20 cm are inserted in the circular pipes. The ratio of the diameter of the ball to the diameter of the internal flow path of the pipe, ball turbulent ratio (BTR) =D_b/D_p, becomes 0.41, 0.62, and 0.83. The water was a working fluid with Reynolds numbers 3,500 to 11,500. The findings demonstrate excellent agreement with deviations of less than 11%. The maximum thermal performance factor reached about 1.18, 1.24, and 1.4 for the BTR 0.41, 0.62, and 0.83, respectively. The ball turbulators increase friction factor; this increase in experimental findings is 52, 65, and 78% at BTR 0.41, 0.62, and 0.83, respectively. Also, it is noticeable that there is a gradual decrease in thermal performance when the Reynolds number range is higher than 7500.

This work introduces a method for fuzzy control charts. Fuzzy theory and the foundations of Shew Hart control charts form the foundation of the process. The information was gathered from one of the key production facilities to raise the quality standard for one of Iraq's industrial products. Fuzzy control charts were used to quickly and accurately identify the production specifications and efficiency. This work uses the triangle membership function to generate fuzzy numbers, which are then transformed into quality control charts for the real data obtained using the proposed ranking function. Next, contrast the quality control of crisp and fuzzy attributes. The graphs demonstrate how professional techniques can increase output and lower defect rates. To meet the control limits for quality control and defective percentages for all samples using (w = 0.2, 0.5, 0.6) and (λ = 0.5, 0.7, 0.9), then compare the adoption of the traditional technique with fuzzy logic while adopting variable cases through the arrangement function. It can be noticed that the chart of fuzzy control is more economically quicker and more accurate at monitoring production quality, enabling the diagnosis of defective units throughout the production process.

Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASNs) have garnered significant attention due to the implementation of self-automaton and modern technologies. Within the healthcare WBASN, certain sensed data hold greater significance than others in light of their critical aspect. Such vital data must be given within a specified time frame. Data loss and delay could not be tolerated in such types of systems. Intelligent algorithms are distinguished by their superior ability to interact with various data systems. Machine learning methods can analyze the gathered data and uncover previously unknown patterns and information. These approaches can also diagnose and notify critical conditions in patients under monitoring. This study implements two supervised machine learning classification techniques, Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers, to achieve better search performance and high classification accuracy in a heterogeneous WBASN. These classification techniques are responsible for categorizing each incoming packet into normal, critical, or very critical, depending on the patient's condition, so that any problem affecting him can be addressed promptly. Comparative analyses reveal that LVQ outperforms SVM in terms of accuracy at 91.45% and 80%, respectively.

A jar test experiment was conducted on tannery factory wastewater using hydrated lime Ca(OH)2 as a treatment material to remove chromium. The Saeeda factory in the Zaafaraniya area was the field for bringing models and applying this research content. The effluent characteristics were analyzed according to the American Public Health Association (APHA), the American Water Works Association (AWWA), and the Water Environment Federation (WEF). The results after analysis showed that calcium hydroxide (lime) removes chromium from industrial wastewater of tanning factories by up to 63.822%. The working conditions and parameters for performing the tests were based on axes, such as the gradient speed achieved at 480 s-1 for 30 minutes at 20°C. Experiments have shown that calcium concentration can remove chromium through multiple mechanisms. However, the presence of calcium also works together with chromium through the presence of chromium ions, which will lead to a reduction of calcium ions by 6.734%, but this does not mean risking adding chromium salts to achieve the best removal of chromium by hydrated lime.

There is limited understanding and utilization of facial recognition models in surveillance. This work addresses the underutilization of facial recognition Models in surveillance contexts. A Model that leverages its proposed facial recognition technology to monitor and locate individuals in real-time video streams and dataset images. The model begins with an initial dataset containing images of specific individuals, such as university professors, missing persons, or criminals. These images extract essential facial attributes for training models capable of identifying individuals in live video recordings. Upon a successful match, the model identifies individuals and tracks their movements using surveillance cameras. A primary objective of this work is to integrate the proposed model seamlessly with the current surveillance infrastructure, minimizing operational costs and disruptions. The work employs two main artificial intelligence approaches: Support Vector Machine achieved an accuracy of 85.33%, demonstrating effective facial recognition compared to the Multilayer Perceptron with 89.0% accuracy. Additionally, Linear Discriminant Analysis achieved the highest classification accuracy at 87.66%. Furthermore, our custom deep learning model demonstrated exceptional accuracy, ranging between 99.5% and 99.8%, showcasing significant advancements over existing methodologies.