Engineering and Technology Journal

Translucent concrete is a building material with light-transmitting properties, due to embedded light optical elements in its mixture; and has the advantage of energy saving in addition to providing nice view to a building. The present study investigated the use and properties of translucent concrete mixture as a construction material with light admittance. The work includes two parts: in the first part many trail mixes are designed and tested to produce self-compact mortar (SCM).Then the obtained mixture is used to prepare a new type of translucent composites with plastic optical fibers POF embedded in the SCM mixture. The second part investigates some of the mechanical properties of translucent concrete by using three concentration of (POF) and three different diameters. The tested results indicate that it is possible to use SCM to produce translucent concrete contain plastic optical fiber (POF) with compressive strength between 31.1 to 40.4 MPa and flexural strength between 5.89 to 8.12MPa for different POF volume fraction content and diameter size at 28 days age.

The present investigation aims to increase the wear resistance for steel CK50 by using Hard Chromium electro plating process. The wear behavior of the specimen was investigated using pin-on-disk where the samples sliding against a steel disk under fixed conditions. The experiments designed according to Taguchi method several experiments have been carried based on an orthogonal array L9 with three parameters (time, current and temperature) at three levels (low, medium and high).The result of research based on the signal to noise ratio (S/R) depending on the condition smaller is the better approach, where the best optimal coating parameters have been arrived at (t2, A2, Temp1) i.e. time 20min, current 30 A/dcm2 and temperature 45 C° from the maximum values of average (S/N). Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is applied to find out the significance and percentage contribution of each parameter. It has been observed that temperature has maximum contribution on Cr - coating process

This research is devoted to study the mechanical properties of fibrous self-compacting concrete (FSCC) as materials as well as studying the punching shear behavior of FSCC slabs. The experimental program includes investigating the effect of steel fiber volumetric ratio (Vf) and absence of limestone powder on some important mechanical properties of FSCC such as compressive strength, modulus of elasticity, splitting tensile strength and modulus of rupture. Additional experimental tests are also conducted to study the effect of Vf, steel reinforcement ratio (ρ) and slab thickness on the punching shear behavior (in terms of load-deflection response and ultimate failure load),and the failure characteristics of the punching shear (in terms of observation of failure, shape of the failure zone, size of the failure zone, failure angles, critical section perimeters and ultimate punching shear stress ) of simply supported reinforced FSCC slabs having dimensions of 1000×1000× 50 or 70 mm under concentrated load at the center of the slab.

Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) absorbers with geometrical and structure surface heterogeneities are investigated. Samples of shields based on dielectric and magnetic powder components and having different surface shape were prepared. Shielding properties of these absorbers such as EMR power attenuation, transmission (S21) and reflection (S11) coefficients in the frequency range of 0.5…18 GHz are shown. Dependencies of the shielding characteristics on the shield thickness and the amount of active substance were obtained. Comparative analysis of the developed novel EMR absorbers was conducted. The transmission coefficient down to -43 dB and the reflec-tion coefficient down to -23 dB in the studied frequency range were obtained. An ef-fective attenuation of electromagnetic power by the developed EMR absorbers has been concluded.

In Iraq, fatigue cracking is considered to be the most important type of distress affecting the performance of asphalt concrete pavements on major state highways. This research describes the results of a laboratory study of the fatigue response of a typical Iraqi asphalt concrete mixes to define the effects of degree of compaction (as measured by air-void content), asphalt content, temperature and aging on this performance parameter. To achieve the objective of this research, the Nottingham flexural fatigue test is considered and Superpave mix design requirements are employed. Test specimens of (400 mm length by 63 mm width and 50 mm height) were sawed from slabs of the mixes prepared to the target air-void contents by rolling wheel compaction. Controlled - procedure. The tests were conducted at temperatures of 10±1°C (50±2°F), 20 ±1°C (68±2°F) and 30±1°C (86±2°F) and at a frequency of loading of 10 Hz. The long term aging experiment employed a full factorial design as well, with three asphalt contents, two aging periods, two air-void contents and three test temperatures for a nominal total of 36 tests were performed. Local material properties, stress level and environmental impacts were considered for this aspect. It was concluded that for strain – controlled testing, an increase in term aging results in a decrease in laboratory fatigue life and a decrease in mix stiffness, and an increase in test temperatures within the range tested results in an increase in laboratory fatigue life and a decrease in mix stiffness. Finally, a series of recommendations are presented for enhancing the fatigue performance of Iraqi pavements including changes to current construction quality assurance procedures.

In order to evaluate the quality of ground water in Al-Mouqdadiya District, Diyala, Iraq, ground water samples were collected from 15 wells in the summer and winter seasons of 2012 and analyzed for various parameters. Physical and chemical parameters of groundwater including electrical conductivity, pH, TDS, Na, K, Ca, Mg, Cl, HCO3, NO3 and heavy metals (Cd, Fe, Pb, Mn, Zn) were determined. Irrigation indices such as, Sodium Absorption Ratio (SAR), Soluble Sodium Percentage (SSP), Residual Sodium Carbonate (RSC), Permeability Index (PI) and Magnesium Hazard (MH) were calculated. Based on the observed results, the TDS of ground water in the study area exceeded the Iraqi guideline for drinking water in 47% while this ground water falls generally in the category of very hard (TH>300 mg/L). For Ca, Mg, Cl, Cd, Pb and Mn it can be concluded with some exception most of the ground water sample were observed to be above of the Iraqi guideline for drinking water. According to the SAR values most of the ground water samples are belong to slight to moderate to severe degree of restriction on use. While the calculated vales of SSP indicated low degree of restriction on the use of this ground water in irrigation. However, the ground water in the study area can be selected as Class III (with 25% maximum permeability) water, which are unsuitable for irrigation purposes according the Permeability and magnesium hazard indices

Growing demand for mobile communication services results in a continuous increase in the number of base stations over a limited area, accompanied by public concern for possible health and ecological effect of these systems.
In this paper, the factors that controlling the power density around base stations on the ground level are presented and discussed.
Many techniques to mitigate the electromagnetic exposure levels in the vicinity of base stations are discussed. Using phased array antenna as an efficient approach for RF radiation reduction in the near of the base stations is analyzed and compared with cell splitting technique. The required base station numbers in both techniques are calculated and compared.

The main object of this research is to study the parameters that have important effects upon performance of the direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) process, through predicting the effects of the outside and inside diameters, the thickness of the hollow fiber membrane, the pore size, porosity, tortuosity, module length, number of fibers in module, inlet feed temperature, inlet feed concentration, inlet permeate temperature and the velocity of feed and permeate. The effective parameters that influence the performance of DCMD are classified into membrane characteristics, operating conditions, and parameters of module specifications. This study is based on an experimental system of Wang et al., 2008 [1] as typical system.It was found that theincreaseof the permeate fluxis by selecting an optimum thickness for each inside or outside diameter of hollow fibers and anoptimum number of fibers in the module and increasing the porosity and pore size within practical range and decreasing of tortusity andas well as increasing the inlet feed temperature rather than decreasing the inlet permeate temperature for constant temperature difference between feed and permeate. Also it is found that the feed concentration and fiber length play an inverse role with the permeate flux

Slope stability analysis is a common analytical tool to assess the factor of safety (FOS) of natural and man-made slopes i.e. embankment. In geotechnical engineering, different methods were used to determine the factor of safety (FOS) of slopes such as traditional or programming methods. Numerical methods using Geo-Studio software (Slope/W) is suitable one, in assessing the stability of slopes under different conditions.
The aim of this study is to analyze the slope stability for the suggested residential project in Hay-AL-Araby / Mosul, with the application of some suggested remedial solutions. GeoStudio2007 software program was used to compute the minimum FOS values, also probabilistic and reliability indexes were studied. The FOS for both natural and corrective with and without seismic cases has been determined using Morganstern-Price, Bishop, Janbu, and ordinary methods. Several methods for remedial of the slopes to increase the FOS have been proposed in the analysis were studied.
The results showed that there are significant differences in the values of minimum FOS of natural slope between dry and wet conditions which varied between (3.348-3.68) and (1.838-2.326) respectively. Also, nailing and pile remedial methods were found to be effective for the dry and wet conditions respectively with minimum FOS=1.111 and 1.137. As well, the application of seismic loading showed that the natural slope would be at risk with minimum FOS equal to 1.826, and 1.006 respectively for both dry and wet cases. Finally, the deterministic and probabilistic analysis of natural and remedial slopes is in the ranges (8.443 to 1.428) for dry and (9.688 to 0.570) for wet conditions.

The objective of this work is study the carbonation of reinforced steel in different solutions include artificial seawater (3.5% NaCl), river water and domestic water by electrochemical method at room temperature. Corrosion parameters were measured to calculate corrosion rates from polarization curves. Cyclic polarization was tested to know the possibility of occurring for pitting corrosion. Both Tafel plot and cyclic polarization indicate that the corrosion of reinforced steel was the lowest in river water due to the impurities and clay in this water which can be inter to the pores in concrete and it does not allow to occur carbonation of reinforced steel in addition to forming calcium salts with anions in river water more than forming calcium carbonate which close the pores of concrete. The results were supplemented with optical microscopy

In this paper, a proposed PID tuning rules for general known or unknown plant models are presented. The design procedure used to obtain the tuning rules has been previously used in literature to obtain tuning rules, but for dedicated plant models. Our contribution in this article is that the proposed tuning rules are applicable for general plant models. These rules are designed to be robust for plant gain variations. The design procedure is based on some specification or constraints of frequency response, namely phase margin, gain crossover and robustness condition. The designed rules are given in terms of frequency response parameters of the plant model ‘which can be found experimentally’ instead of the plant model transfer function (T.F.) parameters. So, these rules do not need the model of controlled process to be known. Simulation study showed clearly the generality, ease of use, good performance and robustness of the obtained tuning rules. Simulation study has included comparison study with other known tuning rules

This work concerns with experimental and numerical study for the cooling characteristics of a target plate under the effect of air impingement from orifice of different sizes D of (5,10,15 and 20 mm). A centrifugal blower was used for air impinging with jet velocity in the range (18-40 m/s). Tested Reynolds number Re is in the range of (7100-44400) with orifice to plate spacing ratio H/D of (2,4,6,8). Numerical analysis using CFD commercial code Fluent version 14.5 with K-ε RNG turbulence model has been used to simulate the flow and heat transfer in impingement jet. Both numerical and experimental results are analyzed to determine the effect of using different orifice sizes on heat transfer rates and flow structure on the target plate. A correlation is obtained for the stagnation Nusselt number as a function of Re and H/D. Optimum heat removal rate are found to occur at H/D=6. According to the experimental results which indicates that orifice diameter and jet velocity are the most effective variables which characterize the heat removal rate, a control system is designed and constructed to vary the orifice diameter in order to control the air flow rate and the plate temperature. Fixing the optimum H/D and for the used blower characteristics the control system is tested and the results show a good response for the control system for different operation conditions so that the cooling rates are increased for the heated plate

The multiple access techniques based on chaotic signals suffer from high co-channel interference due to pseudo-orthogonal nature of chaotic signals. In this paper, an efficient chaotic multiple access communication system based on Orthogonal Chaotic Vector (OCV) generated from Lu system has been proposed. To measure the effectiveness of the proposed system, its performance has been compared with code division multiple access system (CDMA) based on Walsh-Hadamard sequence which has perfect orthogonality. The simulation results showed that the proposed scheme successfully separate the messages of each user and its performance is almost the same regardless of the number of users in AWGN channel. Furthermore, the results also showed that for four users and at bit-error-rate of 10-3, the proposed system has achieved gains of 5 dB and 8 dB in signal-to-noise ratio over traditional CDMA system in AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels respectively. The simulation results obtained have confirmed the theoretical analysis derived for the proposed system

The aeroelastic responses and the flutter condition of 3-D flexible cantilever plate were estimated by developed fully coupled fluid-structure interaction(FSI) approach. The plate model (structure model) based on assumed mode method was then combined with unsteady panel-discrete vortex method (aerodynamic model) to build relatively simple aeroelastic model. The validity of the present method had tested through comparisons with the related published work of plates flutter prediction and with wind tunnel measurements.
Time domain simulation is used to examine the dynamic aeroelastic instabilities of the system. The flutter occurrence is verified when the responses diverge. To estimate the flutter frequency, Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) technique is used to convert the generalized coordinates responses from time domain to frequency domain. The flutter speed and flutter frequency is found for many Aluminum cantilever plates which are different in aspect ratio. The speed and frequency of the flutter are within average absolute error of about 13% and 16 % for theoretical analysis and practically respectively.

This research interesting to study effect of machine conditions end mill on the surface roughness for 1020 carbon steel. In this Paper, propose multiple regression model
(MRM) by using response surface method (RSM) in Minitab program, to predict surface
roughness and study the effect of the spindle speed, feed rate and depth of cut on the
surface roughness. The RP
2
P (ability the Independent values to predict the dependent
values) of the predictive model is 95.51%. From the applicant multiple regression model
equation, the depth of cut (XR3R) is the most significant machining parameter to influence
on surface roughness (Ra).

An experimental studies of the performance of a heat pump are conducted to cover the effect of oil flooding, oil cooling and type of expansion devices. These studies show that there is an improvement in the performance factor with oil addition up to 9.2% for capillary tube and 8.6% for thermal expansion valve. The performance
improvement is combined with decreasing power consumption of the system by 2%
and 2.5% for capillary tube and thermal expansion valve respectively, in comparison
to the standard case. The cooling of oil also improved the performance factor for the
thermal expansion valve by 4.3% and 3.2% for natural and forced cooling
respectively. There is also decrease in power consumption of the system by 2.6% and
4.9% for the above cases. However, using capillary tube with two way of oil cooling
cause a decrease of the performance by 6.6% and increase in the power consumption
by 9.5% and 3.4% respectively for natural and forced oil cooling. It can be concluded
that the use of capillary tube with oil addition, led to better performance factor than
the thermal expansion valve with no cooling of oil. Conversely with oil cooling by
natural and forced the thermal expansion valve has better performance factor

Chromate plating activities are almost associated with certain amounts of hazardous chromium wastes which might be considered as resource losses that can be detoxified and recovered to usable product. The recycling of chromate from aqueous electroplating sludge by oxidizing Cr (III) species to Cr (VI) form has been studied. Wet chemical oxidation was attempted with hydrogen peroxide to oxidize the Cr (III) contained in a freshly collected aqueous ferri-chromium hydroxide sludge in slightly alkaline media (pH=8-9) at room temperature (25±5). Complete oxidation of Cr (III) with hydrogen peroxide could not be achieved. A maximum Cr (VI) recovery of only 77% was obtained using 30.8 mm/l of Cr (III) as initial concentration initial. The oxidation reaction kinetic was found to be dependent on trivalent chromium concentration and oxidant concentration which is described by the following rate equation:

The research study the effect of economic growth rate in Iraq at the rate of traffic growth and the need to create intersections with multiple levels in the city of Diwaniya –Iraq .The study included an economic analysis to establish bridge intersections with multiple levels by using type of investment Build, Operate and Transfer ( B.O.T )
and the calculate present worth value and internal rate of return for the project and
thus determine the ideal investment period to achieve the ideal of cooperation between
national institution and in contracts sector and construction jobs . The study showed
high economic growth rate in Iraq include Diwaniya city for 2006- 2011 . It is
between(2.4%-9.9%) that impacted extrusive on the growth rate of traffic and
doubling the number of vehicles in Diwaniya city more than 200% , Traffic jams have
become an issue requiring quick solution in front of real deficit in the financial
allocation that earmarked for reconstruction in Diwaniya city such us intersections to
create multiple levels

This work is concerned to study effect of addition the cadmium and nickel on mechanical properties of Al-Zn-Mg alloy. Three alloys were prepared with addition cadmium and nickel (0.5%wt) for each one alloy and added the nickel and cadmium in form combined of percentage (1%wt), as well as to base alloy. The alloys were prepared by melting and pouring in metallic mold. Many inspection and tests have been done such as microstructure, hardness , tensile test and wear test. The results show that addition of cadmium and nickel improved the mechanical properties of Al-Zn-Mg alloy, where they increase the hardness ( from58.4 to 86.92 kg\mm2), tensile strength (from 87 to 107 Mpa) ,yield strength(from 32 to54 Mpa), and decrease the wear rate(from28 to 15.6x10-7g\cm) and ductility (from 12 to 8.5%) and microstructure refined .Effect of nickel was more than cadmium, while the addition of nickel and cadmium together improved on improvement the mechanical properties more in comparison with the others alloy

Drip irrigation is considered as a modern irrigation method compared to other methods where irrigation water supplied via pipes containing emitters to provide the plant with its water needs. This method is characterized by continuously and directly supplying water to the root zone and keep the moisture content as high level without exposing the plant to water stress that effect the productivity , unlike what happens with other methods were the water supplied in the form of bursts and infrequent periods.
The study was conducted in the Isshaqi irrigation project which is located
in north of Baghdad in order to estimate the actual efficiency of the irrigation
water consumption using drip irrigation and comparing it with furrow
irrigation for winter and summer crops. The study involved measuring the
supplied water to a group of fields parts of them where irrigated by furrow and
the others by drip irrigation. In addition to that total crop production at the
end of each season was measured for three consecutive seasons for the tested
fields.
The results showed that there is a large difference in the water use efficiency of the agricultural production especially for summer crops where the obtained for eggplant and for the winter crops like cabbage and cauliflower where the yield efficiency was four times in drip irrigation as much with furrow irrigation. So, there was excess of water requirements were supplied to the farms, and this water losses went as deep percolation or it was evaporated .This amount of losses water reduced the water use efficiency. In the other side the increasing in the water use efficiency due to the using of drip irrigation leaded the farmers to apply the drip irrigation, and that cause to increase the cultivated area. The regression analysis of the field measurements appears that, there is a strong relationship between the yield and the irrigation water proportional to other factors that effect on the yield.

The study investigates the structural behavior of low cost roof system of steel frame and thermo-stone blocks. The sustainability engineering requirements were considered in terms of the efficiency of thermal insulation and reduce energy consumption and the use of environmentally friendly materials. The roof construction was tested by examining the horizontal and vertical modes of thermo-stone blocks after laboratory tests and calculation of stresses. The results showed that carrying the vertical loads in the horizontal position around (18.5) tonnes/m2, while in the vertical position approximately (185) tonnes/m2, or about ten times. Cracks or damages were not appearing in the vertical position of thermo-stone under loads while failure occurs in thermo-stone blocks in horizontal position.