Engineering and Technology Journal

This study aims to synthesis a nanocomposite from Al2O3 – Cr2O3 and studying
some of its mechanical properties like microhardness and fracture strength.
X-Ray diffraction patterns shows a good crystallinity of the composite with very
sharp and neat peaks. TEM photographs shows the good distribution of the particles
which have an average particle size of (3-6 nm). The microhardness is increased with
the increasing of sintering temperatures having the height value at 15% chromia
while the fracture strength behaves as a bell shape having again the height value at
15% chromia.

Physical modeling is performed in order to study particular cases of the behavior
of prototype and to validate theoretical and/or empirical hypotheses.
However, most physical models will be constructed at much smaller scales than
the prototype precisely because it is desired to obtain information about expected
patterns of response more rapidly and with closer control over model details than
would be possible with full-scale testing.
The main problem associated with physical model tests is the stress levels and soil
particle size effects. These points should be considered which require deep and
thorough research when studying the behavior of small scale model piles in sand. The
tests indicate that the number of blows recorded when driving the model pile is
affected by pile diameter more than with pile length. As well as, the heavier hammer
shows precedence in bearing capacity than the light hammer because it leads to
upgrade the soil properties during pile driving.

The main objective of this work is to propose an intelligent controller to
enhance the performance of hydraulic turbine speed-governor of a Synchronous
Generator (SG) during different loading conditions.
The proposed mathematical model of the SG is connected to different loads in
two ways. First, each load is connected individually and second, the SG loads
change during the operation to ensure the robustness of controller for wide load
variations.
Two types of controllers are used. The first controller is the Proportional-
Integral (PI) based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique to obtain
optimal gains. The second controller is Fuzzy PD+I with gains and Membership
Functions (MFs) tuned by PSO technique.
The results show the improvement of PI-PSO performance on conventional PI
controller; also show the improvement in the performance of Fuzzy PD+I using
PSO technique on PI-PSO.

The main objective of this paper is to find a path for the robot arm from its
given start point to its desired goal point in an automated manner without collision
with the obstacles. This paper investigates the problem of path planning for a 5 axis
robot, operating in environment with obstacles whose boundaries are enveloped by
cubic shape. The path planning approach presented is developed in the robot joint
space and consists of three steps. The first step is to used Bezier curve technique ,
the second step is to generate a sufficient number of intermediate points in
Cartesian space along Bezier curve and the third step is to convert the coordinate of
the generated intermediate points from it's Cartesian space into joint space and
move the robot arm along the free collision generated path.
This work is not limited to theoretical studies or simulations, experiments have
been run with various tests, on a LabVolt R5150 robot to assess the real efficiency
and usability of the adopted method. The method applies to robots in a fixed and
known environment. A number of experiments were carried out to test the ability
of the robot arm to reach it's goal without collision. Experiment results verify the
effectiveness of the method developed in this paper

Optimization of Al-Doura catalytic naphtha reforming process was done using
genetic algorithm. The objective of optimization is maximization yield of the
aromatics in order to increase the octane number of reformate.
One-dimensional steady-state mathematical model was made to study the effect
of feedstock composition, feed temperature, total pressure and hydrogen to
hydrocarbon feed ratio on the reformate compositions. Detailed kinetic model was
developed to describe the reaction kinetic, the model involving 29 components, 1 to
11 carbon atoms for n-paraffins, 5 to 10 carbon atoms for iso-paraffins and 6 to 11
carbon atom for naphthenes and aromatics with 83 reactions. Using Genetic
Algorithm, 186 parameters of the proposed kinetic model were predicted depending
on plant results collected over two months from Al-Doura reforming process which
located in the south of Baghdad. The validity of the kinetic model was approved by
comparing the results of developed kinetic model with the actual process results.
Genetic algorithm was used again to optimize the commercial reforming process
depending on reformate compositions. Optimization was carried out in temperature
range between 450 to 520°C; total pressure range 5 to 35 bar; hydrogen to
hydrocarbon ratio 3 to 8 and by varying the percentage of catalyst for each one of
four reactors. Optimization results shows that, it’s possible to increase the aromatics
composition in reformate from 63.42 % in actual unit to 70.89 % by changing the
design variables and operating conditions

The piled raft foundations allow an increase in the load capacity and reduction of
settlements in a very economic way as compared with the traditional foundation
concepts. Due to the development of structures that use piled rafts as a foundation
system, an extensive numerical modeling study was performed considering different
factors and conditions. This study highlights the percentage ratio of bearing loads
between the pile and the pile cap (raft). Present modeling results obtained by computer
program (Plaxis 3D Foundation V 1.1) have been verified with an experimental work
of the same problem using the same configuration but extended to include 8 and 16
piles with raft for different soil layers. In addition, a comparison of the present results
is achieved with another a theoretical study using the program (Ansys). The finite
element method through Plaxis program evaluates the effect of parameter on the loadsettlement
behavior of the piled raft foundation. The effect of spacing between piles on
the load-settlement behavior of the piled raft foundation was also studied. The
percentage of the load carried by piles to the total applied load of the numerical model
for case sixteen piles with raft is around 42%. The contribution to carry the load of
piles relative to the total load is decrease with the increase of the spacing to diameter
ratio. The percentage of the load carrying for piled raft for the case of two piles with
raft only decreases about 23% when the spacing between piles increases from 3 to 10
times pile diameters

The main objective of this work is to study the effect of adding plastic fibers on
Lightweight Aggregate Foamed Concrete (LWAFC) using mix proportion of
1:2.6:0.4 by volume (cement: fine Porcelanite: coarse Porcelanite) with 2%
foaming agent by weight of water, and using sand as a partial and total replacement
of local Porcelanite aggregate in that mix.
The properties of lightweight aggregate foamed concrete reinforced with
different percentages of plastic fiber (0.5, 0.75, and 1% by volume) were studied.
Compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, flexural strength, dry density,
initial surface absorption, water absorption, ultrasonic pulse velocity, acoustic
impedance, and impact resistance tests were conducted on mixes at ages of 7, 28,
and 60 days.
The results showed a significant increasing in impact resistance, splitting tensile
strength, and water absorption 34.55%, 4.2%, 326%, and 27.3% respectively.
While the results indicated that the compressive strength, ultrasonic pulse velocity,
dry density and acoustic impedance of the composites were reduced when the
crimped plastic fiber volume fraction increases. The percentage of reduction of
these properties was 15%, 11.1%, 6.23%, and 12.55% respectively

The present work is an experimental and numerical CFD study of air
impingement from orifices of different sizes in the range of (10-40) mm with a step
increase of 10 mm. The impinging jet strikes the target plate at the stagnation point,
converted to a wall jet beyond the stagnation zone in the outward radial direction
on the target plate. Measurements of pressure coefficient (Cp) at points in plate
centre and other points in the radial direction from stagnation point on the target
plate show that pressure coefficients reduces gradually in the outward direction
reflecting the same behavior of velocity distribution of the impinging jet ..The
calculated average values of the pressure coefficients Cpavg on the total target
plate area are reduced as the target plate – orifice distance is increased and its
values are in the range of 0.3-0.7 with the higher jet velocity having the greater
value of Cpavg for the tested axial distances in the range of 50-120 mm. Average
pressure coefficient for different axial distances are calculated and are in the range
of 0.4-0.6 with the higher values are noticed to be for the smaller tested orifice
sizes reflecting a concentration of pressures for the small sizes of the orifice. This
concentration of pressure of small orifices is attributed to the flow condition of the
small orifice relative to the big orifice size where the presence of cross flow within
the stagnation region of big orifice sizes tends to reduce static pressures and reduce
peak heat transfer coefficients, this cross flow is confirmed by the velocity analysis
using CFD numerical analysis zone at the stagnation zone. The percentages of the
wall jet relative to the impinging jet velocities are discussed, where smaller orifice
sizes are shown to have greater velocity percentages especially at the higher tested
jet velocities

This paper presents the use of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), neural
networks with the most promising supervised learning algorithms for automatic
detection of cardiac arrhythmias based on analysis of the Electrocardiogram
(ECG). Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has three layers with ten nodes in
the input layer, five nodes in the hidden layer and five nodes in the output
layer, which is trained using the PSO algorithm. The trained network was able
to classify the ECG signal in normal signal, atrial flutter, ventricular
tachycardia, sever conducting tissue and wandering a trial pacemaker. Field
Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been used to implement ANN
trained by the supervised learning algorithms and PSO, because of their speed
benefits, as well as the re-programmability of the FPGAs which can support
the reconfiguration necessary to program a neural network. A VHDL Design of
ANN platform is proposed to evolve the architecture ANN circuits using
FPGA-Spartan 6 Evaluation board. The VHDL design platform creates ANN
design files using WebPACKTM ISE 13.3 program. All the algorithms used to
train the ANN showed high effectiveness with 100% classification

An experimental work was carried out to produce high performance concrete (HPC)
using superplasticizer and silica fume reinforced with fiber. The variables studied were
fibers type (steel fibers and polypropylene fibers), aspect ratio of steel fibers (60 and
100) and fiber volume fraction (0.0%, 0.5%, and 0.75%). The effect of fibers on the
mechanical properties (compressive strength, splitting tensile and flexural strength,
static modulus of elasticity, toughness, and resilience) of normal strength and high
performance concrete was also studied. The results show that the optimum dosage of
silica fume is 5% as addition by weight of cement with superplasticizer dosage 2
liter/100kg of cement. This dosage of silica fume improves the compressive strength of
concrete by about 25% relative to concrete mix without silica fume. The addition of
steel fibers causes a slight increase in compressive strength of HPC as fiber volume
fraction increases, while the compressive strength decreases as fiber aspect ratio
increases. Both splitting tensile and flexural strengths show a significant increase as
the fiber volume fraction and aspect ratio increases. The percentage increase in
compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths for HPC with steel fiber volume
fraction 0.75% and aspect ratio 100 at age 60 days is about 9%, 75%, 64%, while for
HPC containing polypropylene fiber with volume fraction 0.5% is about 8.5%, 2%,
0% respectively relative to non fibrous HPC.

The effect of both weight fraction of aluminium and frequency on
dielectric properties of Al- powder reinforced polyester composite materials
were investigated. We study the dielectric behaviour of composite materials
reinforced with (0, 5, 15, 30 &45) weight fraction of Al and frequency
ranges (50-106) Hz at room temperature. The results show the dielectric
constant and dielectric losses factor were increased with increasing in
weight fraction of aluminium due to high conductivity of aluminium. The
decrease in the dielectric constant and dielectric losses with higher
frequencies can be explained by the fact that as the frequency increases, the
interfacial dipoles have less time to orient themselves in the direction of the
alternating field.

The corrosion inhibition of aluminum in (1M ) hydrochloric acid solution in the
presence of Hexadecyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTABr) at temperature range of
30o – 50 Cowas studied using galvanostatic polarization techniques. The results showed
that the inhibition occurs through adsorption of the inhibitor molecules on the metal
surface. The inhibition efficiency (%IE)was found to increase with increasing inhibitor
concentration (2*10-6 M – 12*10-6 M) and decreased with increasing temperature. The
behavior of these compounds on the metal surface was found to obey Temkin
adsorption isotherm. Thermodynamic parameters for adsorption and activation
processes were determined. Galvanostatic polarization data indicated that these
compounds act as mixed- type inhibitors. Phenomenon of physical adsorption is
deduced from the obtained values of Ea*andΔGads.

The global features of face image have been extensively used for face recognition
however they are sensitive to variations caused by expressions, illumination, pose,
occlusions and makeup.
The paper describes the enhancement in the behavior of the 2D PCA (Principles
Component Analysis) based recognition algorithm that recognize face images by adding
noise removal filter before and after the recognition stage, PCA algorithm based on
information theory concept, seeks a computational model that best describes a face by
extracting the most relevant information contained, and compare the eigenface with the
eigenfaces in the gallery database, the euclidean distance check the face image
acceptance with noise removal filter added as an additional step to modify the
performance of classic PCA algorithm to get better recognition.

In this paper, an automatic speaker–independent Arabic word speech recognition
system is presented using 3D Radon and Multiwavelet neural network. The approach
contains combining multiwavelet theory to neural network which lead to fabricate a
Multiwavenet. Position and dilation of the Multiwavenets are fixed and the weights are
optimized according to learning algorithm in the network. The feature extraction for real
Arabic word signals through 3D radon model is used. The proposed terminology here is
training process for some words of all speakers done in Multiwavenet learning phase then
test for the other sample speech signals for speakers have been used in Multiwavenet
classification phase. Success theory of Multiwavenets has been generalized by extension
to biorthogonal wavelets which lead to identification system development. Results show
the effectiveness of the proposed system presented in this paper. The accuracy in the
detection process was 86% when using utterances outside the training database
and around 94% when using the whole utterances database in system test process.
The proposed algorithms were implemented using MATLAB2011a

This research paper investigates the effect of the longitudinal channel slope on the
discharge coefficient of cylindrical weirs. The methodology applied is by adopting
three different diameters of the cylindrical weir and at three different slopes of the
channel. In addition, various five flow rates values were used for each case.
The study showed that the discharge coefficient increases when the dimensionless
value of (Hw/R) [which represents the ratio of the net hydraulic head in upstream to
the radius of cylindrical weir] is high. Furthermore, the discharge coefficient
increases as the channel slope increase, for the same (Hw/R) ratio. As a result, the
discharge coefficient increases with the increment of cylindrical weir diameter.
Finally, an empirical non-dimensional relationship was obtained between the
discharge coefficient with a channel slope and dimensionless value (Hw/R) with a
good correlation coefficient