Misan Journal of Engineering Sciences

Integration of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) in concrete beams presents a promising approach for developing sustainability as a substitute for traditional steel reinforcement. Many empirical and analytical studies are presented in this paper, emphasizing the shear performance of Reinforced Concrete (RC) with GFRP. This work aims to focus on the benefits, challenges, and design considerations associated with GFRP in RC beams. This review is based on findings of the latest investigations, which have explored factors like the ratio of span to depth (av/d), the longitudinal reinforcement ratio, concrete compressive strength, the bar diameter and spacing of stirrups. The information taken during the study indicated that GFRP may be utilized as a substitute for steel reinforcement due to their corrosion-free, lightweight, and high tensile strength, which can develop durability. The employment of GFRP increases shear capacity, which may reach 80 % more than beams that did not have stirrups, depending on the bar diameter and spacing between stirrups. On the other hand, GFRP mechanical properties significantly decrease when exposed to high values of pH, which are greater than 10. In addition, challenges such as reduced modulus of elasticity and brittle failure modes are observed, which require careful design considerations. This paper also reviews the number of analytical methods to assess the shear capacity of GFRP-concrete beams.

Background: Collaborative robots require accurate and adaptive control strategies to operate effectively in dynamic environments.
Goal: This work aims to improve trajectory tracking accuracy and system efficiency using a hybrid control strategy.
Method: We propose a novel integration of Model Predictive Control (MPC) with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), where PSO is used to optimize MPC parameters in real-time.
Results: Simulations show that the hybrid MPC+PSO system outperforms traditional MPC, reducing RMSE by 57.8% and energy consumption by 22%.
Conclusion: The proposed method enhances the accuracy and robustness of collaborative robotic control and is suitable for real-world deployment.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been utilized for almost twenty years primarily in military contexts. Today, they serve as one of the most effective tools for remote sensing, with a wide range of applications.The main justification of this research is applying remote sensing a powerful tool for locating karez systems in eastern Missan. In the same way, analyzing their alignment with keyline design. In turn, offering insights into water harvesting as an ancient water management and its harmony with natural topography. The landscape analysis approach combines GIS technologies, remote sensing, drone surveys, and fieldwork, with a focus on water management and sustainability. The DJI Mini 2 drone was employed to capture high-resolution imagery, effectively covering a significant portion of the study area. Ineddtion to the fieldwork using the drone DJI Mini 2 highlighted the process of determining a very high-resolution scale for mapping, and analysis applying the Ground Sampling Distance. This makes it perfect for identifying karez system distribution and their extensions at flight’s height range is 114 to 37 meters. the keyline design principles align with the path of the karez system in the site. This alignment suggests that the karez system was designed in harmony with the natural topography, following the keyline to maximize water efficiency and minimize erosion or water loss. The match between the two indicates a sustainable and intelligent use of the landscape, where the karez system complements the natural water flow patterns identified by keyline design.

In the air conditioning, steel industry, and power plants, rotating heat exchangers are utilized to preheat air for use in waste heat recovery or steam generators. In this article, various rotating heat exchangers that are utilized in thermal power plants have been presented to preheat the air supplied to the steam generators. The heat transfer between two fluid streams is accomplished in these devices via a rotating matrix that functions as a thermal accumulator by alternatingly coming into contact with the two fluid streams. Although a considerable number of studies have investigated the influence of types of heating elements on the performance of air preheaters, there is a scarcity of exhaustive review articles that encompass the latest developments in this domain. This paper provides a comprehensive review of recent available studies that investigate the impact of flow configuration, material, and geometry of the heating elements on the air preheater thermal hydraulic performance. It found that the replacement of the air preheater's baskets with new ones featuring distinct profiles increased the heat transmission rate. Also, the resistance coefficient and Nusselt number increased in tandem with the corrugation angle. The heat regeneration temperature and the heat exchanger's efficiency were observed to decrease as the matrix's rotating speed and the hot flow's mass flow rate increased, according to the results.

This study investigates the impact of porous media on the thermal and hydraulic performance of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger using computational fluid dynamics and advanced statistical optimization. The effects of varying porosity on Nusselt number, pressure drop, and heat transferred were systematically evaluated through a Central Composite Design approach, analyzed using Response Surface Methodology, and optimized via multi-objective genetic algorithms. Results demonstrate a nonlinear relationship between porosity and both heat transfer and pressure loss: while intermediate porosity levels (approximately 0.6–0.7) maximize the Nusselt number and heat exchanged, high porosity leads to diminishing returns. Pressure drop monotonically decreases with increasing porosity, with a significant trade-off observed between thermal enhancement and hydraulic cost. Contour analyses reveal that incorporating porous media leads to notably more uniform velocity and temperature fields, enhancing thermal homogenization but raising maximum system pressure by over 30%. The average shell-side temperature was reduced by 6°C in porous-enhanced cases. These findings underscore the necessity of multi-objective optimization to achieve an optimal balance between thermal performance and pressure loss in the design of next-generation heat exchangers. The study provides comprehensive insights for engineers aiming to leverage porous media for efficient thermal system design

Microscopic organisms pose a significant threat to various structural materials such as wood, metal, and reinforced concrete. Their proliferation contributes to the emergence of technogenic mycoses, mycotoxicoses, and microallergoses, which negatively affect human health and environmental quality. This study aims to develop optimized formulations of protective coatings with enhanced bio-resistance for application in building structures. Using epoxy binders, fungicidal additives, finely dispersed fillers, and a range of pigments, we designed and tested thick-layer coatings. A mathematical experimental design was employed to identify optimal component proportions. The coatings were evaluated for fungal resistance using standard techniques (GOST 9.049-91). Results revealed that all samples exhibited varying levels of microbial contamination, leading to reductions in strength and elasticity. However, the incorporation of biocidal agents, particularly copper sulfate, significantly improved the biological stability of the coatings. These findings support the application of biocidal-enhanced coatings to prolong structural durability and promote healthier built environments.

Various environmentally friendly binders have been used to mitigate the negative environmental impacts of cement production and the negative effects of waste and construction materials being disposed of in landfills. Wood ash (WA) is one such alternative binder, which is extracted from fish grills and restaurants that dispose of it in landfills, causing environmental pollution. Studies have shown that, based on the chemical composition of WA, the strength and durability properties of concrete can be slightly improved by using WA as a cement substitute, with an ideal replacement ratio of 10% to 20% to achieve the highest compressive, tensile and flexural strength within this range. Additionally, Crushed Clay Blocks (CCB) can be used to replace Normal Coarse Aggregate (NCA) at replacement at rates of 0%, 50%, and 100%. This is to meet sustainable development requirements and maintain a clean and pollution-free environment. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the properties of WA and its potential applications in conventional concrete using alternative, environmentally friendly materials such as CCB. The highest compressive, tensile, and flexural strengths were achieved at 10% WA substitution with 50% CCB, reaching (41.45, 3.47, and 4.90) MPa, respectively. It was observed that as the WA substitution ratio increased with the CCB substitution ratio, the strength properties of the concrete mixtures decreased, although they improved over time due to pozzolanic effects. This study recommends an optimal mixture of S6 (10% WA + 50% CCB), which exhibits a proficient balance between strength and resource efficiency. In conclusion, this research aims to use WA in the manufacture of non-load-bearing insulating building units.

Unplanned urban development and population increase have notable impact on the land-use changes and groundwater dynamics. This research analyzes the impact of land use/land cover (LULC) changes and its correlation with the groundwater levels in Duhok city, Iraq, over the period of 10 years (2015–2025) by integration the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with Remote sensing techniques. The Sentinel 2 imagery were used for LULC mapping, while 83 wells were monitored for groundwater trends. The results showed notable trends of changes in land features. Noticeable regions of vegetation were declined from 788.17 km2 to 675.39 km2. However, significant regions of built-up and barren lands were expanded by 27.5 km² and 84.73 km2, respectively. Moreover, the groundwater depth, static water level, and dynamic water level showed negative increases in Duhok, Semel, and Zawita regions. The results of NASA GRACE Satellite also aligned with the ground real well data, highlighting the declining pattern of groundwater storage availability in the region for the period of 10 years (2015-2025). Results of this investigation provide valuable insights for policy makers and government entities to implement sustainable measures such as green infrastructure to preserve the groundwater resources in the region.

Thermal energy storage (TES) is an important method to store the energy in the form of heat by passing hot heat transfer fluid into the storage domain, where single or double storage tank is usually used to store the heat energy. Thermal energy storage systems could help in integrating the energy sources (solar and wind energy) of intermittent nature and thus providing continuous energy based on the demand. In the present study, a lab scale storage vessel is used with 8 " diameter and 23.63" height. Air is used as working fluid with inlet temperature of 95℃ and gravel is used as storage materials. A numerical model was built using finite element method to solve governing equations. COMSOL Multiphysics software is used to solve the problem numerically and validate the experimental results. The focus of the present study is on the analysis of heat losses to the ambient and their influence on the thermal performance and storage efficiency. The amount of heat loss rate is calculated which a significant parameter to quantify the system performance. Therefore, the main studied parameters are temperature, energy and efficiency of the storage system. The amount of energy stored into the bed is low due to the heat losses based on the experimental and numerical results. Charging efficiency is 43.3% at 0.0004 kg/s and 55% at 0.006 kg/s. The heat loss rate per unit area increases with the increase the time, leading to a reduction in thermal performance

One such numerical CFD study (11-E-09) was performed on the industrial shell-and-tube heat exchanger to compare the thermal-hydraulic performance of three fin geometries (external segmented fins, continuous rectangular wrap fins, and internal twisted-tape inserts): These three fin shapes and variations were investigated. All fin designs improved heat transfer relative to the smooth tube baseline. The Type 1 segmented fins, in fact, resulted in an even enhancement of ≈12% in heat transfer with moderate pressure drop. Type 2 helical fins also offered similar thermal enhancement because they maintained surface contact throughout the fins in order to increase overall conductance. The twisted-tape (Type 3) insert generated the most thermal gains (~19% gain) but had a much higher hydraulic penalty. The design of fin geometry to enhance the performance of exchanger while controlling pumping power is suggested by the study.

Using of aluminum and aluminum base are widely used for mechanical components. Hybrid aluminum base alloys are type of alloys with composition differs from the standard percentages. The use of these alloys instead of steel alloys have increasing expansion due to their low weight to toughness ratio and their superior mechanical properties. Fatigue resistance is one of the important properties due exerting most of the mechanical components to cyclic and variable loadings. In this study a hybrid aluminum base alloy has a compositions (Aluminum 85%, Silicon 10% and Chrome5%) is used to investigate its mechanical properties and fatigue resistance under constant completely reversed cyclic loadings under bending rotation.
The results identified a relatively poor bending fatigue resistance under low fatigue regime, with relatively long fatigue life under low bending loading compared with the other hybrid aluminum base alloys with average bending stress*fatigue life of (214,5392 MPa. cycle). The results also confirm the applicability of AL-Bedhany Energy Fraction of Damage Accumulation (EFDA) fatigue damage theory, which depends on the area under S-N curve under the average loading level in MPa cycle. The percentages of errors between 8.7% to -20.5% for the predicted fatigue life according to the gradual propagation of the fatigue cracks of this alloy appears clearly at the fracture regions due to alloy’ malleability. This makes this alloy suitable only for manufacturing the shafts with relatively low bending stress.

The prevalence of misleading information poses a significant challenge to efforts aimed at combating misinformation spread through social media, as such content can adversely affect public opinion and decision-making. Organizations that engage in the business of varied diversity face significant barriers to creating smart and sound mechanisms to detect misinformation with precision. This problem is a strategic dilemma that requires rigorous investigation and efforts to produce systematic answers and reverse the proliferation of fake information, as well as to enhance the trustworthiness of the online information infrastructure. In response to these challenges, there is an increasing demand for robust systems capable of identifying false information. The current paper presents a new way of research with the background of the previous works that use the TruthSeeker2023 dataset. The method combines neural network structures and natural language processing methods to be able to identify obscene cues of deceptive signals in the production of tweets. Multilayer perceptron topologies, or Deep Neural Network (DNN) topologies, are defined by small hidden layers with discrete activation functions. To convert the textual data to numeric attributes, sophisticated text vectorization models, Count Vectorizer and the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF), were used. The proposed methodology is superior to the highest accuracy rate of 96, which has been previously achieved; it has a high rate of 99. This paper elevates the levels of misinformation recognition and shows how intelligent systems can protect social media against misinformation, thus improving the credibility of the entire internet world.

The substantial energy demand for domestic hot water in Iraq, coupled with the intermittent availability of solar energy, presents a significant challenge. Conventional solar water heaters (SWHs) often fail to provide a consistent hot water supply, particularly during post-sunset hours and overcast conditions. To address this limitation, this study investigates the integration of latent heat thermal storage, utilizing phase change materials (PCMs), into SWHs. A comprehensive methodology combining experimental analysis and numerical simulation was employed. An experimental prototype of a PCM-enhanced SWH was constructed and tested under the climatic conditions of Baghdad, and its performance was directly compared against a conventional SWH operating simultaneously. Concurrently, a dynamic heat transfer model was developed and validated in ANSYS Fluent to simulate the PCM's phase transition behavior and optimize system design.
The results demonstrate a significant performance improvement, the PCM-SWH extended the availability of hot water (>40°C) for an average of 4.3 hours after sunset, representing a 95% increase in operational duration compared to the conventional system. Furthermore, the daily thermal efficiency saw a relative increase of 23.5%, rising from 28.1% for the conventional SWH to 34.7% for the hybrid system, the study also identified optimal design parameters, including RT55 paraffin as the PCM, a mass of 30 kg, and a finned cylindrical storage unit configuration, this research confirms the technical viability and substantial benefits of integrating PCMs in solar water heaters for the Iraqi context, offering a practical pathway toward reducing dependency on the electrical grid and enhancing energy security.

The characteristics of wastewater produced by automotive services, including its biodegradability, have not been studied extensively. However, without a firm base, this wastewater is usually treated by conventional biological treatment systems like that used to treat the wastewater generated from Hamdan Industrial Zone (HIZ) in Basrah governorate, south of Iraq. Thus, to justify a conventional treatment system application for reducing the environmental impact of automotive services wastewater, it is essential to characterize such wastewater. The study objective is to investigate the characteristics of the raw wastewater generated in the HIZ and identify its biodegradability measured in terms of biodegradability index which is the ratio of BOD5 to COD. The study involved the analysis of different physiochemical parameters present in the wastewater. The study results revealed that the wastewater generated from the automotive services in HIZ can be characterized as oily, saline, organically polluted, slightly alkaline, and of strong strength. The automotive services wastewater was found to be not readily biodegradable since its biodegradability index values during the study period were below 0.5. The results showed that the major part of the non-biodegradable organics is particulate. Based on the detected wastewater characteristics, it was concluded that conventional treatment of automotive services wastewater needs to be upgraded by adding advanced oxidation and/or chemical precipitation processes for removing the non-biodegradable organics.

Batch reactors are extensively used in chemical industries because of their adaptability and superior product quality; however, their nonlinear and time-varying characteristics present considerable challenges for dynamic modeling and control. Conventional modeling methods frequently inadequately represent intricate behaviors. This review examines the contribution of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques—specifically machine learning (ML), neural networks (NN), and reinforcement learning (RL)—to the improvement of modeling, prediction, and control in batch chemical processes. The primary objective is to assess and compare these AI methodologies, discover their strengths and shortcomings, and underline their value in industrial applications. Principal findings indicate that AI-driven strategies greatly enhance performance, adaptability, and optimization in batch systems. The study addresses challenges including data requirements and computational demands and suggests future directions such as hybrid AI frameworks and real-time optimization. This study seeks to direct researchers and practitioners toward enhanced and effective batch process management

The collaboration between the governmental and private industries has garnered significant consideration from governments, organizations, and study institutions globally, as it has become evident that social and economic growth relies on the mobilization and integration of all societal capabilities, encompassing the energies, assets, and knowledge of both industries. In countries that are developing, particularly Iraq, the notion of government-private collaboration is relatively novel to the government, which has traditionally borne the majority of the responsibility for delivering public services and undertaking substantial construction projects.
The purpose of this research was intended to examine the influence of risk management techniques on the achievement of government-private collaboration projects in Iraq by determining the most significant and frequent risk variables affecting the performance of Iraqi construction operations, where the survey population was primarily composed of civil engineers, comprising 70% of the respondents.
Furthermore, 65% of the study population is currently engaged in government-private collaboration projects, while 35% have previously been involved in government-private collaboration projects. The study utilized questionnaires distributed to real companies and individuals at the southern provinces of Iraq from specialists working in various engineering fields to identify the most significant risk variables and propose suitable strategies for their management. Results from both quantitative and qualitative analyses show that technical, economical, and political support and credibility risk variables are significantly related to the achievement of government-private collaboration projects in Iraq. In contrast, social reliability and ecological effects did not show a statistically substantial relationship with the accomplishment of the project.
The study determined that among the four risk types affecting the achievement of government-private collaboration projects in Iraq, the component of governmental acceptance and credibility exerted the most significant influence, ranking as the primary risk factor. This was subsequently followed by the economic and financial variable, subsequently the technical variable, and lastly, the societal and ecological variable.
The research ultimately advises government-private collaboration project managers to ensure sufficient supervision of the risks encountered, which encompass risk transfer, preventive measures, mitigation, and acceptability. Additionally, it recommends conducting training sessions on risk management and offering informal education through professional development offerings to enhance understanding of risk management and its implementation in government-private collaboration projects.

This study partially replaced cement and coarse aggregate with recycled ceramic and glass waste , and then analyzed the mechanical behaviour of the resulting concrete. Various replacement ratio were prepared for concrete mixes, then compression, splitting tensile and shear strength were perfomed after 28 days of curing. Empirical equations were developed using regression analysis, where the compressive strength was related to the tensile and shear strengths. After analysis , strong, positive relationships were revealed, with a coefficient of determination R2 0.995. This value indicates a high accuracy of the produced models and can provid reliable tools for designing sustainable concrete mixes. Regression analysis also revealed the limitations of predicting the behaviour of modified concrete using convential equations.

The utilization of recycled plastic in concrete production is an innovative approach that addresses both the environmental issues associated with plastic waste and enhances the properties of concrete. An experimental mixture of standard concrete (C30&C45) was made, with coarse aggregate replaced by (0,10,20,30%) for each mixture. In this study, cubes (150 mm x 150 mm x 150 mm) at 7 days and 28 days old were examined. This study assesses C30 and C45 concrete containing 10–30% recycled HDPE as a coarse aggregate substitute. The slump and unit weight diminished (slump decreased by 6.5–16%, density correspondingly), and the compressive strength declined by 8–27% at 28 days. Conversely, splitting tensile and flexural strengths were enhanced, with tensile strength rising by up to 26%, attributable to HDPE's fiber-like characteristics. The results demonstrate that HDPE improves crack resistance while reducing compressive strength, making it more suitable for non-structural or lightweight applications.