Wasit Journal of Engineering Sciences

The test results of six reinforced concrete moderate deep beams with embedded PVC pipes are reported. The tests studied the effect of installation of PVC pipe on behavior of reinforced concrete moderate deep beams. The test parameters were the diameters and locations of the pipes. The dimensions of beams were 1000 mm length, 150 mm width and 300mm depth. One beam was constructed without pipe as control and the remaining five had embedded pipes. Four pipe diameters were used: 25.4, 50.8, 76.2, and 101.6 mm and these pipes were inserted longitudinally either at the center of the beams or near the tension reinforcement. The beams were simply supported and tested under central concentrated load up to failure. The test results indicated that, the pipe diameter less than 1/3 of the beam width had limited effect on the capacity and rigidity of beam. For larger pipes, the ultimate strength of beams decreased between 16.7% and 33.3% and the beams stiffness decreased between 103% and 297%.

Chicken manure wastewaters are increasingly being considered a valuable resource of organic compounds. Screened chicken manure was evaluated as a representative solid organic waste. In this study, electricity generation from livestock wastewater (chicken manure) was investigated in a continuous mediator-less horizontal flow microbial fuel cell with graphite electrodes and a selective type of membrane separating the anodic and cathodic compartments of MFC from each other. The performance of MFC was evaluated to livestock wastewater using aged anaerobic sludge. Results revealed that COD and BOD removal efficiencies were up to 88% and 82%, respectively. At an external resistance value of 150 Ω, a maximum power and current densities of 278 m.W/m2 and 683 mA/m2, respectively were obtained, hence MFC utilizing livestock wastewater would be a sustainable and reliable source of bio-energy generation .

Saline soil is a soil rich with salt resulting from evaporation of irrigation water. This soil has good engineering properties when dry, but once is wetted it loses its entire structure (collapse) and undergoes very large instantaneous settlement. The soil is brought from Al-Dalmaj district. A square footing 50mm×50mm made of steel is used. The stress is applied from a fixed loading system designed especially for model tests.

In this study effect of adding Polypropylene fiber as percentage 1%,3% by weight on behavior of saline soil at the same loading level was investigated and shows improving in results in collapsibility of soil by percent 62% in percent adding 1%.

The present study conducts to investigate the effect of Slurry Infiltration Fiber Concrete (SIFCON) matrix on flexural response of Ferro cement slabs. For this purpose a total of 14 Ferro cement slabs with SIFCON of size (500*120*25 mm) are cast and tested. The major variables studied in this investigation include the number of mesh layers and various volume ratio of discrete steel fiber (2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10%). Structural performance parameters used for comparisons are load–deflection curves, ultimate load and corresponding deflection at failure, energy absorption and failure mode and crack pattern. The inclusion of SIFCON in the Ferro cement slabs can significantly improve its flexural strength and energy absorption may be concluded. Furthermore, reduction in crack width with a large number of cracks is observed in specimens contain SIFCON compared to control specimens.

In this research the performance of the BJT has been improved using the "Feed Forward – Back Propagation Artificial Neural Network" (FFBPANN). The use of this type of networks led to improve the pre specified functions, by widening its bandwidth, improving its sensitivity to the minimum and maximum values of input signals, and reduce the effect of the rise of the temperature on its performance. The improvement done on the type "npn" of the code "2N2222A /ZTX". The execution of this work passed through three stages using various types of computer's programs. The first step have been done using the "Orcad Pspice" program, the second stage; the collected data from the first stage have been introduced as the input data of the "FFBPANN" that represented using "MATLAB R2013b" and the third stage have been done using the (ISE, Project navigator (P.14.2)) in order to apply the results of second stage on the "Field Programmable Gate Array" chip (FPGA).

The combination between the enhance biological phosphorus removal EBPR process and chemical phosphorous precipitation process removal from wastewater to avoid the instability of the biological phosphorus removal process due to temperature variation has been simulated and optimized by implementing three different strategies in the GPS-X 5.0 modeling and simulation software (Hydro mantis). The results were demonstrated that the annual consumption of alum for the three different phosphorus control strategies (side stream line dosing only, wastewater line dosing only and dosing at both wastewater and side stream lines) were 290, 80 and 68 tons Alum/year respectively. Therefore, the implement of both wastewater and side stream lines dosing strategy show a better phosphorus removal choice in terms of effluent quality and amount of alum used.