Al-Khwarizmi Engineering Journal

Changes in mechanical properties of material as a result of service in different conditions can be provided by mechanical testing to assist the estimation of current internal situation of these materials, or the degree of deterioration may exist in furnaces serviced at high temperature and exceed their design life. Because of the rarity works on austenitic stainless steel material type AISI 321H, in this work, ultimate tensile strength, yield strength, elongation, hardness, and absorbed energy by impact are evaluated based on experimental data obtained from mechanical testing. Samples of tubes are extracted from furnace belong to hydrotreaterunit, also samples from un-used tube material are used to make comparisons between these properties. Tensile properties of stainless steel (AISI 321H) were decreased as temperature increases; the trend of properties decreasing for the samples of un-used tube material is the same for the ex-used material. The trend of stress-strain curve will not change due to elevated temperature exposure for long time of service, except the yield strength will be higher in this diagram. The yield strength increased under these conditions, but the ability of material which is elongated will decrease. Hardness and absorbed energy increased by 11.28 and 14% respectively when the material is aged for long time under effect of high temperature accompanied with creep effect.

Magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) process is one of non-traditional or advanced finishing methods which is suitable for different materials and produces high quality level of surface finish where it uses magnetic force as a machining pressure. A set of experimental tests was planned according to Taguchi orthogonal array (OA) L27 (36) with three levels and six input parameters. Experimental estimation and optimization of input parameters for MAF process for stainless steel type 316 plate work piece, six input parameters including amplitude of tooth pole, and number of cycle between teeth, current, cutting speed, working gap, and finishing time, were performed by design of experiment (DOE) and response surface methodology (RSM).These six input parameters in this research were optimized for all input parameters to improve the surface layer for work piece by using signal-to-noise ratio technique. The obtained results showed that all six input parameters have an influence on the change in surface roughness(∆Ra). In addition, the results showed that the surface roughness of the work piece decreased from 1.130 to 0.370µm that means high level of improvement in the change of surface roughness (0.760)µm.

This research aims to study and improve the passivating specifications of rubber resistant to vibration. In this paper, seven different rubber recipes were prepared based on mixtures of natural rubber(NR) as an essential part in addition to the synthetic rubber (IIR, BRcis, SBR, CR)with different rates. Mechanical tests such as tensile strength, hardness, friction, resistance to compression, fatigue and creep testing in addition to the rheological test were performed. Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy (SEM)test was used to examine the structure morphology of rubber. After studying and analyzing the results, we found that, recipe containing (BRcis) of 40% from the natural rubber has the best mechanical and physical specifications to be used in applications that require the presence of rubber, resistant to vibration.

All central air conditioning systems contain piping system with various components, sizes, material, and layouts. If such systems in operating mode, the flow in piping system and its component such as valves can produce severe vibration due to some flow phenomenon’s. In this research, experimental measurements and numerical simulation are used to study the flow-induced vibration in valves. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) concepts are included with one-way and two-way fluid-structure interaction concepts by using finite element software Package (ANSYS 14.57). Detection analysis is performed on flow characteristics under operation conditions and relations with structural vibration. Most of real geometrical, operational, and boundary conditions are simulated to obtain best similarity with real operation conditions. Comparisons performed between experimental data and numerical results (one-way and two-way simulation) to verify the results. The main conclusion was drawn from the study that the dominant source of vibration for valve is the water pulsation in addition to amount of water hammering. In addition, the main source of water pulsation in globe valve is the vortex shedding and pressure difference between upstream and downstream of valve. The vibration amplitude was increased with increasing flow rate until to be maximum when the flow rate around 30% and then decreased until flow rate reaches to around 85% and then trends to be constant.

This paper presents mechanical and electrical design, and implementation process of industrial robot, 3-DoF type SCARA (selective compliment assembly robot arm),with two rotations and one translation used for welding applications.The design process also included the controller design which was based on PLC(programmable logic controller) as well as selection of mechanical and electrical components.The challenge was to use the available components in Iraq with reasonable costs. The robot mentioned is fully automated using programmable logic controller PLC(Zelio type SR3-B261BD),with 16inputs and 10 outputs. The PLC was implemented in FBD logic to obtain three different automatic motions with high efficiency withouterror,where the two links can stop in a certain points and link 3 bushed down for doing the task in a desired trajectory motion by programming the PLCcontroller

The aim of this work is to create a power control system for wind turbines based on fuzzy logic. Three power control loop was considered including: changing the pitch angle of the blade, changing the length of the blade and turning the nacelle. The stochastic law was given for changes and instant inaccurate assessment of wind conditions changes. Two different algorithms were used for fuzzy inference in the control loop, the Mamdani and Larsen algorithms. These two different algorithms are materialized and developed in this study in Matlab-Fuzzy logic toolbox which has been practically implemented using necessary intelligent control system in electrical engineering and renewable energy concepts. A comparison was done to access the functionality of the developed power control system of fuzzy logic and classical control system with PID – control. It can be concluded that the power control system of fuzzy logic allows to accurately maintain production under the control target function for each work area. When switching operation of wind turbines, it has the distinction that from 13.5 m/s to another wind velocity value, there is no overshoot and a typical of classical control systems, and when the wind velocity V is less than13.5 m / s, the pitch angle of the blades should be slightly greater than zero, and if it has increased by 5 °, then blade length should be minimal as possible. Simulation program proved the possibility of effective power regulation for the large wind turbines controller fuzzy type on the basis of knowledge production "if - then" rules, which were shown to be effective on these wind turbines control.

For sparse system identification,recent suggested algorithms are l_0-norm Least Mean Square (l_0-LMS), Zero-Attracting LMS (ZA-LMS), Reweighted Zero-Attracting LMS (RZA-LMS), and p-norm LMS (p-LMS) algorithms, that have modified the cost function of the conventional LMS algorithm by adding a constraint of coefficients sparsity. And so, the proposed algorithms are named l_0-ZA-LMS, l_0-RZA-LMS, p-ZA-LMS and p-RZA-LMS that are designed by merging twoconstraints from previous algorithms to improve theconvergence rate and steady state of MSD for sparse system. In this paper, a complete analysis was done for the theoretical operation of proposed algorithms by exited white Gaussian sequence for input signal. The discussion of mean square deviation (MSD) with regard to parameters of algorithms and system sparsity was observed. In addition, in this paper, the correlation between proposed algorithms and the last recent algorithms were presented and the necessary conditions of these proposed algorithms were planned to improve convergence rate. Finally, the results of simulations are compared with theoretical study (?), which is presented to match closely by a wide-range of parameters..

Locally natural occurring Iraqi rocks of Bauxite and Porcelanite (after pre calcinations at 1000oC for 1hr) were used, with the addition of different proportions of MgO and Al2O3, to prepare refractory materials. The effects of these additives on the physical and thermal properties of the prepared refractories were investigated.Many batches of Bauxite/MgO, Bauxite/Al2O3, Bauxite/MgO/Al2O3, and Porcelanite/ MgO/Al2O3 were prepared. The mixture is milled and classified into different size fractions; fine (less than 45μm) 40%, middle (45-75μm) 40%, and coarse (75-106μm) 20% . X-ray diffraction technique was used to identify the structure of Bauxite and Porcelanite rocks. The samples were formed by semi dry pressing with the addition of few drops of water as a binder. These samples were sintered at 1100oC for 2hrs. Physical properties (linear shrinkage, density and porosity), and the thermal properties (thermal conductivity, diffusivity and specific heat) were measured for all the prepared samples. The results show the increasing of density is susceptible to the thermal properties, and also the addition of Al2O3 and MgO to the natural rocks have a limited effect, and the values of the parameters above for the natural rocks, were in the levels to be used as a refractory material for lining a metal fusion furnaces and other applications.

In this study, the effect of carboxylic methyl cellulose (CMC), and sodium dodcyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) as an aqueous solution on the drag reduction was investigated. Different concentrations of (CMC) and (SDBS) such as (50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, and 500 ppm) were used to analyze the aqueous solution properties, including surface tension, conductivity, and shear viscosity. The optimum four concentrations (i.e., 50, 100, 200, and 300 ppm) of fluid properties were utilized to find their effect on the drag reduction. Two different PVC pipe diameters (i.e., 1" and 3/4") were used in this work. The results showed that blending CMC with SDBS gives a good drag reduction percent about (58%) more than using them individually, friction factor decreasing with increasing Reynolds number and gives good agreement with von Karamn equation and maximum drag reduction (MDR) asymptote. Reynolds number, pipe diameter, and polymer-surfactant concentrations were considered as influencing factors. In addition, critical micelle concentration, the onset of drag reduction, and the interactions between the mixed additives were discussed.

The aim of this paper is to investigate and discuss the mechanisms of corrosion of epoxy coatings used for potable water tanks. Two distinct types of Jotun epoxy coatings: Tankguard 412 contained polyamine cured epoxy and Penguard HB contained polyamide cured epoxy, were tested and studied using the electrochemical impedance spectroscopic (EIS) method. The porosity of epoxy coatings was determined using EIS method. The obtained results showed that the two epoxy coatings have excellent behavior when applied and tested in potable water of Basrah city. Polyamine is more resistance to water corrosion compared to polyamide curing epoxy and has high impedance values. Microscopic inspection after test showed that the polyamine cured epoxy has blistering while the surface of polyamide cured epoxy showed pitting and blisters.

The vegetative filter strips (VFS) are a useful tool used for reducing the movement of sediment and pesticide in therivers. The filter strip’s soil can help in reducing the runoff volume by infiltration. However, the characteristics of VFS (i.e., length) are not recently identified depending on the estimation of VFS modeling performance. The aim of this research is to study these characteristics and determine acorrelation between filter strip length and percent reduction (trapping efficiency) for sediment, water, and pesticide. Two proposed pesticides(one has organic carbon sorption coefficient, Koc, of 147 L/kg which is more moveable than XXXX, and another one has a Koc of 2070 L/kg which is less moveable than XXXX) are presented, where the goal is to prevent 95% of incoming sediment and 85% of the incoming pesticide to reach a receiving stream in still water, Oklahoma from a cultivated field (1250 m²),for 2 hour storm with 5 years return period. Several VFS lengths were simulated including1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 12, and 13 m. The results showed that the percent of reduction of sediment, pesticide, and water mainly depends on VFS lengths. Moreover, considering the design storms range, the simulation illustrated that the optimal filter length was13m for silty clay loam. When the value of〖 K〗_(oc,) was increased from 147 L/kg to 6070 L/kg, the filter length decreased from 13 to 9.5 because of the increase in trapping efficiency. In addition, the results revealed that the trap¬ping efficiency was for sediment but not for water orpesticide which was highly impacted by the narrow filter strips. The amount of the rainfall and runoff of the designated field was larger than the infiltration capacity of filter strips, which resulted in low trapping efficiency for pesticide and water.

This paper presents an intelligent model reference adaptive control (MRAC) utilizing a self-recurrent wavelet neural network (SRWNN) to control nonlinear systems. The proposed SRWNN is an improved version of a previously reported wavelet neural network (WNN). In particular, this improvement was achieved by adopting two modifications to the original WNN structure. These modifications include, firstly, the utilization of a specific initialization phase to improve the convergence to the optimal weight values, and secondly, the inclusion of self-feedback weights to the wavelons of the wavelet layer. Furthermore, an on-line training procedure was proposed to enhance the control performance of the SRWNN-based MRAC. As the training method, the recently developed modified micro artificial immune system (MMAIS) was used to optimize the parameters of the SRWNN. The effectiveness of this control approach was demonstrated by controlling several nonlinear dynamical systems. For each of these systems, several evaluation tests were conducted, including control performance tests, robustness tests, and generalization tests. From these tests, the SRWNN-based MRAC has exhibited its effectiveness regarding accurate control, disturbance rejection, and generalization ability. In addition, a comparative study was made with other related controllers, namely the original WNN, the artificial neural network (ANN), and the modified recurrent network (MRN). The results of these comparison tests indicated the superiority of the SRWNN controller over the other related controllers.