AL-Rafidain Engineering Journal (AREJ)

AbstractRecently the concept of settlement piles has been introduced in which the spacing could be large when the purpose of using piles is to mitigate the settlement rather than resisting the load. For large spacing the effect of cap soil contact on the bearing capacity may increase therefore the new system is usually referred to as piled raft. It is yet not clearly indicated what number of piles or spacing is enough to maintain tolerable settlements. This ambiguity is the main problem of the present research besides some other relations. The software ANSYS version 11 has been used to model and analyze the piled raft. The raft and piles are represented using the 8-node isoparametric brick element SOLID 65 while the surrounding soil is represented using the 8-node brick element SOLID 45. The raft dimensions are kept constants, as well as the cohesion and the angle of friction of the soil. The Drucker-Prager soil yield model has been employed.The results indicate that there is a limiting number of piles represented by the total piles area relative to the group area which in general amounts to 3 to 4% after which there will be no significant advantage of increasing the number of piles to reduce settlement. This relative piles area is slightly affected by the stress level relative to the bearing capacity so that the factor of safety. Accordingly the pile spacing may significantly be increased if the settlement is the major concern.The ultimate bearing capacity was found to moderately increase with increasing the relative pile area up to the narrowest spacing used of 3D which is in agreement with the conventional knowledge.For the conditions investigated the effect of raft-soil contact was found to be not very significant.

AbstractReinforced concrete members may be subjected to axial load, bending moment, shear and torsion. However the behaviour of these members under shear or combined shear and torsion is a complex phenomenon. In this study the softened truss model theory is applied for the analysis of fibre reinforced concrete deep beams and corbels. The theory is more promising than the strut and tie model which satisfies the equilibrium conditions and to some extent materials constitutive relationships. While this theory, considers the equilibrium, compatibility, materials constitutive relationships and the degrading effect of the diagonal tension cracks on the compressive strength of cracked reinforced concrete element when subjected to biaxial compression-tension stresses. The previously developed algorithms for the analysis were modified by incorporating the effect of short discrete steel fibres on the behaviour and strength of concrete subjected to shear.Fibre reinforced concrete deep beams and corbels were analyzed using the adopted algorithm and materials constitutive relationships. The predicted effects of the shear span / depth ratio, volume fraction of steel fibres and the longitudinal steel ratio on the shear strength of fibre reinforced concrete deep beams and corbels showed good agreement with published experimental results.

The environmental impact due to cement and burnt clay industries are increasing continuously, also cement concrete blocks and burnt clay bricks are increasingly becoming costly due to excessive cost of fuel required to manufacture the cement or burning the clay, while the soil suitable for construction is available everywhere in the world.The paper presents the results of an experimental investigation undertaken at Mosul Technical Institute to assess the potential for unfired compressed earth bricks using locally soil as construction material stabilized with crushed limestoneobtained from the waste of masonry factories. The wet soilmolded into bricks by manual press known globally as CINVA-RAM,exert high pressure. The press was manufactured locally for the research purposes conducted in the institute.Different percentages of crushed limestone by weight (passing sieve No.8) were added namely (4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 %) to the soil obtained from 20 km west of Mosul to reduce its expansiveness if any, and in a trial to improve its characteristics[1].The results showed increase in compressive strength at 4% and sharp decrease with higher percentages

Object detection is important operation used in multiple applications such as computer vision, image and video processing, security, artificial intelligent, and several other areas.However, in these applications, it is not easy to realize real-time frame rates and fast invariant detecting function under changing object states such as position and size using software implementations. So that to solves these problems and speed up the highly intensive calculation required, In this paper simple and efficient template matching algorithm architecture of a video streaming application for object detection is proposed,it is based on using Sum of Absolute Differences (SAD)withPyramid Sum of Absolute Differences (PSAD) as similarity measures and a systolic array design using sliding window operation, where each video frame is divided into slides and feeds through the window by using a suitable first in first out(FIFO) buffers instead of the sliding window across the video frame. The implementation operation is done by using combination of software and hardware co-design that is based by using pipelining technique, data recirculation , and single instruction multiple data (SIMD) operations. The results for both SAD and PSAD algorithms showed the best match can be found at the template (window) size is 19×19 bits/pixel and with accuracy detectionrate of100%.Keywords: FIFO, FPGA, Object detection, Pipeline, PSAD, SAD,Sliding window, Systolic array, Template matching, Video stream.

AbstractIt is known that congestion may widely appear in computer networks which apply open shortest path first (OSPF) protocol. The use of such protocol may lead to serve congestion states in some network links while another links are either not used or underutilized. In this paper, an adaptive triple-path congestion control routing mechanism is proposed. This mechanism is based on adaptive adding up to two new additional paths between source and destination nodes, in addition to original shortest path when there is a possibility of congestion in the network links. These two new paths use some information about the congestion and loading states gathered from a network predictor called wavenet-based link status predictor (WBLSP). The first additional path uses a routing algorithm called wavenet-based congested link scaling (WBCLS), while the second uses another algorithm called wavenet-based loaded link-aware with congested link scaling (WBLLACLS). The proposed congestion control routing approach is tested and its performance is evaluated using OPNET 14.5 Modeler. The results are compared with the results of applying traditional OSPF routing protocol on two different tested network topologies and similar loading scenarios.

AbstractIn this paper a special kind of PID controller has been designed and implemented which is called fractional order PID (FOPID) controller whose derivative and integral are fractional rather than integers. The FOPID controller has five parameters which have been tuned by using an intelligent particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm by minimizing the fitness function given as integral of time weighted absolute error (ITAE). The digital fractional order PID (DFOPID) controller in discrete time with suitable sampling period has been attained utilizing special approximation method called continued fraction expansion (CFE) that lead to convert the s domain transfer function into z domain using MATLAB tools. As a case of study the DFOPID controller has been designed and realized by software in C language on PIC microcontroller for DC motor as a position control. The results showed software fulfillment of DFOPID, with alike time domain performance of closed loop system for both continuous and discrete.

AbstractHardware-description Language (HDL) is typically used to synthesise the digital hardware of the control systems. Importantly, this requires a deep knowledge in digital hardware design; howeverthis is not essential for the design of the real time control systems. From this prospective, there is a great interest to employ a modern environment tool to simulate, design, validate and to rapidly implement the hardware to the target of the application. For this reason, this paper aims to presentthe methodology and effectiveness of using the LABVIEW-FPGA toolin embedded system design of digital control algorithms. As the model of the control system has been already simulated using the LABVIEW environment, therefore this will shorten the time of hardware implementation, where the designed control algorithm will directly translate into hardware resources by using LABVIEW-FPGA module. The methodology of hardware digital controller design is clearly explained using LABVIEW-FPGA modulebased SPARTAN-3EFPGA from Xilinx. The prototyped temperature control system using (CI-53003) is accommodatedas one of the examplesto demonstrate the embedded hardware design of digital control system. Experimental results clearly show the successful hardware implementation of the designed algorithm.

AbstractThe paper introduces a modified space vector pulse width modulation strategy which has been used to drive and control the speed of permanent magnet synchronous motor. This strategy, compared with relative conventional SVPWM method, has important features. Such features are increasing the utilization of DC link input voltage of the inverter, reducing the stress on power switching devices, and therefore minimizing the switching losses. The proposed approach is analyzed and simulated. Also a complete system model of the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drive, using MatLab-Simulink, has been performed. The obtained results, for conventional and modified approaches, have been compared. In order to verify the theoretical results, practical test has been performed which shows that the proposed technique is preferable than the conventional type.

AbstractThis paper presents the mathematical model of the ZETA converter circuit operating in the continuous conduction mode (CCM) in state-space form. The converter circuit output is investigated. Fuzzy Logic controller is designed for the converter circuit. Fuzzy Logic based Particle Swarm Optimization (FLC&PSO) Controller is proposed to design controller for controlling the switch operation of the ZETA converter circuit for regulation of its output voltage and getting good performance. Analysis and comparision between Simulation results of open loop, close loop fuzzy logic controller and fuzzy logic based particle swarm optimization controller results are performed for different resistive loads and reference voltages. The results show that there are a signification improvement in the results for the proposed method.

In this work, neural network control theory is applied to identify and control the robot arm with two links conformed by two equations of second order which alternate their operation simultaneous. A neural network is trained to learn the robot arm in the dynamic behavior. The simulation results of the neural network controller based on model reference that used to identify and control the robot arm give very close results.

Flat slabs are the slab without beam so it save level of the floor. The punching shear caused failure around the column area under applied load on the column, to reduce this failure shear reinforcement were used but it is not easy practically especially for low slab thickness, it can be used steel fibres in the concrete mix to increase the punching shear strength. The aim of the research to study the punching shear of flat slab of self compacting concrete ,this type of concrete used widely because it is environmental friendly. The main parameters are the reinforcement of the slab, two percent were taken with different volume percent of steel fibre (0,0.4,0.8,1.2)%.The main results obtained that the punching shear strength increased with the volume percent of fiber and steel reinforcement, it increased about 27.95% , 21.4% for slabs with reinforcement ratio =1.4%, =1.8% respectively for 1.2% fibre, and the energy absorption increased about 107% for slab with 1.2% fibre and =1.8% compared with slab without fibre. The results show also increased in ductility as the fibre content increase and the failure perimeter of the slabs is approximately circular shape and the failure perimeter increase as the fibre content increased.

This paper suggests an information gathering and monitoring system designed for vehicular ad-hoc networks(VANETs) and that implemented in a large area.The suggested infrastructure consists of low cost wireless sensors covering certain areas and connected to “the monitoring and control center” through a master node, the study is divided into four phases: the first phase discusses the information gathering process in vehicles and sensors level, the second phase discusses how to send the brief road traffic information to the master node. This process is based on the concepts of the summarization and aggregation and study the effect of using one or two channels for that purpose, the third phase focuses on the information transportation between the master nodes until it reaches to “the monitoring and control center”, The mechanism of the information transportation in this phase is proposed to be in an ad-hoc manner using four ad-hoc protocols Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector Routing Protocol AODV,Dynamic Source routingDSR, Optimized Link State Routing Protocol OLSR and Temporally-Ordered Routing Algorithm Protocol TORA. The best protocol willbe selectedaccording to its data delivery, latency and average throughput on the radio channel and the fourth phase deals with dissemination of the gathered information to the vehicles.The proposed system is designed and simulated using “OPNET” package. The results indicate the ability of applying real time and high resolution monitoring system using these techniques.

In this paper, a pipeline math processor is designed using VHDL, where doing simulation for processor by using simulation program ISE10.1. The processor is implemented on the FPGA chip in a panel SPARTAN3E, where it has been downloaded by using USB port. The register and buffer memory of each of the fetch and decoder units are designed such that reading and writing operations for the same location are performed during one clock cycle (each clock pulse edge is used for one operation). JTAG port is used to update the data and instructions stored in the main memory via monitor circuit. The main memory of the processor contains two ports, one of them is used to update the data and instructions and the other is used to read data and instructions. For the purpose of increasing the speed, decode and execute units are built so that all operations can be executed in parallel.The number of operations that can be executed on the processor are 30 operations including triangular functions, hyperbolic functions, square root, ALU, comparison operations, move operation, and parallel shifting and rotation operations. The number of clocks that is required by the mathematical functions, ranges between 17-23 clocks for the first output and then each clock has it's output when the values of input functions are sequential and continuous. The remaining operations (such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) need only one clock for each output. The maximum operating frequency for the design chip was found to be 133.820 MHz, therefore its throughput is 133.820 MFlops. For the purpose of displaying all the processor outputs on a computer screen, the VGA Port is used. The overall design of this processor occupies 98% ( when the processor is connected with VGA port) from the volume of the FPGA chip on board SPARTAN3E.

This research focuses on defining and clarifying the property of similarity which characterizes the Traditional Houses Architecture, as previous related literature,which has dealt with this issue almost implicitly, is characterized with inadequate and unclear knowledge regarding this property in the plans of traditional housesin old Mosul city. The research aims at studying and elaborating the property of similarityand testing the principle hypothesis that the plans of traditional houses of old Mosul city may be characterized by certain patterns of similarity on both the level of the overall plan composition and the level of plan parts. The research achieved its goal via four stages; the first stage includes the deffinitions of similarity and its related aspects. In the second stage the related previous literature is reviewed in relation with the issue of similarity, while the third stage focuses on introducing elaborated theoretical framework of the research variables within various compositional levels. The fourth stage is dedicated to practical study procedures, presenting and discussing results and finally introducing the conclusions which support the hypothesis of the research and introduce a more detailed definition of the similarity patterns within the plans of traditional houses in old Mosul city in the light of the measured variables and the related recommendations.

The interior designer seeks to construct internal spaces in the sacred buildings that puts the human being in the presence of God through the use of natural light as it is an attribute of architectural text, which also has been treated for a long time as a holly thing that contains inspiration energy that sparks life in every solid thing and recreates life in it.Inspite of the existence of a large number of literatures that discussed the light phenomena,the modes of employing and using it.Most of them focused on the functional and technical aspects, without considering the style of it is utilization by the interior designer to achieve his style and attract his receivers to theimpressions in the architectural text.Thisindicates the importance of researchingthese phenomena from it is stylistics and semantic aspects.This paper focuses on identification and subsequently the establishment theoretical Framework for the utilization of natural light styles in the sacred building, then apply it on selected architectural projects to explore the stylistic displacements that were used by designer in utilizing the natural light elements in the interior architecture of the modern scared building. The research has reached some stylisticattributesthat showed the nature of renewal in theemploying of natural light in the interior architecture of the modern Sacred Buildings.

AbstractThe presentresearch aims to identify the date of the start of the rainfall season (Onset Rainfall) at Tel- Abta area western of the province of Nineveh. The study relied on data for daily rainfall,mean maximum and minimum monthly temperatures, mean monthly relative humidity, and wind speed at 2 mheight for the period (1996 to 2010).The study involved four models; three already available in the literature and one is developed in this study. The developed model depends on the principles of water balance in the top soil layer in the field. The previously proposed models depend on some sort of statistical analysis of the daily rainfall. A computer program using Microsoft Excel code is developed for each model. The results revealed that the proposed (developed) model is the most suitable one for the dry areas suffering rainfall shortage. The performance of the second and third model was very close to that of the proposed model. The fourth model, however, gave results that are very much different and far from the other three models. We recommend not to adapt Model 4 at all. Models 2 and 3 may be used for practical and quick applications. However, the proposed model (Model 1) stays the best and most accurate because it depends on sound scientific and realistic bases.

AbstractThe study focused on evaluating the Wady Al-Danfely wastewater effluent, which is discharged directly in Tigris river. This effluent represents a mixture of industrial and domestic wastewater, that collected the large portion of the wastewater from industrial district at left bank of river and some residential quarters. The results revealed the exceeded of the total suspended solid concentration, BOD and COD of the stream effluent in compliance with the Iraqi standard for conservation of water resources, as its average concentrations were 104 mg/l, 54mg/l and 114mg/l respectively. According to organic load, the stream effluent is classified as weak. As compared with Municipal wastewater for last previous years, Wady Danfilly wastewater impurities were with less concentration levels; These impurities compares with Tigris river water quality increased by different percentage from the river quality and some exceeds by (41) time up to these of the river. However, the river water is remained within the Iraqi standards for conservation of water resources for the downstream after discharge points of the effluent; except the BOD that it reached in its average concentration to 13mg/l.

In this research a functionally graded polymeric composites (FGPCs) were produced using centrifugal casting method . These composites were fabricated from unsaturated polyester resin as a matrix reinforced with silicon carbide particles (SiCp) of different particle size (75,106,150 µm) and ( 6vol%)bulk volume fraction, using (600 RPM) mold rotational speeds . The aim of the present research was to study the effect of (SiCp)particle size on local values of volume fraction ,hardness and Young modulus at specific points along the graded samples. Hardness was measured at these points then graded samples were cut to eight portions . Density , volume fraction were calculated, then standard homogenous samples of constant but different volume fractions were manufactured. Results show that local values of volume fraction, hardness and young modulus decreased in nearby positions of the center of rotation and increased in positions far away from the center of rotation.