The quality and cost of constructed buildings are heavily influenced by the performance of design/auditing consultants. Thus, selecting the right design consultant and design auditing consultants is of utmost importance and not an easy task for any construction client. so, the client should specify the efficiency criteria and assess the performance levels of the design and design auditing consultant firm. The study aims to identify the selection criteria of the design consultant in construction projects and also identify the selection criteria of the design auditing consultant for the construction projects by using the Delphi survey with applying the principal components analysis (PCA). The results of the present study showed that there are 13 key criteria for selecting the design consultant, where the criterion of “Efficiency and experience of the company/consultant in previous work” was of the highest importance. While there are Ten key criteria for selecting the design auditing consultant for the construction project, where the criterion of “Credibility and professional integrity (transparency, professional conduct, and ethics)” was of the highest importance in the decision-making process. Moreover, the results of applying PCA on the Delphi survey outcomes showed that all the resulting selection criteria are most valuable and suitable for the selection process in construction projects.
Waste is one of the most important problems affecting the city’s environment and its urban landscape, which results from the activities and activities of man and the natural environment. Its sources have varied between residential, commercial, industrial, medical and hazardous, and its spread in cities, on roads and on abandoned open lands, has led to significant negative effects and risks to human health and the environment.
Therefore, there were serious attempts to deal with waste and follow sequential steps that formed a waste management system such as (collection, sorting, transport, then treatment and disposal). Preventing and reducing waste, then recycling and recovering by composting or burning, and ending with bu
... Show MoreThe heat exchanger is a device used to transfer heat energy between two fluids, hot and cold. In this work, an output feedback adaptive sliding mode controller is designed to control the temperature of the outlet cold water for plate heat exchanger. The measurement of the outlet cold temperature is the only information required. Hence, a sliding mode differentiator was designed to estimate the time derivative of outlet hot water temperature, which it is needed for constructing a sliding variable. The discontinuous gain value of the sliding mode controller is adapted according to a certain adaptation law. Two constraints which imposed on the volumetric flow rate of outlet cold (control input) were considered within the rules of the proposed
... Show MoreThe present work presents design and implementation of an automated two-axis solar tracking system using local materials with minimum cost, light weight and reliable structure. The tracking system consists of two parts, mechanical units (fixed and moving parts) and control units (four LDR sensors and Arduino UNO microcontroller to control two DC servomotors). The tracking system was fitted and assembled together with a parabolic trough solar concentrator (PTSC) system to move it according to information come from the sensors so as to keep the PTSC always perpendicular to sun rays. The experimental tests have been done on the PTSC system to investigate its thermal performance in two cases, with tracking system (case 1) and without trackin
... Show MoreConstruction joints are stopping places in the process of placing concrete, and they are required because in many structures it is impractical to place concrete in one continuous operation. The amount of concrete that can be placed at one time is governed by the batching and mixing capacity and by the strength of the formwork. A good construction joint should provide adequate flexural and shear continuity through the interface.
In this study, the effect of location of construction joints on the performance of reinforced concrete structural elements is experimentally investigated.
Nineteen beam specimens with dimensions of 200×200×950 mm were tested. The variables investigated are the location of the construction joints
... Show MoreNanoparticles (NPs) have been suggested for subsurface projects, including enhanced oil recovery (EOR), carbon capture and storage (CCS), and hydrogen storage, due to their small size, high surface energy, controlled surface properties, and significant effects on the underground formation properties. Silica is an excellent NP that efficiently modifies the surface properties of subsurface formations for incremental oil recovery and to derisk carbon and hydrogen leaks. However, the retention of injected NPs in a narrow area near the injection inlet can limit a project’s feasibility. In the present study, hydrophobic (hybrid) NPs were produced via silanization of silica NPs, and the mobility behavior of bare (hydrophilic) and hybrid
... Show MoreThe problem of research was to identify after the use of cost technology based on specifications in the validity of determining and measuring the costs of the implementation of contracting, by applying to al-Mansour General Construction Contracting Company as an appropriate alternative to the traditional costing system currently adopted, which is characterized by many shortcomings and weaknesses Which has been reflected in the validity and integrity of the calculations. To solve this problem, the research was based on the premise that: (The application of cost technology based on specifications will result in calculating the cost of the product according to the specification required by the customer, to meet his wishes properly and witho
... Show MoreSingle-photon detection concept is the most crucial factor that determines the performance of quantum key distribution (QKD) systems. In this paper, a simulator with time domain visualizers and configurable parameters using continuous time simulation approach is presented for modeling and investigating the performance of single-photon detectors operating in Gieger mode at the wavelength of 830 nm. The widely used C30921S silicon avalanche photodiode was modeled in terms of avalanche pulse, the effect of experiment conditions such as excess voltage, temperature and average photon number on the photon detection efficiency, dark count rate and afterpulse probability. This work shows a general repeatable modeling process for significant perform
... Show Moresensor sampling rate (SSR) may be an effective and crucial field in networked control systems. Changing sensor sampling period after designing the networked control system is a critical matter for the stability of the system. In this article, a wireless networked control system with multi-rate sensor sampling is proposed to control the temperature of a multi-zone greenhouse. Here, a behavior based Mamdany fuzzy system is used in three approaches, first is to design the fuzzy temperature controller, second is to design a fuzzy gain selector and third is to design a fuzzy error handler. The main approach of the control system design is to control the input gain of the fuzzy temperature controller depending on the cur
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