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.
Construction 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 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 MoreWithin this paper, we developed a new series of organic chromophores based on triphenyleamine (TPA) (AL1, AL-2, AL-11 and AL-22) by engineering the structure of the electron donor (D) unit via replacing a phenyle ring or inserting thiophene as a π-linkage. For the sake of scrutinizing the impact of the TPA donating ability and the spacer upon the photovoltaic, absorptional, energetic, and geometrical characteristic of these sensitizers, density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) have been utilized. According to structural characteristics, incorporating the acceptor, π-bridge and TPA does not result in a perfect coplanar conformation in AL-22. We computed EHOMO, ELUMO and bandgap (Eg) energies by performing frequency a
... Show MoreAbstract
This research presents a on-line cognitive tuning control algorithm for the nonlinear controller of path-tracking for dynamic wheeled mobile robot to stabilize and follow a continuous reference path with minimum tracking pose error. The goal of the proposed structure of a hybrid (Bees-PSO) algorithm is to find and tune the values of the control gains of the nonlinear (neural and back-stepping method) controllers as a simple on-line with fast tuning techniques in order to obtain the best torques actions of the wheels for the cart mobile robot from the proposed two controllers. Simulation results (Matlab Package 2012a) show that the nonlinear neural controller with hybrid Bees-PSO cognitive algorithm is m
... Show MoreThe Marshlands cover an area of about 24% of the land area of Iraq, which gives it special importance to the country with its resources, resources and human capabilities, and because the conditions of this region are different from other areas environmentally and living necessitates subject to certain design principles achieve sustainable environmental integration to maintain them from For future generations, the idea of research is crystallized by the interest of environmental organizations and urban designers in planning and establishing special laws to exploit the region environmentally, economically and tourism, especially after the current focus of the country's economic revival. T tourism and begin the development
... Show MoreThis research aims to explore the impact of strategic intelligence by his dimensions (Foresight , system thinking, vision, motivation and partnership) on decision making styles which represented by ( rational, intuitive, dependent, Spontaneous and Avoidant style) for a sample of the administrative leaders in the center of Reconstruction &Housing Ministry and Some its formations which are companies of (Sa'ad, Al Mansour, al Farouq, Assyria, al-Mu'tasim, al- Rasheed, and Public Authority for Housing). So to achieve the research objectives and to test hypotheses, it has been relying
... Show MoreA study has been performed to compare the beddings in which ductile iron pipes are buried. In water transmission systems, bends are usually used in the pipes. According to the prescribed layout, at these bends, unbalanced thrust forces are generated that must be confronted to prevent the separation of the bend from the pipe. The bed condition is a critical and important factor in providing the opposite force to the thrust forces in the restraint joint system. Due to the interaction between the native soil and the bedding layers in which the pipe is buried and the different characteristics between them. Also, the interaction with the pipe material makes it difficult to calculate the real forces opposite to the thrust forces and the way they
... Show More
Purpose: Providing practical knowledge of the requirements of a detailed feasibility study for selecting the investment project.
Findings: Directing the private sector towards investing in productive projects - the pre-cast reinforced concrete project - as it achieves a financial return as well as providing Providing foreign currencies by reducing imports and exploiting available natural resources
Practical implications: The importance of a detailed feasibility study to determining whether the project can be implemented or not.
The precast concrete method is one of the best modern c
... Show More