The main objective of this paper is to study the behavior of Non-Prismatic Reinforced Concrete (NPRC) beams with and without rectangular openings either when exposed to fire or not. The experimental program involves casting and testing 9 NPRC beams divided into 3 main groups. These groups were categorized according to heating temperature (ambient temperature, 400°C, and 700°C), with each group containing 3 NPRC beams (solid beams and beams with 6 and 8 trapezoidal openings). For beams with similar geometry, increasing the burning temperature results in their deterioration as reflected in their increasing mid-span deflection throughout the fire exposure period and their residual deflection after cooling. Meanwhile, the existing openings situation was compounded. The burned NPRC beams were left to gradually cool down under ambient laboratory conditions, and afterward, they were loaded until failure. The influence of temperature on the residual ultimate load-carrying capacity of each beam was studied by comparing these beams with unburned reference beams. Increasing exposure temperature reduces the ultimate strength of solid NPRC beams exposed to temperatures of 400°C and 700°C by about 5.7% and 10.84% respectively. Meanwhile, NPRC beams with trapezoidal openings showed ultimate strength reductions of 21.13% and 32.8% (for beams with 8 openings) and 28% and 34.4% (for beams with 6 openings) under the same burning conditions. The excessive mid-span deflections for these three types of beams were 2%–30.8%, 1.33%–21.8%, and 1.5%–17.4% under the same burning conditions.
The study presents the performance of flexural strengthening of concrete members exposed to partially unbonded prestressing with a particular emphasis on the amount (0, 14.2, and 28.5%) of cut strands-symmetrical and asymmetrical damage. In addition to examining the influence of cut strands on the remaining capacity of post-tensioned unbonded members and the effectiveness of carbon fiber reinforced polymer laminates restoration, The investigated results on rectangular members subjected to a four-point static bending load based on the composition of the laminate affected the stress of the CFRP, the failure mode, and flexural strength and deflection are covered in this study. The experimental results revealed that the usage of CFRP la
... Show MoreThis paper studies a novel technique based on the use of two effective methods like modified Laplace- variational method (MLVIM) and a new Variational method (MVIM)to solve PDEs with variable coefficients. The current modification for the (MLVIM) is based on coupling of the Variational method (VIM) and Laplace- method (LT). In our proposal there is no need to calculate Lagrange multiplier. We applied Laplace method to the problem .Furthermore, the nonlinear terms for this problem is solved using homotopy method (HPM). Some examples are taken to compare results between two methods and to verify the reliability of our present methods.
Necessary and sufficient conditions for the operator equation I AXAX n*, to have a real positive definite solution X are given. Based on these conditions, some properties of the operator A as well as relation between the solutions X andAare given.
In this paper, a self-tuning adaptive neural controller strategy for unknown nonlinear system is presented. The system considered is described by an unknown NARMA-L2 model and a feedforward neural network is used to learn the model with two stages. The first stage is learned off-line with two configuration serial-parallel model & parallel model to ensure that model output is equal to actual output of the system & to find the jacobain of the system. Which appears to be of critical importance parameter as it is used for the feedback controller and the second stage is learned on-line to modify the weights of the model in order to control the variable parameters that will occur to the system. A back propagation neural network is appl
... Show MoreBackground: The prevalence of obesity is continuously rising world-wide. Obesity is an important risk factor of cardiovascular disease (CVD), metabolic syndrome (MS), and type 2 diabetes (T2D).
Objective: To estimate the frequency of MS in obese versus non-obese subjects in Basrah, Iraq .
Methods: This is a prospective clinical study performed in Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital, Basrah, and included 86 obese subjects (with a BMI ≥ 30), 39 males and 47 females, and 132 non-obese subjects ( with a BMI < 30 ), 60 males and 73 females as a control group. Measurement of height, weight, waist circumference (WC), blood pressure ( BP ), fasting blood glucose ( FBG ), total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG ) and high density lipoprotein-
This study offers a new Mixed Meta Heuristics algorithm (HGSABAT) for estimating the parameter values of each of the six categories of Non-Linear regression models examined (Misrald, Meyer4, Meyer7, Militky4, Militky2, and MGH09) by combining the Gravitational Search Algorithm and Bat Algorithm. Some models have different numbers of parameters. For example, the Misrald and Militky2 models of the Non-Linear Regression model have two parameters (Bl, B2). In contrast, the MGH09 and Militky4 models have four parameters (MGHl, MGH2, MGH3, and MGH4), in which location as the Meyer4 and Meyer7 models have three attributes (Meyerl, MGH2, and MGH3). To examine the effectiveness of the suggested Hybrid Meta Heuristics algorithm (HGSABAT), a simulatio
... Show MoreUltraviolet photodetectors have been widely utilized in several applications, such as advanced communication, ozone sensing, air purification, flame detection, etc. Gallium nitride and its compound semiconductors have been promising candidates in photodetection applications. Unlike polar gallium nitride-based optoelectronics, non-polar gallium nitride-based optoelectronics have gained huge attention due to the piezoelectric and spontaneous polarization effect–induced quantum confined-stark effect being eliminated. In turn, non-polar gallium nitride-based photodetectors portray higher efficiency and faster response compared to the polar growth direction. To date, however, a systematic literature review of non-polar gallium nitride-
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