Numerical study has been conducted to investigate the thermal performance enhancement of flat plate solar water collector by integrating the solar collector with metal foam blocks.The flow is assumed to be steady, incompressible and two dimensional in an inclined channel. The channel is provided with eight foam blocks manufactured form copper. The Brinkman-Forchheimer extended Darcy model is utilized to simulate the flow in the porous medium and the Navier-Stokes equation in the fluid region. The energy equation is used with local thermal equilibrium (LTE) assumption to simulate the thermofield inside the porous medium. The current investigation covers a range of solar radiation intensity at 09:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 04:00

   The aim of this paper is to present the first record of ctenophore species Pleurobrachia pileus (O. F. Müller, 1776) in the coral reef as was recently found in Iraqi marine waters. The specimens were collected from two sites, the first was in Khor Abdullah during May 2015, and the second site was located in the pelagic water of the coral reef area, near the Al-Basrah deep sea crude oil marine loading terminal. Three samples were collected at this site during May 2015, February and March 2018 which showed that P. pileus were present at a densities of 3.0, 2.2 and 0.55 ind./ m³ respectively. The species can affect on the abundance of other zooplankton community through predation.

The red palm weevil Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier, 1790), which belongs to the family Curculionidae, order Coleoptera, is one of the most important palm pests, which leads to heavy losses in date palms. In the last few years, it has been recorded in Iraq, from Safwan city south of Iraq, where it was detected on date palm trees (Phoenix dactylifera L, Arecales: Arecaceae). In the current study, specimens of adult weevils were collected from infested date palms (Phoenix dactylifera), that showed signs of infection in Safwan district, south of Basra province. The results of the investigation showed the presence of phoretic mites associated with the red palm weevil Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier,

The objective of this paper is to improve the general quality of infrared images by proposes an algorithm relying upon strategy for infrared images (IR) enhancement. This algorithm was based on two methods: adaptive histogram equalization (AHE) and Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE). The contribution of this paper is on how well contrast enhancement improvement procedures proposed for infrared images, and to propose a strategy that may be most appropriate for consolidation into commercial infrared imaging applications.
The database for this paper consists of night vision infrared images were taken by Zenmuse camera (FLIR Systems, Inc) attached on MATRIC100 drone in Karbala city. The experimental tests showed sign

The effective insulation design of the stress grading (SG) system in form-wound stator coils is essential for preventing partial discharges and excessive heat generation under pulse-width modulation excitation. This paper proposes a method to find the optimal insulation design of the SG system aimed at reducing the dielectric and thermal stresses in the machine coil. The non-uniform transmission line model is used to predict the voltage propagation along the overhang, SG, and slot regions considering the variation in the physical properties of the insulation layers. The machine coil parameters for different insulation materials are calculated by using the finite element method. Two optimization algorithms, fmincon and particle swarm optimiz

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (massive-MIMO) is considered as the key technology to meet the huge demands of data rates in the future wireless communications networks. However, for massive-MIMO systems to realize their maximum potential gain, sufficiently accurate downlink (DL) channel state information (CSI) with low overhead to meet the short coherence time (CT) is required. Therefore, this article aims to overcome the technical challenge of DL CSI estimation in a frequency-division-duplex (FDD) massive-MIMO with short CT considering five different physical correlation models. To this end, the statistical structure of the massive-MIMO channel, which is captured by the physical correlation is exploited to find sufficiently

This paper investigated the fatigue life behavior of two composite materials subjected to different times of shot peening (2, 4 and 6 min).The first material prepared from unsaturated polyester with E-glass reinforcement by 33% volume fraction. While, the second one was prepared from unsaturated polyester with aluminum powder by2.5% volume fraction. The experimental results showed that the improvement in endurance limit was obtained (for the first material) at 2, 4 and 6 min shot peening times where the percentage of maximum improvement was 25% at shot peening time of 6 min. While, the endurance limit of the second material decreased at shot peening times of 2, 4 and 6 min where the percentage of maximum reduction was 29 % at shot peenin

Bearing capacity of soil is an important factor in designing shallow foundations. It is directly related to foundation dimensions and consequently its performance. The calculations for obtaining the bearing capacity of a soil needs many varying parameters, for example soil type, depth of foundation, unit weight of soil, etc. which makes these calculation very variable–parameter dependent. This paper presents the results of comparison between the theoretical equation stated by Terzaghi and the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) technique to estimate the ultimate bearing capacity of the strip shallow footing on sandy soils. The results show a very good agreement between the theoretical solution and the ANN technique. Results revealed that us

This paper presents an experimental study for strengthening existing columns against axial compressive loads. The objective of this work is to study the behavior of concrete square columns strengthening with circulation technique. In Iraq, there are significantly more reinforced rectangular and square columns than reinforced circular columns in reinforced concrete buildings. Moreover, early research studies indicated that strengthening of rectangular or square columns using wraps of CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) provided rather little enhancement to their load-carrying capacity. In this paper, shape modification technique was performed to modify the shape (cross section) of the columns from square columns into circular colu