Soil is the cardinal resource for agricultural crops. Healthy soil will produce healthy plants. Since healthy soil is the important goal for the farmers, they need to select the best tillage system to achieve that goal. There are two main types of tillage systems. Conservation tillage (no-tillage farming) uses agricultural machinery that performs a double function; tillage and seed farming simultaneously. In contrast, conventional tillage farming uses multiple agricultural machines to till and seed the soil. The farmers in the northern governorates of Iraq have used the conservation farming system for a long time. However, the farmers who live in the middle and southern governorates in Iraq use conventional tillage farming. Because most of the farmers in Iraq use the conventional tillage farming method instead of conservation tillage farming to prepare the soil, this paper will briefly explain the advantages and disadvantages for each method. This article might help Iraqi farmers to select one of these two approaches, with the goals of increasing crop yield, saving energy, conserving water, reducing total cost of farming, and guarding the environment against air pollution.
Expansive soils are recognized by their swelling potential upon wetting due to the existence of some clay minerals such as montmorillonite. An effective solution was found to avoid the danger of such soils by using piles. A single pile embedded in an elasto-plastic expansive soil has been analyzed by using one of the available software which is ABAQUS to investigate the effect of applied loads on pile’s top and investigate the effect of swelling soils on load carrying capacity of the pile. The result shows that as the pile is axially loaded at its top, the axial force along the pile gradually changes from (tension) to (compression) and the pile tends to move downward. The applied load needed to initiate pile’s settlement depend
... Show MoreThe major objectives of this research are to analyze the behavior of road embankments
reinforced with geotextiles constructed on soft soil and describe the finite element analysis by using
ANSYS program ver. (5.4). The ANSYS finite element program helps in analyzing the stability of
geo- structure (embankment) in varied application of geotextiles reinforcement to enhance the best
design for embankment.
The results of analysis indicate that one of the primary function of geotextiles reinforcement was to
reduce the horizontal displacement significantly. With the inclusions of reinforcement, the horizontal
displacement reduced by about (81%), while the vertical displacement reduced by (32%). The effect
of geotextiles
Existence of these soils, sometimes with high gypsum content, caused difficult problems to the buildings and strategic projects due to dissolution and leaching of gypsum by the action of waterflow through soil mass. In this research, a new technique is adopted to investigate the performance of replacement and geosynthetic reinforcement materials to improve the gypseous soil behavior through experimential set up manufactured loaclally specially for this work. A series of tests were carried out using steel container (600*600*500) mm. A square footing (100*100) mm was placed at the center of the top surface of the bed soil. The results showed that the most effective thickness for the dune sand layer with geotextile at the interface, within
... Show MoreThe contamination of soil with the wastes of oil industry products that are complex mixtures of hydrocarbons increased recently due to the large development of oil industries in Iraq. This study deals with the remediation of low permeability contaminated clayey soil by using the enhanced electrokinetic technique (EK). The contaminated soil samples obtained from Thi-Qar oil refinery plant in Al-Nassyriah city, where the byproducts of refinery plant are disposed into that site. The byproduct contaminant treated as total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) to avoid dealing and complexity of treating the individual minerals and compounds consisting the contaminant. The initial concentrations of TPH were (702.7, 1168, 1235) ppm in the contaminated s
... Show MoreThis research presents a method of using MATLAB in analyzing a nonhomogeneous soil (Gibson-type) by
estimating the displacements and stresses under the strip footing during applied incremental loading
sequences. This paper presents a two-dimensional finite element method. In this method, the soil is divided into a number of triangle elements. A model soil (Gibson-type) with linearly increasing modulus of elasticity with depth is presented. The influences of modulus of elasticity, incremental loading, width of footing, and depth of footing are considered in this paper. The results are compared with authors' conclusions of previous studies.
The change in project cost, or cost growth, occurs from many factors, some of which are related to soil problem conditions that may occurs during construction and/or during site investigation period. This paper described a new soil improvement method with a minimum cost solution by using polymer fiber materials having a length of (3 cm) in both directions and (2.5 mm) in thickness, distributed in uniform medium dense .
sandy soil at different depths (B, 1.5B and 2B) below the footings. Three square footings has been used (5,7.5 and 10 cm) to carry the above investigation by using lever arm loading system design for such purposes.
These fibers were distributed from depth of (0.1B) below the footing base down to the investigated dep
In the geotechnical and terramechanical engineering applications, precise understandings are yet to be established on the off-road structures interacting with complex soil profiles. Several theoretical and experimental approaches have been used to measure the ultimate bearing capacity of the layered soil, but with a significant level of differences depending on the failure mechanisms assumed. Furthermore, local displacement fields in layered soils are not yet studied well. Here, the bearing capacity of a dense sand layer overlying loose sand beneath a rigid beam is studied under the plain-strain condition. The study employs using digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) and finite element method (FEM) simulations. In the FEM, an experiment
... Show MorePlastic soil exhibits unfavorited geotechnical properties (when saturation), which causes negative defects to engineering structures. Different attempts (included various materials) were conducted to proffer solutions to such defects by experimenting in practical ways. On one hand, these attempts aimed to improve the engineering characteristics of plastic soil, and on the other hand, to use problematic waste materials as a stabilizer, like cement kiln dust, and to reduce environmental hazards. This paper explored the shrinkage, plasticity, and strength behavior of plastic soil enhanced with cement dust. The cement dust contents were 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% by dry weight of soil. An experimental series of shrinkage and p
... Show MoreThe effect of saline magnetized water irrigation on seed germination and seedling growth of wheat cultivar Iraq were studied. Irrigation water was supplemented with different levels of Sodium chloride 6, 12 or 18 mmhos/ cm in addition control treatment, and passed through a proper magnetic felid with 1000, 1250, 1500 or 2000 gaus in addition control treatment. The results showed significantly stimulated shoot development and led to the increase of germination, seedling emergence, area leaf, length of shoot and root and fresh and dry weight compared to the controls. Results also showed significant interaction between saline water and magnetized water. So, using magnetic treatment of saline water could be a promising technique
... Show MoreWater scarcity is one of the most important problems facing humanity in various fields such as economics, industry, agriculture, and tourism. This may push people to use low-quality water like industrial-wastewater. The application of some chemical compounds to get rid of heavy metals such as cadmium is an environmentally harmful approach. It is well-known that heavy metals as cadmium may induce harmful problems when present in water and invade to soil, plants and food chain of a human being. In this case, man will be forced to use the low quality water in irrigation. Application of natural materials instead of chemicals to remove cadmium from polluted water is an environmental friendly approach. Attention was drawn in this research wor
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