Flexible pavements are considered an essential element of transportation infrastructure. So, evaluations of flexible pavement performance are necessary for the proper management of transportation infrastructure. Pavement condition index (PCI) and international roughness index (IRI) are common indices applied to evaluate pavement surface conditions. However, the pavement condition surveys to calculate PCI are costly and time-consuming as compared to IRI. This article focuses on developing regression models that predict PCI from IRI. Eighty-three flexible pavement sections, with section length equal to 250 m, were selected in Al-Diwaniyah, Iraq, to develop PCI-IRI relationships. In terms of the quantity and severity of eac

The presence of antibiotic residues such as ciprofloxacin (CIPR) in an aqueous environment is dangerous when their concentrations exceed the allowable. Therefore, eliminating these residues from the wastewater becomes an essential issue to prevent their harm. In this work, the potential of efficient adsorption of ciprofloxacin antibiotics was studied using eco-friendly ZSM-5 nanocrystals‑carbon composite (NZC). An inexpensive effective natural binder made of the sucrose-citric acid mixture was used for preparing NZC. The characterization methods revealed the successful preparation of NZC with a favorable surface area of 103.739 m2/g, and unique morphology and functional groups. Investigating the ability of NZC for adsorbing CIPR antibioti

The issue of increasing the range covered by a wireless sensor network with restricted sensors is addressed utilizing improved CS employing the PSO algorithm and opposition-based learning (ICS-PSO-OBL). At first, the iteration is carried out by updating the old solution dimension by dimension to achieve independent updating across the dimensions in the high-dimensional optimization problem. The PSO operator is then incorporated to lessen the preference random walk stage's imbalance between exploration and exploitation ability. Exceptional individuals are selected from the population using OBL to boost the chance of finding the optimal solution based on the fitness value. The ICS-PSO-OBL is used to maximize coverage in WSN by converting r

For more than a decade, externally bonded carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites successfully utilized in retrofitting reinforced concrete structural elements. The function of CFRP reinforcement in increasing the ductility of reinforced concrete (RC) beam is essential in such members. Flexural and shear behaviors, ductility, and confinement were the main studied properties that used the CFRP as a strengthening material. However, limited attention has been paid to investigate the energy absorption of torsion strengthening of concrete members, especially two-span concrete beams. Hence, the target of this work is to investigate the effectiveness of CFRP-strengthening technique with regard to energy absorption of two-span RC