Institutions and companies are looking to reduce spending on buildings and services according to scientific methods, provided they reach the same purpose but at a lower cost. On this basis, this paper proposes a model to measure and reduce maintenance costs in one of the public sector institutions in Iraq by using performance indicators that fit the nature of the work of this institution and the available data. The paper relied on studying the nature of the institution’s work in the maintenance field and looking at the type of data available to know the type and number of appropriate indicators to create the model. Maintenance data were collected for the previous six years by reviewing the maintenance and financial dep

The effect of the initial pressure upon the laminar flame speed, for a methane-air mixtures, has been detected paractically, for a wide range of equivalence ratio. In this work, a measurement system is designed in order to measure the laminar flame speed using a constant volume method with a thermocouples technique. The laminar  burning velocity is measured, by using the density ratio method. The comparison of the present work results and the previous ones show good agreement between them. This indicates that the measurements and the calculations employed in the present work are successful and precise

Photonic Crystal Fiber Interferometers (PCFIs) are widely used for sensing applications. This work presents the fabrication and the characterization of a relative humidity sensor based on a polymer-coated photonic crystal fiber that operates in a Mach- Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) transmission mode. The fabrication of the sensor involved splicing a short (1 cm) length of Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) between two single-mode fibers (SMF). It was then coated with a layer of agarose solution. Experimental results showed that a high humidity sensitivity of 29.37 pm/%RH was achieved within a measurement range of 27–95%RH. The sensor also showed good repeatability, small size, measurement accuracy and wide humidity range. The RH sensitivity o

In modern hydraulic control systems, the trend in hydraulic power applications is to improve efficiency and performance. “Proportional valve” is generally applied to pressure, flow and directional-control valves which continuously convert a variable input signal into a smooth and proportional hydraulic output signal. It creates a variable resistance (orifice) upstream and downstream of a hydraulic actuator, and is meter in/meter out circuit and hence pressure drop, and power losses are inevitable. If velocity (position) feedback is used, flow pattern control is possible. Without aforementioned flow pattern, control is very “loose” and relies on “visual” feed back by the operator. At this point, we should examine how this valv

Impressed current cathodic protection controlled by computer gives the ideal solution to the changes in environmental factors and long term coating degradation. The protection potential distribution achieved and the current demand on the anode can be regulated to protection criteria, to achieve the effective protection for the system.

In this paper, cathodic protection problem of above ground steel storage tank was investigated by an impressed current of cathodic protection with controlled potential of electrical system to manage the variation in soil resistivity. Corrosion controller has been implemented for above ground tank in LabView where tank's bottom potential to soil was manipulated to the desired set poi

  In the present paper, Arabic Character Recognition  Edge detection method based on contour and connected components  is proposed. First stage contour extraction feature is introduced to tackle the Arabic characters edge detection problem, where the aim is to extract the edge information presented in the Arabic characters, since it is crucial to understand the character content.         The second stage connected components appling for the same characters to find edge detection. The proposed approach exploits a number of connected components, which move on the character by character intensity values, to establish matrix, which represents the edge information at each pixel location .

An idea of a colored glaze is presented in this study to hide and dispose all the obstacles of using solar systems as facades integrated with buildings. This aim is achieved  by designing multilayer optical interference filters by using Mat lab program . Appropriate dielectric materials, namely NdF₃ of high refractive index (n_H =1.6)  and ThF₄ of low refractive index (n_L =1.5143) were employed. Quarter wave thicknesses of high (H) and low (L) refractive index were deposited on a microscopic slide substrate with n=1.513 and 550 nm design wavelength (l_°). Two optical models were designed, which are Air//HL//glass and Air//LH//glass,  for even numbers of layers (2-32 lay

The electrocoagulation process became one of the most important technologies used for water treatment processes in the last few years. It’s the preferred method to remove suspended solids and heavy metals from water for treating drinking water and wastewater from textile, diary, and electroplating factories. This research aims to study the effect of using the electrocoagulation process with aluminum electrodes on the removal efficiency of suspended solids and turbidity presented in raw water and optimizing by the response surface methodology (RSM). The most important variables studied in this research included electrode spacing, the applied voltage, and the operating time of the electrocoagulation process. The samples

Forest fires continue to rise during the dry season and they are difficult to stop. In this case, high temperatures in the dry season can cause an increase in drought index that could potentially burn the forest every time. Thus, the government should conduct surveillance throughout the dry season. Continuous surveillance without the focus on a particular time becomes ineffective and inefficient because of preventive measures carried out without the knowledge of potential fire risk. Based on the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI), formulation of Drought Factor is used just for calculating the drought today based on current weather conditions, and yesterday's drought index. However, to find out the factors of drought a day after, the data