Frequently, load associated mode of failure, rutting and fatigue, are the main failure types found in some newly constructed roads within Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, and some suburban areas. The use of excessive amount of natural sand in asphalt concrete mixes which is attractive to local contractors could be one of the possible causes to the lack of strength properties of the mixes resulting in frustration in the pavement performance. In this study, the performance properties of asphalt concrete mixes with two natural sand types, desert and river sands, were evaluated. Moreover, five replacement rates of 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100% by weight of the fine aggregate finer than 4.75 were used. The performance properties including moisture susceptibility, resilient modulus, permanent deformation, and fatigue characteristics were evaluated using indirect tensile strength, uniaxial repeated loading and repeated flexural beam tests. Also, as a part of the research objective, the laboratory tests result were used to predict the performance using VESYS computer software. Results showed that mixes with high natural sand content (NSC) are more susceptible to moisture damage and rutting, lower resilient modulus and some improvement in fatigue resistance. Based on the obtained results, the necessity has rise to revise the current local specification for asphalt concrete which specifies the limits of natural sand content in the mixes of wearing and binder courses with 25% whereas for base course mixes no limit exist yet.
The effect of considering the third dimension in mass concrete members on its cracking behavior is investigated in this study. The investigation includes thermal and structural analyses of mass concrete structures. From thermal analysis, the actual temperature distribution throughout the mass concrete body was obtained due to the generation of heat as a result of cement hydration in
addition to the ambient circumstances. This was performed via solving the differential equations of heat conduction and convection using the finite element method. The finite element method was also implemented in the structural analysis adopting the concept of initial strain problem. Drying shrinkage volume changes were calculated using the procedure sug
The slurry infiltrated fiber concrete (SIFCON) is nowadays considered a special type of high fiber content concrete; it is high strength and high performance material. This paper investigates the effect of spread steel fiber into the slurry mortar on some properties of SIFCON. According to fiber distribution, two sets were used in this investigation. The first set consisted of randomly distributing fibers inside the slurry. The second set was by placing the fibers in an orderly manner inside the slurry. Crimped steel fibers with an aspect ratio of (60) were used. Two different volume fractions percentage of (7% and 9%) by volume of mold were used in both sets for this study. Also, a w/c ratio of (0.35) and superplasticiz
... Show MoreThis work presents experimental research using draped prestressed steel strands to improve the load-carrying capacity of prestressed concrete non-prismatic beams with multiple openings of various designs. The short-term deflection of non-prismatic prestressed concrete beams (NPCBs) flexural members under static loading were used to evaluate this improvement. Six simply supported (NPCBs) beams, five beams with openings, and one solid specimen used as a reference beam were all tested as part of the experiment. All of the beams were subjected to a monotonic midpoint load test. The configuration of the opening (quadrilateral or circular), as well as the depth of the chords, were the varia
The main objective of the present research is to conduct a thorough investigation into the impact of construction joints on the structural performance of reinforced concrete deep beams. This study involves a series of experimental tests and the use of advanced numerical analysis techniques to gain a deeper understanding of the behavior of these beams in the presence of construction joints. The experimental component incorporates analysis findings from both previous and current research. Specifically, six reinforced concrete deep beam specimens featuring horizontal and inclined construction joints were utilized as simply being supported with two-point loading. The test findings indicate that the presence of a horizontal construction
... Show MoreCooperation spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks has an analogy to a distributed decision in wireless sensor networks, where each sensor make local decision and those decision result are reported to a fusion center to give the final decision according to some fusion rules. In this paper the performance of cooperative spectrum sensing examines using new optimization strategy to find optimal weight and threshold curves that enables each secondary user senses the spectrum environment independently according to a floating threshold with respect to his local environment. Our proposed approach depends on proving the convexity of the famous optimization problem in cooperative spectrum sensing that stated maximizing the probability of detec
... Show MoreExperimental and theoretical investigations are presented on flocculation process in pulsator clarifier. Experimental system was designed to study the factors that affecting the performance of pulsator clarifier. These factors were water level in vacuum chamber which range from 60 to 150 cm , rising time of water in vacuum chamber which having times of 20,30 & 40 seconds , and sludge blanket height which having heights of 20,30 & 40 cm .The turbidity and pH of raw water used were 200 NTU and 8.13 respectively. According to the jar test, the alum dose required for this turbidity was 20 mg/l .The performance parameters of pulsator clarifier such as , turbidity ,total solid TS , shear rate , volume concentration of sludge blanket an
... Show MoreTransport layer is responsible for delivering data to the appropriate application process on the host computers. The two most popular transport layer protocols are Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP). TCP is considered one of the most important protocols in the Internet. UDP is a minimal message-oriented Transport Layer protocol. In this paper we have compared the performance of TCP and UDP on the wired network. Network Simulator (NS2) has been used for performance Comparison since it is preferred by the networking research community. Constant bit rate (CBR) traffic used for both TCP and UDP protocols.
The steady consumption of fish led many researchers to study it preferences over other foods, especially for radioactivity content. The specific activity concentration (S.A) of natural occurring radioactive materials (NORM) have been measured for Cyprinus carpio fishes collected from several industrial fishes' lakes located in Baghdad governorate using gamma spectroscopy doped with high purity germanium coaxial detector (HPGe). Thirteen fishes' samples were collected from industrial lakes, three samples were collected from cages, and two samples were collected from Trigger River. The last two types of samples were collected in order to compare the results with it. The measured overall averages of S.A for Ra-226, Th-232, and K-40 were 58.
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