Water absorbent polymers (WAP) are new component in producing building materials. They provide internal curing which reduces autogenous cracking, eliminates autogenous shrinkage, mortar strength increased, enhance early age strength to withstand strain, improve the durability, introduce higher early age compressive strength, have higher performance and reduce the effect of insufficient external curing. This research used different percent of polymer balls to choose the percent that provides good development in compressive strength with time for both water and air curing. The water absorption polymer balls in this research have the ability to absorb water and after usage in concrete they spill out the water (internal curing) and shri

Test results of six half-scale reinforced concrete flat plates connections with an opening in the vicinity of the column are reported. The test specimens represent a portion of a slab bounded by the lines of contraflexure around the column. The tests were designed to study the effect of openings on the punching shear behavior of the slab-column connections. The test parameters were the location and the size of the openings. One specimen had no opening and the remaining five had various arrangements of openings around the column. All specimens were cast with normal density concrete of approximately 30 MPa compressive strength. The openings in the specimens were square, with the sides parallel to the sides of the column. Three sizes of ope

These days, the world is facing a global environmental and sustainability problem due to the increasing generation of large amounts of waste through construction and demolition work, which causes a serious problem for the environment. Therefore, this research was conducted to get rid of the waste disposal problems, including old glass and concrete, which were used as recycled fine aggregates. Seven different mixtures were prepared. The first mixture was with the used sand, which is glass sand, and it was adopted as a reference mixture (ORPC), and three mixtures were prepared for each of the recycled materials (waste concrete and glass) and partially replaced by glass sand in different proportions (25, 50, and 75) %. Some

ABSTRACT: Ultimate bearing capacity of soft ground reinforced with stone column was recently predicted using various artificial intelligence technologies such as artificial neural network because of all the advantages that they can offer in minimizing time, effort and cost. As well as, most of applied theories or predicted formulas deduced analytically from previous studies were feasible only for a particular testing environment and do not match other field or laboratory datasets. However, the performance of such techniques depends largely on input parameters that really affect the target output and missing of any parameter can lead to inaccurate results and give a false indicator. In the current study, data were collected from previous rel

Infrastructure, especially wastewater projects, plays an important role in the life of residential communities. Due to the increasing population growth, there is also a significant increase in residential and commercial facilities. This research aims to develop two models for predicting the cost and time of wastewater projects according to independent variables affecting them. These variables have been determined through a questionnaire distributed to 20 projects under construction in Al-Kut City/ Wasit Governorate/Iraq. The researcher used artificial neural network technology to develop the models. The results showed that the coefficient of correlation R between actual and predicted values were 99.4% and 99 %, MAPE was