Construction is a hazardous industry with a high number of injuries. Prior research found that many industry injuries can be prevented by implementing an effective safety plan if prepared and maintained by qualified safety personnel. However, there are no specific guidelines on how to select qualified construction safety personnel and what criteria should be used to select an individual for a safety position in the United States (US) construction industry. To fill this gap in knowledge, the study goal was to identify the desired qualifications of safety personnel in the US construction industry. To achieve the study goal, the Delphi technique was used as the main methodology for determining the desired qualifications for construction safety personnel. As a result, a panel of 15 subject-matter experts was selected, and 4 rounds of surveys were carried out. The findings of the study led to the identification of the desired qualifications for three construction safety positions (safety entry, safety professional, and safety manager). The present study contributes to the body of theoretical knowledge on construction safety and presents practical guidelines to assist industry stakeholders select qualified safety personnel for their projects. The selection of qualified safety personnel is expected to improve workplace safety performance and positively reflect on other project outcomes. Construction stakeholders should pay attention to three key aspects (namely, education, experience, and certification) when determining the qualifications for a safety leadership position and take into consideration the type of position intended to be filled. This study fills the gap in knowledge by identifying the desired qualifications and criteria on how to select safety personnel in the US construction industry.
Power switches require snubbing networks for driving single – phase industrial heaters. Designing these networks, for controlling the maximum allowable rate of rise of anode current (di/dt) and excessive anode – cathode voltage rise (dv/dt) of power switching devices as thyristors and Triacs, is usually achieved using conventional methods like Time Constant Method (TCM), resonance Method (RM), and Runge-Kutta Method (RKM). In this paper an alternative design methodology using Fuzzy Logic Method (FLM) is proposed for designing the snubber network to control the voltage and current changes. Results of FLM, with fewer rules requirements, show the close similarity with those of conventional design methods in such a network of a Triac drivin
... Show MoreThe effect of high energy radiation on the energy gap of compound semiconductor Silicon Carbide (SiC) are viewed. Emphasis is placed on those effects which can be interpreted in terms of energy levels. The goal is to develop semiconductors operating at high temperature with low energy gaps by induced permanent damage in SiC irradiated by gamma source. TEACO2 laser used for producing SiC thin films. Spectrophotometer lambda - UV, Visible instrument is used to determine energy gap (Eg). Co-60, Cs-137, and Sr-90 are used to irradiate SiC samples for different time of irradiation. Possible interpretation of the changing in Eg values as the time of irradiation change is discussed
In this paper the experimentally obtained conditions for the fusion splicing with photonic crystal fibers (PCF) having large mode areas were reported. The physical mechanism of the splice loss and the microhole collapse property of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) were studied. By controlling the arc-power and the arc-time of a conventional electric arc fusion splicer (FSM-60S), the minimum loss of splicing for fusion two conventional single mode fibers (SMF-28) was (0.00dB), which has similar mode field diameter. For splicing PCF (LMA-10) with a conventional single mode fiber (SMF-28), the loss was increased due to the mode field mismatch.
In this paper, two elements of the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) antenna had been used to study the five (3.1-3.55GHz and 3.7-4.2GHz), (3.4-4.7 GHz), (3.4-3.8GHz) and (3.6-4.2GHz) 5G bands of smartphone applications that is to be introduced to the respective US, Korea, (Europe and China) and Japan markets. With a proposed dimension of 26 × 46 × 0.8 mm3, the medium-structured and small-sized MIMO antenna was not only found to have demonstrated a high degree of isolation and efficiency, it had also exhibited a lower level of envelope correlation coefficient and return loss, which are well-suited for the 5G bands application. From the fabrication of an inexpensive FR4 substrate with a 0.8 mm thickness level, a loss tang
... Show MoreParticulate matter (PM) emitted from diesel engine exhaust have been measured in terms of mass, using
99.98 % pure ethanol blended directly, without additives, with conventional diesel fuel (gas – oil),to
get 10 % , 15 %, 20 % ethanol emulsions . The resulting PM collected has been compared with those
from straight diesel. The engine used is a stationary single cylinder, variable compression ratio Ricardo
E6/US. This engine is fully instrumented and could run as a compression or spark ignition.
Observations showed that particulate matter (PM) emissions decrease with increasing oxygenate
content in the fuel, with some increase of fuel consumption, which is due to the lower heating value of
ethanol. The reduction in
The permeability is the most important parameter that indicates how efficient the reservoir fluids flow through the rock pores to the wellbore. Well-log evaluation and core measurements techniques are typically used to estimate it. In this paper, the permeability has been predicted by using classical and Flow zone indicator methods. A comparison between the two methods shows the superiority of the FZI method correlations, these correlations can be used to estimate permeability in un-cored wells with a good approximation.
—This paper studies the control motion of a single link flexible joint robot by using a hierarchical non-singular terminal sliding mode controller (HNTSMC). In comparison to the conventional sliding mode controller (CSMC), the proposed algorithm (NTSMC) not only can conserve characteristics of the convention CSMC, such as easy implementation, guaranteed stability and good robustness against system uncertainties and external disturbances, but also can ensure a faster convergence rate of the systems states to zero in a finite time and singularity free. The flexible joint robot (FJR) is a two degree of freedom (2DOF) nonlinear and underactuated system. The system here is modeled as a fourth order system by using Lagrangian method. Based on t
... Show MoreA recently reported Nile red (NR) dye conjugated with benzothiadiazole species paves the way for the development of novel organic-based sensitizers used in solar cells whose structures are susceptible to modifications. Thus, six novel NR structures were derived from two previously developed structures in laboratories. In this study, density functional theory (DFT) calculations and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) were used to determine the optoelectronic properties of the NR-derived moieties such as absorption spectra. Various linkers were investigated in an attempt to understand the impact of π-linkers on the optoelectronic properties. According to the findings, the presence of furan species led to the planarity of the molecule and a reduction
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In this study, optical fibers were designed and implemented as a chemical sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to estimate the age of the oil used in electrical transformers. The study depends on the refractive indices of the oil. The sensor was created by embedding the center portion of the optical fiber in a resin block, followed by polishing, and tapering to create the optical fiber sensor. The tapering time was 50 min. The multi-mode optical fiber was coated with 60 nm thickness gold metal. The deposition length was 4 cm. The sensor's resonance wavelength was 415 nm. The primary sensor parameters were calculated, including sensitivity (6.25), signal-to-noise ratio (2.38), figure of merit (4.88), and accuracy (3.2)
... Show MoreThe present study aims to establish an empirical correlation between biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) of the sewage flowing in Al-Diwaniyah wastewater treatment plant. The strength of the wastewater entering the plant varied from medium to high. High concentrations of BOD5 and COD in the effluent were obtained due to the poor performance of the plant. This was observed from the BOD5 /COD ratios that did not confirm with the typical ratios for the treated sewage. Regression equations for BOD5 and COD removal percentages were suggested which can be used to evaluate rapid effluent assessment after the treatment processes or optimal process control to improve the performance of wastewater treatment plants.
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