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.
This research deals with the design and simulation of a solar power system consisting of a KC200GT solar panel, a closed loop boost converter and a three phase inverter by using Matlab / Simulink. The mathematical equations of the solar panel design are presented. The electrical characteristics of the panel are tested at the values of 1000 for light radiation and 25 °C for temperature environment. The Proportional Integral (PI) controller is connected as feedback with the Boost converter to obtain a stable output voltage by reducing the oscillations in the voltage to charge a battery connected to the output of the converter. Two methods (Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Zeigler- Nichols) are used for tuning
... Show MoreApple slice grading is useful in post-harvest operations for sorting, grading, packaging, labeling, processing, storage, transportation, and meeting market demand and consumer preferences. Proper grading of apple slices can help ensure the quality, safety, and marketability of the final products, contributing to the post-harvest operations of the overall success of the apple industry. The article aims to create a convolutional neural network (CNN) model to classify images of apple slices after immersing them in atmospheric plasma at two different pressures (1 and 5 atm) and two different immersion times (3 and again 6 min) once and in filtered water based on the hardness of the slices usin
In this work ,pure and doped(CdO)thin films with different concentration of V2O5x (0.0, 0.05, 0.1 ) wt.% have been prepared on glass substrate at room temperature using Pulse Laser Deposition technique(PLD).The focused Nd:YAG laser beam at 800 mJ with a frequency second radiation at 1064 nm (pulse width 9 ns) repetition frequency (6 Hz), for 500 laser pulses incident on the target surface At first ,The pellets of (CdO)1-x(V2O5)x at different V2O5 contents were sintered to a temperature of 773K for one hours.Then films of (CdO)1-x(V2O5)x have been prepared.The structure of the thin films was examined by using (XRD) analysis..Hall effect has been measured in orded to know the type of conductivity, Finally the solar cell and the effici
... Show MoreThe possibility of using activated carbon developed from date palm seeds wastes as a permeable reactive barrier (PRB) to remove copper from polluted shallow groundwater was investigated. The activated carbon has been developed from date palm seeds by dehydrating methods using concentrated sulfuric acid. Batch tests were performed to characterize the equilibrium sorption properties of new activated carbon in copper-containing aqueous solutions, while the sandy soil (aquifer) was assumed to be inert. Under the studied conditions, the Langmuir isotherm model gives a better fit for the sorption data of copper by activated carbon than other models. At a pilot scale, One-dimensional column experiments were performed, and an integrated model ba
... Show MoreAdvanced strategies for production forecasting, operational optimization, and decision-making enhancement have been employed through reservoir management and machine learning (ML) techniques. A hybrid model is established to predict future gas output in a gas reservoir through historical production data, including reservoir pressure, cumulative gas production, and cumulative water production for 67 months. The procedure starts with data preprocessing and applies seasonal exponential smoothing (SES) to capture seasonality and trends in production data, while an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) captures complicated spatiotemporal connections. The history replication in the models is quantified for accuracy through metric keys such as m
... Show MoreThe aim of the current study was to develop a nanostructured double-layer for hydrophobic molecules delivery system. The developed double-layer consisted of polyethylene glycol-based polymeric (PEG) followed by gelatin sub coating of the core hydrophobic molecules containing sodium citrate. The polymeric composition ratio of PEG and the amount of the sub coating gelatin were optimized using the two-level fractional method. The nanoparticles were characterized using AFM and FT-IR techniques. The size of these nano capsules was in the range of 39-76 nm depending on drug loading concentration. The drug was effectively loaded into PEG-Gelatin nanoparticles (≈47%). The hydrophobic molecules-release characteristics in terms of controlled-releas
... Show MoreThis work investigates the impacts of eccentric-inclined load on ring footing performance resting on treated and untreated weak sandy soil, and due to the reduction in the footing carrying capacity due to the combinations of eccentrically-inclined load, the geogrid was used as reinforcement material. Ring radius ratio and reinforcement depth ratio parameters were investigated. Test outcomes showed that the carrying capacity of the footing decreases with the increment in the eccentric-inclined load and footing radius ratio. Furthermore, footing tilt and horizontal displacement increase with increasing the eccentricity and inclination angle, respectively. At the same time, the increment in the horizontal displacement due t
... Show MoreIn addition to the primary treatment, biological treatment is used to reduce inorganic and organic components in the wastewater. The separation of biomass from treated wastewater is usually important to meet the effluent disposal requirements, so the MBBR system has been one of the most important modern technologies that use plastic tankers to transport biomass with wastewater, which works in pure biofilm, at low concentrations of suspended solids. However, biological treatment has been developed using the active sludge mixing process with MBBR. Turbo4bio was established as a sustainable and cost-effective solution for wastewater treatment plants in the early 1990s and ran on minimal sludge, and is easy to maintain. This
... Show MoreHydrate dissociation equilibrium conditions for carbon dioxide + methane with water, nitrogen + methane with water and carbon dioxide + nitrogen with water were measured using cryogenic sapphire cell. Measurements were performed in the temperature range of 275.75 K–293.95 K and for pressures ranging from 5 MPa to 25 MPa. The resulting data indicate that as the carbon dioxide concentration is increased in the gas mixture, the gas hydrate equilibrium temperature increases. In contrast, by increasing the nitrogen concentration in the gas mixtures containing methane or carbon dioxide decreased the gas hydrate equilibrium temperatures. Furthermore, the cage occupancies for the carbon dioxide + methane system were evaluated using the Van der Wa
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