Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) bars are anisotropic in nature and have high tensile strength in the fiber direction. The use of High-Strength Concrete (HSC) allows for better use of the high-strength properties of FRP bars. The mechanical properties of FRP bars can yield to large crack widths and deflections. As a result, the design of concrete elements reinforced with FRP materials is often governed by the Serviceability Limit States (SLS). This study investigates the short-term serviceability behavior of FRP RC I-beams. Eight RC I-beams reinforced with carbon-FRP (CFRP) and four steel RC I-beams, for comparison purposes, were tested under two-point loading.
Deformations on the concrete and crack widths and spacing are measured and

Background: The study aim was to evaluate thermocycling effect on microleakage of occlusal and cervical margins of MOD cavity filled with bulk filled composites in comparison to incrementally placed nanohybrid composite and to evaluate the difference in microleakage between enamel and dentin margins for the three materials groups. Materials and method: Forty eight maxillary first premolars were prepared with MOD cavities. Samples were divided into three groups of sixteen teeth according to material used: Grandio: Grandio. SDR: SDR +Grandio. X-tra: X-tra base + Grandio. Each group was subdivided into two according to be thermocycled or not. After 24 hrs immersion in 2% methylene blue, samples weresectioned and microleakage was estimated. Res

The importance of the study stems from the fact that Iraq’s economy is facing a housing crisis, especially in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, great demographic pressure due to pronounced population growth over the past two decades. The Central Bank of Iraq undertakes several initiatives represented in granting real estate loans, mainly through the Real Estate Bank at very low interest, and in the last two years, the interest has become zero. The purpose of the study is to analyze the fiscal implications of the Iraqi central bank’s real estate initiatives, as well as its real impact on the spatial dimension of the Iraqi governorates through new housing in those governorates. Using data mainly from the Central Bank of Iraq’s bulleti

In this work, silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) thin films were deposited on metallic substrates (aluminium and titanium sheets) by the DC reactive sputtering technique using two different silicon targets (n-type and p-type Si wafers) as well as two Ar:N₂ gas mixing ratios (50:50 and 70:30). The electrical conductivity of the metallic (aluminium and titanium) substrates was measured before and after the deposition of silicon nitride thin films on both surfaces of the substrates. The results obtained from this work showed that the deposited films, in general, reduced the electrical conductivity of the substrates, and the thin films prepared from n-type silicon targets using a 50:50 mixing ratio and deposited on both

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to model and optimize the fatigue life and hardness of medium carbon steel CK35 subjected to dynamic buckling. Different ranges of shot peening time (STP) and critical points of slenderness ratio which is between the long and intermediate columns, as input factors, were used to obtain their influences on the fatigue life and hardness, as main responses. Experimental measurements of shot peening time and buckling were taken and analyzed using (DESIGN EXPERT 8) experimental design software which was used for modeling and optimization purposes. Mathematical models of responses were obtained and analyzed by ANOVA variance to verify the adequacy of the models. The resul

A frequently used approach for denoising is the shrinkage of coefficients of the noisy signal representation in a transform domain. This paper proposes an algorithm based on hybrid transform (stationary wavelet transform proceeding by slantlet transform); The slantlet transform is applied to the approximation subband of the stationary wavelet transform. BlockShrink thresholding technique is applied to the hybrid transform coefficients. This technique can decide the optimal block size and thresholding for every wavelet subband by risk estimate (SURE). The proposed algorithm was executed by using MATLAB R2010aminimizing Stein’s unbiased with natural images contaminated by white Gaussian noise. Numerical results show that our algorithm co

Emotion recognition has important applications in human-computer interaction. Various sources such as facial expressions and speech have been considered for interpreting human emotions. The aim of this paper is to develop an emotion recognition system from facial expressions and speech using a hybrid of machine-learning algorithms in order to enhance the overall performance of human computer communication. For facial emotion recognition, a deep convolutional neural network is used for feature extraction and classification, whereas for speech emotion recognition, the zero-crossing rate, mean, standard deviation and mel frequency cepstral coefficient features are extracted. The extracted features are then fed to a random forest classifier. In

Digital forensics has become a fundamental requirement for law enforcement due to the growing volume of cyber and computer-assisted crime. Whilst existing commercial tools have traditionally focused upon string-based analyses (e.g., regular expressions, keywords), less effort has been placed towards the development of multimedia-based analyses. Within the research community, more focus has been attributed to the analysis of multimedia content; they tend to focus upon highly specialised specific scenarios such as tattoo identification, number plate recognition, suspect face recognition and manual annotation of images. Given the ever-increasing volume of multimedia content, it is essential that a holistic Multimedia-Forensic Analysis Tool (M-