In recent years, the search for economic and environmentally friendly alternatives has become a global necessity to achieve sustainability and preserve raw materials. From this concept, natural bitumen (NB) derived from sulphur springs is now one of the most promising alternative energy resources for many applications, especially in asphalt pavement construction. Its low price and abundance characterise NB since sulphur springs produce thousands of tonnes of NB annually and are used in very limited fields. Two main objectives were adopted for this work. The first objective is to examine the virgin NB properties from five sulphur springs and compare them with petroleum asphalt. The second objective is to enhance NB properties by applying heat treatment. The experimental results reveal that heat treatment is highly effective in improving the NB properties. This was confirmed by conducting many tests, such as asphalt, Marshall, SEM-EDX, and indirect tensile strength tests. Based on the experimental test outcomes, virgin NB properties do not conform to asphalt specification limits and are unsuitable for flexible roads. Also, MS-NB significantly affected the mechanical properties of the asphalt mixture, as Marshall's stability increased by 41.3% compared to the conventional mixture. In addition, SS-NB was more effective in moisture damage resistance due to increasing the tensile strength ratio by 5.72 % and provided a higher stiffness index than the conventional mixture by 40.36%. In conclusion, the treated NB can successfully be used as a binder material in hot asphalt mixtures. ABSTRAK: Beberapa tahun kebelakangan, pencarian alternatif baharu ekonomi dan mesra alam telah menjadi satu keperluan global bagi mencapai kemampanan dan memelihara bahan mentah. Melalui konsep ini, bitumen asli (NB) yang diperoleh daripada mata air sulfur kini merupakan satu sumber tenaga alternatif yang berguna bagi digunakan dalam pelbagai aplikasi, terutamanya dalam pembinaan turapan asfalt. NB dicirikan oleh harga yang rendah dan kelimpahannya kerana mata air sulfur menghasilkan beribu-ribu tan NB setiap tahun dan digunakan dalam bidang terhad. Dua objektif utama telah dipakai untuk kajian ini. Objektif pertama adalah memeriksa sifat NB dara daripada lima mata air sulfur dan membandingkannya dengan asfalt petroleum. Objektif kedua adalah meningkatkan sifat NB dengan menggunakan rawatan haba. Dapatan eksperimen mendedahkan bahawa rawatan haba sangat berkesan dalam meningkatkan sifat NB. Ini disahkan dengan menjalankan pelbagai ujian, seperti ujian asfalt, ujian Marshall, ujian SEM-EDX, dan ujian kekuatan tegangan tidak langsung. Berdasarkan dapatan eksperimen, sifat NB dara tidak mematuhi had spesifikasi asfalt dan tidak sesuai untuk jalan fleksibel. Selain itu, MS-NB mempunyai kesan ketara pada sifat mekanikal campuran asfalt kerana kestabilan Marshalls meningkat sebanyak 41.3% berbanding campuran konvensional. Tambahan, SS-NB lebih berkesan dalam rintangan kerosakan lembapan kerana meningkatkan nisbah kekuatan tegangan sebanyak 5.72 % dan memberikan indeks kekukuhan yang lebih tinggi daripada campuran konvensional sebanyak 40.36%. Kesimpulannya, NB yang dirawat boleh berjaya digunakan sebagai bahan pengikat dalam campuran asfalt panas.
This paper presents a meta-heuristic swarm based optimization technique for solving robot path planning. The natural activities of actual ants inspire which named Ant Colony Optimization. (ACO) has been proposed in this work to find the shortest and safest path for a mobile robot in different static environments with different complexities. A nonzero size for the mobile robot has been considered in the project by taking a tolerance around the obstacle to account for the actual size of the mobile robot. A new concept was added to standard Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for further modifications. Simulations results, which carried out using MATLAB 2015(a) environment, prove that the suggested algorithm outperforms the standard version of AC
... Show MoreBackground: Cervical ectopy advanced to erosion is one of the common conditions in gynecological and pathological study. It is considered as a physiologic condition resulting from columnar epithelium migration from the cervical canal into the vaginal portion of the cervix, in which no treatment for asymptomatic cervical ectropion can be given. Treatment can be accomplished via thermal cauterization (Electro cautery), Cryosurgery. CO2 laser therapy is another modality of treatment.
Objective: To study the effectiveness of CO2 laser therapy and evaluate it as a biomedical tool for the treatment of cervical ectropion. The study was done at Laser Medicine Research Clinic at the
... Show MoreThe main aim of this paper is studied the punching shear and behavior of reinforced concrete slabs exposed to fires, the possibility of punching shear failure occurred as a result of the fires and their inability to withstand the loads. Simulation by finite element analysis is made to predict the type of failure, distribution temperature through the thickness of the slabs, deformation and punching strength. Nonlinear finite element transient thermal-structural analysis at fire conditions are analyzed by ANSYS package. The validity of the modeling is performed for the mechanical and thermal properties of materials from earlier works from literature to decrea
... Show MoreThe aim of this paper is to design suitable neural network (ANN) as an alternative accurate tool to evaluate concentration of Copper in contaminated soils. First, sixteen (4x4) soil samples were harvested from a phytoremediated contaminated site located in Baghdad city in Iraq. Second, a series of measurements were performed on the soil samples. Third, design an ANN and its performance was evaluated using a test data set and then applied to estimate the concentration of Copper. The performance of the ANN technique was compared with the traditional laboratory inspecting using the training and test data sets. The results of this study show that the ANN technique trained on experimental measurements can be successfully applied to the rapid est
... Show MoreRenewable energy technology is growing fast especially photovoltaic (PV) system to move the conventional electricity generation and distribution towards smart grid. However, similar to monthly electricity bill, the PV energy producers can only monitor their energy PV generation once a month. Any malfuntion in PV system components may reduce the performance of the system without notice. Thus, developing a real-time monitoring system of PV production is very crucial for early detection. In addition, electricity consumption is also important to be monitored more frequently to increase energy savings awareness among consumers. Hardware based Internet-of-Thing (IoT) monitoring and control system is widely used. However, the implementation of
... Show MoreThe pervaporation using a commercial hydrophilic ceramic membrane supplied from PERVATECH was conducted. The dehydration of ethanol/ water system was used as a model for the pervaporation study. Pervaporation experiments of ethanol/water system were carried out in the temperature range of 303-343K, ethanol concentration in the feed 10-90 vol. % and the feed flow rate in the range of 0.5-10 L/min. In this work, the effect of operation parameters on permeates fluxes as well as permeates separation factors have been studied. The Water flux is strongly dependent on the temperature; it increased with increasing in temperature, which in turn decreased the selectivity of membrane to water molecules.
In addition water flux was decr
... Show MoreIn this work, a large part of Baghdad University campus has been selected. The determination of Geoidal height for the local area requires Ground Control Points which both Ellipsoidal and Orthometric heights are known to compute the difference between them. The first step of the leveling process began by selected the Ground Control Points (GCPs) around the area of the work, and then divided them into two groups of the network traverse stations. They were leveled and adjusted depend on the number of the Bench Marks (B.M.s). Total Station TS (Nikon Nivo 5C) and Global Positioning System (GPS-Garmin 78 map) are used to do this application. The aim of the proposed work was to determine the height of the Geoid surface in the study area. The Geoi
... Show MoreIn this study, experimental and numerical applied of heat distribution due to pulsed Nd: YAG laser surface melting. Experimental side was consists of laser parameters are, pulse duration1.3
The statistical distributions study aimed to obtain on best descriptions of variable sets phenomena, which each of them got one behavior of that distributions . The estimation operations study for that distributions considered of important things which could n't canceled in variable behavior study, as result this research came as trial for reaching to best method for information distribution estimation which is generalized linear failure rate distribution, throughout studying the theoretical sides by depending on statistical posteriori methods like greatest ability, minimum squares method and Mixing method (suggested method).
The research
... Show MoreThe purpose of this paper to discriminate between the poetic poems of each poet depending on the characteristics and attribute of the Arabic letters. Four categories used for the Arabic letters, letters frequency have been included in a multidimensional contingency table and each dimension has two or more levels, then contingency coefficient calculated.
The paper sample consists of six poets from different historical ages, and each poet has five poems. The method was programmed using the MATLAB program, the efficiency of the proposed method is 53% for the whole sample, and between 90% and 95% for each poet's poems.