In this study, three strengthening techniques, near-surface mounted NSM-CRFP, NSM-CFRP with externally bonding EB-CFRP, and hybrid CFRP with circularization were studied to increase the seismic performance of existing RC slender columns under lateral loads. Experimentally, 1:3 scale RC models were studied and subjected to both lateral static load and seismic excitation. In the dynamic test, a model was subjected to El Centro 1940 NS earthquake excitation by using a shaking table. According to the test results, the strengthening techniques showed a significant increase in load carrying capacity, of about 86.6%, and 46.6%, for circularization and NSM-CFRP respectively, of the reference unstrengthened columns. On the other hand, columns strengthened with hybrid NSM-CFRP and EB-CFRP showed a different failure mode. Dynamically, the lateral drift was decreased by about 75%, 47%, and 49% for earthquake amplitudes of 0.05g, 0.15g, and 0.32g respectively. Finally, it was concluded, depending on the static and dynamic analyses, that the circularization process showed a significant increase in lateral load-bearing capacity.
The rise in the general level of prices in Iraq makes the local commodity less able to compete with other commodities, which leads to an increase in the amount of imports and a decrease in the amount of exports, since it raises demand for foreign currencies while decreasing demand for the local currency, which leads to a decrease in the exchange rate of the local currency in exchange for an increase in the exchange rate of currencies. This is one of the most important factors affecting the determination of the exchange rate and its fluctuations. This research deals with the currency of the European Euro and its impact against the Iraqi dinar. To make an accurate prediction for any process, modern methods can be used through which
... Show MoreMonaural source separation is a challenging issue due to the fact that there is only a single channel available; however, there is an unlimited range of possible solutions. In this paper, a monaural source separation model based hybrid deep learning model, which consists of convolution neural network (CNN), dense neural network (DNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN), will be presented. A trial and error method will be used to optimize the number of layers in the proposed model. Moreover, the effects of the learning rate, optimization algorithms, and the number of epochs on the separation performance will be explored. Our model was evaluated using the MIR-1K dataset for singing voice separation. Moreover, the proposed approach achi
... Show MoreMachine learning models have recently provided great promise in diagnosis of several ophthalmic disorders, including keratoconus (KCN). Keratoconus, a noninflammatory ectatic corneal disorder characterized by progressive cornea thinning, is challenging to detect as signs may be subtle. Several machine learning models have been proposed to detect KCN, however most of the models are supervised and thus require large well-annotated data. This paper proposes a new unsupervised model to detect KCN, based on adapted flower pollination algorithm (FPA) and the k-means algorithm. We will evaluate the proposed models using corneal data collected from 5430 eyes at different stages of KCN severity (1520 healthy, 331 KCN1, 1319 KCN2, 1699 KCN3 a
... Show MoreImage retrieval is used in searching for images from images database. In this paper, content – based image retrieval (CBIR) using four feature extraction techniques has been achieved. The four techniques are colored histogram features technique, properties features technique, gray level co- occurrence matrix (GLCM) statistical features technique and hybrid technique. The features are extracted from the data base images and query (test) images in order to find the similarity measure. The similarity-based matching is very important in CBIR, so, three types of similarity measure are used, normalized Mahalanobis distance, Euclidean distance and Manhattan distance. A comparison between them has been implemented. From the results, it is conclud
... Show MoreSpeech is the essential way to interact between humans or between human and machine. However, it is always contaminated with different types of environment noise. Therefore, speech enhancement algorithms (SEA) have appeared as a significant approach in speech processing filed to suppress background noise and return back the original speech signal. In this paper, a new efficient two-stage SEA with low distortion is proposed based on minimum mean square error sense. The estimation of clean signal is performed by taking the advantages of Laplacian speech and noise modeling based on orthogonal transform (Discrete Krawtchouk-Tchebichef transform) coefficients distribution. The Discrete Kra
The purpose of this paper is to develop a hybrid conceptual model for building information modelling (BIM) adoption in facilities management (FM) through the integration of the technology task fit (TTF) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) theories. The study also aims to identify the influence factors of BIM adoption and usage in FM and identify gaps in the existing literature and to provide a holistic picture of recent research in technology acceptance and adoption in the construction industry and FM sector.
This paper proposes a compact, plasmonic-based 4 × 4 nonblocking switch for optical networks. This device uses six 2 × 2 plasmonic Mach-Zehnder switch (MZS), whose arm waveguide is supported by a JRD1 polymer layer as a high electro-optic coefficient material. The 4 × 4 switch is designed in COMSOL environment for 1550 nm wavelength operation. The performance of the proposed switch outperforms those of conventional (nonplasmonic) counterparts. The designed switch yields a compact structure ( 500 × 70 µ m 2 ) having V π L = 12 V · µ m , 1.5 THz optical bandwidth, 7.7 dB insertion loss, and −26.5 dB crosstalk. The capability of the switch to route 8 × 40 Gbps WDM signal is demonstrated successfully.
... Show MoreIn this paper, an experimental study of the thermal performance for hybrid solar air conditioning system was carried out, to investigate system suitability for the hot climate in Iraq. The system consists of vapor compression unit combined with evacuated tube solar collector and liquid storage tank. A three-way valve was installed after the compressor to control the direction flow of the refrigerant, either to the storage tank or directly to the condenser. The performance parameters were collected by data logger to display and record in the computer by using LabVIEW software. The results show that the average coefficient of performance of hybrid solar air conditioning system (R=1) was about 2.42 to 2.77 and the average p
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