The use of Near-Surface Mounted (NSM) Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) strips is an efficient technology for increasing flexural and shear strength or for repairing damaged Reinforced Concrete (RC) members. This strengthening method is a promising technology. However, the thin layer of concrete covering the NSM-CFRP strips is not adequate to resist heat effect when directly exposed to a fire or at a high temperature. There is clear evidence that the strength and stiffness of CFRPs severely deteriorate at high temperatures. Therefore, in terms of fire resistance, the NSM technique has a significant defect. Thus, it is very important to develop a set of efficient fire protection systems to overcome these disadvantages. This paper presents a numerical study that investigates the fire behavior of thermally insulated RC beams flexurally strengthened with NSM-CFRP strips and subjected to fire exposure according to the ISO 834 standard. The numerical study considered three-dimensional finite element models in the ABAQUS software that have been developed to simulate and predict the performance (thermal and structural response) of fire endurance tests on strengthened, uninsulated strengthened, and thermally insulated beams strengthened with NSM-CFRP strips, which were exposed to fire and had different fire insulation schemes. The insulation used was plaster from local material with a thickness range of 25 to 50mm. The variation of the thermal and mechanical properties with the temperature of the constituent materials was considered. All beams' mechanical and thermal responses were adequately simulated using numerical models. The results of the numerical simulations were in good agreement with the experimental data. The fire behavior of the NSM-CFRP strengthened RC beams was examined and particularly the efficiency of the NSM strengthening system during the fire. The behavior in the fire of the NSM-CFRP strengthening system on the RC beams thermally protected with different fire insulation schemes was assessed. Finally, the effectiveness of fire insulation was studied.
Sub-threshold operation has received a lot of attention in limited performance applications.However, energy optimization of sub-threshold circuits should be performed with the concern of the performance limitation of such circuit. In this paper, a dual size design is proposed for energy minimization of sub-threshold CMOS circuits. The optimal downsizing factor is determined and assigned for some gates on the off-critical paths to minimize the energy at the maximum allowable performance. This assignment is performed using the proposed slack based genetic algorithm which is a heuristic-mixed evolutionary algorithm. Some gates are heuristically assigned to the original and the downsized design based on their slack time determined by static tim
... Show MorePhotonic crystal fiber interferometers are widely used for sensing applications. In this work, solid core-Photonic crystal fiber based on Mach-Zehnder modal interferometer for sensing refractive index was presented. The general structure of sensor applied by splicing short lengths of PCF in both sides with conventional single mode fiber (SMF-28). To apply modal interferometer theory; collapsing technique based on fusion splicing used to excite higher order modes (LP01 and LP11). Laser diode (1550 nm) has been used as a pump light source. Where a high sensitive optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) was used to monitor and record the transmitted. The experimental work shows that the interference spectrum of Photonic crystal fiber interferometer
... Show MoreBackground: Injuries to blood vessels are among the most dramatic challenges facing trauma surgeons because repair is often urgent, the surgeon has to decide between management options (open or endovascular), and gaining control and reconstructing a major arterial injury can be technically demanding .
Objective:,To analyze the cause of injury, surgical approach, outcome and complications of axillary artery injuries.
Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study on fifty patients at Ibn-Alnafees hospital in Baghdad from January 2005 to December 2010
Results Males were more commonly affected than female with ratio of 6.1:1. Most injuries were caused by bullet and shell (84%), followed by stab wounds (10%) and blunt trauma (6%). Pati
This paper includes a comparison between denoising techniques by using statistical approach, principal component analysis with local pixel grouping (PCA-LPG), this procedure is iterated second time to further improve the denoising performance, and other enhancement filters were used. Like adaptive Wiener low pass-filter to a grayscale image that has been degraded by constant power additive noise, based on statistics estimated from a local neighborhood of each pixel. Performs Median filter of the input noisy image, each output pixel contains the Median value in the M-by-N neighborhood around the corresponding pixel in the input image, Gaussian low pass-filter and Order-statistic filter also be used.
Experimental results shows LPG-
... Show MoreAverage interstellar extinction curves for Galaxy and Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) over the range of wavelengths (1100 A0 – 3200 A0) were obtained from observations via IUE satellite. The two extinctions of our galaxy and LMC are normalized to Av=0 and E (B-V)=1, to meat standard criteria. It is found that the differences between the two extinction curves appeared obviously at the middle and far ultraviolet regions due to the presence of different populations of small grains, which have very little contribution at longer wavelengths. Using new IUE-Reduction techniques lead to more accurate result.
Ahmed ibn Imad ibn Yusuf al-Aqfhasi (808 AH / 1405 AD) is a small message that speaks about the Nile River in all its sides, despite its limited papers, but it is one of the manuscripts of the important geographical literature for its geographical, historical, religious and grammatical information. it was not limited to the information of the author alore, but taken from many sources below, which added to the importance of the fact that it has saved us the names of the sources that preceded him in mentioning this river with the names of its authors.The method of the Aqfhasi was characterized by scientific methodology in writing and clarity, with reference to some of the myths that people carried in their minds about the Nile River at tha
... Show MoreOxidative stress plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of peripheral artery disease (PAD). This study aimed to investigate the effect of clopidogrel on oxidative stress in PAD patients. Seventy subjects were divided into three groups: PAD patients before treatment (B-PAD), PAD patients after treatment with clopidogrel (A-PAD), and healthy controls. Serum levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), manganese (Mn), and oxidized protein were measured. SOD activities were also determined. The results showed that SOD activities, and SOD specific activities were significantly decreased in PAD patients compared to healthy individuals. After treatment with clopidogrel, SOD activities, and SOD specific activities were continuous
... Show MoreHuman interaction technology based on motion capture (MoCap) systems is a vital tool for human kinematics analysis, with applications in clinical settings, animations, and video games. We introduce a new method for analyzing and estimating dorsal spine movement using a MoCap system. The captured data by the MoCap system are processed and analyzed to estimate the motion kinematics of three primary regions; the shoulders, spine, and hips. This work contributes a non-invasive and anatomically guided framework that enables region-specific analysis of spinal motion which could be used as a clinical alternative to invasive measurement techniques. The hierarchy of our model consists of five main levels; motion capture system settings, marker data
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