Measurement of construction performance is essential to a clear image of the present situation. This monitoring by the management team is necessary to identify locations where performance is exceptionally excellent or poor and to identify the primary reasons so that the lessons gained may be exported to the firm and its progress strengthened. This research attempts to construct an integrated mathematical model utilizing one of the recent methodologies for dealing with the fuzzy representation of experts’ knowledge and judgment considering hesitancy called spherical fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (SFAHP) method to assess the contractor’s performance per the project performance parameters (cost, schedule, quality, leadership, and change management). At the same time, most project control systems are currently applied through software like Primavera P6 or MS Project. These look at a project’s cost and schedule status by following the earned value analysis for finding the performance. Based on decision makers’ preferences, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) may be used to arrive at the optimum conclusion. AHP approaches are discussed, including AHP, grey-AHP, fuzzy-AHP, and SFAHP weights comparison. Calculation results showed that the spherical fuzzy approach differs significantly from the other approaches where it considers the decision maker’s hesitation when making linguistic multicriteria decisions and then, as a result, recommends applying periodically for performance measurement. This model can be viewed as a valuable way to help the decision-making stakeholders in the construction sector do the best job about critical issues at a suitable time.
A system was used to detect injuries in plant leaves by combining machine learning and the principles of image processing. A small agricultural robot was implemented for fine spraying by identifying infected leaves using image processing technology with four different forward speeds (35, 46, 63 and 80 cm/s). The results revealed that increasing the speed of the agricultural robot led to a decrease in the mount of supplements spraying and a detection percentage of infected plants. They also revealed a decrease in the percentage of supplements spraying by 46.89, 52.94, 63.07 and 76% with different forward speeds compared to the traditional method.
Introduction: Carrier-based gutta-percha is an effective method of root canal obturation creating a 3-dimensional filling; however, retrieval of the plastic carrier is relatively difficult, particularly with smaller sizes. The purpose of this study was to develop composite carriers consisting of polyethylene (PE), hydroxyapatite (HA), and strontium oxide (SrO) for carrier-based root canal obturation. Methods: Composite fibers of HA, PE, and SrO were fabricated in the shape of a carrier for delivering gutta-percha (GP) using a melt-extrusion process. The fibers were characterized using infrared spectroscopy and the thermal properties determined using differential scanning calorimetry. The elastic modulus and tensile strength tests were dete
... Show More—This paper studies the control motion of a single link flexible joint robot by using a hierarchical non-singular terminal sliding mode controller (HNTSMC). In comparison to the conventional sliding mode controller (CSMC), the proposed algorithm (NTSMC) not only can conserve characteristics of the convention CSMC, such as easy implementation, guaranteed stability and good robustness against system uncertainties and external disturbances, but also can ensure a faster convergence rate of the systems states to zero in a finite time and singularity free. The flexible joint robot (FJR) is a two degree of freedom (2DOF) nonlinear and underactuated system. The system here is modeled as a fourth order system by using Lagrangian method. Based on t
... Show MoreThis study is planned with the aim of constructing models that can be used to forecast trip production in the Al-Karada region in Baghdad city incorporating the socioeconomic features, through the use of various statistical approaches to the modeling of trip generation, such as artificial neural network (ANN) and multiple linear regression (MLR). The research region was split into 11 zones to accomplish the study aim. Forms were issued based on the needed sample size of 1,170. Only 1,050 forms with responses were received, giving a response rate of 89.74% for the research region. The collected data were processed using the ANN technique in MATLAB v20. The same database was utilized to
The necessary optimality conditions with Lagrange multipliers are studied and derived for a new class that includes the system of Caputo–Katugampola fractional derivatives to the optimal control problems with considering the end time free. The formula for the integral by parts has been proven for the left Caputo–Katugampola fractional derivative that contributes to the finding and deriving the necessary optimality conditions. Also, three special cases are obtained, including the study of the necessary optimality conditions when both the final time and the final state are fixed. According to convexity assumptions prove that necessary optimality conditions are sufficient optimality conditions.
... Show MoreSequence covering array (SCA) generation is an active research area in recent years. Unlike the sequence-less covering arrays (CA), the order of sequence varies in the test case generation process. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the SCA strategies, earlier works reported that finding a minimal size of a test suite is considered as an NP-Hard problem. In addition, most of the existing strategies for SCA generation have a high order of complexity due to the generation of all combinatorial interactions by adopting one-test-at-a-time fashion. Reducing the complexity by adopting one-parameter- at-a-time for SCA generation is a challenging process. In addition, this reduction facilitates the supporting for a higher strength of
... Show MoreA novel technique Sumudu transform Adomian decomposition method (STADM), is employed to handle some kinds of nonlinear time-fractional equations. We demonstrate that this method finds the solution without discretization or restrictive assumptions. This method is efficient, simple to implement, and produces good results. The fractional derivative is described in the Caputo sense. The solutions are obtained using STADM, and the results show that the suggested technique is valid and applicable and provides a more refined convergent series solution. The MATLAB software carried out all the computations and graphics. Moreover, a graphical representation was made for the solution of some examples. For integer and fractional order problems, solutio
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