Materials recycling has a significant economic and environmental impact; as a result, steel, aluminium, plastic, and other recyclable materials have been pushed for use in construction materials. One of these recyclable materials is the crumb rubber, has been considered as a pavement component. The general behaviour of the composite rubber-hot mix asphalt system would be varied from that of the conventional rubber free mix. In this review, desirable characteristics of hot mix asphalt are highlighted first. Also, effect of gradation and the main types of rubber are specified. Afterward, many studies that considered the crumb rubber as a waste product and its associated mixture and modifiers are reviewed. The factors affect the crumb

Thermal performance of closed wet cooling tower has been investigated experimentally and theoretically
in this work. The theoretical model based on heat and mass transfer equations and heat and mass transfer balance equations which are established for steady state case. A new small indirect cooling tower was used for conducting experiments. The cooling capacity of cooling tower is 1 kW for an inlet water temperature of 38oC, a water mass velocity 2.3 kg/m2.s and an air wet bulb temperature of 26oC. This study investigates the relationship between saturation efficiency, cooling capacity and coefficient of performance of closed wet cooling tower versus different operating parameters such wet-bulb temperature, variable air-spray water fl

Experimental measurements of viscosity and thermal conductivity of single layer of graphene . based DI-water nanofluid are performed as a function of  concentrations (0.1-1wt%) and temperatures between (5 to 35ºC). The result reveals that the thermal conductivity of GNPs nanofluids was increased with increasing the nanoparticle weight fraction concentration and temperature, while the maximum enhancement was about 22% for concentration of 1 wt.% at
35ºC. These experimental results were compared with some theoretical models and a good agreement between Nan’s model and the experimental results was observed. The viscosity of the graphene nanofluid displays Newtonian and Non-Newtonian behaviors with respect to nanoparticles concen

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 appl

This paper proposes a novel finite-time generalized proportional integral observer (FTGPIO) based a sliding mode control (SMC) scheme for the tracking control problem of high order uncertain systems subject to fast time-varying disturbances. For this purpose, the construction of the controller consists of two consecutive steps. First, the novel FTGPIO is designed to observe unmeasurable plant dynamics states and disturbance with its higher time derivatives in finite time rather than infinite time as in the standard GPIO. In the FTGPO estimator, the finite time convergence rate of estimations is well achieved, whereas the convergence rate of estimations by classical GPIO is asymptotic and slow. Secondly, on the basis of the finite and fast e

The objective of this study was tointroduce a recursive least squares (RLS) parameter estimatorenhanced by using a neural network (NN) to facilitate the computing of a bit error rate (BER) (error reduction) during channels estimation of a multiple input-multiple output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) system over a Rayleigh multipath fading channel.Recursive least square is an efficient approach to neural network training:first, the neural network estimator learns to adapt to the channel variations then it estimates the channel frequency response. Simulation results show that the proposed method has better performance compared to the conventional methods least square (LS) and the original RLS and it is more robust a

A new two-way nesting technique is presented for a multiple nested-grid ocean modelling system. The new technique uses explicit center finite difference and leapfrog schemes to exchange information between the different subcomponents of the nested-grid system. The performance of the different nesting techniques is compared, using two independent nested-grid modelling systems. In this paper, a new nesting algorithm is described and some preliminary results are demonstrated. The validity of the nesting method is shown in some problems for the depth averaged of 2D linear shallow water equation.

The present work presents design and implementation of an automated two-axis solar tracking system using local materials with minimum cost, light weight and reliable structure. The tracking system consists of two parts, mechanical units (fixed and moving parts) and control units (four LDR sensors and Arduino UNO microcontroller to control two DC servomotors). The tracking system was fitted and assembled together with a parabolic trough solar concentrator (PTSC) system to move it according to information come from the sensors so as to keep the PTSC always perpendicular to sun rays. The experimental tests have been done on the PTSC system to investigate its thermal performance in two cases, with tracking system (case 1) and without trackin