Green buildings are considered more efficient than traditional buildings due to the incorporated techniques and the multidisciplinary specializations required to comply with their specifications, in addition to the advanced commissioning, which undergoes before handing over the buildings to the owners to ensure requirements conformance. As a result, the appropriate selection of a project delivery system acts as the essential factor that affects the performance of the project. This research aims at building a system that helps to select the best method to implement green buildings. Through studying the recent research approaches in project delivery systems, the factors that affect the selection of the optimal implementation method for green buildings have been identified; expert interviews have been done to study and analyze the main influential factors that affect the selection of the best method for implementing green buildings. The results of interviews indicate that the main influential factors are as follows: The occurrence of economic crises in the country, availability of financial capacity for the contractor and the owner, the lack of previous experience in similar projects, hiring an incompetent contractor, differences between design drawings among all disciplines, and providing qualified contractors, subcontractors, suppliers and craftsmen with sufficient qualifications early in the project. Depending on these main factors, a software system is built to choose the best delivery system for green building projects. This research encourages future works to focus on the quality and performance of green buildings and lays out the foundation for academic researchers to explore new techniques for evaluating the project delivery systems as well as supporting the decision-makers to choose the best.
Roller-Compacted Concrete is a no-slump concrete, with no reinforcing steel, no forms, no finishing and wet enough to support compaction by vibratory rollers. Due to the effect of curing on properties and durability of concrete, the main purpose of this research is to study the effect of various curing methods (air curing, 7 days water curing, and permanent water curing) and porcelanite (local material used as an Internal Curing agent) with different replacement percentages of fine aggregate (volumetric replacement) on some properties of Roller-Compacted Concrete and to explore the possibility of introducing practical Roller-Compacted Concrete for road pavement with minimum requirement of curing. Specimens were sawed fro
... Show MoreThe present paper deals with studying the effect of electrical discharge machining (EDM) and shot blast peening parameters on work piece fatigue lives using copper and graphite electrodes. Response surface methodology (RSM) and the design of experiment (DOE) were used to plan and design the experimental work matrices for two EDM groups of experiments using kerosene dielectric alone, while the second was treated by the shot blast peening processes after EDM machining. To verify the experimental results, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to predict the EDM models for high carbon high chromium AISI D2 die steel. The work piece fatigue lives in terms of safety factors after EDM models were developed by FEM using ANSY
... Show MoreBackground: habit is any purposeless action repeated unconsciously. It is a sign of lack of harmony between the subject and the surrounding environment. Deleterious oral habits such as finger sucking could be one of the etiological factors for altered oro-facial growth development. This study conducted to explore the association between finger sucking habit and malocclusion in deciduous dentition. Materials and method: Totally 40 chronic thumb sucker and 40 controls matching in age and gender were enrolled in the study. A study conducted by verifying different occlusal trait through the intra-oral examination. Thumb sucking habit diagnosed using data gathered from parents. Results: The statistical analysis showed a highly significant dif
... Show MorePoly methyl methacrylate PMMA polymer could be considered the main material that used mostly in the recent years in denture base fabrication. It commonly known by it is poor strength properties such as low impact strength. The aim of the present research was to enhance the performance of PMMA denture base through the addition of two kind of nanoparticles (nano particles that selected from artificial and natural sources). Nano -particles from both Al2O3 and crushed peanut Peel were used for comparing purposes.Various weight fraction used in this study for both kinds of the additive (1%, 2% and 3%). Moreover, in this work a study and evaluation in impact strength (I.S.) value were done before and after immersion. The new prepared nanocompo
... Show MoreBackground: Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy and the second leading cause of mortality among women in Iraq forming 23% of cancer related deaths. The low survival from the disease is a direct consequence to the advanced stages at diagnoses. Aim: To document the composite stage of breast cancer among Iraqi patients at the time of diagnosis; correlating the observed findings with other clinical and pathological parameters at presentation. Patients and Methods: A retrospective study enrolling the clinical and pathological characteristics of 603 Iraqi female patients diagnosed with breast cancer. The composite stage of breast cancer was determined according to UICC TNM Classification System of Breast Cancer and the Ameri
... Show MoreA systematic approach is presented to achieve the stable grasping of objects through a two-finger robotic hand, in which each finger cavity was filled with granular media. The compaction of the latter, controlled by vacuum pressure, was used to adjust the structural and contact stiffness of the finger. The grasping stability was studied under the concurrent effect of an external torque and applied vacuum pressure. Stable grasping was defined as the no slippage condition between the grasped object and the two fingers. Three control schemes were adopted and applied experimentally to ensure the effectiveness of the grasping process. The results showed that stable and unstable grasping regions exist for each combination of applied torqu
... Show MoreIn the present study, multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) with outside diameters of< 8 nm and 20−30 nm were covalently functionalized with β-Alanine using a novel synthesis procedure. The functionalization process was proved successful using Raman spectroscopy, FTIR, and TEM. Utilizing the two-step method with ultrasonication, the MWCNTs treated with β-Alanine (Ala-MWCNTs) with weight concentrations of 0.025%, 0.05%, 0.075%, and 0.1% were dispersed in distilled water to prepare water-based nanofluids. The aqueous colloidal dispersions of pristine MWCNTs were unstable. While for Ala-MWCNTs and after> 50 days from preparation, higher colloidal stability was obtained up to relative concentration of 0.955 and 0.939 for the 0.075-wt% samp
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