Moisture-induced damage is one of the primary causes of premature distress in asphalt pavements, leading to reduced service life and increased maintenance costs. Although nanomaterials have shown potential in enhancing asphalt performance, the underlying composite interaction mechanisms among nanomaterials, asphalt binder, and aggregate phases under moisture exposure are still not fully understood. In addition, comparative evaluations under consistent experimental conditions remain limited. This study investigates the influence of five nanomaterials: nano-silica (NS), nano-alumina (NA), nano-titanium dioxide (NT), nano-zinc oxide (NZ), and carbon nanotubes (CNT) on the physical and mechanical properties of asphalt binders and mixtur

This paper presents a comprehensive numerical analysis of the improvement in bearing capacity and settlement performance of hexagonal shallow footings with inclined skirts. Various numerical analyses were conducted using PLAXIS 3D to investigate the influence of skirt length-to-footing width (L/B) ratios and skirt inclination angles (θ) on hexagonal footings in loose sand. The models showed very good agreement with experimental data reported in previous studies, with an R² value of 0.996 and a maximum error of less than 4.31%. It was concluded that the inclusion of inclined skirts has a positive effect on bearing capacity, increasing it by up to approximately 2.97 times compared to non-inclined configurations, while significantly

The synthesis of new substituted cobalt Phthalocyanine (CoPc) was carried out using starting materials Naphthalene-1,4,5, tetracarbonic acid dianhydride (NDI) employing dry process method. Metal oxides (MO) alloy of (60%Ni₃O₄ 40%-Co₃O₄ ) have been functionalized with multiwall carbon nanotubes (F-MWCNTs) to produce (F-MWCNTs/MO) nanocomposite (E2) and mixed with  CoPc to yield (F-MWCNT/CoPc/MO) (E3). These composites were investigated using different analytical and spectrophotometric methods such as ¹H-NMR (0-18 ppm), FTIR spectroscopy in the range of (400-4000cm-1), powder X-rays diffraction (PXRD, 2θ ^o = 10-80), Raman spectroscopy (0-4000 cm^-1), and UV-Visib

Electromyogram (EMG)-based Pattern Recognition (PR) systems for upper-limb prosthesis control provide promising ways to enable an intuitive control of the prostheses with multiple degrees of freedom and fast reaction times. However, the lack of robustness of the PR systems may limit their usability. In this paper, a novel adaptive time windowing framework is proposed to enhance the performance of the PR systems by focusing on their windowing and classification steps. The proposed framework estimates the output probabilities of each class and outputs a movement only if a decision with a probability above a certain threshold is achieved. Otherwise (i.e., all probability values are below the threshold), the window size of the EMG signa

Objectives Bromelain is a potent proteolytic enzyme that has a unique functionality makes it valuable for various therapeutic purposes. This study aimed to develop three novel formulations based on bromelain to be used as chemomechanical caries removal agents. Methods The novel agents were prepared using different concentrations of bromelain (10–40 wt. %), with and without 0.1–0.3 wt. % chloramine T or 0.5–1.5 wt. % chlorhexidine (CHX). Based on the enzymatic activity test, three formulations were selected; 30 % bromelain (F1), 30 % bromelain-0.1 % chloramine (F2) and 30 % bromelain-1.5 % CHX (F3). The assessments included molecular docking, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), viscosity and pH measurements. The efficiency

This paper presents the Extended State Observer (ESO) based repetitive control (RC) for piezoelectric actuator (PEA) based nano-positioning systems. The system stability is proved using Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs), which guarantees the asymptotic stability of the system. The ESObased RC used in this paper has the ability to eliminate periodic disturbances, aperiodic disturbances and model uncertainties. Moreover, ESO can be tuned using only two parameters and the model free approach of ESO-based RC, makes it an ideal solution to overcome the challenges of nano-positioning system control. Different types of periodic and aperiodic disturbances are used in simulation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. The comparison studi