As one type of resistance furnace, the electrical tube furnace (ETF) typically experiences input noise, measurement noise, system uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances, which significantly degrade its temperature control performance. To provide precise, and robust temperature tracking performance for the ETF, a robust composite control (RCC) method is proposed in this paper. The overall RCC method consists of four elements: First, the mathematical model of the ETF system is deduced, then a state feedback control (SFC) is constructed. Third, a novel disturbance observer (DO) is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance with one observer parameter. Moreover, the stability of the closed loop system including controller

This study aimed to assess orthodontic postgraduate students’ use of social media during the COVID-19 lockdown. Ninety-four postgraduate students (67 master’s students and 27 doctoral students) were enrolled in the study and asked to fill in an online questionnaire by answering questions regarding their use of social media during the COVID-19 lockdown. The frequency distributions and percentages were calculated using SPSS software. The results showed that 99% of the students used social media. The most frequently used type of social media was Facebook, 94%, followed by YouTube, 78%, and Instagram, 65%, while Twitter and Linkedin were used less, and no one used Blogger. About 63% of the students used elements of social media to l

Advancements in horizontal drilling technologies are utilized to develop unconventional resources, where reservoir temperatures and pressures are very high. However, the flocculation of bentonite in traditional fluids at high temperature and high pressure (HTHP) environments can lower cuttings transportation efficiency and even result in problems such as stuck pipe, decreased rate of penetration (ROP), accelerated bit wear, high torque, and drag on the drill string, and formation damage. The major purpose of the present research is to investigate the performance of low bentonite content water-based fluids for the hole cleaning operation in horizontal drilling processes. Low bentonite content water-based drilling fluids were formulated by re

The research acquires its importance by motivating the behavioural side of the employees to apply modern technology in the work, because of its great importance in increasing the efficiency of employees’ performance and excellence. The research was based on two main hypotheses to show the relationship and impact between the variables through the adoption of a questionnaire to collect data and information related to the research, which consisted of (50) people from administrators working at different levels, based on personal interviews and field visits to collect research data. The data collection process was subjected to statistical analysis using the statistical program (SPSS) (Statistical package for social science) to reach

The hydraulic conditions of a flow previously proved to be changed when placing large-scale geometric roughness elements on the bed of an open channel. These elements impose more resistance to the flow.  The geometry of the roughness elements, the numbers used, and the configuration are parameters that can affect the hydraulic flow characteristics. The target is to use inclined block elements to control the salt wedge propagation pointed in most estuaries to prevent its negative effects. The Computational Fluid Dynamics CFD Software was used to simulate the two-phase flow in an estuary model. In this model, the used block elements are 2 cm by 3 cm cross-sections with an inclined face in the flow direction, with a length

The grasping stability of robotic manipulators is crucial to enable autonomous manipulation in an environment where robots are facing obstacles in their route, where abrupt changes in the robot’s speed are induced. These speed variations will produce forces affecting the robotic manipulator, hence its grasping stability. In this research, the grasping stability of a robotic manipulator that functions according to a frictional self-locking mechanism is investigated statically and dynamically. Both theoretical and experimental results showed that the grasped object size, weight, and its orientation inside the gripper have a great effect on grasping stability. Both the theoretical and experimental results indicated that the grasping object p