In practical engineering problems, uncertainty exists not only in external excitations but also in structural parameters. This study investigates the influence of structural geometry, elastic modulus, mass density, and section dimension uncertainty on the stochastic earthquake response of portal frames subjected to random ground motions. The North-South component of the El Centro earthquake in 1940 in California is selected as the ground excitation. Using the power spectral density function, the two-dimensional finite element model of the portal frame’s base motion is modified to account for random ground motions. A probabilistic study of the portal frame structure using stochastic finite elements utilizing Monte Carlo simulation is presented using the finite element program ABAQUS. The dynamic reliability and probability of failure of stochastic and deterministic structures based on the first-passage failure were examined and evaluated. The results revealed that the probability of failure increases due to the randomness of stiffness and mass of the structure. The influence of uncertain parameters on reliability analysis depends on the extent of variance in structural parameters.
This research focuses on studying the effects of soil movement on the behavior of an existing pile driven in sandy soil. A physical model has been manufactured to investigate the effect of construction of an embankment adjacent to free head single pile driven in sand of dry unit weight of 13.5 kN/m3. The model pile of diameter (D) of 10 mm are tested under two conditions of loading: loaded axially and without load. The model piles are instrumented with strain gauges along the embedded length to measure strains resulting from the soil movement. The embankment loads are applied at distances of 2.5, 5, and 10D from the edge of the pile. The results obtained from the
The performance of single and two stage solar concentrator were studied ' " The ratio of the primary to the secondary mirrors diameter is taking to be 0.5, depending on the theoretical calculation for the accumulated energy by the concentrator with ratio between 0.0 to 0.9. The design of the systems were designed and examined by using a ray-tracing program. The efficiency of the single and the two stage concentrators are calculated and compared with and without cooling systems.
In this paper, a single-phase boost type ac-dc converter with power factor correction (PFC) technique is designed and implemented. A current mode control at a constant switching frequency is used as a control strategy for PFC converter. The PFC converter is a single-stage singleswitch boost converter that uses a current shaping technique to reshape the non-sinusoidal input current drawn by the bulky capacitor in the conventional rectifier. This technique should provide an input current with almost free-harmonics, comply with the IEC61000-3-2 limits, and a system operates with near unity power factor. The other function of the boost converter that should be
accomplished is to provide a regulated DC output voltage. The complete designed
Background Anorectal carcinoma includes the anal margin, the anal canal, and the lower rectum. The incidences of anal tumors represent 1.4 % of all gastrointestinal tumors.
Patients and methods Our study is retrospective and was conducted at Baghdad Medical City. Patient’s data were collected from the medical records through a predesigned sheet that included the following information: demographic data, medical history, past-history, presenting symptoms, pathological data, and treatment details.
Results The median age was 49 years. As regard tumor extension, 85.71 % of patients had anal disease, while anorectal cancer was encount
Bearing capacity of a concrete pile in fine grained cohesive soils is affected by the degree of saturation of the surrounding soil through the contribution of the matric suction. In addition, the embedded depth and the roughness of the concrete pile surface (expressed as British Pendulum Number BPN) also have their contribution to the shear strength of the concrete pile, consequently its bearing capacity. Herein, relationships among degree of saturation, pile depth, and surface roughness, were proposed as a mathematical model expressed as an equation where the shear strength of a pile can be predicted in terms of degree of saturation, depth, and BPN. Rel
... Show MoreThe objective of the current research is to identify the degree of awareness of the teachers of Arabic language with the requirements of sustainable development. The research sample consisted of (100) male and female teachers of the Arabic language. A 3-likert scale of (71) items grouped into practical and cognitive aspects, five trends for each aspect was designed by the researcher to explore the required data. The results showed that the level of awareness of teachers of the Arabic language was moderate of both the cognitive and practical aspects of sustainable education with means (1.69) and (1.48) respectively. The researcher presented a set of recommendations and suggestions.
Soft clays are generally characterized by low shear strength, low permeability and high compressibility. An effective method to accelerate consolidation of such soils is to use vertical drains along with vacuum preloading to encourage radial flow of water. In this research numerical modeling of prefabricated vertical drains with vacuum pressure was done to investigate the effect of using vertical drains together with vacuum pressure on the degree of saturation of fully and saturated-unsaturated soft soils. Laboratory experiments were conducted by using a specially-designed large consolidometer cell where a central drain was installed and vacuum pressure was applied. All tests were conducted
... Show MoreOvako Working Postures Analyzing System (OWAS) is a widely used method for studying awkward working postures in workplaces. This study with OWAS, analyzed working postures for manual material handling of laminations at stacking workstation for water pump assembly line in Electrical Industrial Company (EICO) / Baghdad. A computer program, WinOWAS, was used for the study. In real life workstation was found that more than 26% of the working postures observed were classified as either AC2 (slightly harmful), AC3 (distinctly harmful). Postures that needed to be corrected soon (AC3) and corresponding tasks, were identified. The most stressful tasks observed were grasping, handling, and positioning of the laminations from workers. The construct
... Show MoreThis study numerically intends to evaluate the effects of arc-shaped fins on the melting capability of a triplex-tube confinement system filled with phase-change materials (PCMs). In contrast to situations with no fins, where PCM exhibits relatively poor heat response, in this study, the thermal performance is modified using novel arc-shaped fins with various circular angles and orientations compared with traditional rectangular fins. Several inline and staggered layouts are also assessed to maximize the fin’s efficacy. The effect of the nearby natural convection is further investigated by adding a fin to the bottom of the heat-storage domain. Additionally, the Reynolds number and temperature of the heat-transfer fluid (HTF) are e
... Show MoreIn this paper, we used maximum likelihood method and the Bayesian method to estimate the shape parameter (θ), and reliability function (R(t)) of the Kumaraswamy distribution with two parameters l , θ (under assuming the exponential distribution, Chi-squared distribution and Erlang-2 type distribution as prior distributions), in addition to that we used method of moments for estimating the parameters of the prior distributions. Bayes