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.
Background: The appointment system is a common practice in primary health care clinics in developed countries. The patients and health care providers in the primary health care setting perceived the appointment system as an indicator of good quality service.
Objective: The aim of this study was to survey patients’ and health care providers’ attitudes towards the introduction of an appointment system and their satisfaction with the existing ‘walk-in’ system in the primary health care setting.
Subjects and Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted included a convenient sample of 234 patients as well as 76 health care providers from two primary health care center
... Show MoreThe 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
... Show MoreIn this work, the effects of solvent properties on the characteristics of absorption and fluorescence for two laser dyes was studied. Dyes used in this work include Coumarin 5400 and DCM, while the solvents include ethanol, methanol, acetone, propanol and chloroform. Coumarin 5400 dye shows sharp fluorescence peaks in the green band of visible region while the DCM dye shows relatively wide band within 590-630 nm. Therefore, the selection of any dye for random gain medium applications should be performed after determining the most appropriate solvent as the optimum fluorescence characteristics are obtained.
Ovako 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 MoreThe study was conducted at the fields of the Dept. of Horticulture and Garden Engineering, College of the Agricultural Engineering Sciences, Jadriyah in the fall season of 2020-2021 aiming to culture the coral lettuce with green and red leaves under the hydroponics system using the modified nutrient solution film NFT and study the effect of aqueous extracts of alfalfa and berseem sprouted seeds on the quantitative and qualitative yield of the lettuce crop. The research was conducted as an experiment of split plots within the Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) of three replicates. The seedlings of the green coral lettuce, Locarno RZ, and red coral lettuce, Locarno RZ, symbolized by A and B respectively, were transferred to the c
... Show MoreBy definition, the detection of protein complexes that form protein-protein interaction networks (PPINs) is an NP-hard problem. Evolutionary algorithms (EAs), as global search methods, are proven in the literature to be more successful than greedy methods in detecting protein complexes. However, the design of most of these EA-based approaches relies on the topological information of the proteins in the PPIN. Biological information, as a key resource for molecular profiles, on the other hand, acquired a little interest in the design of the components in these EA-based methods. The main aim of this paper is to redesign two operators in the EA based on the functional domain rather than the graph topological domain. The perturb
... Show MoreBaghdad city has been faced numerous issues related to freshwater environment deteriorations due to many reasons, mainly was the discharge of wastewater without adequate treatment. Al- Rustamiya Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) have been constructed among many plants in Baghdad city to reduce the amount of wastewater discharged into natural environment and its subsequent adverse effects. This study was conducted to evaluate the performance of the plant which consist of a conventional activated sludge (CAS) and sequencing batch reactors (SBR) systems as secondary treatment units and its ability to meet Iraqi specifications. A reliability level determination and analysis also were conducted to find the plant's stability and its capabi
... Show More