A bolted–welded hybrid demountable shear connector for use in deconstructable steel–concrete composite buildings and bridges was proposed. The hybrid connector consisted of a partially threaded stud, which was welded on the flange of a steel section, and a machined steel tube with compatible geometry, which was bolted on the stud. Four standard pushout tests according to Eurocode 4 were carried out to assess the shear performance of the hybrid connector. The experimental results show that the initial stiffness, shear resistance, and slip capacity of the proposed connector were higher than those of traditional welded studs. The hybrid connector was a ductile connector, according to Eurocode 4, with slip capacity higher than 6 mm. A nonli

    The stratigraphic sequence of Cenomanian-Early Turonian is composed of Ahmadi, Rumaila, and Mishrif formations in the Rifai, Noor and Halfaya Oil Fields within the Mesopotamian Zone of Iraq, which is bounded at top and bottom by unconformity surfaces. The microfacies analysis of the study wells assisted the recognition of five main environments (open marine, basinal, shallow open marine, Rudist biostrome, and lagoon); these microfacies were indicative of a normal lateral change facies from shallow water facies to deeper water and open marine sediments.

    Ahmadi Formation (Early Cenomanian) is characterized by open marine sediments during the transgressive conditions, and would be

(Sepak takraw) is a game that mixes football and volleyball, it is played on a court similar to a badminton court, in which players have the right to play the ball with any part of the body except the arm and hand. The object of the game is to return the ball to the opponent's court and score a point. Since it is a newly emerging game, all aspects related to it must be studied and covered in order to reach the highest levels, and it is known that each game or sporting activity has its own physical and motor capabilities, which is important to determine the level of technical performance, as the game's abilities contribute to mastering the skills. The importance of research in determining standard levels of physical and motor abilities for y

Future wireless networks will require advance physical-layer techniques to meet the requirements of Internet of Everything (IoE) applications and massive communication systems. To this end, a massive MIMO (m-MIMO) system is to date considered one of the key technologies for future wireless networks. This is due to the capability of m-MIMO to bring a significant improvement in the spectral efficiency and energy efficiency. However, designing an efficient downlink (DL) training sequence for fast channel state information (CSI) estimation, i.e., with limited coherence time, in a frequency division duplex (FDD) m-MIMO system when users exhibit different correlation patterns, i.e., span distinct channel covariance matrices, is to date ve

Sequence covering array (SCA) generation is an active research area in recent years. Unlike the sequence-less covering arrays (CA), the order of sequence varies in the test case generation process. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the SCA strategies, earlier works reported that finding a minimal size of a test suite is considered as an NP-Hard problem. In addition, most of the existing strategies for SCA generation have a high order of complexity due to the generation of all combinatorial interactions by adopting one-test-at-a-time fashion. Reducing the complexity by adopting one-parameter- at-a-time for SCA generation is a challenging process. In addition, this reduction facilitates the supporting for a higher strength of

In this paper, a compact genetic algorithm (CGA) is enhanced by integrating its selection strategy with a steepest descent algorithm (SDA) as a local search method to give I-CGA-SDA. This system is an attempt to avoid the large CPU time and computational complexity of the standard genetic algorithm. Here, CGA dramatically reduces the number of bits required to store the population and has a faster convergence. Consequently, this integrated system is used to optimize the maximum likelihood function lnL(φ1, θ1) of the mixed model. Simulation results based on MSE were compared with those obtained from the SDA and showed that the hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) and I-CGA-SDA can give a good estimator of (φ1, θ1) for the ARMA(1,1) model. Anot

One of the main parts in hydraulic system is directional control valve, which is needed in order to operate hydraulic actuator. Practically, a conventional directional control valve has complex construction and moving parts, such as spool. Alternatively, a proposed Magneto-rheological (MR) directional control valve can offer a better solution without any moving parts by means of MR fluid. MR fluid consists of stable suspension of micro-sized magnetic particles dispersed in carrier medium like hydrocarbon oil. The main objectives of this present research are to design a MR directional control valve using MR fluid, to analyse its magnetic circuit using FEMM software, and to study and simulate the performance of this valve. In this research, a