One of the common geotechnical problems is the construction on soft soil and the improvement of its geotechnical properties to meet the design requirements. A stone column is one of the well-known techniques used to improve the geotechnical properties of soft soils. Sometimes thick layers of soft soil imposed the designer to use floating stone columns for improvement of such soil; in this case, the designer will be lost the end bearing of the stone column. In this study, the effects of several patterns of floating stone columns distribution under footing on the bearing capacity of soil and the distribution of excess porewater pressure are investigated. The soft soil used in this study has a very low undrained shear strength (cu) of

This paper demonstrates an experimental and numerical study aimed at comparing the influence of openings of different configurations on the flexural behavior of reinforced concrete gable roof beams. The experimental program consisted of testing six simply supported gable beams subjected to mid-point concentrated load. The variable which has been investigated in this work was opening's configuration (quadrilateral or circular) with the same upper and lower chords depth. The results indicate improvement in the beams’ flexural behavior when circular openings were used compared with that of quadrilateral openings, represented by an increase in ultimate load capacity and a decrease in deflection at the service limit. Also, there was an

The influence of adding metal foam fins on the heat transfer characteristics of an air to water double pipe heat exchanger is numerically investigated. The hot fluid is water which flows in the inner cylinder whereas the cold fluid is air which circulates in the annular gap in parallel flow with water. Ten fins of metal foam (Porosity = 0.93), are added in the gap between the two cylinder, and distributed periodically with the axial distance. Finite volume method is used to solve the governing equations in porous and non-porous regions. The numerical investigations cover three values for Reynolds number (1000 ,1500, 2000), and Darcy number (1 x10^-1, 1 x10^-2, 1x10^-3). The comparison betwee

The two-dimensional transient heat conduction through a thermal insulation of temperature dependent thermal properties is investigated numerically using the FVM. It is assumed that this insulating material is initially at a uniform temperature. Then, it is suddenly subjected at its inner surface with a step change in temperature and subjected at its outer surface with a natural convection boundary condition associated with a periodic change in ambient temperature and heat flux of solar radiation. Two thermal insulation materials were selected. The fully implicit time scheme is selected to represent the time discretization. The arithmetic mean thermal conductivity is chosen to be the value of the approximated thermal conductivity at the i

When the flange of a reinforced concrete spandrel beam is in tension, current design codes and specifications enable a portion of the bonded flexure tension reinforcement to be distributed over an effective flange width. The flexural behavior of the RC L-shaped spandrel beam when reinforcement is laterally displaced in the tension flange is investigated experimentally and numerically in this work. Numerical analysis utilizing the finite element method is performed on discretized flanged beam models validated using experimentally verified L-shaped beam specimens to achieve study objectives. A parametric study was carried out to evaluate the influence of various factors on the beam’s flexure behavior. Results showed that

Piracy on phonograms is now, rightly, the crime of the electronic age. Despite the protection sought by States to provide for such registrations, whether at the level of national legislation or international agreements and conventions, but piracy has been and continues to pose a significant threat to the rights of the producers of those recordings, especially as it is a profitable way for hackers to get a lot of money in a way Illegal, which is contrary to the rules of legitimate competition. Hence, this research highlights the legal protection of producers of phonograms in light of the Iraqi Copyright Protection Act No. (3) of 1971, as amended.

In this work, the behavior of reinforced concrete columns under biaxial bending is studied. This work aims at studying the strengthening of columns by using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP). The experimental work includes investigation of eight reinforced concrete columns (150*150*500mm) tested under several load conditions. Variables considered in the test program include; effect of eccentricity and effect of longitudinal reinforcement (Ø12mm or Ø6mm). Test results are discussed based on load – lateral deflection behavior, load –longitudinal deflection behavior, ultimate load and failure modes. The CFRP reinforcement permits
a complete change in the failure mode of the columns .The effect of longitudinal reinforcement in

In this work, a novel single-slope solar distillator of floating perforated absorber inserted with wicks (cotton ribbons), and a stepped distillator are designed and manufactured with the aim of developing the conventional distillator. They are examined experimentally at Baghdad, Iraq (33.3°N Latitude, 44.4°E Longitude) in order to enhance the freshwater productivity and the efficiency of the conventional distillator. Results showed that the daily productivity and efficiency of the stepped distillator are higher than that for conventional solar distillator by 30% and 36.19% respectively. The daily productivity and thermal efficiency for the distillator with the floating absorber are higher than that for the conventional distillator by 16%