The central marshes are one of the most important wetlands/ecosystems in the southern area of Iraq. This study evaluates the bed soil's mechanical, physical, and chemical properties at certain southern Iraqi central marshes sites. This was conducted to investigate their types and suitability for enhancing the agricultural reality of most field crops and for construction purposes. Soil samples were collected from 15 sites at 10-100 cm depth. Hence, numerous parameters were determined: index properties, unconfined compressive strength, direct shear strength, consolidation, texture, and sieve analysis, water content, specific gravity, dry density, permeability, pH, total soluble salts (TSS), organic materials (OM) and total

         The main objective of this research is to design and select a composite plate to be used in fabricating wing skins of light unman air vehicle (UAV). The mechanical properties, weight and cost are the basis criteria of this selection. The fiber volume fraction, fillers and type of fiber with three levels for each were considered to optimize the composite plate selection. Finite element method was used to investigate the stress distribution on the wing at cruise flight condition in addition to estimate the maximum stress. An experiments plan has been designed to get the data on the basis of Taguchi technique. The most effective parameters at the process to be find out by employing L₉

Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA)/poly(caprolactone) (PCL) and two types of organoclay (OMMT) including a fatty amide and ocatdecylamine montmorillonite (FA-MMT and ODA-MMT) were employed to produce polymer nanocomposites by melt blending. Materials were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), elemental analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Mechanical properties were also investigated for these nanocomposites. The nanocomposites showed increasing mechanical properties and thermal stability. XRD results indicated that the materials formed nanocomposites. SEM morphology showed that increasing content of OMMT reduc

In this paper, ceramic water filters were produced by using ten mixtures of different ratios of red clay and sawdust under different production conditions. The physical properties of these filters were tested. The production conditions include five press pressures ranged from 10 to 50MPa and a firing schedule having three different final temperatures of 1000, 1070, and 1100˚C. The tests results of the physical properties were used to obtain best compatibility between the hydraulic and the mechanical properties of these filters. Results showed that as the press pressure and the firing temperature are increased, the bulk density and the compressive and bending strengths of the produced filters are increased, while, the porosity and absorp

The purpose of this study is designate quenching and tempering heat treatment by using Taguchi technique to determine optimal factors of heat treatment (austenitizing temperature, percentage of nanoparticles, type of base media, nanoparticles type and soaking time) for increasing hardness, wear rate and impact energy properties of 420 martensitic stainless steel. An (L₁₈) orthogonal array was chosen for the design of experiment. The optimum process parameters were determined by using signal-to-noise ratio (larger is better) criterion for hardness and impact energy while (Smaller is better) criterion was for the wear rate. The importance levels of process parameters that effect on hardness, wear rate and impact energy propertie

This study aimed to investigate the influence of longitudinal steel embedded tubes located at the center of the column cross-section on the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) columns. The experimental program consisted of 8 testing pin-ended square sectional columns of 150×150 mm, having a total height of 1400 mm, subjected to eccentric load. The considered variables were the steel square tube sizes of 25, 51 and 68 mm side dimensions and the load eccentricity (50 and 150) mm. RC columns were concealed steel tubes with hollow ratios of 3%, 12% and 20% depending on tube sizes used. The experimental results indicated an improvement in the overall behavior of eccentric columns when steel embedded tubes are used. The maximum gain in

An experimental investigation based on thirty three simple pullout cylinder specimens was conducted to study the bond-slip trend between concrete and steel reinforcement. Plain and deformed steel reinforcement bars were used in this investigation. The effect of bar diameter, concrete compressive strength and development length on bond-slip relation was detected. The results showed that the bond strength increases with increasing of compressive strength and with decreasing of bar diameter and development length. A nonlinear regression analysis for the experimental results yields in a mathematical correlation to predict the bond strength as a function of concrete compressive strength, reinforcing bar diameter and its yield stress. The minimum

Fiber reinforced polymer composite is an important material for structural application. The diversified application of FRP composite has taken center of attraction for interdisciplinary research. However, improvements on mechanical properties of this class of materials are still under research for different applications. In this paper we have modified the epoxy matrix by Al₂O₃, SiO₂ and TiO₂ nano particles in glass fiber/epoxy composite to improve the mechanical and physical properties. The composites are fabricated by hand lay-up method. It is observed that mechanical properties like flexural strength, hardness are more in case of SiO₂ modified epoxy composite compare to other nano