This paper presents a study (experimentally) for strengthening reinforced concrete (RC) beams with Near-Surface-Mounted (NSM) technique. The use of this technique with CFRP strips or rebars is an efficient technology for increasing the strength for flexure and shear or for repairing damaged reinforced concrete (RC) members. The objective of this research is to study, experimentally, RC beams either repaired or strengthened with NSM CFRP strips and follow their flexural behavior and failure modes. NSM-CFRP strips were used to strengthen three RC beam specimens, one of them was initially strengthened and tested up to failure. Four beam specimens have been initially subjected to preloading to 50% and 80% of ultimate load. Two of the specimens were either repaired or strengthened with NSM-CFRP strips. All the repaired/strengthened pre-damaged beams have been tested up to failure by using compression-testing machine. An appropriate-scale model was adopted. All the specimens have a cross-sectional dimension of 150 mm with an effective span of 110 mm. Depends on the experimental results, a better performance of the strengthened concrete specimens was obtained in both strength and serviceability. As a comparison with the control beam specimen, all the repaired specimens show a very good increase of about 40% in the load-carrying capacity and a high improvement in resistance to cracking of about 120% in NSM. On the other hand, the test results of NSM CFRP-strengthened concrete specimens with a preloading of 50% and 80% of the ultimate load show an increase of about 9% to 20% in the load-carrying capacity, for 50% and 80% pre-loading, respectively an improvement in deflection of about 2% to 27% in NSM, for 80% and 50% pre-loading, respectively.
The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of environmental management accounting information (EMAI) on the design process of environmental and sustainable products of Iraqi industrial companies. This process has five different sub-processes: research process, analysis process, conceptual design process, detailed design process and design production process. The study uses the quantitative approach as the questionnaire was designed and distributed to 87 quality managers, production managers, design managers and financial managers. The MANOVA analysis shows that EMAI has a positive and significant effect on three of these processes, namely research process, analysis process and detailed design process, while EMAI has an insi
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In this research, a study is introduced on the effect of several environmental factors on the performance of an already constructed quality inspection system, which was designed using a transfer learning approach based on convolutional neural networks. The system comprised two sets of layers, transferred layers set from an already trained model (DenseNet121) and a custom classification layers set. It was designed to discriminate between damaged and undamaged helical gears according to the configuration of the gear regardless to its dimensions, and the model showed good performance discriminating between the two products at ideal conditions of high-resolution images. So, this study aimed at testing the system performance at poo
... Show MoreNon-thermal plasmas have become popular as plasma technology has advanced in various fields, including waste management, aerospace technology, and medicinal applications. They can be used to replace combustion fuels in stationary hall motors and need little effort to keep running for longer periods of time. To improve overall system performance, non-reactive gases such as )Xe, Ar, and Kr) are utilized in pure or mixed form to generate plasma. Since DC glow discharge is a fundamental topic of importance, these gases have been researched. The paper concentrates on 2-D modeling and simulation. DC glow-discharge tubes are utilized with argon gas to create plasma and learn about its properties. The magnitude of t
... Show MoreCrocidolomia binotalis (Cb) (Zeller) is one of the main pests of cabbage which is difficult for farmers to control in the Ijen Crater in Indonesia. The demand for cabbage in Indonesia is increasing every year, so intensification efforts are continuously being made. Farmers intensively use synthetic pesticides as the primary control of Cb. The purpose of this study is to examine several control agents that can be used as an alternative to synthetic pesticides. Then, it provides recommendations to Ijen Crater farmers to adapt in reducing the use of synthetic pesticides. The biopesticide used was based on the Nuclear Polyhedrosis Virus strains of Spodoptera litura (SlNPV) and Helicoverpa armigera (HaNPV), botanical pesticides, and
... Show MoreThis article aims to introducenumerical study of two different incompressible Newtonian fluid flows. The first type of flow is through the straight channel, while the second flow is enclosed within a square cavity and the fluid is moved by the upper plate at a specific velocity. Numerically, a Taylor-Galerkin\ pressure-correction finite element method (TGPCFEM) is chosen to address the relevant governing equations. The Naiver-Stoke partial differential equations are usually used to describe the activity of fluids. These equations consist of the continuity equation (conservation of mass) and the time-dependent conservation of momentum, which are preserved in Cartesian coordinates. In this study, the effect of Reynolds number (
... Show MoreIn this research, a group of gray texture images of the Brodatz database was studied by building the features database of the images using the gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), where the distance between the pixels was one unit and for four angles (0, 45, 90, 135). The k-means classifier was used to classify the images into a group of classes, starting from two to eight classes, and for all angles used in the co-occurrence matrix. The distribution of the images on the classes was compared by comparing every two methods (projection of one class onto another where the distribution of images was uneven, with one category being the dominant one. The classification results were studied for all cases using the confusion matrix between every
... Show MoreThis paper aims to evaluate large-scale water treatment plants’ performance and demonstrate that it can produce high-level effluent water. Raw water and treated water parameters of a large monitoring databank from 2016 to 2019, from eight water treatment plants located at different parts in Baghdad city, were analyzed using nonparametric and multivariate statistical tools such as principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). The plants are Al-Karkh, Sharq-Dijlah, Al-Wathba, Al-Qadisiya Al-Karama, Al-Dora, Al-Rasheed, Al-Wehda. PCA extracted six factors as the most significant water quality parameters that can be used to evaluate the variation in drinkin