Fine aggregates used for concrete works in Sulaymaniyah city frequently fail to meet the standard requirements for gradation and fineness modulus in cement concrete. This paper aims to critically evaluate gradation, fineness modulus, and clay contents of various natural sands produced and used for concrete work in the region.  Sixteen field sand samples were collected from various sites in Darbandikhan (5 samples), Qalat Dizah (5 samples), Koysinjaq (5 samples), and Piramagroon (1 sample) confirming to ASTM D75. The field samples were parted into test specimens based on ASTM C702. Then, sieve analysis was carried out on the oven-dry test specimens in compliance with ASTM C136. The test results of fine aggregates wer

Internal curing is a method that has been advised to decrease the primary age cracking, mainly of concrete mixes using low (water to cementitious materials - w/cm) ratios corresponding to the self-compacting concrete-(SCC). This research aims to study the effect of the internal curing using saturated lightweight aggregate- (LWA) on the steel reinforcing corrosion in SCC. In this research, crushed bricks or thermostone were partially replaced by (20%) by the weight of sand and volumetrically measured. The results showed that the steel reinforcement of internally cured concrete showed a slight increase in corrosion up to 300 days of exposure to the saline solution (containing 3.5% NaCl). The ability of using the crushed bricks or thermostone

There is an interesting potential for the use of GFRP-pultruded profiles in hybrid GFRP-concrete structural elements, either for new constructions or for the rehabilitation of existing structures. This paper provides experimental and numerical investigations on the flexural performance of reinforced concrete (RC) specimens composite with encased pultruded GFRP I-sections. Five simply supported composite beams were tested in this experimental program to investigate the static flexural behavior of encased GFRP beams with high-strength concrete. Besides, the effect of using shear studs to improve the composite interaction between the GFRP beam and concrete as well as the effect of web stiffeners of GFRP were explored. Encasing the GFRP

Steel–concrete–steel (SCS) structural systems have economic and structural advantages over traditional reinforced concrete; thus, they have been widely used. The performance of concrete made from recycled rubber aggregate from scrap tires has been evaluated since the early 1990s. The use of rubberized concrete in structural construction remains necessary because of its high impact resistance, increases ductility, and produces a lightweight concrete; therefore, it adds such important properties to SCS members. In this research, the use of different concrete core materials in SCS was examined. Twelve SCS specimens were subjected to push-out monotonic loading for inspecting their mechanical performance. One specimen was constructed from co

Advancing the multi-scale performance of asphalt pavements requires innovative binder modifications that address limitations in rutting resistance, fatigue resistance, and durability across the binder, mixture, and structural levels. This study evaluates the performance of asphalt cement, mixtures, and pavement systems modified with a combination of polyethylene (PE) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The binder was modified using 4% PE and varying CNT contents (0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, and 2% by weight of the modified binder). Binder performance was assessed through conventional and rheological tests, including penetration, softening point, viscosity, performance grade (PG) evaluation, and master curve analysis. Mixture-level performance was eval

This paper presents stochastic analysis using the perturbation method to model the structure of a container to verify the distributions of probability of maximum and minimum axial forces reactions in piles. The proposed simulation of a container port terminal under 11 scenarios of load combinations was presented. The probability distributions for live loads are assigned according to the input parameters of simulation data. Part of the load itself is implicitly combined such as vertical live load which includes the weight of equipment and containers and wind load. The structural model was simulated in the software STAAD Pro., while the statistical analyses were performed with MATLAB. The results demonstrated that, the most significant extern

This study investigates consecutive reaction assisted by pervaporation for the first time. It studies the saponification of diethyladipate DA with sodium hydroxide NaOH solution synchronous with separating ethanol from the reaction mixture through an aqueous – organic membrane. The effect of time on some variables such as: permeated ethanol concentration EtOH wt%, separation factor (α), concentration of NaOH solution CB in the reaction medium and the conversion of DA to monoethyladipate (the intermediate product) was studied. It was shown that EtOH wt% and the conversion increased with increasing time unlike CB but (α) showed the existence of maximum value during the time of experiment. The process of reaction assisted by pervaporation

 A dynamic analysis method has been developed to investigate and characterize embedded delamination on the dynamic response of composite laminated structures. A nonlinear finite element model for geometrically large amplitude free vibration intact plate and delamination plate analysis is presented using higher order shear deformation theory where the nonlinearity was introduced  in the Green-Lagrange sense. The governing equation of the vibrated plate were derived using the Variational approach. The effect of different orthotropicity ratio, boundary condition and delamination size on the non-dimenational fundamental frequency and frequency ratios of plate for different stacking sequences are studied. Finally th