Two dimensional meso-scale concrete modeling was used in finite element analysis of plain concrete beam subjected to bending. The plane stress 4-noded quadrilateral elements were utilized to model coarse aggregate, cement mortar. The effect of aggregate fraction distribution, and pores percent of the total area – resulting from air voids entrapped in concrete during placement on the behavior of plain concrete beam in flexural was detected. Aggregate size fractions were randomly distributed across the profile area of the beam. Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) was employed to treat the discontinuities problems result from double phases of concrete and cracking that faced during the finite element analysis of concrete beam. Crac
... Show MoreThis research proposes the application of the dragonfly and fruit fly algorithms to enhance estimates generated by the Fama-MacBeth model and compares their performance in this context for the first time. To specifically improve the dragonfly algorithm's effectiveness, three parameter tuning approaches are investigated: manual parameter tuning (MPT), adaptive tuning by methodology (ATY), and a novel technique called adaptive tuning by performance (APT). Additionally, the study evaluates the estimation performance using kernel weighted regression (KWR) and explores how the dragonfly and fruit fly algorithms can be employed to enhance KWR. All methods are tested using data from the Iraq Stock Exchange, based on the Fama-French three-f
... Show MoreIn this study, oxidative desulfurization of dibenzothiophene (DBT) with H2O2 as an oxidant was studied, whereas the catalyst used was zirconium oxide supported on Activated carbon (AC). Zirconium oxide (ZrO2) was impregnated over prepared activated carbon (AC) and characterized by various techniques such as XRD, FTIR, BET, SEM, and EDX. This composite was used as a heterogeneous catalyst for oxidation desulfurization of simulated oil. The results of this study showed that ZrO2/AC composite exhibited significant catalytic activity and stability, effectively lowering sulfur content under mild conditions. Factors such as reaction temperature (30, 40, 50, 60°C), time (5, 10, 15,20,30,60, 80 100 min), catalyst dose (0.3, 0.5,
... Show MoreAbstract: Stars whose initial masses are between (0.89 - 8.0) M☉ go through an Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) phase at the end of their life. Which have been evolved from the main sequence phase through Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB). The calculations were done by adopted Synthetic Model showed the following results: 1- Mass loss on the AGB phase consists of two phases for period (P <500) days and for (P>500) days; 2- the mass loss rate exponentially increases with the pulsation periods; 3- The expansion velocity VAGB for our stars are calculated according to the three assumptions; 4- the terminal velocity depends on several factors likes metallicity and luminosity. The calculations indicated that a super wind phase (S.W) developed on the A
... Show MoreThis study aims to assess the accuracy of digital elevation model (DEM) created with utilization of handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) and comparing with Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer Global Digital Elevation Model (ASTER GDEM), version 2. It is known that the quality of the DEM is affected by both of accuracy of elevation at each pixel (absolute accuracy) and accuracy of presented morphology (relative accuracy). The University of Baghdad, Al Jadriya campus was selected as a study area to create and analysis the resulting DEM. Additionally, Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to visualize, analyses and interpolate GPS track points (elevation data) of the study area. In this
... Show MoreThe research aims to determine the mix of production optimization in the case of several conflicting objectives to be achieved at the same time, therefore, discussions dealt with the concept of programming goals and entrances to be resolved and dealt with the general formula for the programming model the goals and finally determine the mix of production optimization using a programming model targets to the default case.
The fiscal position of governments in rentier economies depends heavily on oil revenues. The relationship between oil prices and the budget surplus or deficit is often nonlinear and characterized by complex temporal dependencies, which may limit the predictive capability of conventional econometric models. Accordingly, this study aims to forecast the Iraqi budget surplus and deficit and compare the predictive performance of the ARDL, NARDL, LSTM, 1D-CNN, and hybrid 1D-CNN-LSTM models using oil prices as the primary predictive variable. The hybrid model integrates the feature-extraction capability of One-Dimensional Convolutional Neural Networks (1D-CNN) with the ability of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks to capture long-term
... Show MoreObjective: To generate a model that conceptualizes the phenomenon of health promotion and its related factors.
Methodology: A grounded theory methodology is used as qualitative method to explore the health promotion as
phenomenon of interest and its other related factors from the perspectives of specialists in this field. The study is
carried out from January 2002 through September 2004. A sample of (20) specialists in health sciences are
selected and interviewed as experts in the area of health promotion. The investigators conducted intensive and
structured interviews with the specialists to collect the data. These interviews were transcribed verbatim,
analyzed and interpreted.
Results: Findings of the study indicat