Soft clays are generally characterized by low shear strength, low permeability and high compressibility. An effective method to accelerate consolidation of such soils is to use vertical drains along with vacuum preloading to encourage radial flow of water.  In this research numerical modeling of prefabricated vertical drains with vacuum pressure was done to investigate the effect of using vertical drains together with vacuum pressure on the degree of saturation of fully and saturated-unsaturated soft soils.  Laboratory experiments were conducted by using a specially-designed large consolidometer cell where a central drain was installed and vacuum pressure was applied. All tests were conducted

Recently, the internet has made the users able to transmit the digital media in the easiest manner. In spite of this facility of the internet, this may lead to several threats that are concerned with confidentiality of transferred media contents such as media authentication and integrity verification. For these reasons, data hiding methods and cryptography are used to protect the contents of digital media. In this paper, an enhanced method of image steganography combined with visual cryptography has been proposed. A secret logo (binary image) of size (128x128) is encrypted by applying (2 out 2 share) visual cryptography on it to generate two secret share. During the embedding process, a cover red, green, and blue (RGB) image of size (512

Information about soil consolidation is essential in geotechnical design. Because of the time and expense involved in performing consolidation tests, equations are required to estimate compression index from soil index properties. Although many empirical equations concerning soil properties have been proposed, such equations may not be appropriate for local situations. The aim of this study is to investigate the consolidation and physical properties of the cohesive soil. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been adapted in this investigation to predict the compression index and compression ratio using basic index properties. One hundred and ninety five consolidation results for soils tested at different construction sites

Single long spiral tube column pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit, 25 mm diameter, and 6 m length was constructed to study the separation of water from ethanol at azeotropic concentration of 95 wt%. The first three meters of the column length acted as a vaporizer and the remaining length acted as an adsorber filled by commercial 3A zeolite. The effect of pressure, temperature and feed flow rate on the product ethanol purity, process recovery and productivity were studied. The results showed that ethanol purity increased with temperature and pressure and decreased with feed flow rate. The purity decreased with increasing productivity. The purity range was 98.9 % to 99.6 %, the recovery range was 0.82 to 0.92 and the productivity range w

Globalisation and rapid environmental change have created many challenges for public and private organisations across Iraq as a developing country, particularly in the higher education sector. This includes, for example, decreases in government funding; increased demand for higher education; a need for economic transformation, and related competitiveness of organizations. Such challenges require exceptional leaders and strategic planning in order to take action to improve. In Iraq, the higher education sector is still one of the main foundations in progressing the knowledge economy. Studies into leadership style, strategic planning processes, and the importance of leadership and organisational culture to an organisation’s success have bee

The research deals with analyzing the influencing role of trade policies in the growth and development of productive economic sectors and their contribution to GDP and its reflection on workforce employment. Studies have proven the success of the Malaysian experience in stimulating the productive economic sectors to grow and their contribution to the gross domestic product with an increase in the growth of local markets and access to international markets for national products. The research also deals with the ineffectiveness of Iraqi trade policies after 2003 in stimulating the productive economic sectors (agricultural and industrial) on economic growth, as most of the increase in Iraqi GDP growth throughout the study period was

In the present research, the electrical properties which included the ac-conductivity (σac), loss tangent of dielectric (tan δ) and real dielectric constant (ε’) are studied for nano polycarbonate in different pressures and frequencies as a function of temperature these properties were studied at selective temperature gradients which are (RT-50-100-150-250)°C. The results of the study showed that the values of dielectric constant and dissipation factor increase with increasing pressure and temperature and decreases by increasing frequency. And the results of electrical conductivity showed that it increases with increasing temperature, pressure and frequency.

     An experimental investigation of the variation of argon discharge current with a glow and afterglow time intervals of a square discharge voltage was carried out at low pressure (6-11 mbar). The discharge was created between two circular metal electrodes of diameter (7.5 cm), separated horizontally by a distance (10 cm) at the two ends of a Pyrex cylindrical tube. A composite of two Gaussian functions has been suggested to fit and explain the variation graphs clearly. It is shown that the necessary times of glow and afterglow needed to attain a maximum discharge current are (70 us) and (60 us), respectively. The discharge current is observed to drop to the lowest value when the two times are serially longer than (85 us) and (72 u