A ‘locking-bolt’ demountable shear connector (LBDSC) is proposed to facilitate the deconstruction and reuse of steel-concrete composite structures, in line with achieving a more sustainable construction design paradigm. The LBDSC is comprised of a grout-filled steel tube and a geometrically compatible partially threaded bolt. The latter has a geometry that ‘locks’ the bolt in compatible holes predrilled on the steel flange and eliminates initial slip and construction tolerance issues. The structural behaviour of the LBDSC is evaluated through nine pushout tests using a horizontal test setup. The effects of the tube thickness, strength of concrete slab, and strength of infilled grout on the shear resistance, initial stiffness, and ductility of the LBDSC are assessed. The experimental results show that the LBDSC can achieve higher shear resistance and similar initial stiffness as compared to traditional welded studs. In addition, all tested LBDSCs exhibited slip capacities ranging from 14 to 32 mm and can be classified as ductile shear connectors according to Eurocode 4. A detailed finite element model was also created and found to be reliable to reproduce the experimental behaviour. Parametric studies were subsequently conducted using the validated model to study further parameters and generalise the experimental results. Due to the specific test setup, non-negligible uplift forces were generated in the connector and the potential implications are discussed.
The heat exchanger is a device used to transfer heat energy between two fluids, hot and cold. In this work, an output feedback adaptive sliding mode controller is designed to control the temperature of the outlet cold water for plate heat exchanger. The measurement of the outlet cold temperature is the only information required. Hence, a sliding mode differentiator was designed to estimate the time derivative of outlet hot water temperature, which it is needed for constructing a sliding variable. The discontinuous gain value of the sliding mode controller is adapted according to a certain adaptation law. Two constraints which imposed on the volumetric flow rate of outlet cold (control input) were considered within the rules of the proposed
... Show MoreBackground: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory bowel disease restricted to the large intestine, characterized by superficial ulceration. It is a progressive and chronic disease requiring long-term treatment. Although its etiology remains unknown, it is suggested that environmental factors influence genetically susceptible individuals, leading to the onset of the disease. (C-X-C) ligand 9 is a chemokine that belongs to the CXC chemokine family, it plays a role in the differentiation of immune cells such as cytotoxic lymphocytes, natural killer T cells, and macrophages. Its interaction with its corresponding receptor CXCR3 which is expressed by a variety of cells such as effector T cells, CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, and macrophage
... Show MoreIn the pandemic era of COVID19, software engineering and artificial intelligence tools played a major role in monitoring, managing, and predicting the spread of the virus. According to reports released by the World Health Organization, all attempts to prevent any form of infection are highly recommended among people. One side of avoiding infection is requiring people to wear face masks. The problem is that some people do not incline to wear a face mask, and guiding them manually by police is not easy especially in a large or public area to avoid this infection. The purpose of this paper is to construct a software tool called Face Mask Detection (FMD) to detect any face that does not wear a mask in a specific
... Show MoreFor many years, the construction industry damages have been overlooked such as unreasonable consumption of resources in addition to producing a lot of construction waste but with global awareness growth towards the sustainable development issues, the sustainable construction practices have been adopted, taking into account the environment and human safety. The research aims to propose a management system for construction practices which could be adopted during constructing different types of sustainable buildings besides formulating flowcharts which clarify the required whole phases of sustainable buildings life cycle. The research includes two parts: theoretical part which generally ,handles the sustainability concepts at construction i
... Show MoreThere are many varied studies that dealt with the dramatic construction, especially books and studies that addressed drama in its construction and the method of writing it, that no textbook or a general cultural content is void of tackling the dramatic text in its construction and how the dramatic action develops in it. Therefore, a question occurs to the mind about the feasibility of dealing with the dramatic construction in this time, where many contemporary studies of dramatology and its relation and the contemporary critical directions are accumulating. This question many have two realistic aspects, yet the novelty and originality that this research shows lie in addressing a refined linguistic text in its style and connotations, such
... Show MoreA Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA 2) approach for solving the multi-objective Environmental / Economic Power Dispatch (EEPD) problem is presented in this paper. In the past fuel cost consumption minimization was the aim (a single objective function) of economic power dispatch problem. Since the clean air act amendments have been applied to reduce SO2 and NOX emissions from power plants, the utilities change their strategies in order to reduce pollution and atmospheric emission as well, adding emission minimization as other objective function made economic power dispatch (EPD) a multi-objective problem having conflicting objectives. SPEA2 is the improved version of SPEA with better fitness assignment, density estimation, an
... Show MoreToday in the digital realm, where images constitute the massive resource of the social media base but unfortunately suffer from two issues of size and transmission, compression is the ideal solution. Pixel base techniques are one of the modern spatially optimized modeling techniques of deterministic and probabilistic bases that imply mean, index, and residual. This paper introduces adaptive pixel-based coding techniques for the probabilistic part of a lossy scheme by incorporating the MMSA of the C321 base along with the utilization of the deterministic part losslessly. The tested results achieved higher size reduction performance compared to the traditional pixel-based techniques and the standard JPEG by about 40% and 50%,
... Show MoreIndustrial characteristics calculations concentrated on the physical properties for break down voltage in sf6, cf4 gases and their mixture with different concentrations are presented in our work. Calculations are achieved by using an improved modern code simulated on windows technique. Our results give rise to a compatible agreement with the other experimental published data.
Conflict, peace, and sports have a long history as practical realities, and their correlation has become an important subject of study in the last decades of the twentieth century. Sport has infiltrated peace and conflict studies as a tool for resolving conflict and building peace, but opinions have differed between those who say it is a positive tool and others who see it as negative. The Gulf Cup is one of the champions that have never been studied, and in-depth research about it has not been done. This tournament has affected the relations between the states involved. The politics cast its shadow on the Gulf Cup. The paper aims to shed light on how political events in the region have consistently affected the Gulf Cup and how politics in
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