Concrete structures are exposed to aggressive environmental conditions that lead to corrosion of the embedded reinforcement and pre-stressing steel. Consequently, the safety of concrete structures may be compromised, and this requires a significant budgets to repair and maintain critical infrastructure. Prediction of structural safety can lead to significant reductions in maintenance costs by maximizing the impact of investments. The aim of this paper is to establish a framework to assess the reliability of existing post-tensioned concrete bridges. A time-dependent reliability analysis of an existing post-tensioned involving the assessment of Ynys-y-Gwas bridge has been presented in this study. The main cause of failure of this bridge was c

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in a global health crisis leading to widespread illness, death, and daily life disruptions. Having a vaccine for COVID-19 is crucial to controlling the spread of the virus which will help to end the pandemic and restore normalcy to society. Messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules vaccine has led the way as the swift vaccine candidate for COVID-19, but it faces key probable restrictions including spontaneous deterioration. To address mRNA degradation issues, Stanford University academics and the Eterna community sponsored a Kaggle competition.This study aims to build a deep learning (DL) model which will predict deterioration rates at each base of the mRNA

The reality of the field of construction projects in Iraq refers to needing for the development of performance in order to improve quality and reduce defects and errors and to control the time and cost, so there is needing for the application of effective methods in this area, one of the methods that can be applied in this area is the manner of Six Sigma. This research aims to enhance the performance and quality improvement for the construction projects by improving performance in the work of the implementation of the concrete structure depending on the Six Sigma methodology, and for the purpose of achieving the aim of the research, the researcher firstly depends on the theoretical study that include the concepts of qual

Background: The daily cleaning routine of the silicone maxillofacial prostheses by the patient may cause some alteration in the materials properties. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of different disinfection procedures on some properties of silicon dioxide reinforced Cosmesil M511 HTV maxillofacial silicone. Materials and Methods: One hundred and sixty (160) specimens were prepared by mixing 5% SiO2 nano particles and 0.5% intrinsic cream color into the silicone polymer according to manufacturer's instructions. Specimens were divided into 4 groups according to the performed test (tear strength, surface hardness, surface roughness and color) with 40 specimens each. Each group was further subdivided according to

Food fortification has an important and necessary role in compensating for the shortage of nutritional micronutrients, especially in developing and least developed countries. So, 12 samples of flour available in the local market, whether imported or locally produced flour, were obtained during 2019. The amount of base metal of the necessary iron element in the flour models studied which are available in local markets, measured by spot testing and was compared with the values ​​that should be added according to the specification Iraqi standard. Results revealed the qualitative evaluation of iron in locally produced flour does not conform to the Iraqi standard and is almost free of any reinforcement. While the percentage of imp

In this study, plain concrete simply supported beams subjected to two points loading were analyzed for the flexure. The numerical model of the beam was constructed in the meso-scale representation of concrete as a two phasic material (aggregate, and mortar). The fracture process of the concrete beams under loading was investigated in the laboratory as well as by the numerical models. The Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) was employed for the treatment of the discontinuities that appeared during the fracture process in concrete. Finite element method with the feature standard/explicitlywas utilized for the numerical analysis. Aggregate particles were assumedof elliptic shape. Other properties such as grading and sizes of the aggr

In this paper, the behavior of structural concrete linear bar members was studied using numerical model implemented in a computer program written in MATLAB. The numerical model is based on the modified version of the procedure developed by Oukaili. The model is based on real stress-strain diagrams of concrete and steel and their secant modulus of elasticity at different loading stages. The behavior presented by normal force-axial strain and bending moment-curvature relationships is studied by calculating the secant sectional stiffness of the member. Based on secant methods, this methodology can be easily implemented using an iterative procedure to solve non-linear equations. A comparison between numerical and experimental data, illustrated

This paper presents a numerical analysis using ANSYS finite element program to simulate the reinforced concrete slabs with spherical voids. Six full-scale one way bubbled slabs of (3000mm) length with rectangular cross-sectional area of (460mm) width and (150mm) depth are tested as simply supported under two-concentrated load. The results of the finite element model are presented and compared with the experimental data of the tested slabs. Material nonlinearities due to cracking and crushing of concrete and yielding of reinforcement are considered. The general behavior of the finite element models represented by the load-deflection curves at midspan, crack pattern, ultimate load, load-concrete strain curves and failure m