Grass trimming operation is widely done in Malaysia for the purpose of maintaining highways. Large number of operators engaged in this work encounters high level of noise generated by back pack type grass trimmer used for this purpose. High level of noise exposure gives different kinds of ill effect on human operators. Exact nature of deteriorated work performance is not known. For predicting the work efficiency deterioration, fuzzy tool has been used in present research. It has been established that a fuzzy computing system will help in identification and analysis of fuzzy models fuzzy system offers a convenient way of representing the relationships between the inputs and outputs of a system in the form of IF-THEN rules. The paper presents

Diversity has become one of the required phenomena to be available within public organizations, in light of the changes taking place in the global and international environment and in various fields. Therefore, it was imperative to study the impact of this phenomenon in various institutions, especially public ones, in most developing countries, including Iraq. The current research aims to analyze the relationship between The demographic diversity and institutional effectiveness of a sample of workers in public institutions included (500) respondents. The questionnaires were distributed to them randomly. Diversity is considered an independent variable and institutional effectiveness a dependent variable. The researcher used interview tools a

The implementation of decentralization in Iraq was asymmetrical, leading to different forms and paces of implementation. Comparing four cases of Basra, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Sulaymaniyah indicate that these cases differ in their political stability and autonomy in a way that led to a different forms of decentralization. This paper argues that the higher the level of political autonomy from the federal government, the more efficient the governance model, and the more efficient the governance model, the more legitimate the system (trust), and the more legitimate a system, the more accountable elected officials. Therefore, it recommends reforming the institutional setup of decentralization by having districts, instead of provinces, as the bu

The existing study aimed to assess four soil moisture sensors’ capacitive (WH51 and SKU: S EN0193) and resistive (Yl69 and IC Station) abilities, which are affordable and medium-priced for their accuracy in six common soil types in the central region of Iraq. The readings’ calibration for the soil moisture sensor devices continued through two gravimetric methods. The first depended on the protocols’ database, while the second was the traditional calibration method. The second method recorded the lowest analysis error compared with the first. The moderate-cost sensor WH51 showed the lowest standard error (SE), MAD , and RMSE and the highest R² in both methods. The performance accuracy of WH51 was close to readings shown by the manufac

This paper deals with prediction the effect of soil re-moulding (smear) on the ultimate bearing capacity of driven piles. The proposed method based on detecting the decrease in ultimate bearing capacity of the pile shaft (excluding the share of pile tip) after sliding downward. This was done via conducting an experimental study on three installed R.C piles in a sandy clayey silt soil. The piles were installed so that a gap space is left between its tip and the base of borehole. The piles were tested for ultimate bearing capacity according to ASTM D1143 in three stages. Between each two stages the pile was jacked inside the borehole until a sliding of about 200mm is achieved to simulate the soil re-moulding due to actual pile driving. The re

This research presents a method of using MATLAB in analyzing a nonhomogeneous soil (Gibson-type) by
estimating the displacements and stresses under the strip footing during applied incremental loading
sequences. This paper presents a two-dimensional finite element method. In this method, the soil is divided into a number of triangle elements. A model soil (Gibson-type) with linearly increasing modulus of elasticity with depth is presented. The influences of modulus of elasticity, incremental loading, width of footing, and depth of footing are considered in this paper. The results are compared with authors' conclusions of previous studies.

In the geotechnical and terramechanical engineering applications, precise understandings are yet to be established on the off-road structures interacting with complex soil profiles. Several theoretical and experimental approaches have been used to measure the ultimate bearing capacity of the layered soil, but with a significant level of differences depending on the failure mechanisms assumed. Furthermore, local displacement fields in layered soils are not yet studied well. Here, the bearing capacity of a dense sand layer overlying loose sand beneath a rigid beam is studied under the plain-strain condition. The study employs using digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) and finite element method (FEM) simulations. In the FEM, an experiment

Expansive soils are recognized by their swelling potential upon wetting due to the existence of some clay minerals such as  montmorillonite. An effective solution was found to avoid the danger of such soils by using piles. A single pile embedded in an elasto-plastic expansive soil has been analyzed by using one of the available software which is ABAQUS to investigate the effect of applied loads on pile’s top and investigate the effect of swelling soils on load carrying capacity of the pile. The result shows that as the pile is axially loaded at its top, the axial force along the pile gradually changes from (tension) to (compression) and the pile tends to move downward. The applied load needed to initiate pile’s settlement depend

Existence of these soils, sometimes with high gypsum content, caused difficult problems to the buildings and strategic projects due to dissolution and leaching of gypsum by the action of waterflow through soil mass. In this research, a new technique is adopted to investigate the performance of replacement and geosynthetic reinforcement materials to improve the gypseous soil behavior through experimential set up manufactured loaclally specially for this work. A series of tests were carried out using steel container (600*600*500) mm. A square footing (100*100) mm was placed at the center of the top surface of the bed soil. The results showed that the most effective thickness for the dune sand layer with geotextile at the interface, within