This article presents the results of an experimental investigation of using carbon fiber–reinforced polymer sheets to enhance the behavior of reinforced concrete deep beams with large web openings in shear spans. A set of 18 specimens were fabricated and tested up to a failure to evaluate the structural performance in terms of cracking, deformation, and load-carrying capacity. All tested specimens were with 1500-mm length, 500-mm cross-sectional deep, and 150-mm wide. Parameters that studied were opening size, opening location, and the strengthening factor. Two deep beams were implemented as control specimens without opening and without strengthening. Eight deep beams were fabricated with openings but without strengthening, while the other eight deep beams were with openings in shear spans and with carbon fiber–reinforced polymer sheet strengthening around opening zones. The opening size was adopted to be 200 × 200 mm dimensions in eight deep beams, while it was considered to be 230 × 230 mm dimensions in the other eight specimens. In eight specimens the opening was located at the center of the shear span, while in the other eight beams the opening was attached to the interior edge of the shear span. Carbon fiber–reinforced polymer sheets were installed around openings to compensate for the cutout area of concrete. Results gained from the experimental test showed that the creation of openings in shear spans affect the load-carrying capacity, where the reduction of the failure load for specimens with the opening but without strengthening may attain 66% compared to deep beams without openings. On the other hand, the strengthening by carbon fiber–reinforced polymer sheets for beams with openings increased the failure load by 20%–47% compared with the identical deep beam without strengthening. A significant contribution of carbon fiber–reinforced polymer sheets in restricting the deformability of deep beams was observed.
In this study, an efficient photocatalyst for dissociation of water was prepared and studied. The chromium oxide (Cr2O3) with Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanofibers (Cr2O3-TNFs) nanocomposite with (chitosan extract) were synthesized using ecologically friendly methods such as ultrasonic and hydrothermal techniques; such TiO2 exhibits nanofibers (TNFs) shape struct
... Show MoreThis paper delves into some significant performance measures (PMs) of a bulk arrival queueing system with constant batch size b, according to arrival rates and service rates being fuzzy parameters. The bulk arrival queuing system deals with observation arrival into the queuing system as a constant group size before allowing individual customers entering to the service. This leads to obtaining a new tool with the aid of generating function methods. The corresponding traditional bulk queueing system model is more convenient under an uncertain environment. The α-cut approach is applied with the conventional Zadeh's extension principle (ZEP) to transform the triangular membership functions (Mem. Fs) fuzzy queues into a family of conventional b
... Show MoreThe particle-hole state densities have been calculated for 232Th in
the case of incident neutron with , 1 Z Z T T T T and 2 Z T T .
The finite well depth, surface effect, isospin and Pauli correction are
considered in the calculation of the state densities and then the
transition rates. The isospin correction function ( ) iso f has been
examined for different exciton configurations and at different
excitation energies up to 100 MeV. The present results are indicated
that the included corrections have more affected on transition rates
behavior for , , and above 30MeV excitation energy
Image segmentation using bi-level thresholds works well for straightforward scenarios; however, dealing with complex images that contain multiple objects or colors presents considerable computational difficulties. Multi-level thresholding is crucial for these situations, but it also introduces a challenging optimization problem. This paper presents an improved Reptile Search Algorithm (RSA) that includes a Gbest operator to enhance its performance. The proposed method determines optimal threshold values for both grayscale and color images, utilizing entropy-based objective functions derived from the Otsu and Kapur techniques. Experiments were carried out on 16 benchmark images, which inclu
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, inflammatory, immune mediated disease of the central nervous system, mostly affecting young adults with mean age of 30 years, twice as high in women compared to men. The etiology of MS is not fully elucidated. MS symptoms are directly related to demyelination and axonal loss, along with other psychological symptoms, can result in functional limitations, disability and reduced quality of life (QoL). The QoL assessments in patients with a chronic disease may contribute to improving treatment and could even be of prognostic value. The goals of this study were to compare the QoL of Iraqi patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS),using three different diseas
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