Objective: The approximate life span of a silicone maxillofacial prosthesis is as short as1.5–2 years of clinical service, then a new prosthesis should be fabricated. The most common reasonfor re-making the prosthesis is silicone mechanical properties degradation. The aim of this studywas to assess some mechanical properties of VST-30 silicone for maxillofacial prostheses after addi-tion of intrinsic pigments.Methods: Two types of intrinsic pigments (rayon flocking and burnt sienna); each of them wasincorporated into silicone. One hundred and twenty samples were prepared and split into 4 groupsaccording to the conducted tests (tear strength, hardness, surface roughness, and tensile strengthand elongation percentage) with 30 samples for ea

The materials of soil were affected by multi reasons; such as human activities, floods, tidal waves, ... etc. The change of the soil contents could be measured through different indexes; such as electric conductivities, salinity, concentration of the heavy elements, and concentration of essential elements ... etc. The land cover is affected by natural influences, like tidal energy, which plays a negative role in the salinization of land adjacent to the coasts, causing a problem for soils in all its details represented in changing of the dissolved elements in soil. One of the most important natural factors that cause soil salinity is human activity in all its forms, and one of the most important causes of salinity is the phenomenon o

In this research, damping properties for composite materials were evaluated using logarithmic decrement method to study the effect of reinforcements on the damping ratio of the epoxy matrix. Three stages of composites were prepared in this research. The first stage included preparing binary blends of epoxy (EP) and different weight percentages of polysulfide rubber (PSR) (0%, 2.5%, 5%, 7.5% and 10%). It was found that the weight percentage 5% of polysulfide was the best percentage, which gives the best mechanical properties for the blend matrix. The advantage of this blend matrix is that; it mediates between the brittle properties of epoxy and the flexible properties of a blend matrix with the highest percentage of PSR. The second stage

Matrix acidizing is a good stimulation process in which acid is introduced into the reservoir near the wellbore area via the wellbore or coil tubing. In the oil industry, formation damage is a prevalent problem. Bypassing wellbore damage by producing wormholes in carbonate reservoirs is the main purpose of acidizing the matrix of the formation. When doing lab tests, scientists are looking for a wormhole-inducing injection rate that can be used in the field. Meantime the ongoing works on the Ahdeb oil field's Mishrif reservoir, several reports have documented the difficulties encountered during stimulation operations, including high injection pressures that make it difficult to inject acid into the reservoir formation; and only a few

In this research work, a simulator with time-domain visualizers and configurable parameters using a continuous time simulation approach with Matlab R2019a is presented for modeling and investigating the performance of optical fiber and free-space quantum channels as a part of a generic quantum key distribution system simulator. The modeled optical fiber quantum channel is characterized with a maximum allowable distance of 150 km with 0.2 dB/km at =1550nm. While, at =900nm and =830nm the attenuation values are 2 dB/km and 3 dB/km respectively. The modeled free space quantum channel is characterized at 0.1 dB/km at =860 nm with maximum allowable distance of 150 km also. The simulator was investigated in terms of the execution of the BB84 prot

Thin-walled members are increasingly used in structural applications, especially in light structures like in constructions and aircraft structures because of their high strength-to-weight ratio. Perforations are often made on these structures for reducing weight and to facilitate the services and maintenance works like in aircraft wing ribs. This type of structures suffers from buckling phenomena due to its dimensions, and this suffering increases with the presence of holes in it. This study investigated experimentally and numerically the buckling behavior of aluminum alloy 6061-O thin-walled lipped channel beam with specific holes subjected to compression load. A nonlinear finite elements analysis was used to obtain the

In this work, strains and dynamic crack growth were studied and analyzed in thin flat plate with a surface crack at the center, subjected to cycling low velocity impact loading for two types of aluminum plates (2024, 6061). Experimental and numerical methods were implemented to achieve this research. Numerical analysis using program (ANSYS11-APDL) based on finite element method used to analysis the strains with respect to time at crack tip and then find the velocity of the crack growth under cycling impact loading. In the experimental work, a rig was designed and manufactured to applying the cycling impact loading on the cracked specimens. The grid points was screened in front of the crack tip to measure the elastic-plas

Water covers more than 75% of the earth's surface in the form of the ocean. The ocean investigation is far-fetched because the underwater environment has distinct phenomenal activities. The expansion of human activities inside underwater environments includes environmental monitoring, offshore field exploration, tactical surveillance, scientific data collection, and port security. This led to increased demand for underwater application communication systems. Therefore, the researcher develops many methods for underwater VLC Visible Light Communications. The new technology of blue laser is a type of VLC that has benefits in the application of underwater communications. This research article investigated the benefits of underwater blu

The convolutional neural networks (CNN) are among the most utilized neural networks in various applications, including deep learning. In recent years, the continuing extension of CNN into increasingly complicated domains has made its training process more difficult. Thus, researchers adopted optimized hybrid algorithms to address this problem. In this work, a novel chaotic black hole algorithm-based approach was created for the training of CNN to optimize its performance via avoidance of entrapment in the local minima. The logistic chaotic map was used to initialize the population instead of using the uniform distribution. The proposed training algorithm was developed based on a specific benchmark problem for optical character recog