A novel demountable shear connector is proposed to link a concrete slab to steel sections in a way that resulting steel-concrete composite floor is demountable, i.e. it can be easily dismantled at the end of its service life. The proposed connectors consist of two parts: the first part is a hollow steel tube with internal threads at its lower end. The second part is a compatible partially threaded bolted stud. After linking the stud to the steel section, the hollow steel tube can be fastened over the threaded stud, which create a complete demountable shear connector. The connector is suitable for use in both composite bridges and buildings, and using cast in-situ slabs, precast solid slabs, or hollow-core precast slabs. A series of push-off tests with different parameters including wall thickness of steel tube, compressive strength of concrete slab and infilled grout were carried out to study shear strength, shear stiffness, failure modes and relative slip characteristics of demountable shear connectors. Experimental results indicated that the shear connector has a high strength and initial stiffness, also the slip capacity that is higher than the requirements of the current codes of practice. Finally, it is suggested that under applied loading, concrete slabs do not crack or crush, demountable connectors can yield into plastic state, therefore, concrete slabs and steel beams can be easily replaced, repaired or reused.
A field experiment was carried out in one of the orchards of Al-Qassim district in Babel Governorate to find out the ability of a locally manufactured platform to serve palm trees by working in flat and uneven orchard land, palm tree heights of 4, 8, and 12 meters, and it performs pollination, pruning and harvesting services. The time of ascent and descent, the palm service, and the palm/hour productivity were measured. A randomized complete block design with three replications used a split split-plot arrangement. The nature of the land (flat or uneven) represented the main plots, the height of the palm trees (4, 8, 12) meters, the sub-plots, and the palm service operations (pollinati
Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) is a multiple-access technique allowing multiusers to share the same communication resources, increasing spectral efficiency and throughput. NOMA has been shown to provide significant performance gains over orthogonal multiple access (OMA) regarding spectral efficiency and throughput. In this paper, two scenarios of NOMA are analyzed and simulated, involving two users and multiple users (four users) to evaluate NOMA's performance. The simulated results indicate that the achievable sum rate for the two users’ scenarios is 16.7 (bps/Hz), while for the multi-users scenario is 20.69 (bps/Hz) at transmitted power of 25 dBm. The BER for two users’ scenarios is 0.004202 and 0.001564 for
... Show MoreObjectives: This study aimed to evaluate and compare the effect of plasma treatment versus conventional treatment on the micro shear bond strength (μSBS), surface roughness, and wettability of three different CAD/CAM materials. Materials and methods: Sixty cylindrical specimens (5 mm diameter ×3 mm height) were prepared from three different CAD/CAM materials: Group A: Zirconia, Group B: Lithium disilicate, and Group C: Resin nano-ceramic. Each group was subdivided into two subgroups according to surface treatment used: Subgroup I: Conventional treatment, zirconia was sandblasted with Al2O3, while lithium disilicate and resin nano-ceramic were etched with hydrofluoric acid. Subgroup II: Plasma treatment, the surface of each material was tr
... Show MoreThe efficiency of internal combustion engines (ICE) is usually about thirty percent of the total energy of the fuel. The residual energy is lost in the exhaust gas, the lubrication, and the cooling water in the radiators. Recently much of the researcher’s efforts have focused on taking advantage of wasted energy of the exhaust gas. Using a thermoelectric generator (TEG) is one of the promising ways. However, TEG depends entirely on the temperature difference, which may be offered by the exhaust muffler. An experimental test has been conducted to study the thermal performance of a different muffler internal design. The researchers resort to the use of lost energy in an ICE using TEG, which is one of the ways to take adv
... Show MoreA new two-way nesting technique is presented for a multiple nested-grid ocean modelling system. The new technique uses explicit center finite difference and leapfrog schemes to exchange information between the different subcomponents of the nested-grid system. The performance of the different nesting techniques is compared, using two independent nested-grid modelling systems. In this paper, a new nesting algorithm is described and some preliminary results are demonstrated. The validity of the nesting method is shown in some problems for the depth averaged of 2D linear shallow water equation.
Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) is a wireless technology that plays an important role in several modern applications which include military, civil, health and real-time applications. Providing Quality of Service (QoS) for this application with network characterized by node mobility, infrastructure-less, limitation resource is a critical issue and takes greater attention. However, transport protocols effected influential on the performance of MANET application. This study provides an analysis and evaluation of the performance for TFRC, UDP and TCP transport protocols in MANET environment. In order to achieve high accuracy results, the three transport protocols are implemented and simulated with four different network topology which are 5, 10
... Show MoreArtificial roughness applied to a Solar Air Heater (SAH) absorber plate is a popular technique for increasing its total thermal efficiency (ηt−th). In this paper, the influence of geometrical parameters of V-down ribs attached below the corrugated absorbing plate of a SAH on the ηt−th was examined. The impacts of key roughness parameters, including relative pitch p/e (6–12), relative height e/D (0.019–0.043), angles of attack α (30–75°), and Re (1000–20,000), were examined under real weather conditions. The SAH ηt−th roughened by V-down ribs was predicted using an in-house developed conjugate heat-transfer numerical model. The maximum SAH ηt−th was shown to be 78.8% as predicted under the steady-state condition
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