A biconical antenna has been developed for ultra-wideband sensing. A wide impedance bandwidth of around 115% at bandwidth 3.73-14 GHz is achieved which shows that the proposed antenna exhibits a fairly sensitive sensor for microwave medical imaging applications. The sensor and instrumentation is used together with an improved version of delay and sum image reconstruction algorithm on both fatty and glandular breast phantoms. The relatively new imaging set-up provides robust reconstruction of complex permittivity profiles especially in glandular phantoms, producing results that are well matched to the geometries and composition of the tissues. Respectively, the signal-to-clutter and the signal-to-mean ratios of the improved method are consis

Permanent deformation, fatigue and thermal cracking are the three typical distresses of flexible pavement. Using hydrated lime (HL) into the conventional limestone mineral additive has been widely practiced, including in Europe, to improve the mechanical properties of hot mix asphalt (HMA) concrete and as the result the durability of the constructed pavement. Large number of experimental studies have been reported to find the optimum addition of HL for the improvement on HMA concrete mechanical properties, moisture susceptibility and fatigue resistance. Pavement in service is under complex thermomechanical stress-strain conditions due to coupled atmospheric and surrounding environment temperature variation and the traffic loading. To predic

A theoretical analysis studied was performed to study the opacity broadening of spectral lines emitted from aluminum plasma produced by Nd-YLF laser. The plasma density was in the range 1028-1026 )) m-3 with length of plasma about ?300) m) , the opacity was studied as function of plasma density & principle quantum number. The results show that the opacity broadening increases as plasma density increases & decreases with the spacing between energy levels of emission spectral line.

Abstract: In this paper, a U-shaped probe with a curvature diameter of half a centimeter was implemented using plastic optical fibers. A layer of the outer shell of the fibers was removed by polishing to a D-section. The sensor was tested by immersing it in a sodium chloride solution with variable refractive index depending on solution concentrations ranging from 1.333 to 1.363. In this design, the sensor experienced a decrease in its intensity as the concentration of the solution increased. The next step The sensor was coated with a thin layer of gold with a thickness of 20 nm, and the sensor was tested with the same solutions which resulted in a shift in wavelengths where the shift in wavelength was 5.37 nm and sensiti

A paraffin wax and copper foam matrix were used as a thermal energy storage material in the double passes air solar chimney (SC) collector to get ventilation effect through daytime and after sunset. Air SC collector was installed in the south wall of an insulated test room and tested with different working angles (30^o, 45^o and 60^o). Different SC types were used; single pass, double passes flat plate collector and double pass thermal energy storage box collector (TESB). A computational model based on the finite volume method for transient tw dimensional domains was carried out to describe the heat transfer and storage in the thermal energy storage material of collector. Also, equivalent specific heat metho