Concrete filled steel tube (CFST) columns are being popular in civil engineering due to their superior structural characteristics. This paper investigates enhancement in axial behavior of CFST columns by adding steel fibers to plain concrete that infill steel tubes. Four specimens were prepared: two square columns (100*100 mm) and two circular columns (100 mm in diameter). All columns were 60 cm in length. Plain concrete mix and concrete reinforced with steel fibers were used to infill steel tube columns. Ultimate axial load capacity, ductility and failure mode are discussed in this study. The results showed that the ultimate axial load capacity of CFST columns reinforced with steel fibers increased by 28% and 20 % for circular and square c

This paper presents a meta-heuristic swarm based optimization technique for solving robot path planning. The natural activities of actual ants inspire which named Ant Colony Optimization. (ACO) has been proposed in this work to find the shortest and safest path for a mobile robot in different static environments with different complexities. A nonzero size for the mobile robot has been considered in the project by taking a tolerance around the obstacle to account for the actual size of the mobile robot. A new concept was added to standard Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for further modifications. Simulations results, which carried out using MATLAB 2015(a) environment, prove that the suggested algorithm outperforms the standard version of AC

The electrospun nanofibers membranes have gained considerable interest in water filtration applications. In this work, the fabrication and characterization of the electrospun polyacrylonitrile-based nonwoven nanofibers membrane are reported. Then, the membrane's performance and antifouling properties were evaluated in removing emulsified oil using a cross flow filtration system. The membranes were fabricated with different polyacrylonitrile (PAN) concentrations (8, 11, and 14 wt. %) in N, N-Dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent resulted in various average fiber sizes, porosity, contact angle, permeability, oil rejection, and antifouling properties. Analyses of surface morphology of the fabricated membranes before and after oil removal revealed

This paper presents an analytical study on the serviceability of reinforced concrete gable roof beams with openings of different sizes, based on an experimental study which includes 13 concrete gable roof beams with openings under static loading. For deflection and crack widths under static loading at service stage, a developed unified calculation procedure has been submitted, which includes prismatic beams with one opening subjected to flexure concentrated force. The deflection has been calculated with two methods: the first method calculated deflections via relevant equations and the second was Direct Stiffness Method in which the beam is treated as a structural member with several segments constituting the portions with solid sec

Aggregate production planning (APP) is one of the most significant and complicated problems in production planning and aim to set overall production levels for each product category to meet fluctuating or uncertain demand in future. and to set decision concerning hiring, firing, overtime, subcontract, carrying inventory level. In this paper, we present a simulated annealing (SA) for multi-objective linear programming to solve APP. SA is considered to be a good tool for imprecise optimization problems. The proposed model minimizes total production and workforce costs. In this study, the proposed SA is compared with particle swarm optimization (PSO). The results show that the proposed SA is effective in reducing total production costs and req

In this paper, we have extracted Silica from rice husk ash (RHA) by sodium hydroxide to produce sodium silicate. 3-(chloropropyl)triethoxysilane (CPTES) functionalized with sodium silicate via a sol-gel method in one pot synthesis to prepare RHACCl. Chloro group in compound RHACCl replacement in iodo group to prepere RHACI. The FT-IR clearly showed absorption band of C-I at 580 cm^-1. Functionalized silica RHACI has high surface area (410 m²/g) and average pore diameter (3.8 nm) within mesoporous range. X-ray diffraction pattern showed that functionalized silica RHACI has amorphous phase .Thermogravemitric analysis (TGA) showed two decomposition stages and SEM morphology of RHACI showed that the particles have irregu

Roughness length is one of the key variables in micrometeorological studies and environmental studies in regards to describing development of cities and urban environments. By utilizing the three dimensions ultrasonic anemometer installed at Mustansiriyah university, we determined the rate of the height of the rough elements (trees, buildings and bridges) to the surrounding area of the university for a radius of 1 km. After this, we calculated the zero-plane displacement length of eight sections and calculated the length of surface roughness. The results proved that the ranges of the variables above are Z_H (9.2-13.8) m, Z_d (4.3-8.1) m and Z_o (0.24-0.48) m.

The applications of hot plasma are many and numerous applications require high values of the temperature of the electrons within the plasma region. Improving electron temperature values is one of the important processes for using this specification in plasma for being adopted in several modern applications such as nuclear fusion, plating operations and in industrial applications. In this work, theoretical computations were performed to enhance electron temperature under dense homogeneous plasma. The effect of   power and duration time of pulsed Nd:YAG laser   was studied on the heating of   plasmas  by inverse bremsstrahlung  for  several values for the electron density ratio. There results for these ca