This article aims to establish and evaluate standards for critical equipment and materials in highway projects in Iraq. Delphi technique has been used to analyze, explore, and discover the main criteria and sub-criteria that affect equipment and materials in highway construction projects in Iraq. To determine the correct response to the criteria presented in this study, a program (IBM, SPSS/V25) was used to assess the main criteria and sub-criteria using the mean score (MS) and standard deviation (SD) technique, as well as to check reliability using Cronbach's alpha factor (α). The experts' qualifications and the extent to which the person is ready to commit are both important factors in panel selection. The design of a questionnaire, which is also identified as questions or repetitions, is based on a clear identification of study objectives, a literature review, and other primary research activities. By applying the Delphi technique steps and procedures, this research reveals fifteen (15) successful criteria in equipment and materials in highway construction projects in Iraq.
Objective: Evaluation of the poly ether keton keton polymer (PEKK) coating material on the commercial pure titanium disks (CP Ti) with or without laser surface structuring. Design: In vitro experimental study of PEKK polymer coated material on the CP Ti disks with or without laser surface structuring. Materials and methods: coating the surface of the commercial pure titanium (CP Ti) disks with PEKK polymer was performed via using frictional mode CO2 laser, then the samples disks analyzed by using FESEM. Results: the FESEM reveal good adherence and distribution of the PEKK coated material over the CP Ti substrate by using the frictional mode CO2 laser at 2 watt and 6 ms pulse duration. Conclusion: the frictional mode CO2 laser considered an
... Show MoreThe aim of this research is to study the optical properties of carbon-magnesium plasma resulting from arc discharge with explosive wire technique, where the energy gap of each of carbon and magnesium and the carbon-magnesium bond for three values of the wire exploding current (50,75,100 amperes) was studied. It was found that the energy gap for each of carbon and magnesium decreases with increasing the current, the X-ray diffraction of magnesium and the carbon-magnesium suspension was studied, and FTIR of the carbon-magnesium suspended carbon was studied for three values of the exploding current (50, 75, 100 amperes) and the type of bonds for carbon and magnesium was determined. To ob
An atomic force microscope (AFM) technique is utilized to investigate the polystyrene (PS) impact upon the morphological properties of the outer as well as inner surface of poly vinyl chloride (PVC) porous fibers. Noticeable a new shape of the nodules at the outer and inner surfaces, namely "Crater nodules", has been observed. The fibers surface images have seen to be regular nodular texture at the skin of the inner and outer surfaces at low PS content. At PS content of 6 wt.%, the nodules structure was varied from Crater shape to stripe. While with increasing of PS content, the pore density reduces as a result of increasing the size of the pore at the fiber surface. Moreover, the test of 3D-AFM images shows that the roughness of both su
... Show MoreBackground: Alveolar ridge expansion is proposed when the alveolar crest thickness is ≤5 mm. The screw expansion technique has been utilized for many years to expand narrow alveolar ridges. Recently, the osseodensification technique has been suggested as a reliable technique to expand narrow alveolar ridges with effective width gain and as little surgical operating time as possible. The current study aimed to compare osseodensification and screw expansion in terms of clinical width gain and operating time. Materials and methods: Forty implant osteotomies were performed in deficient horizontal alveolar ridges (3–5 mm). A total of 19 patients aged 21–59 years were randomized into two groups: the screw expansion group, which invo
... Show MoreThis paper presents an experimental study for strengthening existing columns against axial compressive loads. The objective of this work is to study the behavior of concrete square columns strengthening with circulation technique. In Iraq, there are significantly more reinforced rectangular and square columns than reinforced circular columns in reinforced concrete buildings. Moreover, early research studies indicated that strengthening of rectangular or square columns using wraps of CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) provided rather little enhancement to their load-carrying capacity. In this paper, shape modification technique was performed to modify the shape (cross section) of the columns from square columns into circular colu
... Show MoreIn this research an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique was applied for the prediction of Ryznar Index (RI) of the flowing water from WTPs in Al-Karakh side (left side) in Baghdad city for year 2013. Three models (ANN1, ANN2 and ANN3) have been developed and tested using data from Baghdad Mayoralty (Amanat Baghdad) including drinking water quality for the period 2004 to 2013. The results indicate that it is quite possible to use an artificial neural networks in predicting the stability index (RI) with a good degree of accuracy. Where ANN 2 model could be used to predict RI for the effluents from Al-Karakh, Al-Qadisiya and Al-Karama WTPs as the highest correlation coefficient were obtained 92.4, 82.9 and 79.1% respectively. For
... Show MoreThis research aims at identifying the level of quality of University environment according to the viewpoint of female students taking the College of Sciences for Woman an example, as represented in the college units as registration unit and the unit of students' affairs, the curricula, instructors, study halls, the college library, scientific labs, computer access, stationary and photocopying services, health care center, the unit of artistic, cultural and sportive activity, the canteen, the college gardens, college buildings and equipment and bathrooms. To achieve the objectives of the research, the researcher prepared a questionnaire to identify the viewpoints of female students concerning the extent of the availability of the standards o
... Show MoreThe Internet of Things (IoT) is an information network that connects gadgets and sensors to allow new autonomous tasks. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) refers to the integration of IoT with industrial applications. Some vital infrastructures, such as water delivery networks, use IIoT. The scattered topology of IIoT and resource limits of edge computing provide new difficulties to traditional data storage, transport, and security protection with the rapid expansion of the IIoT. In this paper, a recovery mechanism to recover the edge network failure is proposed by considering repair cost and computational demands. The NP-hard problem was divided into interdependent major and minor problems that could be solved in polynomial t
... Show MoreThe 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
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