In the field of construction project management, time and cost are the most important factors to be considered in planning every project, and their relationship is complex. The total cost for each project is the sum of the direct and indirect cost. Direct cost commonly represents labor, materials, equipment, etc.
Indirect cost generally represents overhead cost such as supervision, administration, consultants, and interests. Direct cost grows at an increasing rate as the project time is reduced from its original planned time. However, indirect cost continues for the life of the project and any reduction in project time means a reduction in indirect cost. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the time and cost for completing construction activities.
In this research, modeling of time-cost optimization, generating global optimum solution for time and cost problem, and lowering construction time and cost using ant colony optimization algorithm
Community detection is an important and interesting topic for better understanding and analyzing complex network structures. Detecting hidden partitions in complex networks is proven to be an NP-hard problem that may not be accurately resolved using traditional methods. So it is solved using evolutionary computation methods and modeled in the literature as an optimization problem. In recent years, many researchers have directed their research efforts toward addressing the problem of community structure detection by developing different algorithms and making use of single-objective optimization methods. In this study, we have continued that research line by improving the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm using a
... Show MoreThis research proposes the application of the dragonfly and fruit fly algorithms to enhance estimates generated by the Fama-MacBeth model and compares their performance in this context for the first time. To specifically improve the dragonfly algorithm's effectiveness, three parameter tuning approaches are investigated: manual parameter tuning (MPT), adaptive tuning by methodology (ATY), and a novel technique called adaptive tuning by performance (APT). Additionally, the study evaluates the estimation performance using kernel weighted regression (KWR) and explores how the dragonfly and fruit fly algorithms can be employed to enhance KWR. All methods are tested using data from the Iraq Stock Exchange, based on the Fama-French three-f
... Show MoreArtificial lift techniques are a highly effective solution to aid the deterioration of the production especially for mature oil fields, gas lift is one of the oldest and most applied artificial lift methods especially for large oil fields, the gas that is required for injection is quite scarce and expensive resource, optimally allocating the injection rate in each well is a high importance task and not easily applicable. Conventional methods faced some major problems in solving this problem in a network with large number of wells, multi-constrains, multi-objectives, and limited amount of gas. This paper focuses on utilizing the Genetic Algorithm (GA) as a gas lift optimization algorit
This paper proposes a new strategy to enhance the performance and accuracy of the Spiral dynamic algorithm (SDA) for use in solving real-world problems by hybridizing the SDA with the Bacterial Foraging optimization algorithm (BFA). The dynamic step size of SDA makes it a useful exploitation approach. However, it has limited exploration throughout the diversification phase, which results in getting trapped at local optima. The optimal initialization position for the SDA algorithm has been determined with the help of the chemotactic strategy of the BFA optimization algorithm, which has been utilized to improve the exploration approach of the SDA. The proposed Hybrid Adaptive Spiral Dynamic Bacterial Foraging (HASDBF)
... Show MoreEach organization struggles to exploit each possible opportunity for gaining success and continuing with its work carrier. In this field, organization success can be concluded by fulfilling end user requirements combined with optimizing available resources usage within a specified time and acceptable quality level to gain maximum profit. The project ranking process is governed by the multi-criteria environment, which is more difficult for the governmental organization because other organizations' main target is maximizing profit constrained with available resources. The governmental organization should consider human, social, economic and many more factors. This paper focused on building a multi-criteria optimizing proje
... Show MoreThe objective of the study is developing a procedure for production and characterization of rice husk ash (RHA). The effects of rice husk (RH) amount, burning/cooling conditions combined with stirring on producing of RHA with amorphous silica, highest SiO2, lowest loss on ignition (LOI), uniform particle shape distribution and nano structured size have been studied. It is concluded that the best amount is 20 g RH in 125 ml evaporating dish Porcelain with burning for 2 h at temperature 700 °C combined with cooling three times during burning to produce RHA with amorphous silica, SiO2 90.78% and LOI 1.73%. On the other hand, cooling and stirring times affect the variation of nano structured size and particle shape dis
... Show MoreIn this study, biodiesel was prepared from chicken fat via a transesterification reaction using Mussel shells as a catalyst. Pretreatment of chicken fat was carried out using non‐catalytic esterification to reduce the free fatty acid content from 36.28 to 0.96 mg KOH/g oil using an ethanol/ fat mole ratio equal to 115:1. In the transesterification reaction, the studied variables were methanol: oil mole ratio in the range of (6:1 ‐ 30:1), catalyst loading in the range of (9‐15) wt%, reaction temperature (55‐75 °C), and reaction time (1‐7) h. The heterogeneous alkaline catalyst was greenly synthesized from waste mussel shells throughout a calcin
In this study, biodiesel was prepared from chicken fat via a transesterification reaction using Mussel shells as a catalyst. Pretreatment of chicken fat was carried out using non‐catalytic esterification to reduce the free fatty acid content from 36.28 to 0.96 mg KOH/g oil using an ethanol/ fat mole ratio equal to 115:1. In the transesterification reaction, the studied variables were methanol: oil mole ratio in the range of (6:1 ‐ 30:1), catalyst loading in the range of (9‐15) wt%, reaction temperature (55‐75 °C), and reaction time (1‐7) h. The heterogeneous alkaline catalyst was greenly synthesized from waste mussel shells throughout a calcin
The present work is concerned with the finding of the optimum conditions for biochemical wastewater treatment for a local tannery. The water samples were taken from outline areas (the wastewater of the chrome and vegetable tannery) in equal volumes and subjected to sedimentation, biological treatment, and chemical and natural sedimentation treatment.
The Box-Wilson method of experimental design was adopted to find useful relationships between three operating variables that affect the treatment processes (temperature, aeration period and phosphate concentration) on the Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD5).
The experimental data collected by this method were successfully fitted to a second order polynomial mathematical model. The most fa