An extensive program of laboratory testing was conducted on ring footing rested on gypseous soil brought from the north of Iraq (Salah El-Deen governorate) with a gypsum content of 59%. There are limited researches available, and even fewer have been done experimentally to understand how to ring footings behave; almost all the previous works only concern the behavior of ring footing under vertical loads, Moreover, relatively few studies have examined the impact of eccentric load and inclined load on such footing. In this study, a series of tests, including dry and wet tests, were carried out using a steel container (600×600×600) mm, metal ring footing (100 mm outer diameter and 40 mm inner diameter) was placed in the m

  A new hetrocyclic liquid crystal compounds containing 1,3,4-oxadiazole with different substituted in para position (Bromo, Chloro, Nitro and Methyl) were synthesized and characterized by melting points, FTIR Spectroscopy and 1HNMR spectroscopy for [Cl-SR6] and [NO2-SR6] compounds. The liquid crystalline properties of the synthesized compounds were studied by using hot-stage polarizing optical microscopy (POM), so they determined the transition enthalpies and entropies by using differential scanning calorimetery (DSC). All of the compounds show mesomorphic properties. The compounds [Br-SR6], [Cl-SR6] and [NO2SR6] exhibit an enantiotropic dimorphism smectic (Sm) phase, while the compounds [MeSR6] showed nematic (N) phase throw cooli

The steel jetty selected for strengthening is in Baghdad city, over Tigris River, consists of 55 short spans, each of approximately 4 meters and one naviga-tional opening of 12 m. The bridge is 224 meters length and 8 meters in width. The strengthening system was designed to remove overstresses that occurred when the bridge was subjected to abnormal loads of 380 tons. A strengthening system which installed in spring 2008 was used where the main concept is to depend on added side supporting elements which impose reversal forces on the bridge to counteract most of the loads expected from the abnormal heavy loads. The bridge was load tested before and after the strengthening system was activated. The load test results indicate that the strengt

Soil movement resulting due unsupported excavation nearby axially loaded piles imposes significant structural troubles on geotechnical engineers especially for piles that are not designed to account for loss of lateral confinement. In this study the field excavation works of 7.0 m deep open tunnel was continuously followed up by the authors. The work is related to the project of developing the Army canal in the east of Baghdad city in Iraq. A number of selected points around the field excavation are installed on the ground surface at different horizontal distance. The elevation and coordinates of points are recorded during 23 days with excavation progress period. The field excavation process was numerically simulated by using the finite

The field of structural optimization (optimal design) has grown rapidly over the past decades with many different optimization methods that could be used to produce a structure of minimum weight. This research deals with two aspects, in the first, a general numerical technique based on the finite element analysis and it suggests to investigate the preliminary behavior of metal stiffened plate under action of static load environment. The technique was included a finite element model of the structures using high- order isoparimetric plate elements to be used to create a certain models to obtain their optimum design. The models are characterized such that, each model is builded using different types of stiffener configuration. The second as

When the flange of a reinforced concrete spandrel beam is in tension, current design codes and specifications enable a portion of the bonded flexure tension reinforcement to be distributed over an effective flange width. The flexural behavior of the RC L-shaped spandrel beam when reinforcement is laterally displaced in the tension flange is investigated experimentally and numerically in this work. Numerical analysis utilizing the finite element method is performed on discretized flanged beam models validated using experimentally verified L-shaped beam specimens to achieve study objectives. A parametric study was carried out to evaluate the influence of various factors on the beam’s flexure behavior. Results showed that