In this work, a novel design for the NiO/TiO2 heterojunction solar cells is presented. Highly-pure nanopowders prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique were used to form the heterojunctions. The electrical characteristics of the proposed design were compared to those of a conventional thin film heterojunction design prepared by the same technique. A higher efficiency of 300% was achieved by the proposed design. This attempt can be considered as the first to fabricate solar cells from highly-pure nanopowders of two different semiconductors.

Experimental investigations had been done in this study to demonstrate the effect of natural particles used as a reinforcement material to unsaturated polyester resin. The tensile test and water absorption were investigated according to (ASTM D638) and (ASTM D570), respectively. The influence of sunflower husk and pomegranate husk particles, used as a reinforcement material, on the tensile strength, Young's modulus and water absorption with different weight fraction (3%, 7% and 10%) and particle grain size (50µm, 100 µm and 150 µm), has been investigated. The water absorption of polymer composites was studied by measuring the specimen weight before and after immersion in water for one hundred days. In the experiments of tensile test,

This study includes adding chemicals to gypseous soil to improve its collapse characteristics. The collapse behavior of gypseous soil brought from the north of Iraq (Salah El-Deen governorate) with a gypsum content of 59% was investigated using five types of additions (cement dust, powder sodium meta-silicate, powder activated carbon, sodium silicate solution, and granular activated carbon). The soil was mixed by weight with cement dust (10, 20, and 30%), powder sodium meta-silicate (6%), powder activated carbon (10%), sodium silicate solution (3, 6, and 9%), and granular activated carbon (5, 10, and 15%). The collapse potential is reduced by 86, 71, 43, 37, and 35% when 30% cement dust, 6% powder sodium meta-silicate, 10% powder activated

The effect of different cutting fluids on surface roughness of brass alloy workpiece during turning operation was carried out in this research. This was performed with different cutting speed, while other cutting parameters had been regarded as constants(feeding rate , and depth of cut). Surface roughness of machined parts that will be tested by electronic surface roughness tester .The results show that the standard coolant gives the best values of surface roughness for fixed cutting speed ,followed by sun flower oil that has approximately the same effect, while the air stream as a coolant gave unsatisfied results for the evaluation of surface roughness.

In the other hand the best values of surface roughness were recorded for max

Near surface mounted (NSM) carbon fibers reinforced polymer (CFRP) reinforcement is one of the techniques for reinforcing masonry structures and is considered to provide significant advantages. This paper is composed of two parts. The first part presents the experimental study of brick masonry walls reinforced with NSM CFRP strips under combined shear-compression loads. Masonry walls have been tested under vertical compression, with different bed joint orientations 90° and 45° relative to the loading direction. Different reinforcement orientations were used including vertical, horizontal, and a combination of both sides of the wall. The second part of this paper comprises a numerical analysis of unreinforced brick masonry (URM) wa

Construction joints are stopping places in the process of placing concrete, and they are required because in many structures it is impractical to place concrete in one continuous operation. The amount of concrete that can be placed at one time is governed by the batching and mixing capacity and by the strength of the formwork. A good construction joint should provide adequate flexural and shear continuity through the interface.

In this study, the effect of location of construction joints on the performance of reinforced concrete structural elements is experimentally investigated.

Nineteen beam specimens with dimensions of 200×200×950 mm were tested. The variables investigated are the location of the construction joints

In many oil-recovery systems, relative permeabilities (kr) are essential flow factors that affect fluid dispersion and output from petroleum resources. Traditionally, taking rock samples from the reservoir and performing suitable laboratory studies is required to get these crucial reservoir properties. Despite the fact that kr is a function of fluid saturation, it is now well established that pore shape and distribution, absolute permeability, wettability, interfacial tension (IFT), and saturation history all influence kr values. These rock/fluid characteristics vary greatly from one reservoir region to the next, and it would be impossible to make kr measurements in all of them. The unsteady-state approach was used to calculate the relat

Experiments were conducted to study the behavior of the solid particles (proppant) inside the hydraulic fracture during the formation stimulation, and study the effect of the proppant concentration on the hydraulic fracturing process, which lead to bridge and screen-out conditions inside the fractures across the fracture width that restricts fracturing fluid to flow into the hydraulic fracture. The research also studies the effect of the ratio between the fracture size and the average particles diameter “proppant", on fracture bridging. In this study two ratios were considered β= 2 and 3 ,where β=D_t / D_p where: D_t= hydraulic fracture size (width) and Dp=Average particles diameter.

This work pr