Highly plastic soils exhibit unfavorited properties upon saturation, which produce different defects in engineering structures. Attempts were made by researchers to proffer solutions to these defects by experimenting in practical ways. This included various materials that could possibly improve the soil engineering properties and reduce environmental hazards. This paper investigates the strength behavior of highly plastic clay stabilized with brick dust. The brick dust contents were 10%, 20%, and 30% by dry weight of soil. A series of linear shrinkage and unconfined compression tests were carried out to study the effect of brick dust on the quantitative amount of shrinkage experienced by highly plastic clay and the undrained shear strength. The effect of curing on soil shear strength was included in this paper. It was found that the critical behavior of highly plastic soil can be mitigated by mixing with 20% or 30% of brick dust. The undrained shear strength of highly plastic clay mixed with brick dust increased with the increase of brick dust content up to 20%. It was affected by the curing period. The best improvement was achieved when the optimum content of brick dust was 20%. Finally, seven days of curing improved the undrained shear strength with over 100%.
The ceramic composite with different proportions of clay and silica was prepared with a grain size of 70 μm and the weight percentage was selected for four groups (clayx silica100-x) were x q15, 25, 30 and 50. In this manuscript, for each pressured sample, a sintering procedure was carried out for 3 hours under static air and at various sintering temperatures (1000, 1100, 1200, 1400)°C. After sintering, the density, porosity, water absorption, compression strength and thermal conductivity were measured. The best results were obtained using a mixture of 15% clay and 85% silica which were sintering at 1400°C for three hours under air.
Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA)/poly(caprolactone) (PCL) and two types of organoclay (OMMT) including a fatty amide and ocatdecylamine montmorillonite (FA-MMT and ODA-MMT) were employed to produce polymer nanocomposites by melt blending. Materials were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), elemental analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Mechanical properties were also investigated for these nanocomposites. The nanocomposites showed increasing mechanical properties and thermal stability. XRD results indicated that the materials formed nanocomposites. SEM morphology showed that increasing content of OMMT reduc
... Show MoreCurrently regions in the world are much affected with dust storms, rising and suspended dust, as Iraq is suffering of this state as well within an eye-catching manner, whereas the storms leave negative traces on environment and public health and many of the other vital utilities. This research aims to diagnosis of the reasons that resulted in increment of dust storms in Iraq basing on some recorded data and to be analyzed in conformity with the prevalent theories and concepts at the atmospheric science and environmental physics. Generally the study, has illustrated that the climate changes and increase of temperatures averages because of green house effect, that followed by clear changes at thermal wind and jet stream, that caused to ins
... Show MoreBack ground: Glass ionomer materials lack resistance to wear and pressure and are susceptible to moisture during the initial stages of setting and dehydration. So this study was done to assess diametral tensile strength and microhardness of glass ionomer reinforced by different amounts of hydroxyapatite. Materials and methods: In this study a hydroxyapatite material was added to glass monomer cement at different ratios: 10%, 15%, 20%, 25% and 30% (by weight). The diametral tensile strength test described by the British standard specification for zinc polycarboxylate cement was used in this study and the microhardness test was performed using Vickers microhardness testing machine and the microhardness values were calculated and statistical c
... Show MoreThis paper includes the estimation of the scale parameter of weighted Rayleigh distribution using well-known methods of estimation (classical and Bayesian). The proposed estimators were compared using Monte Carlo simulation based on mean squared error (MSE) criteria. Then, all the results of simulation and comparisons were demonstrated in tables.
Twelve storm dust samples were collected from three cities in Iraq. The samples were collected in the same time during big storms which hit Iraq in summer, 2012 and 2013. The deposited dust on 4 by 4 nylon sheet on surfaces of selected buildings in cities of Baghdad, Fallujah and Al-Ramadi were collected. Each sample was put in sealed Marinilli beaker and kept for 4 weeks to reach the equilibrium state between radium and its short half-life daughters. Gamma spectrometry system based on HPGe was used for analysis of natural and artificial radionuclides in the dust. The activities of natural radionuclides were found to be ranged between 13-19 Bq/kg, 9-14 Bq/kg and 200-240 Bq/kg for Ra-226, Th-232 and K-40 respectively, while Cs-137 w
... Show MoreThis work was carried out to investigate the shrinkage properties of insulator ceramic body, and the effect of changing the ratio of concentration of electrolyte solution on these properties. The electrical insulator body was prepared by using Iraqi local materials. These are :- kaolin Duakhla, Arudhuma Sand glass, and potash feldspar with weight percentage (45%, 25%,and 30%) respectively. The processes of milling, classification, mixing, forming and firing, through the process of mixing electrolyte solution and mineralizer were added at different concentrations for electrolyte solution, (1%, 0.7%, 0.5%, 0.2%, and 0.1%). The electrolyte solution was prepared by mixing sodium carbonate and sodium silicate by (2:1) ratio
... Show MoreThis research studies the influence of water source on the compressive strength of high strength concrete. Four types of water source were adopted in both mixing and curing process these are river, tap, well and drainage water (all from Iraq-Diyala governorate). Chemical analysis was carried out for all types of the used water including (pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), Turbidity, chloride, total suspended solid (TSS), and sulfates). Depending on the chemical analysis results, it was found that for all adopted sources the chemical compositions was within the ASTM C 1602/C 1602M-04 limits and can be satisfactorily used in concrete mixtures. Mixture of high strength concrete for compressive strength of (60 MPa) was designed and checked using
... Show MoreThis paper is concerned with Double Stage Shrinkage Bayesian (DSSB) Estimator for lowering the mean squared error of classical estimator ˆ q for the scale parameter (q) of an exponential distribution in a region (R) around available prior knowledge (q0) about the actual value (q) as initial estimate as well as to reduce the cost of experimentations. In situation where the experimentations are time consuming or very costly, a Double Stage procedure can be used to reduce the expected sample size needed to obtain the estimator. This estimator is shown to have smaller mean squared error for certain choice of the shrinkage weight factor y( ) and for acceptance region R. Expression for
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