This paper presents thermal characteristics analysis of a modified Closed Wet Cooling Tower (CWCT) based on heat and mass transfer principles to improve the performance of this tower in Iraq. A prototype of CWCT optimized by added packing was designed, manufactured and tested for cooling capacity of 9 kW. Experiments are conducted to explore the effects of various operational and conformational parameters on the thermal performance. In the test section, spray water temperature and both dry bulb temperature and relative humidity of the air measured at intermediate points of the heat exchanger and packing. Heat exchangers consist of four rows and eight columns for an inline tubes arrangement and six rows and five columns f

Thin-walled members are increasingly used in structural applications, especially in light structures like in constructions and aircraft structures because of their high strength-to-weight ratio. Perforations are often made on these structures for reducing weight and to facilitate the services and maintenance works like in aircraft wing ribs. This type of structures suffers from buckling phenomena due to its dimensions, and this suffering increases with the presence of holes in it. This study investigated experimentally and numerically the buckling behavior of aluminum alloy 6061-O thin-walled lipped channel beam with specific holes subjected to compression load. A nonlinear finite elements analysis was used to obtain the

It has increasingly been recognised that the future developments in geospatial data handling will centre on geospatial data on the web: Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). The evaluation of VGI data quality, including positional and shape similarity, has become a recurrent subject in the scientific literature in the last ten years. The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project is the most popular one of the leading platforms of VGI datasets. It is an online geospatial database to produce and supply free editable geospatial datasets for a worldwide. The goal of this paper is to present a comprehensive overview of the quality assurance of OSM data. In addition, the credibility of open source geospatial data is discussed, highlight

In this study, nano TiO2 was prepared with titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) as a resource to titanium oxide. The catalyst was synthesized using phosphotungstic acid (PTA) and, stearyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (STAB) was used as the structure-directing material. Characterization of the product was done by the X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescent spectroscopy (XRF), nitrogen adsorption/desorption measurements, Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra, were used to characterize the calcined TiO2 nanoparticles by STAB and PWA. The TiO2 nanomaterials were prepared in three crystalline forms (amorphous, anatase, anatase-rutile). The results showed that the nanoparticles of anatase TiO2 have good cata

The permeable reactive barrier (PRB) is one of the promising innovative in situ groundwater remediation technologies, in removing of copper from a contaminated shallow aquifer. The 1:1- mixture of waste foundry sand (WFS) and Kerbala’s sand (KS) was used for PRB. The WFS was represented the reactivity material while KS used to increase the permeability of PRB only. However, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) analysis proved that the carboxylic and alkyl halides groups are responsible for the sorption of copper onto WFS. Batch tests have been performed to characterize the equilibrium sorption properties of the (WFS+KS) mix in copper- containing aqueous
solutions. The sorption data for Cu+2 ions, obtained by batch experiments, have be

Background: Differentiation between malignant and benign vertebral compression fracture is often problematic. This is precisely difficult in elderly who are predisposed to benign compression caused by osteoporosis .Establishing correct diagnosis is of great importance in determining the treatment andprognosis.A study was performed to determine which magnetic resonance imaging findings are useful in discrimination between metastatic and acute osteoporotic compression fractures of the spine. Recently MRI is being increasingly used for evaluation of these fractures.Objectives: The aim of this study is to establish the correct diagnosis of malignant and benign compression vertebral fracture by MRI to determine treatment and prognosis.Methods

This research is concerned to investigate the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) deep beams strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips. The experimental part of this research is carried out by testing seven RC deep beams having the same dimensions and steel reinforcement which have been divided into two groups according to the strengthening schemes. Group one was consisted of three deep beams strengthened with vertical U-wrapped CFRP strips. While, Group two was consisted of three deep beams strengthened with inclined CFRP strips oriented by 45^o with the longitudinal axis of the beam. The remaining beam is kept unstrengthening as a reference beam. For each group, the variable considered

Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) is a popular method for estimation the number of sources impinging on an array of sensors, which is a problem of great interest in several applications. The performance of AIC degrades under low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). This paper is concerned with the development and application of quadrature mirror filters (QMF) for improving the performance of AIC. A new system is proposed to estimate the number of sources by applying AIC to the outputs of filter bank consisting quadrature mirror filters (QMF). The proposed system can estimate the number of sources under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

This paper presents an improved technique on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. The procedure is applied on Single Machine with Infinite Bus (SMIB) system with power system stabilizer (PSS) at three different loading regimes. The simulations are made by using MATLAB software. The results show that by using Improved Ant Colony Optimization (IACO) the system will give better performance with less number of iterations as it compared with a previous modification on ACO. In addition, the probability of selecting the arc depends on the best ant performance and the evaporation rate.