A low speed open circuit wind tunnel has been designed, manufactured and constructed at the Mechanical Engineering Department at Baghdad University - College of Engineering. The work is one of the pioneer projects adapted by the R & D Office at the Iraqi MOHESR. The present paper describes the first part of the work; that is the design calculations, simulation and construction. It will be followed by a second part that describes testing and calibration of the tunnel. The proposed wind tunnel has a test section with cross sectional area of (0.7 x 0.7 m2) and length of (1.5 m). The maximum speed is about (70 m/s) with empty test section. The contraction ratio is (8.16). Three screens are used to minimize flow disturbances in the test section.

It is suitable to use precast steel-concrete composite beams to quickly assemble a bridge or a building, particularly in isolated regions where cast-in-situ concrete is not a practical option. If steel-concrete composite beams are designed to allow demountability, they can also be extremely useful in the aftermath of natural disasters, such as earthquakes or flooding, to replace damaged infrastructure. Furthermore, rapid replacement of slabs is extremely beneficial in case of severe deterioration due to long-term stressors such as fatigue or corrosion. The only way to rapidly assemble and disassemble a steel-concrete composite structure is to use demountable shear connectors to connect/disconnect the steel beams to/from the concrete slab. I

Ball and Plate (B&P) system is a benchmark system in the control engineering field that has been used to verify many control methods. In this paper the design of a sliding mode . controller has been investigated and verified in real-time via implementation on a real ball and plate system hardware. The mathematical model has been derived and the necessary parameters have been measured. The sliding mode controller has been designed based on the obtained mathematical model. The resulting controller has been implemented using the Arduino Mega 2560 and a ball and plate system built completely from scratch. The Arduino has been programmed by the Arduino support target for Simulink. Three test signals has been used for verification purposes

This paper presents a cognition path planning with control algorithm design for a nonholonomic wheeled mobile robot based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The aim of this work is to propose the circular roadmap (CRM) method to plan and generate optimal path with free navigation as well as to propose a nonlinear MIMO-PID-MENN controller in order to track the wheeled mobile robot on the reference path. The PSO is used to find an online tune the control parameters of the proposed controller to get the best torques actions for the wheeled mobile robot. The numerical simulation results based on the Matlab package show that the proposed structure has a precise and highly accurate distance of the generated refere

The conception and experimental assessment of a removable friction-based shear connector (FBSC) for precast steel-concrete composite bridges is presented. The FBSC uses pre-tensioned high-strength steel bolts that pass through countersunk holes drilled on the top flange of the steel beam. Pre-tensioning of the bolts provides the FBSC with significant frictional resistance that essentially prevents relative slip displacement of the concrete slab with respect to the steel beam under service loading. The countersunk holes are grouted to prevent sudden slip of the FBSC when friction resistance is exceeded. Moreover, the FBSC promotes accelerated bridge construction by fully exploiting prefabrication, does not raise issues relevant to precast co

The effect of using grinded rocks of (quartzite and porcelanite) as powder of (10 and 20) % replacement by weight of cement for self-compacting concrete slabs was investigated in this study. Five slabs with 15 concrete cubes were tested experimentally at 28 days to study the compressive strength, ultimate load, ultimate deflection, ductility, crack load and steel strain. The test results show that, the compressive strength improvement when replacement of local rock powder reached to (7.3, 4.22) % for (10 and 20) % quartzite powder and (11.3, 16.1) % for (10 and 20) % porcelanite powder, respectively compared to the reference specimen. The ultimate load percentage increase for slabs with (10 and 20) % rep

The sorption of Cu²⁺ ions from synthetic wastewater using crushed concrete demolition waste (CCDW) which collected from a demolition site was investigated in a batch sorption system. Factors influencing on sorption process such as shaking time (0-300min), the initial concentration of contaminant (100-750mg/L), shaking speed (0-250 rpm), and adsorbent dosage (0.05-3 g/ml) have been studied. Batch experiments confirmed that the best values of these parameters were (180 min, 100 mg/l, 250 rpm, 0.7 g CCDW/100 ml) respectively where the achieved removal efficiency is equal to 100%. Sorption data were described using four isotherm models (Langmuir, Freundlich, Redlich-Peterson, and Radke-Prausnitz). Results proved that the pure ads

Concrete is widely used in construction materials since early 1800's. It has been known that concrete is weak in tension, so it requires some addition materials to have ductile behavior and enhance its tensile strength and strain capacity to improve their uses. In this study reactive powder concrete (RPC) was used with steel fiber by using different types of cement; (Ordinary Portland cement (OPC) and/or Portland- Limestone cement (PLC)) with three types of mixtures (OPC at the first mix, 50 % OPC and 50 % PLC at the second mix and PLC at the third mix). The behavior of RPC with steel fibers on compressive strength and tensile strength of concrete with different ages of curing (7, 14, 28 and 60) days and shrinkage have been studied. The clo