Lignin has emerged as a promising asphalt binder modifier due to its sustainable and renewable nature, with the potential to improve flexible pavement performance. This study investigates the use of Soda Lignin Powder (SLP), derived from Pinus wood sawdust via alkaline treatment, as an asphalt modifier to enhance mixture durability. SLP was characterized using Fourier Transformation Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), and Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (SEM/EDX), revealing significant changes in its chemical structure post-extraction. These analyses showed the presence of phenolic units, including hydroxyphenyl propane, syringyl, and guaiacyl units. The morphology of SLP was identified as irregular and spherical particles consisting of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. Experimental evaluations involved three SLP dosages (2%, 4%, and 6% by weight of asphalt binder), with tests for penetration, softening point, ductility and rotational viscosity. Additionally, the asphalt mixtures were tested for their performance in terms of moisture susceptibility, resilient modulus, permanent deformation, and fatigue resistance. Results indicated that SLP effectively reduces the temperature susceptibility of asphalt by increasing its stiffness and rotational viscosity. Furthermore, mixtures with 6% SLP showed enhanced moisture resistance, with a Tensile Strength Ratio (TSR) of 86.98%, a 74.1% reduction in accumulated permanent deformation at 10,000 cycles, and a 38.1% increase in the Cracking Tolerance Index (CT index) compared to the control mix (0% SLP content). These findings confirm that SLP has the potential to be an effective additive in the design of asphalt mixture. Moreover, it allows producing endurable mixtures with higher resistance to distress.
Gypseous soils are common in several regions in the world including Iraq, where more than 28.6% of its surface is covered with this type of soil. This soil, with high gypsum content, causes different problems for construction and strategic projects. As a result of water flow through the soil mass, the permeability and chemical arrangement of these soils varies with time due to the solubility and leaching of gypsum. In this study, the soil of 36% gypsum content, was taken from one location about 100 km southwest of Baghdad, where the samples were taken from depths (0.5 - 1) m below the natural ground and mixed with (3%, 6%, 9%) of Copolymer and Novolac polymer to improve the engineering properties that include: collapsibility, perm
... Show MoreInsufficient and poor sleep quality significantly impacts the health and quality of life of persons with end-stage renal failure (ESRF) on hemodialysis. This study explored the effectiveness of teaching patients on hemodialysis, Benson’s relaxation technique. Seventy-one persons on hemodialysis in Iraq were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control group. The experimental group received training and encouragement to use the Benson relaxation technique. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) score was collected for all the patients before and after the intervention. After 8 weeks a repeated measurement of the post-test on sleep quality was done for both groups. The experimental group showed a statistically sign
... Show MoreThis paper proposed a theoretical treatment to study underwater wireless optical communications (UWOC) system with different modulation schemes by multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) technology in coastal water. MIMO technology provides high-speed data rates with longer distance link. This technique employed to assess the system by BER, Q. factor and data rate under coastal water types. The reliability of the system is examined by the techniques of 1Tx/1Rx, 2Tx/2Rx, 3Tx/3Rx and 4Tx/4Rx. The results shows the proposed technique by MIMO can get the better performance compared with the other techniques in terms of BER. Theoretical results were obtained to compare between PIN and APD
Arabic text classification is a challenging task because of the complex morphology of the language, the existence of different writing forms and a multitude of dialects, which can result in sparser common text representations. While transformer models such as AraBERT have obtained superior results on many Arabic NLP tasks, their high computational requirements make them difficult to deploy in environments with limited hardware resources. In some cases this can also make the model less practical for researchers working with basic computer systems. This study focuses on a more practical issue: how much accuracy a simple classifier may lose when the amount of required computation is reduced. We use a combined TF-IDF representation based on bo
... Show MoreIn this study, polymeric composites were prepared from unsaturated polyester as a base material with glass powder (fluorescent) in different weight ratios (4, 6, 8, 10,and 11%) as a support material and after comparison before and after reinforcement of the prepared composites, an increase was found. In the values of mechanical properties (hardness, compressive strength), the shock resistance values decreased, but an increase in temperature leads to an increase in the values of shock resistance, as well as the values of compressive strength And it reduces the hardness value.
Asphalt Hot Mix (HMA) is mainly applied in highway construction in Iraq because of its economic advantage and easy maintenance. Various factors impact the performance of HMA in the field. It is one of the significant impacts on aggregate gradation. The Universal Specification for Roads and Bridges in Iraq (SCRB) limits the different types of asphalt layers and allows for designed tolerance aggregate gradation. It is quite hard for contractors in the present asphalt industries to achieve the required job mix because of sieves' control problems. This study focuses on the effects on the required specification performance of aggregate deviations by using original and modified asphalt binder with AC(40-50) and
... Show MoreThis study explores the role of nanomaterials in the performance of asphalt binders and mixtures. Two commonly available nanomaterials, i.e., nanosilica (NS) and nanoalumina (NA), were used at contents of 0%, 2%, 4%, 6%, and 8% by weight of asphalt binder. A set of experiments was carried out at the binder level to investigate properties such as penetration, softening point, aging-related mass loss, nanomaterial dispersion (storage stability), and workability (rotational viscosity). In addition, the suitability of NS and NS was also assessed through the testing of nanomodified asphalt mixtures, which focused on Marshall properties, the resilient modulus, moisture susceptibility, permanent deformation, and fatigue resistance. The findings in
... Show MoreIncreasing material prices coupled with the emission of hazardous gases through the production and construction of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) has driven a strong movement toward the adoption of sustainable construction technology. Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA) is considered relatively a new technology, which enables the production and compaction of asphalt concrete mixtures at temperatures 15-40 °C lower than that of traditional hot mix asphalt. The Resilient modulus (Mr) which can be defined as the ratio of axial pulsating stress to the corresponding recoverable strain, is used to evaluate the relative quality of materials as well as to generate input for pavement design or pavement evaluation and analysis. Based on the aforementioned preface, it is
... Show MoreThe field of autonomous robotic systems has advanced tremendously in the last few years, allowing them to perform complicated tasks in various contexts. One of the most important and useful applications of guide robots is the support of the blind. The successful implementation of this study requires a more accurate and powerful self-localization system for guide robots in indoor environments. This paper proposes a self-localization system for guide robots. To successfully implement this study, images were collected from the perspective of a robot inside a room, and a deep learning system such as a convolutional neural network (CNN) was used. An image-based self-localization guide robot image-classification system delivers a more accura
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