In the present research, a crane frame has been investigated by using finite element method. The damage is simulated by reducing the stiffness of assumed elements with ratios (10% and 20 %) in mid- span of the vertical column in crane frame. The cracked beam with a one-edge and non-propagating crack has been used. Six cases of damage are modeled for crane frame and by introducing cracked elements at different locations with ratio of depth of crack to the height of the beam (a/h) 0.1, 0.20. A FEM program coded in Matlab 6.5 was used to model the numerical simulation of the damage scenarios. The results showed a decreasing in the five natural frequencies from undamaged beam which means

The present work is to investigate the feasibility of removal vanadium (V) and nickel (Ni) from Iraqi heavy gas oil using activated bentonite. Different operating parameters such as the degree of bentonite activation, activated bentonite loading, and operating time was investigated on the effect of heavy metal removal efficiency. Experimental results of adsorption test show that Langmuir isotherm predicts well the experimental data and the maximum bentonite uptake of vanadium was 30 mg/g. The bentonite activated with 50 wt% H₂SO₄ shows a (75%) removal for both Ni and V. Results indicated that within approximately 5 hrs, the vanadium removal efficiencies were 33, 45, and 60% at vanadium loadings of 1

Photoacoustic is a unique imaging method that combines the absorption contrast of light or radio frequency waves with ultrasound resolution. When the deposition of this energy is sufficiently short, a thermo-elastic expansion takes place whereby acoustic waves are generated. These waves can be recorded and stored to construct an image. This work presents experimental procedure of laser photoacoustic two dimensional imaging to detect tumor embedded within normal tissue. The experimental work is accomplished using phantoms that are sandwiched from fish heart or blood sac (simulating a tumor) 1-14mm mean diameter embedded within chicken breast to simulate a real tissue. Nd: YAG laser of 1.064μm and 532nm wavelengths, 10ns pulse duration, 4

This study investigates the results of electrocoagulation (EC) using aluminum (Al) electrodes as anode and stainless steel (grade 316) as a cathode for removing silica, calcium, and magnesium ions from simulated cooling tower blowdown waters. The simulated water contains (50 mg/l silica, 508 mg/l calcium, and 292 mg/l magnesium). The influence of different experimental parameters, such as current density (0.5, 1, and 2 mA/cm²), initial pH(5,7, and 10), the temperature of the simulated solution(25⁰C and 35 ⁰C), and electrolysis time was studied. The highest removal efficiency of 80.183%, 99.21%, and 98.06% for calcium, silica, and magnesium ions, respectively, were obtained at a current de

Objective: To generate a model that conceptualizes the phenomenon of health promotion and its related factors.
Methodology: A grounded theory methodology is used as qualitative method to explore the health promotion as
phenomenon of interest and its other related factors from the perspectives of specialists in this field. The study is
carried out from January 2002 through September 2004. A sample of (20) specialists in health sciences are
selected and interviewed as experts in the area of health promotion. The investigators conducted intensive and
structured interviews with the specialists to collect the data. These interviews were transcribed verbatim,
analyzed and interpreted.
Results: Findings of the study indicat

The goal of this paper is to design a robust controller for controlling a pendulum
system. The control of nonlinear systems is a common problem that is facing the researchers in control systems design. The Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) is the best solution for controlling a nonlinear system. The classical SMC consists from two phases. The first phase is the reaching phase and the second is the sliding phase. The SMC suffers from the chattering phenomenon which is considered as a severe problem and undesirable property. It is a zigzag motion along the switching surface. In this paper, the chattering is reduced by using a saturation function instead of sign function. In spite of SMC is a good method for controlling a nonlinear system b

Computer systems and networks are increasingly used for many types of applications; as a result the security threats to computers and networks have also increased significantly. Traditionally, password user authentication is widely used to authenticate legitimate user, but this method has many loopholes such as password sharing, brute force attack, dictionary attack and more. The aim of this paper is to improve the password authentication method using Probabilistic Neural Networks (PNNs) with three types of distance include Euclidean Distance, Manhattan Distance and Euclidean Squared Distance and four features of keystroke dynamics including Dwell Time (DT), Flight Time (FT), mixture of (DT) and (FT), and finally Up-Up Time (UUT). The resul

In this paper, first and second order sliding mode controllers are designed for a single link robotic arm actuated by two Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAMs). A new mathematical model for the arm has been developed based on the model of large scale pneumatic muscle actuator model. Uncertainty in parameters has been presented and tested for the two controllers. The simulation results of the second-order sliding mode controller proves to have a low tracking error and chattering effect as compared to the first order one. The verification has been done by using MATLAB and Simulink software.