Buildings begin to deteriorate gradually over time due to several factors, including environmental influences, improper use of the building, and neglected repairs for damages during the building's life span. Effective maintenance practices can minimize operational costs, extend the life of building systems and components, improve energy efficiency, and maintain property value. This paper aims to review articles related to building maintenance to identify factors affecting maintenance practices. After conducting the review, the result was that there were 33 factors affecting building maintenance categorized into six groups: management-related factors, manpower-related factors, technical-related factors, financial-
... Show MoreThe population has been trying to use clean energy instead of combustion. The choice was to use liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for domestic use, especially for cooking due to its advantages as a light gas, a lower cost, and clean energy. Residential complexes are supplied with liquefied petroleum gas for each housing unit, transported by pipes from LPG tanks to the equipment. This research aims to simulate the design and performance design of the LPG system in the building that is applied to a residential complex in Baghdad taken as a study case with eight buildings. The building has 11 floors, and each floor has four apartments. The design in this study has been done in two parts, part one is the design of an LPG system for one building, an
... Show MoreThere is no doubt that optical fiber technology is one of the most important stages of the communications revolution at all and it is of utmost importance in our daily life. In this work, five fibers with core radii 2.5, 4.5 and 6.5–8.5 μm were designed. The properties of all guided modes have been calculated at a wavelength of 1550 nm by using RP Fiber Calculator. A single-mode fiber is obtained when the core radius approaches the wavelength. As the core radius is increased, the fiber becomes a multimode. The percentage power in the core increases with increasing core radius. The modes profiles were illustrated and compared with the modern references.
A compact microstrip six-port reflectometer (SPR) with extended bandwidth is proposed in this paper. The design is based on using 16-dB multi-section coupled line directional couplers and a multi-section 3-dB Wilkinson power divider operating from 1 to 6 GHz. The proposed SPR employs only two calibration standards: a matched load and an open load. As compared to other dielectric substrates, fabricating the proposed SPR involves using a low-cost (FR4) substrate. A novel algorithm is also proposed to estimate the complex reflection coefficient over the frequency ranges at which the standard performance of the circuit components is not fully satisfied. The new algorithm is based on the circles’ intersection points, which have been de
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