For more than a decade, externally bonded carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites successfully utilized in retrofitting reinforced concrete structural elements. The function of CFRP reinforcement in increasing the ductility of reinforced concrete (RC) beam is essential in such members. Flexural and shear behaviors, ductility, and confinement were the main studied properties that used the CFRP as a strengthening material. However, limited attention has been paid to investigate the energy absorption of torsion strengthening of concrete members, especially two-span concrete beams. Hence, the target of this work is to investigate the effectiveness of CFRP-strengthening technique with regard to energy absorption of two-span RC

A detailed methodology is presented in this paper for the calculation of nucleate boiling safety margin (NBSM) in nuclear research reactors using a temperature function with three different thermal-hydraulic hot-spot analyses: nominal, cumulative and statistical for normal operating condition and coolant flow variation. A computer simulation program is developed for applying the methodology to the IRT-5000 reactor based on experimental core data. According to cumulative analysis as the overconservative approach, the NBSM at normal operating condition of thermal power 5 MW and coolant velocity 1.672 m/s was 2.3% with reactor power limit 5.13 MW. However, during power or coolant flow trip condition, transient nucleate boiling would occur for

Background: Porcelain veneers are under a great deal of stress which may lead to clinical failure as fracture or dettachment. This study examined whether different finishing lines and lingual shoulder preparations in the incisal area of the maxillary central incisor affect the bond of the porcelain veneers. Materials and methods: A two- dimensional finite element model was made. Location and magnitude of maximum Von Mises stresses were calculated in porcelain veneer. Six types of preparations were drawn as:incisal overlap of 0.5mm, 1mm and 1.5mm depth and lingual shoulder, and incisal overlap of 0.5mm, 1mm and 1.5mm depth without shoulder preparation. Results: Stress formation is maximum in the incisal edge region. All the lingual shoulder

Background. Bone healing is a complex and dynamic process that represents a well-orchestrated series of biological events of cellular recruitment, proliferation, and differentiation. The use of medicinal plants in bone healing has attracted increasing interest because of their lower side effects. Punica granatum seed oil (PSO) contains high levels of phenolic compounds, promotes osteoblast function, and plays an important role in bone remodeling. A gelatin sponge (Spongostan) is a hemostatic agent that is extensively applied as scaffolds in engineering and as drug carriers in the medical field. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of PSO for bone healing enhancement. Twenty adult male New Zealand rabbits, weighing an avera

A simple, accurate and sensitive spectrophotometric method for the determination of Procaine penicillin (PP) is described. The method is based on charge-transfer reaction of PP with metol (N-methyl-p-hydroxy aniline) in the presence of ferric sulphate to form a purple-water soluble complex ,which is stable and has a maximum absorption at 510 nm .A graph of absorbance versus concentration shows that Beer’s low is obeyed over the concentration range of 3-80 µg /ml of PP (i.e.,3-80 ppm) with a molar absorbativity of 4.945 ×103 L.mol-1.cm-1 ,Sandell sensitivity of 0.1190 µg cm-2 ,a relative error of (-1.57)-2.79 % and a standard deviation of less than 0.59 depending on the concentration of PP.The optimum conditions for full co

In Computer-based applications, there is a need for simple, low-cost devices for user authentication. Biometric authentication methods namely keystroke dynamics are being increasingly used to strengthen the commonly knowledge based method (example a password) effectively and cheaply for many types of applications. Due to the semi-independent nature of the typing behavior it is difficult to masquerade, making it useful as a biometric. In this paper, C4.5 approach is used to classify user as authenticated user or impostor by combining unigraph features (namely Dwell time (DT) and flight time (FT)) and digraph features (namely Up-Up Time (UUT) and Down-Down Time (DDT)). The results show that DT enhances the performance of digraph features by i

A strong sign language recognition system can break down the barriers that separate hearing and speaking members of society from speechless members. A novel fast recognition system with low computational cost for digital American Sign Language (ASL) is introduced in this research. Different image processing techniques are used to optimize and extract the shape of the hand fingers in each sign. The feature extraction stage includes a determination of the optimal threshold based on statistical bases and then recognizing the gap area in the zero sign and calculating the heights of each finger in the other digits. The classification stage depends on the gap area in the zero signs and the number of opened fingers in the other signs as well as

Bioethanol produced from lignocellulose feedstock is a renewable substitute to declining fossil fuels. Pretreatment using ultrasound assisted alkaline was investigated to enhance the enzyme digestibility of waste paper. The pretreatment was conducted over a wide range of conditions including waste paper concentrations of 1-5%, reaction time of 10-30 min and temperatures of 30-70°C. The optimum conditions were 4 % substrate loading with 25 min treatment time at 60°C where maximum reducing sugar obtained was 1.89 g/L. Hydrolysis process was conducted with a crude cellulolytic enzymes produced by Cellulomonas uda (PTCC 1259).The maximum amount of sugar released and hydrolysis efficiency were 20.92 g/L and 78.4 %, respectively. Sugars