Peak ground acceleration (PGA) is one of the critical factors that affect the determination of earthquake intensity. PGA is generally utilized to describe ground motion in a particular zone and is able to efficiently predict the parameters of site ground motion for the design of engineering structures. Therefore, novel models are developed to forecast PGA in the case of the Iraqi database, which utilizes the particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach. A data set of 187 historical ground-motion recordings in Iraq’s tectonic regions was used to build the explicit proposed models. The proposed PGA models relate to different seismic parameters, including the magnitude of the earthquake (Mw), average shear-wave velocity (VS30), focal depth (FD), and nearest epicenter distance (REPi) to a seismic station. The derived PGA models are remarkably simple and straightforward and can be used reliably for pre-design purposes. The proposed PGA models (i.e., models I and II) obtained via the explicit formula produced using the PSO method are highly correlated to the actual PGA records owing to low coefficients of variation (CoV) of approximately 2.12% and 2.06%, and mean values (i.e., close to 1.0) of approximately 1.005 and 1.004. Lastly, high-frequency, low absolute relative error (ARE), which is below 5%, is recorded for the proposed models, thereby showing an acceptable error distribution.
A lack of adequate building maintenance is a significant obstacle faced by governmental hospitals. This paper evaluates factors that negatively impact building-maintenance practices in Iraq. A literature review was conducted to identify factors affecting maintenance. A list of 42 factors affecting hospital-buildings was collected from previous studies and tested using a structured questionnaire distributed to hospital-maintenance experts. During the data analysis, 76 valid questionnaires were used. Based on the respondents’ ratings, the relative-importance index (RII) was used to determine the level of importance of each factor. From the results, it was concluded that twelve factors affect maintenance practices in hospital buildin
... Show MoreWater pollution as a result of contamination with dye-contaminating effluents is a severe issue for water reservoirs, which instigated the study of biodegradation of Reactive Red 195 and Reactive Blue dyes by E. coli and Bacillus sp. The effects of occupation time, solution pH, initial dyes concentrations, biomass loading, and temperature were investigated via batch-system experiments by using the Design of Experiment (DOE) for 2 levels and 5 factors response surface methodology (RSM). The operational conditions used for these factors were optimized using quadratic techniques by reducing the number of experiments. The results revealed that the two types of bacteria had a powerful effect on biodegradable dyes. The regression analysis reveale
... Show MoreThis paper presents a comprehensive numerical analysis of the improvement in bearing capacity and settlement performance of hexagonal shallow footings with inclined skirts. Various numerical analyses were conducted using PLAXIS 3D to investigate the influence of skirt length-to-footing width (L/B) ratios and skirt inclination angles (θ) on hexagonal footings in loose sand. The models showed very good agreement with experimental data reported in previous studies, with an R² value of 0.996 and a maximum error of less than 4.31%. It was concluded that the inclusion of inclined skirts has a positive effect on bearing capacity, increasing it by up to approximately 2.97 times compared to non-inclined configurations, while significantly
... Show MoreSocietal security is regarded as a basic need for human society through which the stability, progress and prosperity of the nation is measured. It is the guarantor of the safety of individuals and groups from various internal and external dangers, based on the protection of the three pillars: the individual, the family, and society. For decades, Iraq has witnessed the phenomenon of political instability, represented by its entry into several wars, starting with the 1948 war, leading up to the American war on Iraq in 2003. Then, those wars were followed by an era in which corruption and terrorism spread, and this, in turn, led to the fragmentation of the national will and the division of Iraqi public opinion regarding many regional and inte
... Show MoreToday in the digital realm, where images constitute the massive resource of the social media base but unfortunately suffer from two issues of size and transmission, compression is the ideal solution. Pixel base techniques are one of the modern spatially optimized modeling techniques of deterministic and probabilistic bases that imply mean, index, and residual. This paper introduces adaptive pixel-based coding techniques for the probabilistic part of a lossy scheme by incorporating the MMSA of the C321 base along with the utilization of the deterministic part losslessly. The tested results achieved higher size reduction performance compared to the traditional pixel-based techniques and the standard JPEG by about 40% and 50%,
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