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.

Localization is an essential demand in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It relies on several types of measurements. This paper focuses on positioning in 3-D space using time-of-arrival- (TOA-) based distance measurements between the target node and a number of anchor nodes. Central localization is assumed and either RF, acoustic or UWB signals are used for distance measurements. This problem is treated by using iterative gradient descent (GD), and an iterative GD-based algorithm for localization of moving sensors in a WSN has been proposed. To localize a node in 3-D space, at least four anchors are needed. In this work, however, five anchors are used to get better accuracy. In GD localization of a moving sensor, the algo

Soil stabilization with stone powder is a good solution for the construction of subgrade for road way and railway lines, especially under the platforms and mostly in transition zones between embankments and rigid structures, where the mechanical properties of supporting soils are very influential. Stone powder often has a unique composition which justifies the need for research to study the feasibility of using this stone powder type for ground improvement applications. This paper presents results from a comprehensive laboratory study carried out to investigate the feasibility of using stone powder for improvement of engineering properties of clays.

The stone powder contains bassanite (CaSO₄. ½ H

In the present research a new test rig has been proposed to be suitable for different cyclic loads such as cyclic bending, cyclic torsion, proportional and non proportional loads. In this work the efforts were concentrated on the cyclic bending loads concerning cracked pipes with or without internal pulsing pressure to study crack propagation in small bore pipes (up to 1'') for transverse or inclined cracks. The rig simulates the real service conditions under different stresses by means the least dangerous case will be suggested, so the experiments were considered for copper pipe, and the results have been tabulated and drawn to demonstrate the crack growth behavior as well as to justify the outcomes practically, consequently the durabil

Ball and Plate (B&P) system is a benchmark system in the control engineering field that has been used to verify many control methods. In this paper the design of a sliding mode . controller has been investigated and verified in real-time via implementation on a real ball and plate system hardware. The mathematical model has been derived and the necessary parameters have been measured. The sliding mode controller has been designed based on the obtained mathematical model. The resulting controller has been implemented using the Arduino Mega 2560 and a ball and plate system built completely from scratch. The Arduino has been programmed by the Arduino support target for Simulink. Three test signals has been used for verification purposes

Variation orders are an on-going phenomenon in construction and industry projects worldwide, particularly in the province of Sulaimani, where the project's damage from cost and schedule overrun because of variation orders. However, the effect on project costs and time overrun of variation order has yet to be identified. This study evaluates the impact of variation orders on the cost and time off in the Sulaimani governorate. Two hundred twenty-eight projects from various construction sectors built between 2007-2012 were adopted to calculate the contract cost and schedule overruns due to variation orders. Data analysis was applied in the study were descriptive statistics. One-way ANOVA was also applied to determine w

Finite element modeling of transient temperature distribution is used to understand physical phenomena occurring during the dwell (penetration) phase and moving of welding tool in friction stir welding (FSW) of 5mm plate made of 7020-T53 aluminum alloy at 1400rpm and 40mm/min.
Thermocouples are used in locations near to the pin and under shoulder surface to study the welding tool penetration in the workpiece in advance and retreate sides along welding line in three positions (penetrate (start welding) , mid, pullout (end welding)).
Numerical results of ANSYS 12.0 package are compared to experimental data including axial load measurements at different tool rotational speeds (710rpm.900rpm.1120rpm and 1400rpm) Based on the experiment

To finalize any construction investment project, it would be necessary to identify the most significant problems and obstacles that lead to project reluctance and stalling. Unexpected events and conflicts may have disrupted these strategies and impacted project development. Due to the high initial investment costs of construction projects, crises can have an immediate impact, resulting in significant financial losses. The 2014 financial crisis was one of the most prominent crises that Iraq faced, which prompted the researcher to identify and evaluate those obstacles through this research and questionnaires using Pareto scientific theory to exclude factors that do not contribute to project lag. It was discovered that 28 o

Heat transfer rates of a single horizontal finned tube immersed in water –filled enclosure tilted at
30 degrees are measured .The results serve as a baseline case for a solar water heating system with a heat exchanger immersed in integral collector storage. Tests were made with both adiabatic and uniform heat flux boundary conditions. Natural convection flow in enclosure is interpreted from measured water temperature distributions. Formation of an appropriate temperature difference that drives natural convection is determined .Correlations for the overall heat transfer coefficient in terms of the Nusselt and Rayleigh numbers are reduced to the form Nu=0.716 Ra ^0.247 Based on the diameter of the immersed tube .Comparis

In this paper a detailed study of the theory of free axisymmetric vibration of thin isotropic prolate spheroidal shells is presented. The analysis is performed according to Rayleigh – Ritz method. This method as well as an approximate modeling technique were attempted to estimate the natural frequencies for the shell. This technique is based on considering the prolate spheroidal as a continuous system constructed from two spherical shell elements matched at the continuous boundaries. Through out the obtained results it is found that this method predicted fairly well the natural frequencies of a prolate spheroidal shell for all values of eccentricities. 

This paper introduces a new model-free identification methodology to detect and identify speakers and recognize them. The basic module of the methodology is a novel multi-dimensional wavelet neural network. The WNN approach include: a universal approximator; the time frequency localization: property of wavelets leads to reduced networks at a given level of performance; The construct used as the feature mode classifier. Wavelet transform has been successfully applied to the processing of non- stationary speech signal and the feature vector that obtained becomes the input to the wavelet neural network which is trained off-line to map features to used for the classification procedure. An example is employed to illustrate the robustness and

Experiments were carried out to study the local and average heat transfer by mixed convection to a simultaneously developing air flow in a horizontal inclined, and vertical concentric cylindrical annulus. The experimental setup consists of an annulus has a radius ratio of 0.555 and inner cylinder with a heated length 1.2m subjected to the constant heat flux while the outer cylinder is subjected to the ambient temperature. The investigation covers Reynolds number range from 154 te 845, heat flux varied from 96 W/m² to 845 W/m², and annulus angles of inclinations a (horizontal), 40°, 70°, and 90° (vertical). Results demonstrate the temperature variation along th inner cylinder surface and the local Nusselt number Nu, variation with th

The conjugate heat transfer problem through a glass window with non-uniform thickness is presented. The problem was studied using the fully implicit finite difference numerical technique. The tapered glass window is subjected to a convective boundary condition on the outer uniform side of the window and the heat transfer coefficient depends on the direction of the flow. While the inside boundary condition is at constant comfortable temperature. The upper and lower edge of the tapered section is also at constant temperature but equal to the mean temperature between the indoor and the outdoor temperature. In the first part a rectangular cross section an area of 4mm width and I'm height was taken under study. While, in the second part of th

This Investigation was conducted activated carbon study the removal of dyes from waste water in the textile cotton industry Three different industrial dyes were used, these are direct blue, sulphure black and vat yellow with the following maximum concentrations in solution The method used is adsorption on of 6,10 and 16 ppm respectively The results showed that adsorption onto activated carbon with surface area of 626 m³/g to be very effective for the removal of the different dyes considered, where the percent removal was 96.75% 987 7% and 98.4% for direct blue, sulphure black and vat and vat yellow respectively

The lightweight concrete is manufactured from aggregates (expanded perlite) with a density of 145 kg/m³ and an absorption of 1.65%. This study has two aspects: a theoretical aspect that includes previous research on this concrete and a practical aspect that provides for conducting two groups of mixtures and preparing them according to ACI 211.2-98 design method. The first group includes cement, perlite, and water, and the second group consists of the addition of superplasticizer and silica fume, Each group included five series with three variables for each series. In the first series, the cement content was changed with a content of (275,300,350) kg/m³ with a volumetric mixing ratio

The seismic design of pile foundations mainly relies on analyzing the seismic response of layered, liquefiable locations. Two design scenarios are taken into consideration from the case histories; the first is how pile foundations react to the stresses and lateral displacements brought on by the lateral dispersion of liquefied soil. The second is how to piles reaction to seismic activity that occurs with the development of high pore water pressures. The PLAXIS 3D software is utilized in this research with a non-linear soil constitutive model (hypoplastic model) for both dry and saturated loose sandy soils under the impact of two earthquakes and the motion of different features to give a complete understanding of the dyna

Natural convection in a porous, rectangular hollow full of saturated air was investigated numerically in the current study. The bottom side was warmed with a continuous heat flux, the right side's temperature was kept at (Tc), the left wall was opened to the surroundings, and the top side was insulated. The pertinent filled-out research parameters in the current experiment were four heat flux values (1500, 3000, 4500, and 6000 W/m²) and three Darcy’s numbers (Da₁=4.025×10^-10, Da₂=4.025×10^-8, Da₃=4.025×10^-6). COMSOL Multiphysics 5.5a, using finite elements and a relying Brinkman-Darcy extended model, was employed to resolve government

This study's primary objective is to examine the structural behavior of using 2C-Cold produced. Section Castellated beams when subjected to monotonic load till failure. The experimental program testing. Seven Fabricated samples of castellated steel beams and one sample, which is a non-castellated steel beam (reference beam), were tested as supported beams under concentrated loads at two points over a clear span length (1730 mm). All castellated steel beams were similar in all properties and dimensions except the breadth of the upper and lower flanges. The current study considers the implications of modifying the width of the top and bottom flanges on how these beams behave. The findings showed that the ratio of the teste

Grayscale images are extensively used due to their simplicity and cheapness in storage and transmission compared to color one of RGB base. It can also be considered a solution for color-blind people to ensure a better view of things and reading. However, unfortunately, it is still quite overburdened with redundancy(s) in which the data compression exploits them efficiently depending on the type and way of redundancy removal. This work introduces a hybrid compression system to compress grayscale images using the adaptive pixel-based technique (PBT) of optimized modeling base, with incorporated Minimize Matrix Size Algorithm (MMSA) of three digits values (C321) to encode the residual compactly along the need to overhead in

This study focuses on the simulation of the bed change and total sediment concentration in the Al-Musayyab Canal, which is a vital irrigation system located in the central region of Iraq, using HEC-RAS V 6.3 software. The 49.5 km canal, with 13 branches, faces challenges from sediment influx originating from the Euphrates River. The primary objective is to analyze sedimentation, erosion patterns, and sediment discharge variations to support effective canal management. Field sampling collected suspended and bed load samples for laboratory tests, providing input data for the sediment transport model. Simulation results show steady flow water surface elevations ranging from 26.32 to 33.16 m.a.s.l, with velocities from 0.24

The aim of reducing drag is to increase the flow efficiency by using the same pipes and pumps. As a result the amount of crude oil transported will increase without using new pipes and pumps.
In the present work, the effectiveness of two surfactants (Sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) and Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)) are studied by using a closed loop system. This system consists of three pipes made from commercial steel, each one with different diameter (0.75, 1 and 1.5 inch). The length of each individual test section of the pipe is two meters. The experimental work is achieved under three different temperatures (30º, 40º and 50°C). The concentrations of both surfactants used are ranging between 50 to 300 weight ppm. Laborat

Fluorophosphate neodymium laser glass has been prepared by discontinuous melting technique.
Special melting and casting conditions were followed to prevent devitrification of glass samples.
Furnace melting followed by slow cooling resulted formation of non vitreous glass. Problems of
high viscosity melt and incomplete solubility and immiscibility of glass components were
encountered by adjusting composition of glass components. X-ray diffraction analysis of the
prepared glass samples proved the formation of amorphous phase. The prepared Nd – fluoride glass
has low refractive index which is an important parameter for high power laser application. Optical
properties of Nd – fluoride glass samples were investigated.

Based on the biological human models in defending human body against viruses, a new approach in designing the anti-virus system is introduced. This approach is called SDS( Self- Defence System). The principle of the SDS is that each executable program is responsible of defending itself against viral-attacks. In this system, each executable program is injected with basic anti-virus component which is called Self-Defence Routine. This routine, together with dedicated anti-virus loading program are used to construct the SDS which protects the computer system from virus invasion

Piezoelectric transducers have become increasingly popular in vibration control applications. They are used as sensors and as actuators in structural vibration control systems. They provide excellent actuation and sensing capabilities. In this paper, the term smart beam refers to a beam with a finite number of collocated piezoelectric actuator / sensor pairs. The proposed thin smart beam governing equation was derived by the same procedure that the Bernoulli-Euler equation derived but with some additional mathematical terms to be valid for describing the smart beam. The engineering control techniques were used to obtain the solution of the proposed differential equation for the simply supported beam where with some auxiliary equations an

In this work, numerical method approach has been used to simulate the solidification parameters
of an eutectic aluminum-silicon alloy in chilled metallic mould with copper. The approach is based on
the solution of heat flow equations of the casting and mould. In addition, the latent heat is treated as a
boundary condition between the liquid and solid phase. The results showed that different behaviors of
solidification parameters are obtained along the casting. Furthermore, the simulation approach of
solidification parameters in conjunction with the microstructure indicated that it is possible, to a large
degree, giving a knowledge about the microstructural features for any alloy system.

Consuming of by-product or waste materials in highway engineering is significant in the construction of new roads and/or in renovations of the existing ones. Pulverised Fuel ash (PFA), which is a by-product material of burning coal in power stations, is one of these materials that might be incorporated instead of mineral filler in hot asphalt mixtures.

Two types of surface course mixtures have been prepared one with conventional mineral filler i.e. ordinary Portland cement (OPC) while the second was with PFA. Several testings have been conducted to indicate the mechanical properties which were Marshall Stability and Indirect Tensile Strength tests. On the other hand, moisture damage and ageing have been evaluated

      An experimental and computational study is conducted to analyze the thermal performance of heat sinks and to pick up more profound information in this imperative field in the electronic cooling. One important approach to improve the heat transfer on the air-side of the heat exchanger is to adjust the fin geometry. Experiments are conducted to explore the impact of the changing of diverse operational and geometrical parameters on the heat sink thermal
performance. The working fluid used is air. Operational parameters includes: air Reynolds number (from 23597 to 3848.9) and heat flux (from 3954 to 38357 W/m
2 ). Conformational parameters includes: change the direction of air flow and the area of conduct

An experimental study was performed to estimate the forced convection heat transfer performance and the pressure drop of a single layer graphene (GNPs) based DI-water nanofluid in a circular tube under a laminar flow and a uniform heat flux boundary conditions. The viscosity and thermal conductivity of nanofluid at weight concentrations of (0.1 to 1 wt%) were measured. The effects of the velocity of flow, heat flux and nanoparticle weight concentrations on the  enhancement of the heat transfer are examined. The Nusselt number of the GNPs nanofluid was enhanced as the heat flux and the velocity of flow rate  increased, and the maximum Nusselt number  ratio (Nu nanofluid/ Nu base fluid)   and thermal performance factor

In recent years and decades, there is a great need for developing new alternative energy sources or renewable sustainable energy. On the other hand, new technology approaches are growing . towards benefits from the valuable nutrients in wastewater which are unrecoverable by traditional wastewater treatment processes.  In the current study, a novel integrated system of microbial fuel cell and anoxic bioreactor (MFC-ANB) was designed and constructed to investigate its potential for slaughterhouses wastewater treatment, nitrogen recovery, and power generation. The system consisted of a double-chamber tubular type MFC with biocathode inoculated with freshly collected activated sludge. The MFC-ANB system was continuously fed with real-fi

A load-shedding controller suitable for small to medium size loads is designed and implemented based on preprogrammed priorities and power consumption for individual loads. The main controller decides if a particular load can be switched ON or not according to the amount of available power generation, load consumption and loads priorities. When themaximum allowed power consumption is reached and the user want to deliver power to additional load, the controller will decide if this particular load should be denied receiving power if its priority is low. Otherwise, it can be granted to receive power if its priority is high and in this case lower priority loads are automatically switched OFF in order not to overload the power generation. The