In Baghdad city, Iraq, the traffic volumes have rapidly grown during the last 15 years. Road networks need to reevaluate and decide if they are operating properly or not regarding the increase in the number of vehicles. Al-Jadriyah intersection (a four-leg signalized intersection) and Kamal Junblat Square (a multi-lane roundabout), which are two important intersections in Baghdad city with high traffic volumes, were selected to be reevaluated by the SIDRA package in this research. Traffic volume and vehicle movement data were abstracted from videotapes by the Smart Traffic Analyzer (STA) Software. The performance measures include delay and LOS. The analysis results by SIDRA Intersection 8.0.1 show that the performance of the roundab

In this paper, fire resistance and residual capacity tests were carried out on encased pultruded glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) I-beams with high-strength concrete beams. The specimens were loaded concurrently under 25% of the ultimate load and fire exposure (an increase in temperature of 700 °C) for 70 min. Subsequently, the fire-damaged specimens were allowed to cool and then were loaded statically until failure to explore the residual behaviors. The effects of using shear connectors and web stiffeners on the residual behavior were investigated. Finite Element (FE) analysis was developed to simulate the encased pultruded GFRP I-beams under the effect of fire loading. The thermal analyses were performed using the general-pu

Various theories have been proposed since in last century to predict the first sighting of a new crescent moon. None of them uses the concept of machine and deep learning to process, interpret and simulate patterns hidden in databases. Many of these theories use interpolation and extrapolation techniques to identify sighting regions through such data. In this study, a pattern recognizer artificial neural network was trained to distinguish between visibility regions. Essential parameters of crescent moon sighting were collected from moon sight datasets and used to build an intelligent system of pattern recognition to predict the crescent sight conditions. The proposed ANN learned the datasets with an accuracy of more than 72% in comp

Nanofluids, liquid suspensions of nanoparticles (NPs) dispersed in deionized (DI) water, brine, or surfactant micelles, have become a promising solution for many industrial applications including enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and carbon geostorage. At ambient conditions, nanoparticles can effectively alter the wettability of the strongly oil-wet rocks to water-wet. However, the reservoir conditions present the greatest challenge for the success of this application at the field scale. In this work, the performance of anionic surfactant-silica nanoparticle formulation on wettability alteration of oil-wet carbonate surface at reservoir conditions was investigated. A high-pressure temperature vessel was used to apply nano-modification of oil-wet

In many video and image processing applications, the frames are partitioned into blocks, which are extracted and processed sequentially. In this paper, we propose a fast algorithm for calculation of features of overlapping image blocks. We assume the features are projections of the block on separable 2D basis functions (usually orthogonal polynomials) where we benefit from the symmetry with respect to spatial variables. The main idea is based on a construction of auxiliary matrices that virtually extends the original image and makes it possible to avoid a time-consuming computation in loops. These matrices can be pre-calculated, stored and used repeatedly since they are independent of the image itself. We validated experimentally th

Flexible pavements are subjected to three main distress types: fatigue crack, thermal crack, and permanent deformation. Under severe climate conditions, thermal cracking particularly contributes largely to a considerable scale of premature deterioration of pavement infrastructure worldwide. This challenge is especially relevant for Europe, as weather conditions vary significantly throughout the year. Hydrated lime (HL) has been recognized as an effective additive to improve the mechanical properties of asphalt concrete for pavement applications. Previous research has found that a replacement of conventional limestone dust filler using hydrated lime at 2.5% of the total weight of aggregates generated an optimum improvement in the mec

Machine learning has a significant advantage for many difficulties in the oil and gas industry, especially when it comes to resolving complex challenges in reservoir characterization. Permeability is one of the most difficult petrophysical parameters to predict using conventional logging techniques. Clarifications of the work flow methodology are presented alongside comprehensive models in this study. The purpose of this study is to provide a more robust technique for predicting permeability; previous studies on the Bazirgan field have attempted to do so, but their estimates have been vague, and the methods they give are obsolete and do not make any concessions to the real or rigid in order to solve the permeability computation. To

Water 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

Nanofluids (i.e. nanoparticles dispersed in a fluid) have tremendous potential in a broad range of applications, including pharmacy, medicine, water treatment, soil decontamination, or oil recovery and CO2 geo-sequestration. In these applications nanofluid stability plays a key role, and typically robust stability is required. However, the fluids in these applications are saline, and no stability data is available for such salt-containing fluids. We thus measured and quantified nanofluid stability for a wide range of nanofluid formulations, as a function of salinity, nanoparticle content and various additives, and we investigated how this stability can be improved. Zeta sizer and dynamic light scattering (DLS) principles were used to invest

Heat pipes and two‐phase thermosyphon systems are passive heat transfer systems that employ a two‐phase cycle of a working fluid within a completely sealed system. Consequently, heat exchangers based on heat pipes have low thermal resistance and high effective thermal conductivity, which can reach up to the order of (105 W/(m K)). In energy recovery systems where the two streams should be unmixed, such as airconditioning systems of biological laboratories and operating rooms in hospitals, heat pipe heat exchangers (HPHEs) are recommended. In this study, an experimental and theoretical study was carried out on the thermal performance of an air‐to‐air HPHE filled with two refrigerants as working fluids, R22 and R407c. The heat pipe he

By optimizing the efficiency of a modular simulation model of the PV module structure by genetic algorithm, under several weather conditions, as a portion of recognizing the ideal plan of a Near Zero Energy Household (NZEH), an ideal life cycle cost can be performed. The optimum design from combinations of NZEH-variable designs, are construction positioning, window-to-wall proportion, and glazing categories, which will help maximize the energy created by photovoltaic panels. Comprehensive simulation technique and modeling are utilized in the solar module I-V and for P-V output power. Both of them are constructed on the famous five-parameter model.  In addition, the efficiency of the PV panel is established by the genetic algorithm

Ultimate oil recovery and displacement efficiency at the pore-scale are controlled by the rock wettability thus there is a growing interest in the wetting behaviour of reservoir rocks as production from fractured oil-wet or mixed-wet limestone formations have remained a key challenge. Conventional waterflooding methods are inefficient in such formation due to poor spontaneous imbibition of water into the oil-wet rock capillaries. However, altering the wettability to water-wet could yield recovery of significant amounts of additional oil thus this study investigates the influence of nanoparticles on wettability alteration. The efficiency of various formulated zirconium-oxide (ZrO2) based nanofluids at different nanoparticle concentrations (0