Smear zone is usually formed around the prefabricated vertical drains (PVD’s) due to mandrel driving. The geotechnical properties of the soil in this zone exhibit significant changes that affect the performance of the PVD’s. The most relevant property in this respect is the coefficient of permeability. So far, no serious attention is paid to investigate the effects of shearing under large shear strains on the geotechnical properties of the soft soil in Fao region. In this study, an extensive laboratory testing program was conducted to assess the characteristics of the smear zone with an emphasis on the permeability coefficient of Fao soft soil. The results show that the permeability of the smear zone is about 70% of

To accommodate utilities in buildings, different sizes of openings are provided in the web of reinforced concrete deep beams, which cause reductions in the beam strength and stiffness. This paper aims to investigate experimentally and numerically the effectiveness of using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips, as a strengthening technique, to externally strengthen reinforced concrete continuous deep beams (RCCDBs) with large openings. The experimental work included testing three RCCDBs under five-point bending. A reference specimen was prepared without openings to explore the reductions in strength and stiffness after providing large openings. Openings were created symmetrically at the center of spans of the other specimens

Static Synchronous Series Compensator (SSSC) is a well known device for effectively regulating the active power flow in a power system. In this paper, the SSSC linearized power flow equations are incorporated into Newton-Raphson algorithm in a MATLAB written program to investigate the control of active poweer flow and the transient stability of a five bus and a thirty bus IEEE test systems, during abnormal conduction (three phase fault near buses). A comparison of the results obtained for the base case without SSSC and with it to investigate the effectiveness of the device on both of the active power flow and the transient stability.

Background: MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is a global health problem. Many people are looking for new ways to combat MRSA, for example by using bacteriophages (phages). It has been extremely challenging to isolate a sufficient quantity of lytic anti-MRSA phages. Therefore, new techniques for separating, refining, and reworking anti-MRSA phages were sought in this study.

Methods: Of 437 S. aureus isolates, nine clinical MRSA isolates were obtained from three hospitals in Baghdad, Iraq and two ATCC MRSA strains were used to separate wild anti-MRS

Thermal management has become a major issue in the latest high performance computing machines because high CPU temperatures result in inefficient performance and decreased hardware life span. In this work, the cooling performance of a finned metal foam heat sink (FMFHS) was examined. The pore density values of tested copper metal foam (CMF) samples with different values of PPI 5, 10 and 20, with a constant porosity of 90%. For reference, these samples were measured by a conventional Aluminum plate-fin heat sink (CHS). The work was performed under experimental conditions in which air directed over the heat sink surface at air velocities (2.5, 3.0 and 3.5 m/s). The environmental temperature was fixed at 27 °C. Findings

Some of the main challenges in developing an effective network-based intrusion detection system (IDS) include analyzing large network traffic volumes and realizing the decision boundaries between normal and abnormal behaviors. Deploying feature selection together with efficient classifiers in the detection system can overcome these problems.  Feature selection finds the most relevant features, thus reduces the dimensionality and complexity to analyze the network traffic.  Moreover, using the most relevant features to build the predictive model, reduces the complexity of the developed model, thus reducing the building classifier model time and consequently improves the detection performance.  In this study, two different sets of select

The fractional order partial differential equations (FPDEs) are generalizations of classical partial differential equations (PDEs). In this paper we examine the stability of the explicit and implicit finite difference methods to solve the initial-boundary value problem of the hyperbolic for one-sided and two sided fractional order partial differential equations (FPDEs). The stability (and convergence) result of this problem is discussed by using the Fourier series method (Von Neumanns Method).

This study was aimed to develop an optimized Dy determination method using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). The Plackett-Burman (PB) experimental design was used to select significant factors that affect the electrical current response, which were further optimized using the response surface method-central composite design (RSM-CCD). The type of electrolyte solution and amplitude modulation were found as two most significant factors, among the nine factors tested, which enhance the current response based on PB design. Further optimization using RSM-CCD shows that the optimum values for the tw

Iron oxide(Fe3O4) nanoparticles of different sizes and shapes were synthesized by solve-hydrothermal reaction assisted by microwave irradiation using ferrous ammonium sulfate as a metal precursor, oleic acid as dispersing agent, ethanol as reducing agent and NaOH as precipitating agent at pH=12. The synthesized Fe3O4 nano particles were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR and thermal analysis TG-DTG. Sizes and shapes of Fe3O4 nanoparticles were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM).