Background: The desire for an attractive appearing fixed orthodontic appliance fueled the use of ceramic brackets and clear accessories. Elastics are one of the most versatile materials available to orthodontists so studying their effect on the esthetic appearance is important. This an in vivo study, conducted to evaluate the effect of exposing stretched clear elastomeric ligatures to the oral environment from four different companies (OrthoTechnology, Morelli, Ortho Organizer, and Ormco). Materials and Methods: A total of 240 elastomeric modules were examined, 60 modules from each brand. Each of the 60 patients enrolled in the study, received 4 elastomeric modules on the 4 lower incisors, one from each brand. The specimens were placed on t
... Show MoreApplying load to a structural member may result in a bottle-shaped compression field especially when the width of the loading is less than the width of bearing concrete members. At the Building and Construction Department – the University of Technology-Iraq, series tests on fibre reinforced concrete specimens were carried out, subjected to compression forces at the top and bottom of the specimens to produce compression field. The effects of steel fibre content, concrete compressive strength, transverse tension reinforcement, the height of test specimen, and the ratio of the width of loading plate to specimen width were studied by testing a total of tenth normal strength concrete blocks with steel fibre and one normal s
... Show MoreThe thermal performance of indirect expansion solar assisted heat pump, IX-SAHP, was investigated experimentally under Iraqi climate. An Indirect-Solar Assisted Heat Pump system was designed, built, instrumented and tested. Experimental tests were conducted by varying the controlling parameters to investigate their effects on the thermal performance of the IX-SAHP such as cooling water flow rate, heating water flow rate, ambient temperature and solar radiation intensity. The investigation covered values of cooling water flow rate of (2, 3, 4, 5 l/min) and heating water flow rate of (2, 3, 4, 5 l/min) under meteorological condition of Baghdad from November 2014 to January 2015.
The results indicated that the performance of the IX-
... Show MoreThis paper proposes a new strategy to enhance the performance and accuracy of the Spiral dynamic algorithm (SDA) for use in solving real-world problems by hybridizing the SDA with the Bacterial Foraging optimization algorithm (BFA). The dynamic step size of SDA makes it a useful exploitation approach. However, it has limited exploration throughout the diversification phase, which results in getting trapped at local optima. The optimal initialization position for the SDA algorithm has been determined with the help of the chemotactic strategy of the BFA optimization algorithm, which has been utilized to improve the exploration approach of the SDA. The proposed Hybrid Adaptive Spiral Dynamic Bacterial Foraging (HASDBF)
... Show MoreThe Adaptive Optics technique has been developed to obtain the correction of atmospheric seeing. The purpose of this study is to use the MATLAB program to investigate the performance of an AO system with the most recent AO simulation tools, Objected-Oriented Matlab Adaptive Optics (OOMAO). This was achieved by studying the variables that impact image quality correction, such as observation wavelength bands, atmospheric parameters, telescope parameters, deformable mirror parameters, wavefront sensor parameters, and noise parameters. The results presented a detailed analysis of the factors that influence the image correction process as well as the impact of the AO components on that process
Introduction: This study aimed to assess the color change of human teeth with artificial enamel white spot lesions (WSLs) after sandblasting with bioactive glass, resin infiltration, and microabrasion and to test color stability after pH cycling. Methods: Fifty extracted human mandibular first molars were randomly assigned into five groups: Sound, WSLs (untreated), and WSLs sandblasted with bioactive glass (Sylc), WSLs treated by resin infiltration (ICON), and WSLs treated by microabrasion (Opalustre), respectively. All specimens underwent a pH cycling procedure. The color parameters for each specimen were assessed using an Easyshade dental spectrophotometer at different time stages then the color changes (ΔE) were calculated. Results: The
... Show MoreThis work aims to investigate the tensile and compression strengths of heat- cured acrylic resin denture base material by adding styrene-butadiene (S- B) to polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). The most well- known issue in prosthodontic practice is fracture of a denture base. All samples were a blend of (90%, 80%) PMMA and (10%, 20%) S- B powder melted in Oxolane (Tetra hydro furan). These samples were chopped down into specimens of dimensions 100x10x2.5mm to carry out the requirements of tensile tests. The compression strength test specimens were shaped into a cylinder with dimensions of 12.7mm in diameter and 20mm in length. The experimental results show a significant increase in both tensile and compression strengths when compared to cont
... Show MoreMany researchers consider Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) engine mode as a promising alternative to combustion in Spark Ignition and Compression Ignition Engines. The HCCI engine runs on lean mixtures of fuel and air, and the combustion is produced from the fuel autoignition instead of ignited by a spark. This combustion mode was investigated in this paper. A variable compression ratio, spark ignition engine type TD110 was used in the experiments. The tested fuel was Iraqi conventional gasoline (ON=82).
The results showed that HCCI engine can run in very lean equivalence ratios. The brake specific fuel consumption was reduced about 28% compared with a spark ignition engine. The experimental tests showed that the em
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