Construction contractors usually undertake multiple construction projects simultaneously. Such a situation involves sharing different types of resources, including monetary, equipment, and manpower, which may become a major challenge in many cases. In this study, the financial aspects of working on multiple projects at a time are addressed and investigated. The study considers dealing with financial shortages by proposing a multi-project scheduling optimization model for profit maximization, while minimizing the total project duration. Optimization genetic algorithm and finance-based scheduling are used to produce feasible schedules that balance the finance of activities at any time with the available funds. The model has been tested in multi scenarios, and the results are analyzed. The results show that negative cash flow is minimized from −693,784 to −634,514 in enterprise I and from −2,646,408 to −2,529,324 in enterprise II in the first scenario and also results show that negative cash flow is minimized to −612,768 with a profit of +200,116 in enterprise I and to −2,597,290 with a profit of +1,537,632 in enterprise II in the second scenario.
Biodiesel as an attractive energy source; a low-cost and green synthesis technique was utilized for biodiesel preparation via waste cooking oil methanolysis using waste snail shell derived catalyst. The present work aimed to investigate the production of biodiesel fuel from waste materials. The catalyst was greenly synthesized from waste snail shells throughout a calcination process at different calcination time of 2–4 h and temperature of 750–950 ◦C. The catalyst samples were characterized using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX), and Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR). The reaction variables varying in the range of 10:1–30:1 M ratio of MeOH: oil, 3–11 wt% catalyst loading, 50–
... Show MoreThe electrocoagulation process became one of the most important technologies used for water treatment processes in the last few years. It’s the preferred method to remove suspended solids and heavy metals from water for treating drinking water and wastewater from textile, diary, and electroplating factories. This research aims to study the effect of using the electrocoagulation process with aluminum electrodes on the removal efficiency of suspended solids and turbidity presented in raw water and optimizing by the response surface methodology (RSM). The most important variables studied in this research included electrode spacing, the applied voltage, and the operating time of the electrocoagulation process. The samples
... Show MoreProduction of fatty acid esters (biodiesel) from oleic acid and 2-ethylhexanol using sulfated zirconia as solid catalyst for the production of biodiesel was investigated in this work.
The parameters studied were temperature of reaction (100 to 130°C), molar ratio of alcohol to free fatty acid (1:1 to 3:1), concentration of catalyst (0.5 to 3%wt), mixing speed (500 to 900 rpm) and types of sulfated zirconia (i.e modified, commercial, prepared catalyst according to literature and reused catalyst). The results show the best conversion to biodiesel was 97.74% at conditions of 130°C, 3:1, 2wt% and 650 rpm using modified catalyst respectively. Also, modified c
... Show MoreThe clayey soils have the capability to swell and shrink with the variation in moisture content. Soil stabilization is a well-known technique, which is implemented to improve the geotechnical properties of soils. The massive quantities of waste materials are resulting from modern industry methods create disposal hazards in addition to environmental problems. The steel industry has a waste that can be used with low strength and weak engineering properties soils. This study is carried out to evaluate the effect of steel slag (SS) as a by-product of the geotechnical properties of clayey soil. A series of laboratory tests were conducted on natural and stabilized soils. SS was added by 0, 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20% to the soil.
... Show MoreThe Khabour reservoir, Ordovician, Lower Paleozoic, Akkas gas field which is considered one of the main sandstone reservoirs in the west of Iraq. Researchers face difficulties in recognizing sandstone reservoirs since they are virtually always tight and heterogeneous. This paper is associated with the geological modeling of a gas-bearing reservoir that containing condensate appears while production when bottom hole pressure declines below the dew point. By defining the lithology and evaluating the petrophysical parameters of this complicated reservoir, a geological model for the reservoir is being built by using CMG BUILDER software (GEM tool) to create a static model. The petrophysical properties of a reservoir were computed using
... Show MoreAbstract
This research deals will the declared production planning operation in the general company of planting oils, which have great role in production operations management who had built mathematical model for correct non-linear programming according to discounting operation during raw materials or half-made materials purchasing operation which concentration of six main products by company but discount included just three products of raw materials, and there were six months taken from the 1st half of 2014 as a planning period has been chosen . Simulated annealing algorithm application on non-linear model which been more difficulty than possible solution when imposed restric
... Show MoreObjectives: To identify the impact of the brain consensus model on the acquisition of Arabic grammar concepts among students in the fourth grade, methodology: The pilot curriculum was used, and a partial control pilot design was adopted. There were 30 female students in the pilot group, 30 female students in the control group, and the two researchers were statistically rewarded among the two groups' students in some variables and used appropriate statistical means to analyse the results, including the test for two independent samples, the square (c2) and the Alpha Kronbach equation.Results: The pilot group outperformed the control group. The results showed that there is a significant statistical difference at the indicative level (0.05) for
... Show MorePrediction of daily rainfall is important for flood forecasting, reservoir operation, and many other hydrological applications. The artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm is generally used for stochastic forecasting rainfall which is not capable to simulate unseen extreme rainfall events which become common due to climate change. A new model is developed in this study for prediction of daily rainfall for different lead times based on sea level pressure (SLP) which is physically related to rainfall on land and thus able to predict unseen rainfall events. Daily rainfall of east coast of Peninsular Malaysia (PM) was predicted using SLP data over the climate domain. Five advanced AI algorithms such as extreme learning machine (ELM), Bay
... Show MoreThis paper presents a comparative study of two learning algorithms for the nonlinear PID neural trajectory tracking controller for mobile robot in order to follow a pre-defined path. As simple and fast tuning technique, genetic and particle swarm optimization algorithms are used to tune the nonlinear PID neural controller's parameters to find the best velocities control actions of the right wheel and left wheel for the real mobile robot. Polywog wavelet activation function is used in the structure of the nonlinear PID neural controller. Simulation results (Matlab) and experimental work (LabVIEW) show that the proposed nonlinear PID controller with PSO
learning algorithm is more effective and robust than genetic learning algorithm; thi