This article presents a new cascaded extended state observer (CESO)-based sliding-mode control (SMC) for an underactuated flexible joint robot (FJR). The control of the FJR has many challenges, including coupling, underactuation, nonlinearity, uncertainties and external disturbances, and the noise amplification especially in the high-order systems. The proposed control integrates the CESO and SMC, in which the CESO estimates the states and disturbances, and the SMC provides the system robustness to the uncertainty and disturbance estimation errors. First, a dynamic model of the FJR is derived and converted from an underactuated form to a canonical form via the Olfati transformation and a flatness approach, which reduces the complexity of th

The  thermal  and  electrical  performance  of  different  designs  of  air  based  hybrid photovoltaic/thermal collectors is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The circulating air is used to cool PV panels and to collect the absorbed energy to improve their performance. Four different collectors have been designed, manufactured and instrumented namely; double PV panels without cooling (model I), single duct double pass collector (model II), double duct single pass (model III), and single duct single pass (model IV) . Each collector consists of: channel duct, glass cover, axial fan to circulate air and two PV panel in parallel connection. The temperature of the upper and lower surfaces of PV panels, air temper

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

The synthesis, characterization and mesomorphic properties of two new series of triazine-core based liquid crystals have been investigated. The amino triazine derivatives were characterized by elemental analysis, Fourier transforms infrared (FTIR), 1HNMR and mass spectroscopy. The liquid crystalline properties of these compounds were examined by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and polarizing optical microscopy (POM). DSC and POM confirmed nematic (N) and columnar mesophase textures of the materials. The formation of mesomorphic properties was found to be dependent on the number of methylene unit in alkoxy side chains.

Objective: Carbamazepine is typically used for the treatment of seizure disorders and neuropathic pain. One of the major problems with this drug is its low solubility in water; therefore the objective of this study was to enhance the solubility of carbamazepine by complexation with cyclodextrin to be formulated as effervescent and dispersible granules.Methods: Solvent evaporation method was used to prepare, binary (Carbamazepine/β-cyclodextrin) complex and ternary (Carbamazepine/β-cyclodextrin/hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose (HPMC E5). The more soluble complex will be further formulated as unit dose effervescent and dispersible granules. The complexes were evaluated for their solubility, drug content, percentage practical yield and

Background: The base of the denture is largely responsible for providing the prosthesis with retention, stability, and support by being closely adapted to the oral mucosa. However; the process of bone resorption is irreversible and may lead to an inadequate fit of the prosthesis; this can be overcome by relining. Materials and methods: Acrylic based soft denture liner is prepared by preparing polymer from purified methylmethacrylate monomer with (10-2) initiator and (30%) dibutylphthalate plasticizer concentrations. Biological properties were evaluated in comparison with the control material through subcutaneous specimens' implantation in the New Zealand rabbits. Excisional biopsies were taken after (1, 3, days 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks) period. Mic

The performance of H2S sensor based on poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA)-CdS nanocomposite fabricated by spray pyrolysis technique has been reported. XRD pattern diffraction peaks of nano CdS has been indexed to the hexagonally wurtzite structured The nanocomposite exhibits semiconducting behavior with optical energy gap of4.06eV.SEM morphology appears almost tubes like with CdS/PMMA network. That means the addition of CdS to polymer increases the roughness in the film and provides high surface to volume ratio, which helps gas molecule to adsorb on these tubes. The resistance of PMMA-CdS nanocomposite showed a considerable change when exposed to H2S gas. Fast response time to detect H2S gas was achieved by using PMMA-CdS thin film sensor. The

Peak ground acceleration (PGA) is one of the critical factors that affect the determination of earthquake intensity. PGA is generally utilized to describe ground motion in a particular zone and is able to efficiently predict the parameters of site ground motion for the design of engineering structures. Therefore, novel models are developed to forecast PGA in the case of the Iraqi database, which utilizes the particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach. A data set of 187 historical ground-motion recordings in Iraq’s tectonic regions was used to build the explicit proposed models. The proposed PGA models relate to different seismic parameters, including the magnitude of the earthquake (Mw), average shear-wave velocity (VS30), focal depth (FD