Contamination of surface and groundwater with excessive concentrations of fluoride is of significant health hazard. Adsorption of fluoride onto waste materials of no economic value could be a potential approach for the treatment of fluoride-bearing water. This experimental and modeling study was devoted to investigate for the first the fluoride removal using unmodified waste granular brick (WGB) in a fixed bed running in continuous mode. Characterization of WGB was carried out by FT-IR, SEM, and EDX analysis. The batch mode experiments showed that they were affected by several parameters including contact time, initial pH, and sorbent dosage. The best values of these parameters that provided maximum removal percent (82%) with the initial concentration of F-1 ions (10 mg/L) and agitation speed (200 rpm) were 90 min, 8, and 3 g/100 mL, respectively. The experimental data were found to fit the Freundlich isotherm model. The maximum adsorption capacity of fluoride on WGB was 1.1 mg/g. The continuous mode experiments clearly confirmed the important role of WGB bed in hindering and confining the propagation of the fluoride-loaded plume as well as there was a very good matching (RMSE ≤ 0.0398) with the predicted results obtained by the simulated mathematical model using COMSOL Multiphysics 3.5a software.
This research aimed to predict the permanent deformation (rutting) in conventional and rubberized asphalt mixes under repeated load conditions using the Finite Element Method (FEM). A three-dimensional (3D) model was developed to simulate the Wheel Track Testing (WTT) loading. The study was conducted using the Abaqus/Standard finite element software. The pavement slab was simulated using a nonlinear creep (time-hardening) model at 40°C. The responses of the viscoplastic model under the influence of the trapezoidal amplitude of moving wheel loadings were determined for different speeds and numbers of cycles. The results indicated that a wheel speed increase from 0.5Km/h to 1.0Km/h decreased the rut depth by about 22% and 24% in conv
... Show MoreIn this research Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique was applied to study the filtration process in water treatment. Eight models have been developed and tested using data from a pilot filtration plant, working under different process design criteria; influent turbidity, bed depth, grain size, filtration rate and running time (length of the filtration run), recording effluent turbidity and head losses. The ANN models were constructed for the prediction of different performance criteria in the filtration process: effluent turbidity, head losses and running time. The results indicate that it is quite possible to use artificial neural networks in predicting effluent turbidity, head losses and running time in the filtration process, wi
... Show MoreThis study aims to assess the water quality index (WQI) according to the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment's Water Quality Index method (CCME WQI). Four locations (measurement stations) are selected along the Tigris River, in Iraq. Two of them are located in the north near Mosul City, (Mosul Dam and Mosul city), and the other two are located in the south near Al-Amarah city, (Ali Garbi and Al-Amarah). The water data collected is for the period 2011 to 2013, including eleven water quality parameters. These are magnesium (Mg+2), calcium (Ca2+), potassium (K+), sodium (Na+), sulfate (SO42-), chloride (Cl-), nitrate (NO3<
... Show MoreThe convergence speed is the most important feature of Back-Propagation (BP) algorithm. A lot of improvements were proposed to this algorithm since its presentation, in order to speed up the convergence phase. In this paper, a new modified BP algorithm called Speeding up Back-Propagation Learning (SUBPL) algorithm is proposed and compared to the standard BP. Different data sets were implemented and experimented to verify the improvement in SUBPL.
Vibration analysis plays a vital role in understanding and analyzing the behavior of the structure. Where, it can be utilized from this analysis in the design process of the structures in different engineering applications, check the quality and safety of the structure under different working conditions. This work presents experimental measurements and numerical solutions to an out of plane vibration of a rectangular plate with a circular hole. Free edges rectangular plates with different circular holes diameters were studied. The effects of hole location on the plate natural frequencies were also investigated. A finite element modeling (using ANSYS Software) has been used to analyze the vibration characteristics of the plates. A good agree
... Show MoreThe development that solar energy will have in the next years needs a reliable estimation of available solar energy resources. Several empirical models have been developed to calculate global solar radiation using various parameters such as extraterrestrial radiation, sunshine hours, albedo, maximum temperature, mean temperature, soil temperature, relative humidity, cloudiness, evaporation, total perceptible water, number of rainy days, and altitude and latitude. In present work i) First part has been calculated solar radiation from the daily values of the hours of sun duration using Angstrom model over the Iraq for at July 2017. The second part has been mapping the distribution of so
In this work, functionally graded materials were synthesized by centrifugal technique at different
volume fractions 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2% Vf with a rotation speed of 1200 rpm and a constant rotation time, T
= 6 min . The mechanical properties were characterized to study the graded and non-graded nanocomposites
and the pure epoxy material. The mechanical tests showed that graded and non-graded added alumina
(Al2O3) nanoparticles enhanced the effect more than pure epoxy. The maximum difference in impact strength
occurred at (FGM), which was loaded from the rich side of the nano-alumina where the maximum value was
at 1% Vf by 133.33% of the sample epoxy side. The flexural strength and Young modulus of the fu
