This research utilized natural asphalt (NA) deposits from sulfur springs in western Iraq. Laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of an asphalt mixture incorporating NA and verify its suitability for local pavement applications. To achieve this, a combination of two types of NA, namely soft SNA and hard HNA, was blended to create a binder known as Type HSNA. The resulting HSNA exhibited a penetration grade that adhered to Iraqi specifications. Various percentages of NA (20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%) were added to petroleum asphalt. The findings revealed enhanced physical properties of HSNA, which also satisfied the requirements outlined in the Iraqi specifications for asphalt cement.

Consequently, HS

Metal contents in vegetables are interesting because of issues related to food safety and ‎potential health risks. The availability of these metals in the human body ‎may perform many biochemical functions and some of them linked with various diseases at ‎high levels. The current study aimed to evaluate the concentration of various metals in ‎common local consumed vegetables using ICP-MS. The concentrations of metals in vegetables ‎of tarragon, Bay laurel, dill, Syrian mesquite, vine leaves, thymes, arugula, basil, common ‎purslane and parsley of this study were found to be in the range of, 76-778 for Al, 10-333 for B, 4-119 for ‎Ba, ‎2812‎-24645 for Ca, 0.1-0.32 for Co, 201-464 for Fe, 3661-46400 for K, 0.31–‎‎1.

As one type of resistance furnace, the electrical tube furnace (ETF) typically experiences input noise, measurement noise, system uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances, which significantly degrade its temperature control performance. To provide precise, and robust temperature tracking performance for the ETF, a robust composite control (RCC) method is proposed in this paper. The overall RCC method consists of four elements: First, the mathematical model of the ETF system is deduced, then a state feedback control (SFC) is constructed. Third, a novel disturbance observer (DO) is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance with one observer parameter. Moreover, the stability of the closed loop system including controller

In this study, a new technique is considered for solving linear fractional Volterra-Fredholm integro-differential equations (LFVFIDE's) with fractional derivative qualified in the Caputo sense. The method is established in three types of Lagrange polynomials (LP’s), Original Lagrange polynomial (OLP), Barycentric Lagrange polynomial (BLP), and Modified Lagrange polynomial (MLP). General Algorithm is suggested and examples are included to get the best effectiveness, and implementation of these types. Also, as special case fractional differential equation is taken to evaluate the validity of the proposed method. Finally, a comparison between the proposed method and other methods are taken to present the effectiveness of the proposal meth

This research is carried out to investigate the externally post-tensioning technique for strengthening RC beams. In this research, four T-section  RC beams having the same dimensions and material properties were casted and tested up to failure by applying two mid-third concentrated loads. Three of these beams are strengthened by using external tendons, while the remaining beam is kept without strengthening as a control beam. Two external strands of 12 mm diameter were fixed at each side of the web of the strengthened beams and located at depth of 200 mm from top fiber of the section (d_ps). So that the depth of strands to overall depth of the section ratio (d_ps

The ability of using aluminum filings which is locally solid waste was tested as a mono media in gravity rapid filter. The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of variation of influent water turbidity (10, 20and 30 NTU); flow rate(30, 40, and 60 l/hr) and bed height (30and60)cm on the performance of aluminum filings filter media for 5 hours run time and compare it with the conventional sand filter. The results indicated that aluminum filings filter showed better performance than sand filter in the removal of turbidity and in the reduction of head loss. Results showed that the statistical model developed by the multiple linear regression was proved to be
valid, and it could be used to predict head loss in aluminum filings

Atorvastatin (ATR) is a poorly water-soluble anti-hyperlipidemic drug. The drug belongs to the class II group according to the biopharmaceutical classification system (BCS) with low bioavailability due to its low solubility. Solid dispersion is an effective technique for enhancing the solubility and dissolution of drugs. Phospholipid solid dispersion (PSD) using phosphatidylcholine (PC) as a carrier with or without adsorbent (magnesium aluminum silicate, silicon dioxide 15nm, silicon dioxide 30nm, calcium silicate) was used to prepare ATR PSD using different drug: PC: adsorbent ratios by solvent evaporation method. The resulted PSD was evaluated for its percentage yield, drug content, solubility, dissolution rate, Fourier transforma

This study focuses on CFD analysis in the field of the shell and double concentric tube heat exchanger. A commercial CFD package was used to resolve the flow and temperature fields inside the shell and tubes of the heat exchanger used. Simulations by CFD are performed for the single shell and double concentric tube.

This heat exchanger included 16 tubes and 20 baffles. The shell had a length of 1.18 m and its diameter was 220 mm. Solid Works 2014, ANSYS 15.0 software was used to analyze the fields of flow and temperature inside the shell and the tubes. The RNG k-ε model was used and it provided good results. Coarse and fine meshes were investigated, showing that aspect ratio has no significant effect. 14 million