In the field of construction project management, time and cost are the most important factors to be considered in planning every project, and their relationship is complex. The total cost for each project is the sum of the direct and indirect cost. Direct cost commonly represents labor, materials, equipment, etc.
Indirect cost generally represents overhead cost such as supervision, administration, consultants, and interests. Direct cost grows at an increasing rate as the project time is reduced from its original planned time. However, indirect cost continues for the life of the project and any reduction in project time means a reduction in indirect cost. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the time and cost for completing construction activities.
In this research, modeling of time-cost optimization, generating global optimum solution for time and cost problem, and lowering construction time and cost using ant colony optimization algorithm
Two different oxidative desulfurization strategies based on oxidation/adsorption or oxidation/extraction were evaluated for the desulfurization of AL-Ahdab (AHD) sour crude oil (3.9wt% sulfur content). In the oxidation process, a homogenous oxidizing agent comprising of hydrogen peroxide and formic acid was used. Activated carbons were used as sorbent/catalyst in the oxidation/adsorption process while acetonitrile was used as an extraction solvent in the oxidation/extraction process. For the oxidation/adsorption scheme, the experimental results indicated that the oxidation desulfurization efficiency was enhanced on using activated carbon as catalyst/sorbent. The effects of the operating conditions (contact time, temperat
... Show MoreIn this paper, we introduce a DCT based steganographic method for gray scale images. The embedding approach is designed to reach efficient tradeoff among the three conflicting goals; maximizing the amount of hidden message, minimizing distortion between the cover image and stego-image,and maximizing the robustness of embedding. The main idea of the method is to create a safe embedding area in the middle and high frequency region of the DCT domain using a magnitude modulation technique. The magnitude modulation is applied using uniform quantization with magnitude Adder/Subtractor modules. The conducted test results indicated that the proposed method satisfy high capacity, high preservation of perceptual and statistical properties of the steg
... Show MoreThe removal of Ibuprofen antibiotics (IBU) by photo-degradation UV/H2O2/Fe+2 system was investigated in a batch reactor under different initial concentrations of H2O2 (100-500) mg/L, Fe+2 (10-40) mg/L, pH (3-9) and initial concentrations of IBU (10-80) mg/L, and their relationship with the degradation efficiency were studied. The result demonstrated that the maximum elimination of IBU was 85.54% achieved at 300 mg/L of H2O2, 30 mg/L of Fe+2, pH=3, and irradiation time of 150 min, for 10 mg/L of IBU. The results have shown that the oxidation reagent H2O2 plays a very important role in IBU degradation.
Indirect electrochemical oxidation of phenol and its derivatives was investigated by using MnO2 rotating cylinder electrode. Taguchi experimental design method was employed to find the best conditions for the removal efficiency of phenol and its derivatives generated during the process. Two main parameters were investigated, current density (C.D.) and electrolysis time. The removal efficiency was considered as a response for the phenol and other organics removal. An orthogonal array L16, the signal to noise (S/N) ratio, and the analysis of variance were used to test the effect of designated process factors and their levels on the performance of phenol and other organics removal efficiency. The results showed that th
... Show MoreThe aim of this research is to compare traditional and modern methods to obtain the optimal solution using dynamic programming and intelligent algorithms to solve the problems of project management.
It shows the possible ways in which these problems can be addressed, drawing on a schedule of interrelated and sequential activities And clarifies the relationships between the activities to determine the beginning and end of each activity and determine the duration and cost of the total project and estimate the times used by each activity and determine the objectives sought by the project through planning, implementation and monitoring to maintain the budget assessed
... Show MoreMany academics have concentrated on applying machine learning to retrieve information from databases to enable researchers to perform better. A difficult issue in prediction models is the selection of practical strategies that yield satisfactory forecast accuracy. Traditional software testing techniques have been extended to testing machine learning systems; however, they are insufficient for the latter because of the diversity of problems that machine learning systems create. Hence, the proposed methodologies were used to predict flight prices. A variety of artificial intelligence algorithms are used to attain the required, such as Bayesian modeling techniques such as Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD), Adaptive boosting (ADA), Deci
... Show MoreThis paper proposed a theoretical treatment to study underwater wireless optical communications (UWOC) system with different modulation schemes by multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) technology in coastal water. MIMO technology provides high-speed data rates with longer distance link. This technique employed to assess the system by BER, Q. factor and data rate under coastal water types. The reliability of the system is examined by the techniques of 1Tx/1Rx, 2Tx/2Rx, 3Tx/3Rx and 4Tx/4Rx. The results shows the proposed technique by MIMO can get the better performance compared with the other techniques in terms of BER. Theoretical results were obtained to compare between PIN and APD
The aim of this research is to study the surface alteration characteristics and surface morphology of the superhydrophobic/hydrophobic nanocomposite coatings prepared by an electrospinning method to coat various materials such as glass and metal. This is considered as a low cost method of fabrication for polymer solutions of Polystyrene (PS), Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and Silicone Rubber (RTV). Si were prepared in various wt% of composition for each solutions. Contact angle measurement, surface tension, viscosity, roughness tests were calculated for all specimens. SEM showed the morphology of the surfaces after coated. PS and PMMA showed superhydrophobic properties for metal substrate, while Si showed hydroph
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