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
The primary objective of this study is to manage price market items in the construction of walls for affordable structures with load-bearing hollow masonry units using the ACI 211.1 blend design with a slump range of 25-50 mm that follows the specification limits of IQS 1077. It was difficult to reach a suitable cement weight to minimum content (economic and environmental goal), so many trail mixtures were cast. A portion (10-20%) of the coarse aggregates was replaced with concrete, tile, and clay-brick waste. Finally, two curing methods were used: immersion under water as normal curing, and water spraying as it is closer to the field conditions. The recommendation in IQS 1077 to increase the curing period from 14 to 28 days was tak
... Show MoreA number of compression schemes were put forward to achieve high compression factors with high image quality at a low computational time. In this paper, a combined transform coding scheme is proposed which is based on discrete wavelet (DWT) and discrete cosine (DCT) transforms with an added new enhancement method, which is the sliding run length encoding (SRLE) technique, to further improve compression. The advantages of the wavelet and the discrete cosine transforms were utilized to encode the image. This first step involves transforming the color components of the image from RGB to YUV planes to acquire the advantage of the existing spectral correlation and consequently gaining more compression. DWT is then applied to the Y, U and V col
... Show MoreThe present work describes numerical and experimental investigation of the heat transfer characteristics in a plate-fin, having built-in piezoelectric actuator mounted on the base plate (substrate). The geometrical configuration considered in the present work is representative of a single element of the plate-fin and triple fins. Air is taken as the working fluid. A performance data for a single rectangular fin and triple fins are provided for different frequency levels (5, 30 and
50HZ) , different input power (5,10,20,30,40 and 50W) and different inlet velocity (0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6m/s) for the single rectangular fin and triple fins with and without oscillation. The investigation was also performed with different geometrical fin
This paper provides the result of an investigation to use of crushed clay brick as
aggregates in producing concrete. Eight different crushed clay brick aggregate concretes were
used in this investigation. Compressive strength, splitting tensile strength and pulse velocity of
crushed clay brick aggregates concrete were determined and compare to natural aggregate
concrete. The compressive strength of crushed clay brick aggregates concretes were always
lower than the compressive strength of natural aggregates concrete regardless the age of
concrete, but the crushed clay brick aggregates concrete showed better performance as the age of
concrete increases and average reduction in compressive strength were 33.5% at the age
The art of preventing the detection of hidden information messages is the way that steganography work. Several algorithms have been proposed for steganographic techniques. A major portion of these algorithms is specified for image steganography because the image has a high level of redundancy. This paper proposed an image steganography technique using a dynamic threshold produced by the discrete cosine coefficient. After dividing the green and blue channel of the cover image into 1*3-pixel blocks, check if any bits of green channel block less or equal to threshold then start to store the secret bits in blue channel block, and to increase the security not all bits in the chosen block used to store the secret bits. Firstly, store in the cente
... Show MoreApplications of remote sensing are important in improving potato production through the broader adoption of precision agriculture. This technology could be useful in decreasing the potential contamination of soil and water due to the over-fertilization of agriculture crops. The objective of this study was to assess the utility of active sensors (Crop Circle™, Holland Scientific, Inc., Lincoln, NE, USA and GreenSeeker™, Trimble Navigation Limited, Sunnyvale, CA, USA) and passive sensors (multispectral imaging with Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs)) to predict total potato yield and phosphorus (P) uptake. The experimental design was a randomized complete block with four replications and six P treatments, ranging from 0 to 280 kg P ha−1, as
... Show MoreOne of the most important problems in concrete production in Iraq and other country is the high sulfate content in sand that led to damage of concrete and hence reduces its compressive strength and may leads to cracking due to internal sulfate attack and delay ettringite formation. The magnetic water treatment process is adopted in this study. Many samples with different SO3 content are treated with magnetic water (12, 8, 4 and 2)L that needed for each 1kg of sand with the magnetic intensity (9000 and 5000) Gaus. The magnetic water needed is reduced with less SO3 content in sand. The ACI 211.1-91 concrete mix design was used in this research with slump range (75- 100) mm and the specified compressive strength (35MPa). The compressive streng
... Show MoreThe multiple linear regression model is an important regression model that has attracted many researchers in different fields including applied mathematics, business, medicine, and social sciences , Linear regression models involving a large number of independent variables are poorly performing due to large variation and lead to inaccurate conclusions , One of the most important problems in the regression analysis is the multicollinearity Problem, which is considered one of the most important problems that has become known to many researchers , As well as their effects on the multiple linear regression model, In addition to multicollinearity, the problem of outliers in data is one of the difficulties in constructing the reg
... Show MoreThis study investigated the treatment of dairy wastewater using the electrocoagulation method with iron filings as electrodes. The study dealt with real samples collected from local factory for dairy products in Baghdad. The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to optimize five experimental variables at six levels for each variable, for estimating chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency. These variables were the distance between electrodes, detention time, dosage of NaCl as electrolyte, initial COD concentration, and current density. RSM was investigated the direct and complex interaction effects between parameters to estimate the optimum values. The respective optimum value was 1 cm for the distance between electrodes, (6
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