This paper analyzes a piled-raft foundation on non-homogeneous soils with variable layer depth percentages. The present work aims to perform a three-dimensional finite element analysis of a piled-raft foundation subjected to vertical load using the PLAXIS 3D software. Parametric analysis was carried out to determine the effect of soil type and initial layer thickness. The parametric study showed that increasing the relative density from 30 % to 80 % of the upper sand layer and the thickness of the first layer has led to an increase in the ultimate load and a decrease in the settlement of piled raft foundations for the cases of sand over weak soil.  In clay over weak soil, the ultimate load of the piled raft foundation w

Geotechnical engineering like any other engineering field has to develop and cope with new technologies. This article intends to investigate the spatial relationships between soil’s liquid limit (LL), plasticity index (PI) and Liquidity index (LI) for particular zones of Sulaymaniyah City. The main objective is to study the ability to produce digital soil maps for the study area and determine regions of high expansive soil. Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation tool within the GIS (Geographic Information System) program was used to produce the maps. Data from 592 boreholes for LL and PI and 245 boreholes for LI were used for this study. Layers were allocated into three depth ranges (1 to 2, 2 to 4 and 4 to 6)

When the guard honey bees, Apis mellifera L., form a clump at the hive entrance or on the flight board, the oriental hornet, Vespa orientails L., either creeps toward the clump or hovers over it in order to take a bee. Once the hornet creeps, only few bees facing the hornet become alert, rock their heads and antennae, open their wings, and take a posture of defense. The rest of the clump stays listless without any signal of concern. However, the clump stays dense and the defending bees do not detach themselves neither from the rest of the clump nor from each other. For this reason, it is very difficult for the hornet to grab a bee unless the latter makes a “mistake” by detaching herself from other adjacent bees. If the hornet grabs s

       The present study was performed to spotlight the potential role of soil bacteria in the Al-Rumaila oil field as a bioindicator of heavy metals pollution. For this purpose, nine soil samples were collected from different sites, with 20cm depth, to assess the pollution status depending on the total and available concentrations of heavy metals.  The result indicates pollution of the studied soils with the following metals: Cd, Cu, Fe, Zn, and Pb. The mean of total concentration for all studied metals was higher than the allowed maximum limit based on the international limit:(3.394, 3.994, 39.993, 8844.979,150.372, and 103.347 µg/g), respectively. While measuring the total Metal concentration is important in determining the de

Expansive soil is one of the most serious problems that face engineers during the execution of any infrastructure projects. Soil stabilization using chemical admixture is one of the most traditional and widespread methods of soil improvement. Nevertheless, soil improvement on site is one of the most economical solutions for many engineering applications. Using construction and demolishing waste in soil stabilization is still under research., The aim of this study is to identify the effect of using concrete demolishing waste (CDW) in soil stabilization. Serious tests were conducted to investigate the changes in the geotechnical properties of the natural soil stabilized with CDW. From the results, it is concluded that the

In this study, the relationship between the bare soil temperature with respect to its salinity is presented, the bare soil feature is considered only by eliminating all other land features by classifying the site location by using the support vector machine algorithm, in the same time the salinity index that calculated from the spectral response from the satellite bands is calibrated using empirical salinity value calculated from field soil samples. A 2D probability density function is used to analyze the relationship between the temperature rising from the minimum temperature (from the sunrise time) due to the solar radiation duration tell the time of the satellite capturing the scene image and the calibrated salinity index is presented. T

In the present work, experimental tests was done to explain the effect of insulation and water level on the yield output. Linear basin, single slope solar still used to do this purpose. The test was done from May to August 2017 in Mosul City-Iraq (Latitude: Longitude: Elevation: 200 m, and  South-East face). Experimental results showed that the yield output of the still increased by 20.785% and 19.864% in case of using thermal insulation at 4cm and 5cm respectively, also the yield output decrease by 15.134% as the water level increase from 4 to 5cm, with the presence of insulation and 14.147% without it. It has been conclude that the insulation and water level play important role in the process of passive