One of the most important problems facing the world today is the energy problem. The solution was in finding renewable energy sources such as solar energy. The solar energy applications in Iraq is facing many problems . One of the most important problems is the accumulation of dust on the solar panels surface which causes decreasing its performance sharply. In the present work, a new technique was presented by using two-axis solar tracking system to reduce the accumulated dust on the solar panel surface and compared it with the fixed solar panels which installed at tilt angles 30° and 45°. The results indicated that the maximum losses of the output power due to accumulation of dust on the fixed solar panels is about 31.4% and 23.1% res

Ceramic to metal joining technique, which was used in this investigation includes the use of active filler alloy as a sandwich between the alumina and kovar alloy for brazing. High purity powdered metals of silver, copper, and additives of titanium were used to prepare the active filler alloy, through compacting the mixed powders and alloying in a furnace with argon atmosphere at the temperature of 800oC for 10 minutes. To use it as an active filler metal, it has been modified to a proper thickness. Two groups of alumina were prepared with different sintering temperatures (1450oC and 1650oC) and each group was tested under atmospheric pressure, vacuum furnace pressure of 2*10-4 torr and vacuum furnace pressure of 2*10-6 torr. All the pro

Unsaturated soil can raise many geotechnical problems upon wetting and drying resulting in swelling upon wetting and collapsing (shrinkage) in drying and changing in the soil shear strength. The classical principles of saturated soil are often not suitable in explaining these phenomena. In this study, expansive  soil (bentonite and sand) were tested in different water contents and dry unit weight chosen from the compaction curve to examine the effect of water content change on soil properties (swelling pressure, expansion index, shear strength (soil cohesion) and soil suction by the filter paper method). The physical properties of these soils were studied by conducting series of tests in laboratory. Fitting methods

The  thermal  and  electrical  performance  of  different  designs  of  air  based  hybrid photovoltaic/thermal collectors is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The circulating air is used to cool PV panels and to collect the absorbed energy to improve their performance. Four different collectors have been designed, manufactured and instrumented namely; double PV panels without cooling (model I), single duct double pass collector (model II), double duct single pass (model III), and single duct single pass (model IV) . Each collector consists of: channel duct, glass cover, axial fan to circulate air and two PV panel in parallel connection. The temperature of the upper and

Methods of estimating statistical distribution have attracted many researchers when it comes to fitting a specific distribution to data. However, when the data belong to more than one component, a popular distribution cannot be fitted to such data. To tackle this issue, mixture models are fitted by choosing the correct number of components that represent the data. This can be obvious in lifetime processes that are involved in a wide range of engineering applications as well as biological systems. In this paper, we introduce an application of estimating a finite mixture of Inverse Rayleigh distribution by the use of the Bayesian framework when considering the model as Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). We employed the Gibbs sampler and

The effect of considering the third dimension in mass concrete members on its cracking behavior is investigated in this study. The investigation includes thermal and structural analyses of mass concrete structures. From thermal analysis, the actual temperature distribution throughout the mass concrete body was obtained due to the generation of heat as a result of cement hydration in addition to the ambient circumstances. This was performed via solving the differential equations of heat conduction and convection using the finite element method. The finite element method was also implemented in the structural analysis adopting the concept of initial strain problem. Drying shrinkage volume changes were calculated using the procedure suggested

The paper aims is to solve the problem of choosing the appropriate project from several service projects for the Iraqi Martyrs Foundation or arrange them according to the preference within the targeted criteria. this is done by using Multi-Criteria Decision Method (MCDM), which is the method of Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratios Analysis (MOORA) to measure the composite score of performance that each alternative gets and the maximum benefit accruing to the beneficiary and according to the criteria and weights that are calculated by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The most important findings of the research and relying on expert opinion are to choose the second project as the best alternative and make an arrangement acco