This research is presented experimental and numerical investigations of composite concrete-steel plate shear walls under axial loads to predicate the effect of both concrete compressive strength and aspect ratio of the wall on the axial capacity, lateral displacement and axial shortening of the walls. The experimental program includes casting and testing two groups of walls with various aspect ratios. The first group with aspect ratio H/L=1.667 and the second group with aspect ratio H/L=2. Each group consists of three composite concrete -steel plate wall with three targets of cube compressive strength of values 39, 54.75 and 63.3 MPa. The tests result obtained that the increase in concrete compressive strength results in increasing the ultimate axial load capacity of the wall. Thus, the failure load, the corresponding lateral displacement and the axial shortening increased by increasing the compressive strength and the rate of increase in failure load of the tested walls was about (34.5% , 23.1%) as compressive strength increased from 39 to 63.3 MPa for case of composite wall with aspect ratio H/L=1.667 and H/L=2, respectively. The effect of increasing aspect ratio on the axial load capacity, lateral displacement and axial shortening of the walls was also studied in this study. Compared the main performance characteristic of the testing walls, it can be indicated that the walls with aspect ratio equal to (2) failed under lower axial loads as compared with walls with aspect ratio equal to 1.667 ratios by about (5.8, 12, 15.6 %) at compressive strength (39, 54.75, 63.3 MPa), respectively and experienced large flexural deformations. The mode of failure of all walls was characterized by buckling of steel plates as well as cracking and crushing of concrete in the most compressive zone. Nonlinear three-dimensional finite element analysis is also used to evaluate the performance of the composite wall, by using ABAQUS computer Program (version 6.13). Finite element results were compared with experimental results. The comparison shows good accuracy.
The present study tackles the complex issue of the urgent need for Environmental Auditing (EA) in Iraq in the absence of laws that support environmental management and in the light of the high rates of cancerous diseases in Iraq, which coincided significantly with the increase in oil production, according to the numbers indicated in the Iraqi Ministry of Health. The study aimed to investigate the mediating role of Management Systems (MS) related to the role of EA supporting sustainability reports concerning the reduction of the negative effects of gas emissions from oil companies. We adopted the descriptive approach which relies on studying relationships through a questionnaire that was distributed to a group of workers at Doura Refinery in
... Show MoreBackground: It's believed that HBD-3 is involved in the tissue remodeling process of articular cartilage. Also, HBD-3 has anti-inflammatory properties. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to assay human beta-defensine-3 (HBD-3) in serum from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and investigate its correlation with proinflammatory cytokines. Methods: In this case-control study, fifty-eight RA patients were aged 20–65 years, and 29 age-matched healthy subjects (HS) had no inflammatory rheumatic diseases. The disease activity score-28 joint erythrocyte sedimentation rate (DAS28-ESR) was used to measure RA activity. CRP, ACPA, HBD-3, TNF-α, and IL-1β were assessed using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay technique (ELISA). Res
... Show MoreThe university course timetable problem (UCTP) is typically a combinatorial optimization problem. Manually achieving a useful timetable requires many days of effort, and the results are still unsatisfactory. unsatisfactory. Various states of art methods (heuristic, meta-heuristic) are used to satisfactorily solve UCTP. However, these approaches typically represent the instance-specific solutions. The hyper-heuristic framework adequately addresses this complex problem. This research proposed Particle Swarm Optimizer-based Hyper Heuristic (HH PSO) to solve UCTP efficiently. PSO is used as a higher-level method that selects low-level heuristics (LLH) sequence which further generates an optimal solution. The proposed a
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