Experimental and numerical studies have been conducted on the effects of bed roughness elements such as cubic and T-section elements that are regularly half-channel arrayed on one side of the river on turbulent flow characteristics and bed erosion downstream of the roughness elements. The experimental study has been done for two types of bed roughness elements (cubic and T-section shape) to study the effect of these elements on the velocity profile downstream the elements with respect to different water flow discharges and water depths. A comparison between the cubic and T-section artificial bed roughness showed that the velocity profile downstream the T-section increased in smooth side from the river and decrease in the rough side

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

sensor sampling rate (SSR) may be an effective and crucial field in networked control systems.  Changing sensor sampling period after designing the networked control system is a critical matter for the stability of the system. In this article, a wireless networked control system with multi-rate sensor sampling is proposed to control the temperature of a multi-zone greenhouse. Here, a behavior based Mamdany fuzzy system is used in three approaches, first is to design the fuzzy temperature controller, second is to design a fuzzy gain selector and third is to design a fuzzy error handler. The main approach of the control system design is to control the input gain of the fuzzy temperature controller depending on the cur

The temperature influence on the fluorescence lifetime, quantum yields and non-radiative rate parameter or coumarin 460 dye dissolved in methanol was investigated in the temperature range (160-300 k). A single photon counting technique was used or measuring the fluorescence decay curves. A noticeable decrease of the fluorescence lifetime with increasing the temperature was observed. The non-radiative activation energy of 10.57 K.J. mole-1 was measured by the help of Arrhenius plot.

Erythrocytes aggregation is an important physiological phenomenon in the circulation of blood, and is a basic characteristic of normal blood that plays a major role in cardiovascular system especially in the microcirculation. Blood samples have been taken from (30) volunteers (15 male, and 15 female), their ages (20-30) years. The Erythrocytes Sedimentation Rate (ESR) for those subjects was measured at different Packed Cells Volume (PCV) (10%-25%), and also it was measured at different temperature (10oC-25oC). The results show that there was a highly significant decrease (P<0.01) in ESR when the PCV increase and a highly significant increase (P<0.01) in ESR when the temperatures increase. The conclusion from these results is that the ESR va

The main goal of this work is to obtain the plasma electron temperature Te by optical emission spectroscopy of low pressure microwave argon plasma, as a function of working pressure and microwave power. A plasma system was designed and constructed in our laboratory using a magnetron of domestic microwave oven with power 800W without any commercial part. The applied voltage on the magnetron electrical circuit is changed for the purpose of obtaining the variable values of the microwave power. The spectral detection is performed with a spectrometer of wavelength range (200−1000nm). The working pressure and magnetron applied voltage were 0.3-3.0mbar and 180-240V, respectively. Two methods had been applied to estimate the electron temperatu

A solar updraft tower power plant (solar tower) is a solar thermal power plant that utilizes a combination of solar

air collector and central updraft tube to generate an induced convective flow which drives pressure staged turbines to generate electricity.

 This paper presents practical results of a prototype of a solar chimney with thermal mass, where the glass surface is replaced by transparence plastic cover. The study focused on chimney's basements kind effect on collected air temperatures. Three basements were used: concrete, black concrete and black pebbles basements. The study was conducted in Baghdad from August to November 2009.

The results show that the best chimney efficiency attaine