Table of contents

ICCEET was established at University of Kufa with the aim of promoting the acquisition and transfer of civil and environmental engineering technologies for advancing research, design, and construction practices that can be utilized for improving the quality of life for all people in our territory. ICCEET is going to bring people from different marbles in civil & environmental engineering and merge them in one forum. In the ICCEET, you'll find a wide range of disciplines to include all fields of civil and environmental engineering including: construction, modern GIS, geotechnical, structural, environmental, water resources, and transportation where it's hoped that useful discussions and collaborations can be instigated.

The first edition of ICCEET has been organized in cooperation with Liverpool June Moores University on April 23-24, 2019 at University of Kufa. In this edition, numerous manuscripts were submitted to the ICCEET from a wide range of countries all around the world and in different fields of Civil Engineering. The total published papers after accepting them by the editorial board of the conference and performing a peer review process were 63 papers.

The conference in the second edition received potential number of submissions from across the world i.e. Iraq, UK, Turkey, Iran, Thailand, China and Malesia. 84 papers have been accepted by the editorial board of ICCEET 2020 after the stringent screening and review process. ICCEET is an annual technical event and has been aimed to be conducted on April every year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in all over the world followed by the national and international travel restrictions, the conference has been organized in online model via Free Conference Call (FCC) during June 10 - 11, 2020 from Najaf, Iraq. There were more than 80 papers presented from Iraq, Uk, Malesia, Thailand, Iran, and Turkey which were distributed to six individual sessions in accordance to the specific field i.e. structural engineering, highways engineering, geotechnical engineering, environmental engineering, materials, engineering and others. Each presenter were given ten minutes for presentation and five minutes for Q&A discussion on the queries. The chairman of the technical session made sure that the questions and answer sessions were fairly coordinated with the presenters and participants. The conference started at 10:00 am on 10th June with the keynote speakers session by Prof. Louay Mohammed, Louisiana State University, USA and Professor Ahmed Al-Shamma'a, the dean of the College of Engineering, University of Sharja, UAE. Also, an attractive workshop has been conducted on the first day at 7:00 pm by Dr. Kazem Fakharian, Amirkabir University, Iran. Also, we are pleased that more than 800 people from different regions of the world have attended to the different activities of the conference. The conference has been successfully completed with keynote session, workshop and all the presentations.

Dr. Abbas Al-Hdabi

ICCEET2020 Editor

List of Scientific committee members are available in this pdf.

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the proceedings Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing.

The architect plays a great role in influencing the professors and students behavior of the constituent spaces of the architectural form he produces, since the occupation of this space needs to provide his biological, physical and psychological needs, thus positively affecting the performance of the users. The productivity of the individual increases, whether for work for adults or for students. The study dealt with the effect of shaping the architectural form of the buildings in general and the university buildings in particular in achieving psychological stability for professors and students to increase their positive influence and their chances of success as individuals in the society, and discussed the negative effects of these buildings on the professors and students as they design their lives and negative perception of architectural elements, principles and strategies. The researchers conducted some practical experiments regarding the role of each building on the inside of their users in terms of (space capacity or narrowness, high or low ceiling, shape and color of walls and ceiling, straight or curved architectural design lines, The value, as well as the shape and color of the furniture used). This role has been identified by distributing a questionnaire for each of the professors and students about the university building internal and external spaces at the University of Mosul, and collecting the data in special tables and then discussing the results. The architect who design and shape the architectural form of the university buildings must be well thought out as it directly affects (positively or negatively) on both of them of these configurations that he designed.

Traffic congestion is a considerable problem that big cities face and has undesirable consequences such as uncomfortable usage of roads, car accidents, worsening of performance of road networks, air pollution and economic issues. Therefore, governments have been planning to solve this problem and reduce the traffic congestion level (1). Recently, it is observed that Baghdad city has suffered from severe daily traffic congestion. The key reasons include the great increase in the number of private cars and the deterioration of public transit services. The planners tend to building new highways, such as overpasses and underpasses, to accommodate the increase in the traffic volume and alleviate congestion. However, it is noted that this problem has been persisted in several locations in Baghdad city even after the operation of the new overpasses and underpasses. It means that the implemented projects have not efficient in achieving their aim. Thus, it has been important to investigate the reasons behind this failure. This study focused on evaluating the efficiency performance of two selected overpasses at the Al-Shaab quarter and at the Bab al-Muadam place as the congestion is still in its highest level there, especially at peak hours. A traffic analysis study was accomplished involving a collection of traffic data in the two locations and analysing them using the HCS2000 program in order to specify the reasons of poor performance. It was found that level of service is F after construction, therefore the paper proposed number of alternative suggestions to develop their performance.

The use of drains in a regular grid and required depth in the soil are reduced the time of drainage process and soil consolidation considerably. Sombar dam is a project to use optimum seawater flow and flood control to provide agricultural water as well as to develop the area under cultivation of the existing dam in Gholaman village as well as the city of Raz in north Khorasan province, Iran. The purpose of this research is assessing the influence of vertical geotextile drainage (length and spacing), for different permeability ratios (ky/kx), on the dam stability during the construction using GeoStudio2012 software. The analysis is performed using models of Mohr-Coulomb and modified cam clay. The results show that there is a significant effect of the drains for the studied parameters. After 24 months with maximum drain depth (24m) and minimum drain spacing (2m) the values of the studied parameters are closer to each other.

By using water resources management techniques for planning, improvement and supply, optimal use of the available water inside Iraq will achieve. This paper focuses on the management of water resources in Bahr Al-Najaf region, Najaf, Iraq for the expected future water resources and demands. These resources and demands are adopted with continued demands from the current situation to study the adequacy of water resource quantities in the study area. The authors try to answer the question that is the resources are enough or must provide other quantities of surface water and groundwater? and what amount? The results of the study indicate that there is a shortage that occurs in the futurity scenario of 55Mm3 and it is related to the tourism sector. The shortage of water quantity of the futurity scenario can be covered by drilling new wells by portion reach to 85%.

Recently, applying of the waste materials as mineral filler in hot asphalt mixture has many advantage for economic and environmental impacts and also used to improve the hot asphalt mixtures characteristics. In this research, sugar industry waste materials has been used as mineral filler to investigate the achievable prospects to improve hot asphalt mixture properties. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of adding Sugar Waste (SW) materials on the properties of hot mix asphalt in comparison with the State Commission of Roads and Bridges (SCRB, R9) requirements. Two groups of hot asphalt mixtures have been prepared, the first was with the Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) as mineral filler i.e. (control mixture) and the second was prepared with SW materials (modified mixtures). These mixtures have been assessed based on different experimental tests which were Marshall Stability and Flow, Indirect Tensile Strength (ITS), Index of Retained Strength (IRS) and Long Term Aging (LTA). The results indicate that there is an improvement in the mixture properties; slight increase in Marshall Stability, an improvement in Indirect Tensile Strength, enhanced their Marshall stability after aging when tested in accordance to LTA. Furthermore, the modified mixtures comply with (SCRB, R9).

This study elucidate a test methodology to execute the creep tests to assess the performance of the hot asphalt mixture (HMA) beams by utilizing the bending beam rheometer (BBR) and explain the most issues related to performing this test. Firstly, a comprehensive samples preparation technique has illustrated and the experimental data were presented to evaluate the reliability of this technique. To perform this test, one aggregate gradation and two types of polymer modifiers with three percent of modification for each type of polymers were used. However, experimental results showed that decreasing the testing temperature by an increment of 10 oC can reduce the deflection by 95.6, and 99.13%. Decreasing the temperature from 25 to 15 and 10 oC can increase the creep stiffness by 12.6 and 36.6 time. Which indicate that temperature was a predominant factor affecting the most responses of the hot asphalt Mixtures. besides polymer modification significant effect on the stiffness which is clear that using 4, 6, and 8 % of SBS can increase the creep stiffness by 9.8, 44.6 and 196 % respectively. Although, the hybrid modification had been increased the creep stiffness for asphalt mixtures by 16.3, 72.5, and 186.7% respectively.

Gypsum and anhydrite rocks are frequently found in numerous countries of the world in extensive deposits, the huge region in middle and west of Iraq is classified as a gypseous soil. Stone columns are non-time dependent foundation technique used to increase the structural stability and to reduce the structural deformations of soil. In the present study, the finite element method is used as a tool to utilized the effect of using stone columns with geogrid as reinforcing material for treatment gypsiferous subgrade soil under embankment during both construction and consolidation conditions. The results show that decreasing the stone column spacing leads to a considerable decrease in the settlement beneath the embankment, especially below the center line, reduction in the settlement of about 60% and when using geosynthetic material the reduction about 75%. Also, increases the excess pore water pressure immediately after the construction of each lift of the embankment and then falls with and without using geosynthetic material. The vertical stress in the gypsiferous subgrade soil increases at a very small rate especially in the early stages and decreases as stone columns spacing decreases.

This search report is an experimental result on load –deflection relationship of various ratios of longitudinal reinforcement for six simply supported reinforced concrete beams. All specimens' dimensions are (200×300×1750mm) and they were tested under two-point loading. Concrete compressive strength was (37.0-40.7 MPa). The variables studied in this work were tensile steel ratio (0.46-3.0%), bar diameter (12, 16 and 25mm) and number of bars (2 or 3 bars). It is concluded that for low reinforcement values (ρ < 0.013), an increase in ρ is sharply reduced the ductility index μ_d. However, this effect decreases with increase in ρ values. All beams exhibit insufficient displacement ductility (less than 3) when reinforced with ρ/ρ_b > 0.4. The increase in longitudinal steel ratio using 2 bars is more significant than when using 3 bars in yield and ultimate strengths of specimens as well as the deflection values at yield load, but the deflection values have gradual decrease at the ultimate load as a result of ductility decrease. It was concluded that the increase in longitudinal reinforcement ratio causes an increase in yield and ultimate strength of beams, these increments are compatible with the steel ratio i.e. by increasing the ρ by 50% the strength is increased about this ratio. As well as, the decreasing in ductility compatible with increasing the ρ by 50% the ductility decreased in about 50% on average.

One of the most important properties about the durability of concrete is its resistance to sulfate attack. In this search, the effect of sulfate salts on reinforced polymer concrete columns was studied, the columns buried in two types of soil, sand and clay, in depth of 3 m, in one of the agricultural areas in the holy city of Karbala. The sandy soil comprised 10.609% of SO3, the clay soil 2.61%SO3. A compressive test for reinforced concrete columns, compressive test for concrete cubes and a tensile splitting test for concrete cylinders were applied, absorption, voids ratio and density also measured. A ratio of polymer / cement = 7.5% was found to reduce the compressive strength of polymer reinforced concrete columns buried in clay soil at ages 60, 150 and 240 days by 23.97, 20.28 and 24.96%. When buried in sandy soil, the decrease in strength was 31.12, 20.03 and 37.52 % respectively, in comparison to the reference column. From this it can be concluded that the use of a polymer (SBR) has negatively affected the strength of reinforced concrete columns after 150 days so is not recommended for use in concrete facilities which are subject to attack by sulfate salts.

Analysis of finite slopes is a common practical problem which faces the geotechnical engineering. The aim of the slope analysis is to predict the safety factor against shear failure of the slope which is the ratio between the resisting and the disturbing forces developed along an assumed slip surface. Presence of seismic forces due earthquake lead to more critical situation. The deterministic approaches are employed for this purpose. These approaches do not take into account the uncertainty related to soil properties and/or seismic loads in their procedures. In the present work, a probabilistic approach is adopted using the Monte Carlo simulation technique to study the effect of uncertainty due to soil properties (unit weight, angle of internal friction and cohesion) and seismic accelerations (vertical and horizontal). The results of the work demonstrate that the use of probabilistic approach will yield more accurate results for estimating the safety factor and then economic design of the slope. Also, the results reveal that the statistical properties for the soil shear strength parameters have significant impact on the standard deviation of the output (factor of safety), while the soil unit weight and horizontal acceleration have small effect. However, the vertical acceleration has no effect on it. On other hand, the mean of the output distribution does not affect by the statistical parameters of all input variables. All cases simulated in this study give reliability index (RI) less than 3. Hence, RI values indicate that there are unsatisfactory level of safety for the slope subjected to seismic loading. Finally, the soil shear strength parameters have the same positive significant impact on the safety factor. But, the soil properties and the coefficient of the horizontal acceleration should be selected carefully in the stability analysis due to the effect of their uncertainty on the analysis results.

Roller-compacted concrete is defined as that concrete of no-slump consistency in its' unhardened state that is transported, placed, and compacted by roller compaction. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of using steel fiber reinforcement on the properties of roller compacted concrete in which, 5%, and 10% of the cementitious materials were replaced by cement kiln dust. Different contents of steel fibers were used to reinforce concrete which were compacted using a manually controlled roller device. The results showed that the compressive strength of the roller compacted concrete with 5% replacement of cementitious materials increased by 19, 25, 32, and 42%, when the concrete was reinforced using steel fibers amounts of 30, 50, 70, and 90 Kg per m³ of concrete respectively. The corresponding increases in the flexural strength were (15, 34, 37, and 40%). Similar increases were recorded for specimens with 10% replacement. The research had confirmed the feasibility of using steel fiber reinforcement to enhance the properties of this kind of concrete to be used in airport pavements. Substitution of 5 to 10 % of the cementitious materials by cement kiln dust will save energy and contribute in decreasing the impact of pollutants on the environment.

The presented work is providing the results of experimental study to investigate the impact of elevated temperature on load resistance related to the concrete beams that are reinforced via the glass fibre reinforced polymers (GFRPs). There are four GFRP reinforced concrete beams with width (250mm) and height (160mm) as cross-sectional dimensions, also (1250mm) as total length have been designed according to ACI440.1R-15[1], cast using normal weight concrete and considered in the experimental tests. One specimen has been put to test at ambient temperature, while other three specimens were firstly exposed to increased temperatures (350, 500, and 600 °C), after that subjected to a monolithically increased one point load up to failure. The effect of increased temperature on load displacement relationships as well as the failure modes regarding tested beams were discussed and put to comparison with the results related to the control beam (20°C). The experimental tests results have indicated that the shear failure is the pre-dominate failure mode with regard to all the tested GFRP-beams before and after exposing to elevated temperature. Results have also shown that in comparison to the control beam (20°C), reduction in loading capacity of heated reinforced concrete beams have been 4%, 15.5% and 19% when exposing to temperature of 350°C, 500°C and 600°C respectively.

This paper studies the effect of the specimen sizes and shapes on the settlement behaviour of sand soil with gypsum from Al-Najaf city in Iraq. The investigation aimed to verify the impact of the studied parameters of the prediction of the settlement using reliability-based analysis. Three sets of soil samples with different shapes and sizes, 60 mm diameter Oedometer cell, 60 x 60 mm box container and 100 x100 mm box container were remoulded with three different densities related to the maximum dry density, 100%, 95% and 92%. The results reveal that different settlement behaviours were determined at several normal stress levels during the soaking process. The samples exhibited reductions in volume due to the applied stresses, while under the same level of normal stress, the final settlement values due to soaking were higher for the samples with a lower value of initial relative compaction. Further, the test results showed that at any initial relative compaction and applied vertical stress, the higher settlement value is achieved by the larger square specimen (100x100)mm.

An experimental study of simply supported ferrocement timber composite members is presented in this paper. An adhesively bonded connection is examined. Sikadur 31 thixotropic epoxy resin adhesive is used as a shear connector layer. The main purpose of the research is generating data and providing information about the structural behaviour of proposed ferrocement timber composite (FTC) beams. Several parameters studied including thickness, and width of timber beams, the number of wire mash layers of ferrocement slab and the presence and absence of a bonding layer of the shear connector and the effect of sag and hog bending moment. Ferrocement-timber composite (FTC) beams are a relatively new civil engineering solution and their behaviour should be investigated to develop relevant methods for calculating their resistance. The slip and the pinnacle load limit for connector were resolved tentatively in two push-out tests. The authors examined the stiffness and the strength of the connection used to join a ferrocement slab with a timber beam. These parameters are fundamental for planning composite beam, on the grounds that the conduct of a composite beam framework is relied upon the solidness and the quality of its associations. The composite beams specimens were subjected to a three-point loading test. Measurements also show that the connection could be considered perfect as the slip remains very little during the test (except at failure). Tests disclosed excellent loading capacity of the suggested beams relative to their weight. The use of epoxy resin can be providing appropriate bonding between the two layers. The energy absorption increases with increasing dimensions of timber. The maximum increase in load with increasing the depth of timber (72.5%) when the thickness of timber Change from (85 to 190) mm.

This work comprises a survey on former work on the response of structures resting on soil and method used in the analysis of problems. Several techniques were used earlier by other researchers, some of these based on closed form or series solutions and the other problems were solved using numerical technique (finite differences or finite elements). Beam, plate or 3D solid elements were used in the finite elements to model structural members whereas spring elements were used to model the soil. Also, the finite difference was used to formulate the problems of plates or beams placed on Winkler springs. Moreover, the series solution of the differential equations using Fourier series programmed in various computer languages was used in the previous studies to analysed such problems. The numerical analysis showed to be very effective in solving problems involving structures resting on the ground.

In construction industry, projects are usually completed in a budget more than what is estimated for, finished in a time more than the contracted time, not executed properly according to the specifications, and not constructed with the client satisfaction. The thing that causes lowering the profits of contractors, clients losing, time to market prolonging, and other consequences. Projects execution on or under the budgeted money requires valid practices, precise decisions, good strategies, and needs developing new techniques, such as cost reduction technique. Thus, this paper mainly aims to relieving part of the big concerns of those who specialized in construction media respecting construction cost overruns by determining the most economical structural design, which can be realized by studying, quantifying, analysing cost, and comparing a number of structural elements with different dimensions, different design combinations, and different materials proportions. Then, the optimum structural element, the element that meets the design requirements, comprises the least materials quantities, and costs least, was selected in case to achieve an economical construction.

In steel structures, bolted joints are used to connect structural elements. Due to the ease of its making, the square and rectangle arrangement of bolts are the prevalent pattern in these structural joints. To investigate the effect of changing the arrangement of bolts on the bearing capacity of single shear joint, square, circular and diamond are the patterns of bolts that have been chosen in this study. Nine specimens represent all these configurations experimentally have been tested under tension load. The results indicated that the highest bearing capacity of a single shear connection could be achieved using a square arrangement of bolts. While stresses could not be equally distributed around holes in circular and diamond pattern specimens of the same connection.

Forecasting of municipal water demand is essential for the decision-making process in the water industry in particular for countries that suffered from water scarcity. An accurate prediction of water demand improves the water distribution systems' performance. This study analyses the water consumption data of Baghdad city using a signal pre-treatment processing approach aiming at a stochastic signal extraction of such data. An autoregressive (AR) model is then applied to predict monthly water consumption. Our prediction model has been trained and tested using a water consumption data captured from Al-Wehda treatment plant between 2006 and 2015. The results reveal that applying signal pre-treatment method was an effective approach for detecting stochastics of our water consumption data, and the hybrid model was reliable for the prediction of water demand.

Hollow-core slab (HCS) is a voided slab that has longitudinal voids made by recycled plastic pipes that were placed in the middle of the slab thickness where the flexural stress is minimum. These longitudinal voids can reduce the volume of slabs to more than 30% which leads to save raw materials and satisfying sustainability, economic considerations, and a clean environment. The experimental program comprised casting six slabs with dimensions of 1700mm × 435mm ×125mm, one of them was solid slab as a reference slab and the other five slabs were HCSs. These slabs were divided into two groups, the first group consisted of three HCSs with different numbers of longitudinal voids, and the second group consisted of three HCSs with different diameters of longitudinal voids. The results of the test showed that increasing numbers of longitudinal voids can save the ultimate load with percentages 93.47%, 87.63%, and 82.92%, with increasing the ultimate deflection by 8.72%, 21.57%, and 28.31%. Also, increasing the diameter of longitudinal voids can save the ultimate load with percentages 93.37%, 90.01%, and 87.63% and increase the ultimate deflection by 6.58%, 13.26%, and 21.57% respectively when compared with the reference slab.

In this research, the main aim of this paper is to develop a statistical model for the total capacity of the roundabout as a function of influence traffic features and driver factors. The variables remain predicted to simulate the characteristics of the traffic that have most influence the capacity of the roundabout; classified as traffic conditions such as critical headway, follow-up headway, and driver behavior are involved in the building of the model by using SPSS statistical program. 30 samples have been taken, each sample representing an average of 15 readings for 15 minutes, equivalent to 450 readings for each of Critical Time Headway, follow up headway for each lane (Right, middle, Left) and Driver Factor for model one, for model 2 only Follow up time headway for the Middle lane and Driver Factor have been used. All tests for checking outliers, normality and correlation between independent variables with each other have been used for both models. Model 2 is the most significant with R2 = 91%. Validation of Observed and Theoretical Capacity is strongly liner with a Correlation coefficient = 0.938, the statistical model proves that the Follow-up headway time and driver factor have been influenced effect on the total capacity of the roundabout.

This study aims is to investigating the structural capacity of fibbers reinforced deep beams with opening under pure torsion. The deep beams were made of high strength concrete. The openings were made in the web with different shapes (circular and square), sizes and located at the mid span. Seventeen deep beam specimens were casted and they experimentally investigated throughout this study. The constants in this study are beam dimensions and compressive strength for concrete. The effects of the shape, size and locations of opening on the torsional behaviour of deep beams under torsional loading are studied in the paper. The results showed the square opening is weakest due to the concentration effect which increases the stresses and the opening size participate main role in strength of deep without steel fiber. Also, the steel fibre in which the presence of steel fiber causes increasing in the torsion strength about (30-32) of tested specimens.

The engineering properties inspection of green concrete resulted from using Metakaolin to replace cement and crushed tiles as waste coarse aggregates is the main aim in this work study. Different concrete mixtures were prepared in order to obtain 30 MPa target strength for concrete in compression. The crushed tile as waste aggregates is used to substitute crushed gravel as natural aggregate with ratios of 0 to 100% in the concrete mixtures and the mixture properties were inspected. It is revealed that employing Metakaolin in the replacement of cement and crushed tile to substitute a ratio of crushed gravel affects all concrete properties such as; elastic modulus, tensile strength, and compressive strength. The difference relies on the percentages of Metakaolin and aggregate substituted. The optimum percentages for both Metakaolin and waste aggregate were found to be 20% and 25% respectively which can be used to produce green concrete with acceptable properties and solve a very important environmental problem. The ACI 318 code equations for estimating the spilt cylinder and modulus of elasticity are used and it is revealed that these equations give overestimated values for green concrete having waste aggregate with percentage exceeding 25%.

Turbulent flow over stepped spillways can be considered the most significant flow that can cause severe problems at the downstream side, near the toe of the structure, such as sediment erosion which normally occurs due to the high amount of water energy. The presence of turbulent flow over the steps can cause cavitation damages due to pressure differences over the steps. The turbulent flow, which is induced at certain times of the year, especially during the flooding seasons, is examined experimentally and numerically in this study. Flow measurements were conducted using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system in a hydraulic flume where the dam break condition is applied in order to achieve the skimming turbulent flow. Two cases of stepped spillways were tested, normal stepped spillways and gabion stepped spillways. For each case, measurements of the instantaneous turbulent velocity field were taken at different locations of the physical models of a slope of (1V:2H). A comparison has been conducted between the gabion and normal steps to assess the required time to attach skimming flow. The results indicated that the presence of the porous media could increase the required time to attach skimming flow.

The dimension analysis is solve to more difficult problem, simplify to difficult equation, reduce the many parameters in equations and search on the parameters more effect of equations. Increase the evaporation from soils and surfaces water with increase transpiration from plants because of raising in temperatures and reducing in humidity are problems of the times which effect on reducing of water. To solve the problems must research on formulas which give actual effects to control on the water reduction by evapotranspiration. In this study will search on methods to solve the crop coefficient (K_c) and evapotranspiration (ET) with multi variables. In this research will be driven equations by statistic of excel program of reference evapotranspiration (ET_o) and crop evapotranspiration (ET_c) with respect to. From equations and drawings were obtained on maximum value of correlation coefficient(R²). In addition to use the dimension analysis to multi variables (time, number hours of days, relative humidity, change of moisture content, hydraulic conductivity, root depth and temperature) with maximum value of (R²). Researching on equations and methods help to obtain results instead of going back to tables and curves as well reducing field tests that are tired. From equations of ET_o and ET_c are obtained on R²=0.999 and R²=0.997, respectively from data. From statistic and dimension analysis equations are obtained on result very close with field data with little difference 10% and 4.28%, respectively.

An accurate asphalt mix design is a big issue to produce high quality pavement layer. Introduce a computer program that can be used to design different types of asphalt concrete layers i.e. base, binder and surface course will be very helpful. Therefore, the authors are introducing Asphalt Mix Design by MATLAB Program (AMDMAP) software to be used as a replacement to the manual calculations. The input data such as the characteristics of the used materials and lab work results must be available to run this program. The main output will be indicating the optimum asphalt content. Also, the relationships between Marshall Stability, Marshall flow, mixture density, Air Voids, Voids in Mineral Aggregate and Voids Filled with Asphalt vs different contents of asphalt will be produced. Mixture properties at optimum asphalt content will be indicated. Furthermore, the results will be compared with the standard specification of roads in Iraq.

A double curvature arch dam considers as complex mega structure built for the hydropower or agriculture national goals. Arch dam cost effective is less compared to other types of dams, construction a safe and stable of arch dam depending on intelligent formation of dam layouts. This work conducted to explore the structural behavior of the double curvature arch concrete dam under the variation effect of the distance in between the contraction joints. The dam blocks divided and distributed as seven intervals of the distance between the blocks of the dam as 15,17.5,20,22.5,25, 27.5, and 30 m. Stresses analysis of arch dam conducted to study the effects of these intervals on the structural behavior of double curvature concrete dam when the water in the reservoir at the operation level. Arch dam data input considered the Nonlinearity in both of dam shape and concrete materials properties to evaluate the maximum and minimum principal stresses at the top of the crown cantilever, and the maximum principal stresses along the crest path of the upstream face. Finite element and building information modeling tools (Revit – Abaqus6.13) were considered during the modeling and analysis process. The results show that the dam must be simulated for a specific interval of distance between each two contraction joints are 20 to 22.5 meter and the optimum selection to this interval of contractions joints leads to increase the structural stability status of the arch dam.

A comparative analysis of the dynamic behavior of two prestressed concrete girder bridges was implemented. The first bridge was designed with AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) type III girders while the second bridge was designed with the new (FIB) Florida I-Beam girders. Both bridges have the same length, width and girder depth. However, six AASHTO Type III girders were used in the first bridge versus only four FIB girders for the second bridge. The bridges response to dynamic loads was obtained with the aid of a sophisticated finite element model. Modal and time history analyses were performed for the bridges to identify the dynamic properties, behavior, and responses of the two bridges. The dynamic properties and the deflections of the bridges were obtained and compared for different girders and spans. Outputs from the finite element model indicated that although FIB bridge has less number of girders, the deflections of FIB bridge were less than their corresponding values from AASHTO bridge.

Najaf city in southern Iraq has developed around the burial site of Imam Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohamed. The grave of Imam Ali was the first element of Najaf, and the only reason behind its emergence¹. At the same time, the city has positively impacted the number of Shi'a pilgrims by providing them with services. This mutual relationship between the shrine and the city has autonomously evolved throughout history and has always been a mutually co-dependent relationship. However, since 1954, when the Iraqi central government created wide roads around the shrine and through the city to accommodate motor vehicles, the relationship slightly altered². This paper evaluates the current relationship by exploring the historical evolution of the city. For this purpose, three questions will be examined: 1) To what extent have Shi'a Muslim beliefs impacted the design of the city? 2) How did the city and Ali's shrine evolve together? 3) How have the shrine, the main market of the city, the Wadi Al Salam cemetery, and the residential sector, functioned and influenced the evolution of the city as a whole?

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been used to derive a mathematical model to relate the length of a gradual expansion (Le) with the others of hydraulic and geometric parameters of the flow in rectangular channels under supercritical flow conditions. Five models with different length of expansion 30 cm, 50 cm, 75 cm, 100 cm, and 125 cm were simulated in the CFD v18.2 software and verified by experimental data which have been measured into a laboratory flume. All models of CFD software were processed depending on k – epsilon viscous models while the mesh was built by adapting the multi-zone method. Five values of inlet velocity of flow were applied in the runs of the program to each model of 1.5 m/s, 1.6 m/s, 1.7 m/s, 1.8 m/s, and 2 m/s. Depths of water along the channel were measured in multi-section, before expansion, within expansion and after expansion. The results of CFD analysis showed that the minimum length of expansion to maintain the flow within supercritical regime was 0.35 m and the ratio of (Le/W) equal to 1.167. The results of the non-dimensional relationship were compared with the experimental results and the comparison showed a significant correlation where the highest percentage difference was 13.8 %. The coefficient of determination for this equation was 0.973.

Two-Way Two-Lane (TWTL) highways have been developed rapidly throughout the world, and they represent a large percentage of the road network spread about the world. In Iraq, this type of road still has also been adopted widely. Therefore, this study tries to investigate the two-way, two-lane highway characteristics because very few studies have been devoted to studying this topic in Iraq. Three sections of this type of highway have been selected along Al-Mishkhab city as a case study. The data collected include flow, headway, number passing and speed. A speed gun was used to measured speed in the selected sections. The passing frequency was high and amounted to about 240passings/hr. Further, the speed distribution was normal. The results of this study indicate that the number of passing vehicles is up to 240 passes/hr/km at 1200 veh/hr. In addition, as flow increases more than 1200 veh/hr, the number of passing vehicles decreases because of absence the adequate gap for such passing.

Phosphorus is crucial to the growth of the skeletons and the living cell. However, elevated phosphate concentrations represent a problem due to its grave impacts on human health, animal and also because of its effects on water quality and economy. This research studies the applicability of filtration-electrocoagulation (filtration - EC) system to remove phosphate from wastewater when calcium is present as competitor ions. In laboratory batch trials, the ability of zeolite filter-electrocoagulation system to eliminate phosphate from artificial wastewater samples, in the presence of calcium as competitor ions, was tested. The research was initiated by studying the ability of the electrocoagulation method (EC), as a separated treatment unit, to remove phosphate from solutions that containing calcium ions. In this phase of the study, the influence initial pH, current densities and electrolysing period. Then, the new method, filtration-EC, was applied to treat solutions (with identical chemical composition to that used in the first phase) considering the effects of the initial pH, current densities, contact periods (in the filter), electrolysing period (in the EC cell) and zeolite dosage. The results of this research evidenced that the filtration - EC system completely removes phosphate from calcium-phosphate solution at pH, current density, dosage of zeolites, contact period and electrolysing period of 7, 2.0 mA.cm⁻², 150.0 g, 30.0 minutes and 20.0 minutes, respectively.

One of the significant sources of water pollution is construction industry as it requires considerable freshwater amounts during manufacturing of concrete, mortars and other construction materials. Vast volume of the used water is discharged back to source of freshwater as extremely polluted effluent (high level of suspended solids and pH), which is categorized as hazardous wastewaters. Therefore, environmental regulations prevent discharging these effluents before conducting adequate treatment. As a result, efficient treatment solutions for these effluents become necessary in the field of construction industry. In this context, this research aims at treating construction industry effluents using an integrated method, which involves adsorption (AD) and electrochemical (EL) techniques, to treat effluents of concentration sites. Turbidity and chemical oxygen demand (COD) were selected as pollutants models due to their wide occurrence in this type of effluents. 200 mg of activated carbon (AC) and four aluminum electrodes were utilized to construct the adsorption and electrochemical units, respectively. Aluminum and AC were used here as they are economically efficient, safe, and have a proven efficiency in waters/wastewaters treatment. The influences of initial pH, retention time (RT) and electrolyzing time (ET) on the removal of COD and turbidity using the new method (AD-EL method) were examined. The results demonstrated the AD-EL decreased COD and turbidity by about 72% and 85%, respectively. The perfect conditions to reach this removal levels were pH, RT and ET of 6, 30 minutes and 20 minutes, respectively.

Organic matter (OM) is commonly occur in freshwaters, and it poses a threat for health and environment. For instance, high OM concentrations increase the sludge volume and cost of the treatment process in turn. Remediation of water or wastewater from OM has thus become an important issue for the treatment industry. Electrocoagulation (EC) is one of the preferred techniques of treatment for remediation of water from OM and other polluting chemicals, as it utilises simple and easy to run machines and tools, it requires less working area in comparison with conventional methods, and it is more rapidly pollutant separation than other methods. EC technique could be described by passing an electric current through sacrificial electrodes to produce metal hydroxides that separate dissolved contaminants from aqueous phase. On the other hand, the EC method has a limited efficiency in the treatment of high OM concentrations. The present study is thus intended to develop a new technique that combines an EC reactor with an ultrasound (US) field to remediate water from OM. The EC reactor, in this study, was made from four aluminium plats (500 cm² in gross area) and plastic container (1 L in volume). The operation of this combined method was optimised for the effects of key factors, such as the pH of solution, electrodes gapping, and current density. The obtained results proved that the US-EC technique removed 97.50 % of OM after 5.0 minutes of US irradiation, 20 minutes of electrolysing at current density 4.0 mA. cm⁻², initial pH 7 and gap between electrodes 5.0 mm.

Occurrence of iron in the potable water is responsible for several issues related to environmental, economic, and public health. Water remediation from iron is very vital step for ensuring the safety of potable water. Hence, many treatment techniques, such as chemical precipitation and reverse osmosis, have been proposed in recent literature. However, these methods are either expensive or possess some negative environmental impacts. This paper therefore studies the possibility of utilizing farms' wastes (straw and reed) to produce a filtration system for remediating water from iron ions. This natural filtration cell (NFC) was manufactured by mixing equal weights of straw and reed (1:1 ratio), while the artificial iron solution (10.0 mg.L⁻¹) was synthesized by dissolving suitable amount of iron sulfates in deionized water. This artificial solution was treated in the NFC at different retention times (RTS) (ranging from 10 to 90 minutes) and initial pH of solution (IPS) (ranging from 4 to 9). The remaining iron in the solution, during the course of filtration process, was calculated utilizing a spectrophotometer and a standard iron cuvette test. The outcomes of this study revealed that 33.1% of iron was absorbed at RTS and IPS of 80 minutes and 7.0, respectively. Even though the research's outcomes proved that the NFC possesses an acceptable capacity for iron removal from water, light brownish color was formed in the produced water, so another suitable treatment technique is needed to decolorize the produced.

Limestone is originally generated from sedimentary rocks that are mainly made from CaCO₃, the latter in turn is made from calcites and aragonites. This chemical composition of limestone makes it a suitable material for water/wasters treatment as these elements are identified for their capability to adsorb several pollutants. Although, limestone is environmentally sustainable material and is broadly applied in water filtration, it is has a moderate affinity for heavy metals. Thus, due to this serious drawback, limestone becomes less attracting for researchers. Therefore, this study is aiming at producing an environmentally sustainable filtration system by mixing limestone and activated carbon, and applies it to remove heavy metal (iron) from synthetic wastewaters. The ability of the new filtration media, which was made of 50% activated carbon and 50% limestone (1:1 ratio), to remove iron from 10 mg/L synthetic iron solution. The latter was created using ferrous sulphate heptahydrate and deionised water. The removal of iron was optimised for the influence of the absorbent dosage (AD) (500-1000 g), detention time (DT) (10-120 minutes) and pH of solution (4-10). The outcomes of the experiments evidenced the capacity of the new filter to efficiently remediate wastewater from iron. Where, 1000 g of this filter needed only 95 minutes, at pH of 6.0, to completely remove iron ions from the synthetic solution.

Dyes are one of the most widely used materials in many industrial fields as coloring agents such as textile, wood, and food manufacturing. As these dyes end up in a water source, this high rate of dyes use represents one of the severe risks to the environment and health organizations. Most of the dyes are considered as highly toxic compounds and dangerous to the environment and human health as it consists of heavy metals, carcinogenic elements, oxygen – absorbing chemicals, and other toxic compounds that need to be well treated before discharge them back to environment. As a result, federal legislations have directed that all industrials that waste dyes-containing effluents to ensure a full dyes removal before discharging their effluents back to water bodies. Industries have applied many different treatment methods including physical, chemical, and biological methods in order to meet the required legislations. In recent years, many industries started to use electrocoagulation as the main treatment method. This study is focusing on using electrocoagulation (EC) method to remediate artificial colored effluents from coloring agents (brilliant green dye (BG dye) as a model). Electrocoagulation reactor, uses aluminum electrodes, was employed to remove this dye under different initial pH (40-10.0), direct currents (DC) (244-732 mA), and spaces between electrodes (SBE) (4-12 mm). According to the findings obtained, EC was highly efficient in treatment of colored effluents; 95.3% of BG dye was removed at treatment time, SBE, DC and pH of 30 minutes, 4 mm, 488 mA and 7.0, respectively.

There are many natural elements that cause pollution of groundwater and surface water. Nitrate is one of those pollutants that could cause serious problems to the aquatic life and human health. Consequently, environmental organisations and most of the governments around the world limited nitrates in potable water to 50 and 10 mg/L for adults and babies, respectively. The current research explores the removability of nitrate from industrial effluents using an electrochemical cell (ESE). The latter is a laboratory-scale batch flow cell having steel electrodes. The experiments were conducted using nitrates solution having100 mg/L. This investigation also studied the impact distance between the electrodes (SBE), treatment period (TP), current density value (CDV) and the initial pH on nitrates removal. Box-Behnken design technique (BBD) has been utilized to optimize the impacts of TP, CDV, SBE and pH on the removal of nitrates by ESE and also to generate a regression model to simulate the removability of nitrates by the ESE. The results of this investigation indicated that the optimum removal of nitrates was 93.4% that achieved at TP of 60 minutes, SBE of 0.5 cm, CDV of 3 mA/cm² and initial pH of 6. Furthermore, the developed model's findings were in a respectable compatibility with the experimental findings (R²=0.904). In conclusion, the current investigation indicated that the ESE has good capacity to remove nitrate.

Incidence of fluoride concentrations in drinking water above the allowable limit (1.5 mg/L) leads to varied health issues. However, fluoride concentration below 1.5 mg/L in drinking water is useful for teeth and bones health. A considerable concentration of fluoride is naturally released to the sources of freshwaters from the geological environment, specifically the groundwater, because of the weathering and seepage of water phenomena influences. Unfortunately, nowadays world population depend on groundwater as the main drinking water source, which means those people are exposed to fluoride contaminations. As a result, contamination of groundwater with fluoride has been lately considered as a universal grave issue. Although fluoride could be removed from drinking water using efficient methods, such as reverse osmosis and filtrations, there is a challenge to develop a cost-effective practical removal method. This study examines the efficiency of an economically-efficient a hybrid filtration cell (HFC), which utilizes limestone and activated carbons, for fluorides removal from water. Batch flow experiments were conducted using HFC to remediate artificial water from fluorides. Additionally, the influences of initial pH, initial concentration of fluoride (IFC), water temperature (WT) and adsorbent dosage (AD) were optimized, using Box–Behnken approach, to reach the highest removal of fluorides. The results demonstrated that fluoride could be completely removed from artificial water when the HFC is run at pH of 5.0, IFC of 30 mg/L, AD of 30 mg/L and WT of 313 K.

Five proposed simply supported RC beams were numerically tested by finite element method using ABAQUS software to investigate their behavior and shear strength when strengthened by embedded through section technique (ETS). All beams have the same dimensions of (160 × 250 ×1140) mm and were insufficient reinforced in shear. One beam is taken as a control beam. While, the other four beams were strengthened ETS CFRP bars and divided into two groups. The first group is with 13mm ETS CFRP bars (one bar per section). While, the second group is with 10mm ETS CFRP bars (two bars per section). For all groups, two styles of ETS inclination are considered, vertical and inclined by 45°. From the numerical tests, it was found that using ETS with 2φ10 inclined CFRP bars is the most effective technique for enhancing both the first cracking load about 100% and ultimate load capacity about 86%.

This paper investigates the influence of construction joints on the behavior of reinforced self-compacting concrete (SCC) slabs in flexure. The experimental scheme involves constructing and testing four slab specimens with dimensions of 450mm×450mm×60mm. One of the specimens is without construction joint as a reference, the second is of vertical construction joint at mid-span of the slab, the third is of horizontal construction joint at mid-depth and the fourth is of construction joint with key-shaped at mid-span. The outcomes of this investigation revealed that the influence of construction joint on the first crack load was more significant than that on the ultimate load. The slab with key-shaped construction joint gave better performance with regard to first crack load and ultimate bearing capacity as compared with the other cases with reduction percentages of 15% and 9.5% respectively as compared with the reference specimen, while the slab with horizontal construction joint in mid-depth represented the less efficiency case with reduction percentages of 40% and 22.8% respectively. Also, the load-deflection relationship becomes stiffer after the first crack load for the slabs with construction joint comparing with the reference specimen.

In this current study can be split into two aims next its two aims. The first aim was to study the effectiveness of steel fibre ratio from (0 to 2.5%) on the flexural action of RPC continuous beams. The other aim was to investigate the effectiveness of longitudinal reinforcement bar on the flexural behavior of RPC continuous beams by using (CFRP and GFRP). Therefore, seven continuous beams consist of two span were searched under one-concentrated load for each span. All specimens had the same dimensions 150 mm width, 250 mm depth and 2700 mm length. The experimental outcomes display that the continuous samples made with RPC had an excellent compressive strength and that the maximum load improved when steel fibre ratio increased. The maximum load of the continuous sample was also discover to be improved when the using of CFRP bar as a longitudinal reinforcement ratio. In supplement, the maximum load of the continuous beam was decrease when using GFRP bar as a longitudinal reinforcement ratio.

An asphalt pavements require to a wide variety of raw materials, costs and energy in a construction and repair processes. The using of recycled and waste materials in the pavement industry is one branch of the sustainability policy which is leading to substantial reductions in material, cost, and energy, as well as environmental enhancement. This research aims to evaluate the impact of reusing RAP materials in the production of recycled asphalt mixtures and investigate the mechanical characteristics depending on the criteria of mixture strength under affecting various testing conditions as a sustainable design method. Three proportions of RAP materials (12.5, 25, and 50 %) were added to two types of mixtures these used in surface and base layers. one type of softening agent (vacuum residue liquid asphalt) was used to restore the RAP binder properties. Several laboratory experiments were carried out on the control and recycled asphalt mixtures such as Marshall stability and flow, indirect tensile strength and the resilient modulus. The results indicated that the adding of RAP materials with virgin binder resulted in improving the strength and mechanical properties of recycled asphalt mixtures, while the using of vacuum residue liquid asphalt as a softening agent in recycled mixtures has given impressive results in improving the durability and workability.

The use of concrete reinforced with steel fibers has emerged as an effective material which has the advantages to be used in the most unconventional situations in reinforced concrete structures. These advantages involve reinforcements in structures that intend to resist loads in extreme conditions or change in the type of use, design and or construction errors, degradation of materials (carbonation or corrosion of reinforcement) and also the possible occurrence of accidents such as fires, floods, gusts of wind and earthquakes. In addition, the increasing use of this reinforcement system requires the development of more conclusive studies regarding the characteristics and behaviour of the steel fibers, as well as a critical evaluation of this material and its techniques. This manuscript presents a review on the interaction between steel fibre and the concrete substrate. Initially, a brief description of some fibers materials is made, followed by a summary of some works on adhesion between steel fibres and concrete under static loads. Finally, a summary of the few works on the main contribution of the steel fibers application to increase the strength after the cracking of concrete matrix during loading.

Few researchers have study the branching column and there is no enough information about it. The objects of this research is to study the structural behaviour of the branching columns and how it effects on the form-finding. These branching columns are experimentally tested and preparation tables to assist with design of it. Experimental work was carried out on the seventeen specimens. All specimens have been tested under static load then evaluated for maximum failure load, maximum vertical displacement and failure mode. The studied variables are the ratio of horizontal spacing between branches to total width of specimen, number of branches and number of branching level. The results showed that when the ratio between the width of the specimen and the overall width was increased, failure load and buckling load was decreased and maximum vertical displacement was increased. When the number of branches increases, the failure load increases slightly, with the vertical displacement increasing. The failure load, buckling load decreased and the vertical displacement greatly increased as the number of branching levels increases. All specimens have failed with buckling mode, and had less failure load and buckling load than the reference specimen.

This paper presents an experimental investigation of axial load projected onto concrete filled steel tube (CFST) columns and study the effect of using iron filings in the filled concrete mixture to improve the ultimate compressive strength, ductility index and energy absorption. Twelve column specimens was used in this study, three as reference and nine iron filings (CFST) column specimens as a partial replacement of sand by 2.5%, 5%, and 10% with 6 cubics,9 cylinder and 3 prisms samples of concrete of each column specimens. Three types of stub, short and long column. These tests include performing slump, compressive strength, tensile strength and flexural strength. The results show that the concrete with iron filings have the highest compressive strength at the age of 28 days'ageof 49.53Mpa,52,3Mpa and 55.63 Mpa, namely more than control mix by 11%,17% and 25%. However, ductility index and energy absorption of column specimens with iron filings become the highest at the age of 28 days.

This paper aims at studying the flexural behavior of continuous composite beams casting from normal concrete and Slurry Infiltrated Fiber Concrete (SIFCON) by using DIC (Digital Image Correlation) technique. The DIC results are compared with the standard methods measurement. DIC is a new non-contacting and non-destructive optical technique based on digital photographs for the tested area to compare them at different stages of loading. Tests were performed on three full-scale T-section continuous beam specimens subjected to two-point loads. In this paper, the effect of using SIFCON at compression or tension parts of plastic hinge locations on the flexural capacity, moment redistribution and crack width are investigated experimentally. The results indicate that the DIC technique gives very good correspondence comparing with the results recorded by standard methods measurement. In addition, it was found that the enhancement in moment redistribution ratio for the beam with SIFCON at compression parts of plastic hinge zones was significantly higher by about 38% comparing with the beam with SIFCON at tension parts of plastic hinge zones.

Safe system is a new vision recommended by global organisation interested in achieving safer road system in the world. Methodologies have been developed to consider this approach in assessing the safety level of new and existing road infrastructures in most of the world countries. In Iraq, most of the conducted studies investigated the road safety level at aggregated national scale. However, there are no studies consider the safe system approach in assessing the road safety situation. Therefore, this paper aims to assess the road safety level at road section scale according to the safe system approach. For this, international methodologies were reviewed to select the most appropriate one. The international road assessment programme (iRAP) was selected as it has been recommended by the UN and WHO. The old Baquba-Baghdad rural road which is a two way-two lane road was selected for this study. The necessary data was collected from a previous study and from field observations, and then was processed using the iRAP programme to quantify the risk scores and the star rating of head-on overtaking crashes for vehicle occupants as this is the most common crashes recorded at the selected sections. The results showed that the star rating of the study road is one to two which reflects the dangerous situation. Therefore, four countermeasures were suggested to improve the level of safety, three of them has been already implemented which are upgrading some sections to four lane road with separated physical median and improving the skid resistance of the road surface. The results of assessment after improvement showed that the implemented improvements may reduce the fatalities rate by about 60% and upgrade the star rating to 3 in some sections and less in others. Therefore, it is recommended to upgrade the two lanes sections to four lanes and extend the physical separation median to all these sections which will eliminate the risk of the head-on overtaking crashes as the results of the assessment produced.

Knowing the rhythm of daily life is more important in investigating some travel behaviours of people. Most importantly, improving parking behaviour in urban cities is one an useful characteristics in reducing traffic congestion problems. The aim of this study is to shed light on the parking behaviours for both off and on-street parking in urban areas. The methodology of this study could be summarized by collecting data from sixteen off-street and eight on-street parking facilities within the CBD area in AL-Hillah city. Mainly, the investigated parking characteristics are average turnover, occupancy, duration, purpose of trip, origin and destination. In addition, the type of vehicle parking has been investigated such as parallel, inclined angle and double or single parking style. In fact, the based-data results indicate that parking duration for medical activities has more duration than commercial and other activities. Similarly, the average turnover for medical land use is less than other land uses. Furthermore, it was found that there are a total of 2275 parking spaces in the study area, of which 1296 are in off-street parking spaces. While other spaces 979 are along the streets. Moreover, most on-street parking was illegal (about 68.5%). Finally, the reduction in capacity and speed for streets with on-street parking activities are 20% and 62.5%, respectively.

The quality of water is considered as a vital quality factor that affects the life quality in different areas. Thus, its assessment and forecasting became an essential subject matter for several researches. Analytically, the common adopted feed forward error back propagation neural network technique is used to developed two types of ANN models. The first model is applied having experimental data that gotten from the Department of Environment, Basrah-Iraq, during year 2009-2014 and the data set for the current year (2019), while the second model is applied according to the data for the current year (2019) only. The parameters of input of the neural network are pH value (pH), electrical conductivity (EC), Total Dissolved Solid (TDS), Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg), nitrate nitrogen (NO₃), phosphorous (PO₄⁻³) and Sulfate (SO₄⁻²), the output parameter of the neural network is dissolved oxygen (DO). Through comparing the outcomes of ANN models depending on high value of regressions coefficient (R²) and lower value of mean square error (MSE). For the first model R = 0.96143 and MSE=0.00125 for testing. The second model is R=0.99225 and MSE=0.00532. The results show the proposed ANN prediction model has a great potential significance for the assessment and forecasting the dissolved oxygen.

Leachate generated from Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) may drain into groundwater aquifers as a consequence of rainfall, transmitted to the conterminous river system through groundwater flow and contaminate the environment. Iraq, because of the lack of accurate data and the high cost of measurement, accurate assessment of leachate generation levels has often been considered a problem. The production of leachate connects into many factors, such as the data of meteorological, levels of waste production, and requirements of design landfill, the large differences in these factors indicate that leachate modelling processes are complicated. The purpose of this paper is to predict the movement of various contaminants in landfill soil in Al Najaf city to predict the behaviour and distribution of landfill pollution in order to properly understand the distribution of contamination in these soil, to control it and to prevent groundwater contamination to predict the depth of leachate from landfill using numerical model by SEEP/W, and CTRAN/W packages from GeoStudio 2012 Software.

Several structural members like columns and walls can be under the effect of accidental strikes from falling objects or collision of moving vehicles. Several researches are available in the literature on impact tests on different types of concrete, while those on Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC) reinforced with steel fiber are very limited. In this research, repeated impact tests were conducted on normal strength and high strength SCC reinforced with micro-steel fibers. Four fiber fractions of 0, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.0% by volume were investigated, while two design strength of 30 and 50 MPa were considered as normal and high strength SCCs. The test procedure was similar to the repeated impact test technique of ACI 544-2R but with a drop height of 100 mm and using prism specimens. The test results showed that micro-steel fiber can increase the impact resistance of SCC significantly. The inclusion of 1.0% fiber led to up to approximately 500% increase in the retained number of impacts at cracking stage, while the percentage increase at failure was much higher which reached approximately 2100%. On the other hand, the adopted high strength SCC could retained only up to approximately 30% higher number of impacts compared to normal strength SCC.

Abrasion of water-exposed surfaces in hydraulic structures can impose devastating defects in these surfaces leading to larger costs of rehabilitation and maintenance. One of the possible solutions is the improvement of concrete quality. Generally, several factors govern the abrasion resistance of hydraulic concrete. In the present study, previous experimental works, which carried out depending on the ASTM C 1138 test method, were collected, studied and analyzed precisely in order to estimate the effect of several factors that related with concrete quality on the abrasion rate of concrete. The results showed that the selection of cement type, inclusion of fibers, addition of silica fume and the election of the proper concrete type have the most effective influence among the remaining studied factors on the abrasion rate reduction.

Near surface mounted (NSM) is a promising strengthening technique for improving the flexural, shear and torsional strength of structures. Epoxy is the adhesive material used in this technique, but, the rapid failure happened in the mechanical properties of the epoxy matrix at high temperature, and the dangerous effects of epoxy fumes on the workers made the need of replacing epoxy with a new sustainable adhesive. Geopolymer Paste Adhesive and Modified Geopolymer Paste Adhesive were used in this study as adhesive materials in NSM strengthening technique to be an alternative to epoxy, where the geopolymer is a sustainable, environmentally friendly and less expensive material than epoxy. More importantly, it can better work at high temperatures. The test results showed that the modified geopolymer paste adhesive beat the epoxy adhesive by (4.1)% when adding (1)% micro steel fiber and (9.6)% when adding (0.6)% carbon fiber, while the bond strength reaches to (93)% of epoxy adhesive when adding (0.6)% polypropylene fiber.

The current research includes study the effect of internal sulfate (Calcium sulfate) on mechanical properties of normal and light weight concrete. The mechanical properties included compressive, splitting tensile, and flexural strength. The experimental work consists of casting and testing 216 cubes (150×150×150) mm, 216 cylinders (200×100) mm, and 144 prisms (400×100×100) mm having different condition including: ratio of the sulfate, the age test, type of concrete, and type of cement. This research consists of two part normal and light weight concrete, each part divided to three groups according to type of cement (type I cement, type V cement, and type I cement with 15% silica fume replacing from weight of cement). Each group consisting of four set with different ratio of sulfate (0.28% (reference SO3), 0.5%, 1% and 1.5%) by weight of fine aggregate where these ratios approximate the actual reality of the sulfates present in internal concrete components such as sand, each set having nine cubes tested in a different age (28, 60, and 90) days. The experimental results show that the harmful effect of internal sulfate in concrete on mechanical properties was decreased by using type I cement with 15% silica fume replacement whether normal and light weight concrete. Using of silica fume concrete is more effective to enhance the concrete resistance to internal sulfate attack.

In liquefying soils, Shallow foundations may experience an increase in settlement and displacement due to dynamic loading. Therefore, the machine footing may settle and tilt excessively. In this paper, the settlement of shallow foundation and inner displacement on liquefiable of unreinforced and reinforced saturated multi-layered sandy soils (medium-dense sand MD) will be studied. The relative density of the first and second layers is 50% and 85% corresponding to medium sand soil and dense sand soil respectively. The tests have been carried out on 20 models. The amplitudes of the applied harmonic load are 0.25, 1 and 2 tons with frequencies of 0.5, 1 and 2 Hz. The used foundation was with dimension 200*200*20 mm and the geogrid was used as reinforcement material. For each amplitude and frequency of load, the sand models were tested without and with reinforcement in various configurations (0.5B, 1B using single reinforcement layer and 0.5B, 1B using double reinforcement layers) where B is the square footing width. The results showed the high susceptibility for liquefaction and its potential which increased with increasing amplitude load and amplitude frequency. Also, the surface settlement and displacement were increased in the first layer and reduced with increasing relative density. The results also showed the high effect of reinforcement material and its configuration and number of layers by maintaining the little settlement values when fixing other parameters.

Repeated and periodic assessments of pavement conditions at intersection sites to improve the serviceability of intersection, is an essential component of the transportation system. Further, continuous maintenance of deterioration and defects that appear on the surface layers of pavement at intersection sites according to pavement condition indices (PCI), is a vital process in pavement management. This research aims at conducting spatial analysis for pavement conditions at intersection sites. The application of the developed measure is demonstrated for three signalized intersections in Hilla city, Iraq, by using distress definition. Point density Estimation (PDE) as spatial analyses and interpolation tool (IDW) in ArcGIS software is used to estimate the position intensity. PDE for Pavement condition applications enables the visualization and extraction of distress density in a selected zone or a network of road, which gives the makers of decision an advanced vision to the problem within a location. In this paper, PDE is used to generate potential distress hotspots map based on distress definition data. The result of this research shows the suitability of the heat map for the maintenance entitlement of a particular intersection. It gives a clear indication of the deterioration in the pavement layers depending on the severity of the colours shown in the heat map. For instance, a section of high score of PCI may include a very deteriorating units of low score of PCI due to the presence of many defects. Hence, it can be concluded that, it is doubtful that the PCI section represents the reality of all units. As a sample section (D) of the AL Thawra intersection where there were damaged units, PCI reached 55, 56, 59, while the PCI of section (D) was 74. The developed heat map demonstrates deterioration condition thoroughly for all units and provides advanced vision to pavement condition at the studied sites.

Environmental Pollution has become the first threat to humanity nowadays. Water pollution with petroleum products occupies the largest space because of its impact on the environment and waste of money. Oil is still one of the most important sources of energy currently used in the world. The aim of this research is to monitor and measure the intensity of the oil pollution caused by the oil spill leaks to the Tigris river and to treatment this leakage by oil booms. Six stations for remote sensing were distributed along the Tigris river to record oil concentrations. Each station consists of a sensor and a data reader that receives the digital data from the handsets and stores in the form of tables. Gravimetric analysis has been used to measure oil concentration. An organic solvent, hexane, was used to extract oil from the water. Oil booms have been used to collect spilled oil, preventing oil from spreading and changing flow direction for the purpose of collection. The process of scraping oil above the surface of water was done using oil scrapers.

This study has mainly focused on studying the characteristics of selected rural roads in Iraq using the developed simulation model and S-Paramics in order to enrich the area of developing such traffic simulation model calibrated with field data. Thus, several sites, such as Baghdad-Hilla, Baghdad-Mahmudiyah, Baghdad-Kut, Baghdad-Diyala and Najaf-Kerbala, have been investigated such as two and three-lane sections. This paper has three objectives; first, to investigate driver behavior mostly according to collected data of lane changing, lane utilization, flow and time headway. The second objective is to develop simulation model starting from car-flowing and ending with the process of calibrating it graphically and statistically with field data. The third objective is to calibrate the well-known S-Paramics model with field data and comparing it with the developed model. More than 80hrs have been collected using video cameras placed on footbridges as vantage points. The graphical and statistical analyses demonstrate more accurate for the developed model with field data than S-Paramics model. This model may be considered as the first step towards modeling driver behavior in Iraqi rural roads and enhance this model to represent different behaviors according to the collected data.

Failures in the management and planning processes for waste disposal have caused serious urban and environmental problems leading to costly and inadequate management in cities. The lack of areas for waste deposition resulting from the occupation and valorisations of urban areas, the high social costs in waste management, troubles of public sanitation and environmental contamination are some of these problems. With technology suitable for the joint use of recycled construction waste as coarse aggregate, it is intended to reduce the extraction of sand and gravel, and also to reduce the volume of waste landfills. In this manuscript, a review of the bibliography on construction waste and its potential for application in the construction industry is presented.

Quality measurement is an important tool for quality improvement. Due to the lack of tools and methods used to measure quality, quality improvement in construction projects is difficult. As a result of the high cost of construction projects for public buildings and the lack of improved tools for measuring quality, there is an urgent need to develop new models. This study aims to provide necessary information for owners, project managers, designers, and contractors to determine the main and secondary factors that have a major impact on improving the quality of construction projects for government buildings and reduce maintenance. This study also contributes to building a predictive model to measure the quality of these projects, and a literature review and interviews were conducted. A personal figure to collect a list of factors affecting the quality of government building projects, and the resulting factors were subject to a survey that was sent to owners, project managers, and engineers working on general construction projects in Iraq. Adoption of the technique of multiple linear regression in the modeling process and determining the most important factors that affect the quality of the project.

The present study investigates the effect of using stepped gabion weir in a laboratory channel on the distance of the hydraulic jump. A set of 25 laboratory experiments and 175 operation tests were conducted using a laboratory flume with dimensions 10 m long by 0.3 m wide, and 0.5 m high. The tested gabion weir had different five possible lengths 0.88 m, 0.96 m, 1.04m, 1.12 m, and 1.20 m, and the filling material used was natural quarry mono graded gravel in five different sample sizes of average equivalent diameter 11.75 mm, 16.50 mm, 22.00 mm, 31.25 mm, and 43.75 mm. Operation discharge values ranged between 0.7 to 15.0 l/s. The data set was subject to dimensional analysis to generate dimensionless groups, and correlated using the Buckingham Pi-Theorem. The results of this study showed that in case of direct representation between the parameters, the distance of hydraulic jump has a direct relationship with discharge but both the gravel sample used and the overall length of the weir give an undular behaviour with its increment. While using of dimensional representation shows that both the gravel sample and weir length have an inverse relationship with the distance of the hydraulic jump. Many trials have been made to formulate the best equation which combine the studied parameters with good agreement.

The stabilization of clayey gravel and sand soil used in construction of subbase course pavement highway is one of the engineering solutions in order to increase structural capacity of underneath pavement layers. There are many sorts of soil stabilization which are classified into mechanical and chemical methods. Recently, there has been an increasing social concern about the issue of waste management, by production industrial waste and waste disposal. This project presents the study of the influence of waste ceramic dust (WCD) on strength of clayey gravel and sand materials used in construction of subbase course. The subbase collected locally was mixed with waste ceramic dust from (0 to 25%) by weight of dry soil. The target of this study is to clear that waste is often used as filling and reinforcement and for this reason California Bearing Ratio test (CBR) was conducted to research the strength of waste ceramic and plastic strip of subbase material. The application of plastic waste in various forms is one among the emerging areas of ground improvement technique and there are economic and eco-friendly advantages. A detailed analysis of their results depicts that it is often utilized in the fields effectively and economically as reinforcing materiel. Plastic strips with dimensions (12 mm × 6 mm) are mixed with soil containing the optimum proportion of ceramic dust and California bearing tests are conducted. The effect of waste plastic strip (WPS) content is 0.5% to2% (by weight of sub base material) on the CBR of strip reinforced subbase was studied. The ratio is decided by changing its length and width. From the CBR on soil with and without plastic reinforcements, it had been found that after reinforcement the soil gained its strength appreciably. The best percent of waste ceramic dust was (20%) with waste plastic strip is (1%) which gave higher percent of CBR.

Huge quantities of water are consumed by the construction industry, and consequently huge amount of polluted wastewater is discharged from this industry to the surrounding environment. For example, it was reported that a single 8000 L capacity concrete mixer requires 1,500 litters of water per each shift for washing process and 1,600 litters for concrete preparation. This huge consumption of water results in substantial production of wastewater, which is generally highly contaminated with various contaminates and high pH (≥ 11). Consequently, it exerts serious influence on quality of freshwater and marine lives. Therefore, this research was devoted to examine the efficiency of a new method of wastewater treatment, which combines and applies electrocoagulation and ultra-sonication systems (UL-EC) for remediation of concrete plants' effluents from chemical oxygen demand (COD) from. The electrocoagulation cell was based on four aluminum electrodes, while ultrasonic treatment was applied using ultrasonic bath. The effect of other major parameters, including initial pH of wastewater (IPHW) (4, 7 and 10), current densities (CDS) (1, 3 and 5 mAcm⁻²), and electrodes spacing (ES) (5, 10 and 15 mm) on the efficiency of UL-EC were optimized using Box–Behnken Design (B-BD). The results of the present experiments confirmed that 68.14% COD removal was gotten by the electrocoagulation unit, while, the UL-EC removed 87.8% of COD. The optimum removal of COD was achieved at IPHW of 7, CDS of 5 mA.cm⁻² and ES of 5mm.

Providing sufficient quantity of drinking water to the inhabitants of poor countries and rural areas is one of the difficult challenges for water treatment authorities, where it was reported, by the World Health Organisation (WHO), that nowadays there are more than 800 million people in the poor countries and rural areas do not have sufficient quantity of drinking water, which subjected those people for outbreaks of different water-related diseases. Water companies therefore seek to provide affordable and reliable methods of treatment in order to solve this life-threatening issue. In this vein, the goal of the current study is to develop and analyse the effectiveness of affordable eco-friendly coagulants that derived from the seed of Strychnos potatorum. The applicability of this new type of coagulants for water treatment has been validated by treating turbid water sample, which was synthesized using kaolinites. The experimental work was also focused on optimising the effects of coagulants dosage; retention period and pH of water on turbidity removal by applying the Response Surface Methodology (RSM). The final results demonstrated that the new eco-friendly coagulants are suitable for water treatment as they removed about 93% of kaolinite turbidity when the unit was operated at natural pH (7) for 70.0 min with a dosage of the new coagulants of 40.0 mg.L⁻¹.

Since, hyperelastic materials, such rubber, are widely used in different life fields principally in engineering of elastomeric bearing pads. The present study aims to determine a suitable constitutive model dependent on strain energy potential which can characterize hyperelastic material behavior through uniaxial tension test only. Built-in ABAQUS software constitutive hyperelastic models are used to fit the experimental results of the uniaxial tension test, check the stability and obtain the material coefficients. The used models are that of Mooney-Rivlin, Polynomial, Neo-Hookean, Yeoh and Ogden. The results revealed that Polynomial, Ogden and then Yeoh models are convenient to fit the hyperelastic behavior of the rubber material while Mooney-Rivlin and Neo-Hookean models have a slight ability of fitting limited to the early stage of the linear behavior of the material.

An appropriate formula of rainfall data is the Intensity Duration Frequency (IDF) relationship. The rainfall IDF relationship is one of the tools used considerably in water resources engineering, either in planning, designing and operating projects of water resources, or in flood control projects. The purpose of this paper is to update rainfall IDF curves of Baghdad city developed in previously. The frequency analysis of available rainfall data is perform by three statistical methods, namely, the Gumbel Distribution Theory, the Log Pearson Type III and Log Normal Distribution to attain rainfall intensities for various short durations (0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 12 and 24) in hours and return periods (2, 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100) in years. IDF equation was derived based on Bernard equation and the results of three distributions were compared using Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit test with help of the Easy fit software 5.6. The results of three methods were close and accepted at 10% significant level. The maximum rainfall intensity of 118.052mm/hr was happened at the duration 0.25hr of the return period 100yr, whereas the minimum rainfall intensity of 1.257mm/hr was happened at the duration 24hr of the return period 2yr.

A laboratory study was conducted on groundwater reservoir to characterize the hydrogeological conditions and performance of wells in an unconfined aquifer using laboratory experiments and real-–time groundwater level data. A single-well step-drawdown pumping test was conducted using a two-dimensional sand tank aquifer model, followed by Hunts–Bierschenk's graphical analyses. The step-drawdown pumping test revealed 25% well losses and 75% aquifer losses, demonstrating high well efficiency, while the well efficiency value of 75% indicated that the well was appropriately designed and developed. The laboratory results suggested that the contact point of the aquifer's laminar flow and well-face had only slight turbulent flow. A well development factor of 0.46 reflected the effective development of the well. The hydraulic conductivity (K) value was 0.037cm/s. Our approach thus demonstrated the potential of the pumping test of a single-well step-drawdown at the laboratory scale for the estimation of safe and sustained yield from the well for groundwater exploitation within an unconfined aquifer under similar conditions in the future.

The present study examines the effect of cavities on the pipe pile foundation settlement and capacity subjected to compressive axial loads and embedded in sandy soil. By inserting a prototype of cavity which is placed adjacent to the pile at different locations that lie at horizontal spacing between pile and cavity center to center defined by (X) and cavity depth from the soil surface by cavity depth (Y), the variation in cavity location was studied for all laboratory tests. The presence of cavity reduces the pile load capacity by different rates depending on its location. In group piles with of L/D = 15 with cavity at Y/L = 1 and X/D = 1.5, 2.5, the reduction is between (6.1% to 26%).

This paper presents a 3D nonlinear finite element analysis on simply supported steel beams subjected to impact load. The modelling was developed to simulate the beams and the models developed were validated against the corresponding experimental results with good correlation. Parametric studies were achieved to study the steel beam with web openings and to investigate the effect of several parameters such as the number of openings, impact energy and impact location on the impact response of the steel beams. The numerical predictions show that the opening presence reduced the impact force and increased the displacement. In contrast, increase the number of openings has insignificant effect on the impact behaviour within the conditions of this study. Also, higher impact energy induces the beams to exhibit higher impact force and displacement.

The concrete durability is a fundamental factor in the investigation of concrete elements which require to long service lives, especially the elements which used in infrastructure systems such as bridges and roads, that have a high construction cost. Internal curing has been becoming extensively used for reducing the external factors of aggressive effect and for improving the behavior of the structural element and increased durability of the structural element. The present research work studies the efficiency of internal curing agent that provided by using a local ceramic waste as a fine aggregate on the high-performance concrete (HPC). Two different high-performance concrete slabs without and with the ceramic fine aggregates with two different replacement percentages (10 and 20) % from the volume at three ages (60, 120, and 180) days have been examined to show the structural properties development. The results of tests have shown high effectiveness of the local fine ceramic waste aggregates as internal curing purposes. It has been shown that the incorporation of 10% of the local fine ceramic waste leads to a noticeable significant increase in the ultimate load by 1.26% while the incorporation of 20% increase in the ultimate load by 6.31% at later age compared with reference mix.

As the climate temperature decreases, the flexible pavement will be subjected to high tensile stresses which exceeding to the movement resistance of asphalt binder leading to low temperature cracking. SHRP identified a Bending Beam Rheometer (BBR) for measuring the value of flexural-creep stiffness of asphalt binder at low temperatures which consider this value a good indicator for resistance of low-temperature cracking. This study developed a method for measuring the flexural-creep stiffness of asphalt binder by modification of an apparatus instead of Bending Beam Rheometer due to its expensive cost and unavailable in most research laboratories. A (40-50) penetration grade of asphalt binder used in this study at different test temperatures (-5, 0, 5)°C. The experimental results indicate to the modified apparatus and developed test is suitable for testing an asphalt binder at different temperature and loading time.

Waste effects inter-reliant with productivity, the Waste measurement is essential in the management of production systems, because it is an effective way to evaluate their performance. Maine aim for this paper is diagnoses the waste time factors and examined to eliminate them in the implementation 'the tests assess the performance of the process accomplished by finding the waste time on the two case studies, the observations have been taken in Baghdad using forms developed by researchers specifically designed based on the fundamentals of work-study methods and Work measurement techniques including (Activity sampling observations sheet, the flow process chart, and foremen survey form.) the wasted time causes defined clearly inclusion the performance of general efficiency also determining the Invaluable and unnecessary activities ratio that contribute in the waste of implementation a general regression model had been made for these factors showing the power of their association. The calculations shown the Mismanagement of the site and Choosing an inefficient contractor is most significant. while the conduct of activities the direct work is 56%, and the unnecessary activities by 25.75%, that's the activity type should target for mitigation to increase the efficiency of the construction process from Wasted Tim reduction.

Water contamination with nitrates is a serious problem due to the detrimental effects of nitrates on both human life and the global ecosystem; therefore, it is essential to remove nitrates using efficient methods. Accordingly, various methods have been used to treat nitrate-containing solutions, but recent studies focused on electrocoagulation (ELE) as it produces high quality water at low cost and it is environmentally friendly. However, passive layers are growing on the aluminum anodes after short time of treatment, which substantially affects the efficiency of ELE. In this investigation therefore, ultrasonic filed was used to remove these passive layers, and consequently improves the efficiency of ELE. This new method, ultrasonic-assisted ELE (U-ELE), was used to remove nitrates from water under various operational conditions. In particular, the impacts of water initial pH (WIP) (4.0-8.0), applied current densities (ACD) (6.0-9.0 mA/cm²), flow rates (FR) (60-100 ml/min), and initial nitrate concentrations (INC) (100-200 mg/L), which were optimized using the Central Composite Design (CCD). The ultrasonic irradiation time (UT) has been kept at 10 minutes for all experiments. The best possible removal of nitrate using only ELE method was about 77% at WIP of 6, UT of 10 minutes, FR of 40 ml/min, INC of 150 mg/l and ACD of 7.5mA/cm². However, it was found that exerting ultrasonic for 10 minutes, U-ELE method, has increased nitrates removal to 87.80% under the same conditions of ELE treatment.

This article presents experimental results from a concrete-steel composite girder. The girder is composed of an I-shape steel beam that is topped by a reinforced concrete slab. The girder was constructed in an open environment so that it is freely subjected to the variation of the atmospheric thermal loads. These loads include the solar radiation, temperature of the surrounding air and speed of the wind. Therefore, a weather station that includes sensors to measure the three aforementioned thermal loads was installed beside the girder. The girder was instrumented with thermocouples that were either embedded in the concrete slab or attached to the steel beam. The thermocouples were distributed across the slab thickness, along its width and along the vertical centerline of the composite girder. The aim of this research is to provide experimental measurements that facilitate better understanding of temperature gradient distributions in composite bridge girders in winter. The test records were continued for approximately two months during the cold season. The test results showed that the negative vertical temperature gradient was higher than the corresponding positive one due to the low intensity of solar radiation. Similarly, the lateral positive temperature gradient along the width of the concrete slab was higher than the vertical positive temperature gradient due to the low altitude of solar radiations.

Central Business District (CBD) is the undisputed center of traffic development resulting from growing industry and economic activity. Attracts people from various parts of the city as well as its area to shop and leisure services. To achieve the objective of this research the Central Commercial Area, Sector 2 in Hilla, was selected to evaluate the sustainability process on the basis of environmental and social indicators for car parks (20 parking lots), as well as identifying the level of service for the pedestrian sidewalks for three roads (Street 60, Street 40 and Bab al-Hussein). The methodology of this research can be summarized by obtaining field data for the volumes of pedestrian traffic using the imaging process, and vehicle parking data (air pollutants from vehicle exhausts, noise level and a number of accidents) through collaboration with relevant government institutions. This work is developing a method for achieving a sustainable composite index for the available information. The indicators are incorporated into environmental, social and economic indicators in a composite sustainable index in a way that overcomes the restrictions of normalization, weight, and aggregation. The results of the composite sustainable transportation index for car parking sustainability range from very low level (2 parking), low level (4 parking), moderate level (12 parking) and high level (2 parking). While the study concluded that the level of service for pedestrian sidewalks is of type (D) for Bab Al-Hussein Street and type (A) for Street 60 and Street 40.

The existing of openings in the structural elements of concrete may be useful in some cases and necessary at other cases. Experimental study on Reinforced Concrete (RC) beams was address in this research to examine the conduct of the opening in RC beams. The target of this study is to evaluate the impact of web elliptical openings in reinforced concrete beams experimentally. Under two-point top loading, four reinforced beams were tested, three of them with openings and one without opening. Test variable included the number of elliptical openings. Test results indicated that incase of the number of opening increased the ultimate load decreased. The ultimate load of CBEH1, CBEH2 and CBEH3 beams are decreased by 12%, 24% and 28% respectively compared with the ultimate load of CB beam.

Owing to their toxicity, the existence of heavy metals in the environment has become a major global concern. In this study, the ability of albizia-lebbeck tree leaves (ALTL) as green and low cost adsorbent to remove Pb²⁺, Zn²⁺ and Cd²⁺ from Synthetic wastewater by adsorption was investigated. The initial metals' concentrations of 10-80 mg/l, adsorbent dosage of 0.3-1.0 gm, pH of 3-8, contact time of 30-240 min, and shaking speed of 200 rpm, have been studied by batch adsorption technique. Four ranges of adsorbent particle size were tested: 75-150; 150-300; 300-600; 600-1000 μm. Five different temperatures (20, 30, 40, 50 and 60°C) were selected to demonstrate the influence of temperature on metals' adsorption onto ALTL. Langmuir and Freundlich models were used to analyze the experimental data. Equilibrium data fitted well with the Freundlich isotherm model with maximum adsorption capacity of 9.124 mg/g at 20°C for metals' concentration of 40 mg/L. Pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order equations were utilized for analysis of the kinetic data. The second-order model was fitting very well with the experimental data. Thermodynamic parameters like entropy, enthalpy and Gibbs free energy changes were estimated to determine the spontaneity of the sorption process. The results revealed that the ALTL adsorbent performed good removal of metals.

This research presents a study of using an additive for the objective of increasing the setting time of a material used in several aspects in the constructional field, this material is "Local-Gypsum" which is locally called "Joss", and the additive used in this study is "Trees Glue Powder" denoted by "TGP". Nine mixtures of Local-gypsum (joss) had been experimented in the current study to find their setting time, these mixes were divided into three groups according to their water-joss ratios (W/J) (0.3, 0.4 and 0.5), and each group was sub-divided into three sub-groups according to their TGP contents (0.0%, 0.3% and 0.6%). It was found that, when TGP is added with the two contents (0.3% and 0.6%), the setting time of local gypsum (joss) is increased, and the percentage of this increase at (TGP content = 0.6%) is doubly multiplied as compared to the percentage at (TGP content = 0.3%). Moreover, when TGP content is increased from (0.0% to 0.6%), the percentage of increase in the setting times of joss is reduced with the increase of (W/J) ratio from (0.3 to 0.5). It was also found that, when (W/J) ratio is increased, the setting time of joss is increased, and this behavior is applicable for all TGP contents (0.0%, 0.3% and 0.6%). While, when (W/J) is increased from (0.3 to 0.5), the percentage of increase in the setting times of joss is reduced with the increase in TGP contents from (0.0% to 0.6%).

In this research, the enhancement of compressive, tensile and flexural strength of concrete mixtures was explored using both waste white marble instead of aggregate and steel fibers. White marble was mixed with an ordinary Portland cement replacing the mixture of both coarse and fine aggregate by 10%, 50% and 100% of weight. Besides adding the steel fibres to mixture with a total volume of concrete up to 2%. At the age of 28 days of curing, a significant increase of 24.3%, 34.5% and 38.8% was noticed in compressive, tensile and flexural strengths respectively for the replaced aggregate mixtures. Further improvement was gained by adding the steel fiber.

This paper demonstrates an experimental and numerical study aimed to compare the influence of openings of different configurations on the flexural behavior of prestressed concrete rafters. The experimental program consisted of testing six simply supported prestressed concrete rafters; 5 rafters are perforated, and the other one is solid as a reference. All rafters were tested under monotonic midpoint load. The variable which has been investigated in this work was the opening's configuration (quadrilateral or circular) with the same upper and lower chords depths. The results indicate improvement in the beam flexural behavior using the circular openings compared to the quadrilateral openings, represented by increase the ultimate load capacity and decrease in deflection at the service limit. The experimental results of the tested rafters were confirmed by the non-linear finite element software (ABAQUS13.6.1). Comparisons are offered and the good agreement appears between the experimental results and the predictions of finite element analysis in terms of load-deflection and failure loads relationships.

This research presents a comparative study to highlight the differences between the effect of using various contents of steel fibers on the ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) in two types of self-compacting concretes (SCC) which are identical in their constituent materials, the only difference between them is the coarse aggregate type (normal in one and light in the other) with various specimen lengths (200mm cylinders and 100mm cubes). In this work, six types of mixes were casted, the first three (Mix1, Mix2 and Mix3) are of normal-weight SCC having steel fiber content (Vf) : 0.0%, 0.4% and 0.8% respectively, and the other three (Mix4, Mix5 and Mix6) are of light-weight SCC with the same aforementioned steel fiber contents respectively. It turns out that, the ultrasonic pulse velocity is smaller in light-weight SCC than in normal-weight SCC, and the percentage of this reduction is higher in cylindrical samples than in cubic samples, and this percentage of reduction is reduced with the increasing in steel fiber contents. It also turns out that, the ultrasonic pulse velocity is increased with the increase in steel fiber contents, and this percentage of increase is higher in light-weight SCC than in normal-weight SCC, and it is also larger in cylindrical samples than in cubic samples. Moreover, when the specimen length has been focused on, it was found that, the ultrasonic pulse velocity is larger in (100mm) cubic specimens than in (100×200mm) cylindrical ones, and the percentage of this rise is also larger in light-weight SCC than in normal-weight SCC, and it is reduced with increasing steel fibers contents.

The tensile strength of asphalt mixtures is one of the main parameters of deterioration and failure in flexible pavements. Hence, in this study, the effects of reinforcing asphalt mixtures, using polypropylene fibers, on their engineering performance were experimentally investigated. A set of cylindrical specimens of asphalt mixtures was prepared and subjected to a compressive load at different testing temperatures in terms of evaluation of the indirect tensile stiffness modulus. Similarly, fatigue (four-point bending) and crack propagate (three-point bending) tests were conducted for different asphalt mixtures made with and without polypropylene fibres. The impacts of such fibres on the engineering properties of asphalt mixtures were studied. The laboratory results revealed that the reinforced mixtures with polypropylene fibres had a noticeable influence on the tensile, fatigue and cracking initiation and propagation of these mixtures.

Competition in the Thai construction industry in terms of costs, quality of work and construction time, which has resulted in the continuously increasing demand for construction workers, both skilled and unskilled workers, to be an important resource that contractors must maintain. In order to survive in the construction business, the contractor must understand the factors related to increasing the engagement of the construction workers and using the appropriate strategy to reduce turnover of the construction workers. The objective of this research is to study the factors related to the engagement of Thai construction workers that affect the satisfaction of construction workers and reduce the turnover. A conceptual worker engagement framework was modelled using employee engagement and worker satisfaction concepts. Research methods involved studying, collating and listing the theoretical factors and variables sourced from the available literature. Seven experts in related fields were employed to confirm the factors and framework following the Delphi technique. Results indicated that the factor of worker satisfaction had a positive direct effect on worker engagement that was comprised of two sub-factors as (1) organizational engagement, and (2) personal engagement, while worker satisfaction and worker engagement had negative effects on worker turnover in construction projects. Details of all the factors were summarized in the conclusion of this article.

The corrugated web girders had a wide applications because of its many favourable properties. Such as there is no need for intermediate stiffeners to avoid local buckling of the web and the reduction in web to produce by this technique. This study is an experimental investigation of flexural behaviour of I-section steel beams with corrugated webs and flat flange. The study involved testing six groups of steel beams. Each group consisted of two identical specimens and the average result was taken for compression. The first two groups consisted of standard and built-up I-section beams which served as a control beams. The other four groups content a corrugated web beams with different corrugation profiles (trapezoidal, rectangular, sinusoidal and zigzag). The experimental results showed that flexural contribution of the web does not exceed 7-11% from the total beam bending capacity for all configurations types. The rectangular corrugated web had the higher bending capacity and mid-span deflection among all the corrugation types.