Manufacturing and Measuring Mechanical Properties of Continuous Functionally Graded Beam

In this study, glass-filled epoxy functionally graded material (FGM) was prepared by adopting the hand lay-up method. The vertical gravity casting was used to produce a continuous variation in elastic properties. A 30 % volume fraction of glass ingredients that have mean diameter 90 μm was spread in epoxy resin (ρ = 1050 kg/m3). The mechanical properties of FGM were evaluated according to ASTM D638. Experimental results showed that a gradually relationship between Young’s modulus and volume fraction of glass particles, where the value of Young’s modulus at high concentration of glass particles was greater than that at low concentration, while the value of Poisson’s ratio at high concentration of glass particles was lower than that at low concentration. The manufacture of this FG beam is particularly important and useful in order to benefit from it in the field of various fracture tests under dynamic or cyclic loads.

Numerical Simulation of Heat Transfer from PV Panel with a Wetted Porous Wick

The panel absorbed solar radiation and majority of this radiation is transform into a heat, and it is usually wasted and useless. At higher cell temperature, the current out of the cell has an unnoticeable rise, but the voltage value will drop significantly, resulting in a reduction in maximum power produced. The cooling method is therefore beneficial to keep the panel at the operation temperature. A simulation model is developed using COMSOL Multiphysics software version 3.5 software to investigate the enhancement in performance of a PV water cooling module (PVW module) based on a passive and simple cooling technique using a wetted cotton porous wick attached on the PV panel's back side and compare with uncooled PV panel (PVREF module). Unsteady, laminar and 2-D, the flow in the proposed modules is assumed. The input parameters were taken from a real weather condition was perform in Najaf-Iraq. The effect of variation of mass flow rate is also studied in the present work. Good agreement was obtained for PVREF module with previously researches.

Experimental, Theoretical and CFD Validations for Solar Powered Atmospheric Water Generation Using Thermoelectric Technics

The Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG) is an environmental water recovery that easily dehumidifies water vapor moisture from the air. This article presents an experiment to construct an AWG model using solar energy as a source of power. An experimental and numerical study for a device of (AWG) is performed. The experimental work is performed at Basrah city, located in the south of Iraq, during August and September of 2019 and March of 2020. The theoretical results are calculated by EES and the numerical study has been conducted by the (ANSYS19/CFD/ FLUENT) program. The experimental device is tested for different days with different climate conditions. The Maximum water production obtained is 3.4 L/day from all the testing days, for different hours of operation when the relative humidity in the range of (45 – 95 %) and the temperature range from 17 °C to 45 °C. The results shown that, the water production rate is increased with increasing humidity, temperatures, hours of operation, and model size.

Using PCM, an Experimental Study on Solar Stills Coupled with and without a Parabolic Trough Solar Collector

Performance a double slope of the solar still Integrated With or without parabolic trough collector is investigated experimentally. To improve the output of a double slope solar still, a number of initiatives have been undertaken, using wax as a phase change material (PCM) with a parabolic trough collector. A parabolic trough collector (PTC) transfers incident solar energy to the solar still through a water tube connected to a heat exchanger embedded in used microcrystalline wax. Experiments were carried out after orienting the basin to the south and holding the water depth in the basin at 20 mm. According to the results obtained, the solar stills with parabolic trough collector have higher temperatures and productivity than solar stills without parabolic trough collector, as well as the ability to store latent heat energy in solar still, allowing fresh water to condense even after sunset. In addition, the parabolic trough collector with phase change material in the double slope solar improves productivity by 37.3 % and 42 %, respectively.

Vibration Control of Quarter Car Model Using Modified PID Controller

The purpose of this research is to control a quarter car suspension system and also to reduce the fluctuated movement caused by passing thevehicle over road bump using modified PID (Proportional Integral and Derivative) controller. The proposed controller deals with dual loopfeedback signals instead of single feedback signal as in the conventional PID controller. The structure of the modified PID controller wascreated by moving the proportional and derivative actions in the feedback path while remaining the integral action in the forward path. Thus,high accuracy results were obtained. Firstly, modelling and simulation of linear passive suspension system for a quarter car system wasperformed using Matlab – Simulink software. Then the linear suspension system was activated and simulated by using an active hydraulicactuator to generate the necessary force which can be regulated and controlled by the proposed controller. The performance of whole systemhas been enhanced with a modified PID controller.

Preparing Methane – Air Mixture Using Ejector

In this research, a two – dimensional numerical investigation is conducted to show the ability of the jet-ejector to prepare the air – methane mixture at different equivalence ratio. The basic dimensions (diameters ratio, throat length, angle α, and angle θ) of the jet-ejector are taken into account on calculating the equivalence ratio. The results showed that the ratio of the diameters has a higher effect than other parameters on preparing a mixture for equivalent ratios including both rich and lean mixture. The rest of the factors did not have a significant effect on the value of the equivalence ratio, and only had a role in preparing an equivalence ratio for rich mixture type.

Experimental Study on Shear Strengthening of Reinforced Concrete Beams Using Different Techniques of Concrete Jacketing

A large number of RC structures or at least some of their members need strengthening or rehabilitation. Among the typical failure modes, the shear failure is more dangerous and less predictable, because of usually brittle behavior and sudden collapse. Therefore, there are necessities for upgrading the shear capacity and the local ductility of reinforced concrete beams. In this study, four different techniques of concrete jacketing were used to improve the behaviors of the shear deficiencies beams. The four techniques used in this study to enhance the behavior of the beams were by using a Self-Compacted Fiber Reinforced Concrete jacket without stirrups (S.-J. + Steel Fiber), a concrete jacket of Self Compacted Concrete with stirrups (S.-J. + Stirrups), a concrete jacket of ferrocement jacket (S.-J. + Ferrocement), and a concrete jacket of ferrocement jacket with external steel reinforcing bars (S.-J. + Ferrocement + R). These techniques contributed to enhancing the load-carrying capacity and delaying the appearance of the first crack in tested beams compared with the control beam by a percentage of (35, 59, 30, 6) % and (18, 35, 81, 80) %, respectively. The specimen (S.-J. + Stirrups) showed the best performance in comparison with the other used strengthening techniques used in this study in terms of stiffness and the ultimate load-carrying capacity. The ferrocement jacket (S.-J. + Ferrocement) was found to be the most suitable jacketing system used to enhance the shear capacity in terms of cracking load.

Matlab graphical user interface (GUI) code for solar tower power plant performance calculations

In the present research, a Matlab program with a graphical user interface (GUI) has been established for studying the performance of a solar tower power plant (STPP). The program gives the ability for predicting the performance of STPP for different tower dimensions, ambient operating conditions and locations. The program is based on the solution of a mathematical model derived from the heat and mass balance for the tower components. The GUI program inputs are; tower dimensions, solar radiation, ambient temperature, pressure, wind velocity, turbine efficiency, emissivity and absorptivity for collector and ground and thermal conductivity and thickness for ground. However, the GUI program outputs are; temperature and pressure differences across the collector and tower, velocity in the tower, density of air in collector outlet, mass flowrate of air, efficiency for collector and tower, the overall efficiency and output power of STPP. The effect of the geometrical dimensions of STPP and some climatic variables on the plant performance was also studied. The results show that the output power increases with increasing the collector diameter, chimney diameter and solar radiation by an increasing of 0.282 kW/m, 0.204 kW/m and 0.046 kW/(W/m2) respectively.

Indoor Air Quality in a Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) under Different Ventilations

A proper ventilation offered warranty for a perfect indoor environment. Indoor air environment includes indoor thermal environment and indoor air quality (IAQ). In this paper a numerical investigation of the indoor environment in different ventilations was accomplished. The Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) in Al-Rifai hospital in Thi-Qar governorate was chosen to be investigated, and its thermal achievement and indoor air quality in the hot summer weather were simulated. For the numerical study, the fluent technique used to set up the physical and numerical model of CCU. An attention has been paid carefully to considerate the distributions of the temperature and the velocity fields, followed by an argument of two different ventilation patterns; up-in and up-out ventilation (UV) and displacement ventilation (DV). After making the comparison, it was noticed that the displacement ventilation (DV) is clearly super than that of the up-in and up-out ventilation (UV) due to improvement in the indoor air quality.

Flexible rotor balancing without trial runs using experimentally tuned FE based rotor model

A method based on experimentally calibrated rotor model is proposed in this work for unbalance identification of flexible rotors without trial runs. Influence coefficient balancing method especially when applied to flexible rotors is disadvantaged by its low efficiency and lengthy procedure, whilst the proposed method has the advantage of being efficient, applicable to multi-operating spin speeds and do not need trial runs. An accurate model for the rotor and its supports based on rotordynamics and finite elements analysis combined with experimental modal analysis, is produced to identify the unbalance distribution on the rotor. To create digital model of the rotor, frequency response functions (FRFs) are determined from excitation and response data, and then modal parameters (natural frequencies and mode shapes) are extracted and compared with experimental analogies. Unbalance response is measured traditionally on rotor supports, in this work the response measured from rotating disks instead. The obtained results show that the proposed approach provides an effective alternative in rotor balancing. Increasing the number of balancing disks on balancing quality is investigated as well.