Progressive building collapse occurs when failure of a structural component leads to the failure and collapse of surrounding members, possibly promoting additional collapse. Global system collapse will occur if the damaged system is unable to reach a new static equilibrium configuration. The objective of this research is to identify and investigate the importance of issues related to the unexpected collapse resulting from the loss of key elements of the structure (a column or columns, for example). In this research study there are examined on the entire frame including details of the column loss scenario and also the influence of the ductility and strength of beam-to-column joints adjacent to the location of such as incident. The study also includes catenary action in beams resulting from collapse and its impact on the adjacent joints and reports on the comparison of negative and positive moments in joints. In addition, it records the important notes associated with the state of collapse and parts of this research include the conformity of numerical and analytical results, the ratio of credibility and conformity of results and the test. This thesis reports in detail on the experimental and numerical investigations of the behaviour of steel and composite joints, which aim to develop common solutions with regard to the joint semi-rigid and partial strength properties that might allow for significant rotations and the redistribution of internal forces in structural system when there was a damage to its key element such as a column. Investigations of steel and composite joints with regard to their ductile behaviour are presented. Thereby special attention is paid to shaping of …

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are based on techniques inspired by some aspects of natural science such as inheritance, reproduction and mutation, and they are used as optimization technique for searching large solution spaces. In computer science, for example, they could be used in data sorting and searching, circuit design and to improve application performance the quality of designed tools such as code generation. This paper looks at the possibility of using genetic algorithms to ameliorate the automatic construction of code generators. Experimental evidence is provided that the use of such algorithms can improve the quality of automatically constructed code generators.

The development and implementation of condition monitoring system become very important for wind industry with the increasing number of failures in wind turbine generators due to over temperature especially in offshore wind turbines where higher maintenance costs than onshore wind farms have to be paid due to their farthest locations. Monitoring the wind generators temperatures is significant and plays a remarkable role in an effective condition monitoring system. Moreover, they can be easily measured and recorded automatically by the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) which gives more clarification about their behavior trend. An unexpected increase in component temperature may indicate overload, poor lubrication, or possibly ineffective passive or active cooling. Many techniques are used to reliably predict generator's temperatures to avoid occurrence of failures in wind turbine generators. Multiple Linear Regression Model (MLRM) is a model that can be used to construct the normal operating model for the wind turbine generator temperature and then at each time step the model is used to predict the generator temperature by measuring the correlation between the observed values and the predicted values of criterion variables. Then standard errors of the estimate can be found. The standard error of the estimate indicates how close the actual observations fall to the predicted values on the regression line. In this paper, a new condition-monitoring method based on applying Multiple Linear Regression Model for a wind turbine generator is proposed. The technique is used to construct the normal behavior model of an electrical generator temperatures based on the historical generator temperatures data. Case study built on a data collected from actual measurements demonstrates the adequacy of the proposed model.

Current and future applications of small gas turbine engines annular type combustors have requirements presenting difficult disputes to the combustor designer. Reduced cost and fuel consumption and improved durability and reliability as well as higher temperatures and pressures for such application are forecast. Coupled with these performance requirements; irrespective of the engine size; is the demand to control the pollutant emissions, namely the oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, smoke and unburned hydrocarbons. These technical and environmental challenges have made the design of small size combustion system a very hard task. Thus, the main target of this work is to generalize a calculation method of annular type combustors for small gas turbine engines that enables to understand the fundamental concepts of the coupled processes and to identify the proper procedure that formulate and solve the problems in combustion fields in as much simplified and accurate manner as possible. The combustion chamber in task is designed with central vaporizing unit and to deliver 516.3 KW of power. The geometrical constraints are 142 mm & 140 mm overall length and casing diameter, respectively, while the airflow rate is 0.8 kg/sec and the fuel flow rate is 0.012 kg/sec. The relevant design equations are programmed by using MathCAD language for ease and speed up of the calculation process.

Network layer indications are not readily available upon a link change; therefore, general dependes on the network layer may introduce unnecessary delays due to network layer signaling for a simple link layer handover. If information could be gathered at link layer to determine the need for network layer signaling, then both the delay and signaling load could be really improved over the current standards of Mobile IP.

This paper presents a Cross-layer decision on two layer network and link layers to improve the performance of Enhanced Mobile IP (E-Mobile IP) handover in which reducing packet loss and latency during handover process.

Abstract

This paper is conducted to compare the determinants of profitability of the domestic and foreign Islamic banks operating in Malaysia. The Generalized Least Square (GLS) is employed with unbalanced panel data on seventeen Islamic banks, using quarterly data for the period of 2007 to 2010. In order to find out the differences in the profitability determinants, the sample of banks is divided into two sub-samples (domestic and foreign). The results reveal that domestic Islamic banks are more profitable than foreign Islamic banks. The results also show that the profitability determinants of domestic banks are different from those of foreign banks. The overhead expenses, loans, efficiency, gross domestic product growth rate and bank size have a significant effect in determining banks’ profitability, in which case applicable to the domestic banks only. In turn, the gross domestic product per capita has a significant effect in determining banks’ profitability of only the foreign banks. The study finds that, deposits, capital and reserves, inflation and banks’ age have a significant effect in determining banks’ profitability of both domestic and foreign banks. Meanwhile, liquidity and concentration are not able to explain the variability of domestic and foreign Islamic banks’ profitability. The findings indicate that the profitability of domestic banks is affected by the global financial crisis while, the profitability of foreign banks is not affected.

In this work, in addition to the 16-corrugation that have been tested, three more models with same dimensions and different corrugation density have been tested too. 18-corrugation, 20-corrugation, and 22-corrugation (RCCT-18, RCCT-20, and RCCT-22) have been investigated. Here, it is wise to mention that all corrugations have the same shape and dimensions. Moreover, 22 corrugations were found the maximum number of corrugations that can be fabricated in the tube circumference. In other words it was impossible to fabricate a tube with more than 22-corrugations at that certain diameter, since all tested composite tubes have the same length and diameter at all testing phases. Results show that corrugation density has an influence on the performance of composite shells as an energy absorber. It has been found that as corrugation density increases, total energy absorption increases.

Today the use of composite materials in different kinds of applications is accelerating rapidly. Composite materials have become common engineering materials and are designed and manufactured for various application. This paper involves an experimental program including testing the capabilities of hybrid material s (composite and metallic materials) as an energy absorber. The method of approach has been to fabricate and test a series of specimens. The specimens have cylindrical shape; they are fabricated using hand lay-up technique. Hybrid specimens involve two subtypes: metallic cylinder surrounded by three layers of composite cylinder referred as M/C, and three layers of composite cylinder form the internal part surrounded by metallic cylinder referred as C/M (Fig.1). Hybrid model are subjected to lateral quasi static compression load.