Association of Arab Universities Journal of Engineering Sciences

Addition and Expansion in the Architecture of the Holy Shrines (Revaluation)

zainab abbas monshed, ammar saleh ashour — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0300

With the emergence of significant changes across various aspects of life and their rapid occurrence in recent times, they have had a profound impact on the transformation and development of functions. This necessitates the possibility of expansion and addition to existing structures, whether they are heritage, historical, or modern. This is to adapt to these occurring changes. It has brought about the need to achieve this adaptation within new or modified functions by using space, structure, or construction beside or above the current building. The architecture of holy shrines emerges as one of the most important examples highlighting the urgent need for expansion and addition to accommodate the increasing number of occupants and the growing and varied functions held within, collectively such as congregational prayers, visits, Quran recitation gatherings, and more. Equally, there's an urgent need for expansion and addition to major religious occasions.While there are numerous global literature and examples that have addressed the concept of adaptive reuse in historical, heritage, and even modern buildings through expansion and addition, there is a lack of local knowledge, particularly regarding the adaptive reuse of architecture related to holy shrines. Hence, diagnosing the research problem related to "the lack of local knowledge, studies, and applications regarding the adaptive reuse of holy shrines through expansion and addition, of all kinds used in them, and reassessing these experiences compared to successful global experiences to meet the needs of their occupants."Therefore, the research necessitates "the importance of reassessing the experiences of adaptive reuse for buildings of holy shrines that have practically implemented concepts of addition and expansion on one hand, and selecting successful strategies in the process of future addition and expansion for other thresholds where this has not yet occurred." The research aims to extract indicators from global experiences and study concepts to create adaptive usage for buildings through addition and expansion to cope with ongoing changes. This will be applied to holy shrines buildings on one hand and reassess local experiences in the holy shrines in the Karbala and Najaf Al-Ashraf governorates, specifically, attempting to identify their points of success and failure to serve as a base alongside successful global indicators for upcoming experiments.This is accomplished through a meticulous plan starting with reviewing and analyzing the previous literature, then discerning and understanding the definitions of the main concepts of the research. Following this, it explores global and regional experiences that addressed the adaptive reuse of various historical, heritage, and modern buildings to accommodate new or emerging functions through different methods, whether by adding structural elements, construction, or utilizing spaces within and around buildings, yielding indicators. Additionally, it investigates experiences of expansion and addition to holy shrines and their reassessment.

Impproving the performance of Hurriya-Dagharah Irrigation project using Aqua-Crop Model

Hadeel Majed, Basim Shabaa Abed — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 18:19:23 +0300

Iraq has experienced a depletion of water mainly because of climate change, and decrease for water. There is for instance the Daghara/Huriyh Irrigation Project, which is an agro centric, large-scale project involving Qadisiyah Governorate to solve issues of water management. Several objectives of the study were established, namely evaluating the application of the currently installed irrigation system, the storage and distribution in the fields, and canals and the overall performance of the project. Nine fields were assessed, Three (A1, A2, A3) in the first, (B1, B2, and B3) in the second and (C1, C2, C3) in the third phase respectively. This entailed the measurement of water potential concerning moisture content, field capacity and discharge was done. There was thus a poor irrigation efficiency, which was estimated to range from 36%. 768% and 42. Nine percent for the different tools while the evaluated storage efficiency ranges from 50. 17% and 77. 47%, while the anti-inflation target is set at 15%, import price level at 26% and distribution efficiency at between 93%. 9% and 97. 6%. This revealed that conveyance efficiency of water was 86. 38 % while the overall efficiency towards the project completion was only 32 %. 39 % for high wastage from irrigation. Therefore, using AquaCrop model, the virtual irrigation efficiency was estimated using the overall 80% sprinkler irrigation and 20% drip irrigation allocation. Among all the irrigation techniques, Sprinkler was found to be most efficient, second to that was drip Irrigation (90. 36 %). The tested virtual efficiency with sprinklers was 68. 39% and with drip irrigation it 77. 25 %, which is close to two and the respondents reported half times the actual efficiency. This improvement could lift the ratio in cultivated area from 107000 to 239000 dunums for the same water volume.

Harnessing the Potential of Blue Infrastructure in Urban Riverbanks for Sustainable Development

jwan_ jabbar zngana, Amjad Albadry — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 18:24:08 +0300

Urban design and planning often overlook the potential benefits of activating green-blue infrastructure on riverbanks, leading to a lack of comprehensive research in this field. This study addresses this gap by exploring the key advantages of leveraging green-blue infrastructure to enhance urban environments and promote sustainable practices. By integrating innovative water features, flexible access points, and vibrant public spaces along riverbanks, the study aims to create lively and appealing urban settings that meet the diverse stakeholders' needs. The main objective is to achieve a harmonious balance between urban development and nature.

The study examines green-blue infrastructure initiatives aimed at improving environmental function, stormwater management, water quality, and ecological connectivity in urban river environments, emphasizing the importance of human interaction with the environment and physical activity in shaping vibrant and sustainable urban landscapes. Through the implementation of green-blue infrastructure strategies, the study seeks to enhance community engagement, environmental conservation, and public well-being. The results indicate that activating green-blue infrastructure can significantly contribute to urban sustainability and resilience against climate-induced hydrological events. It is expected that the findings of this research will provide valuable insights into the potential of leveraging green-blue infrastructure to transform urban spaces and promote a healthy and active urban lifestyle.

Investigation of Discrete Heating Gap Size Effect on the Heat Transfer Performance in a Two Parallel Plates Channel

Mohammed A. Nima, Raed G. Saihood — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 18:29:09 +0300

Heat transfer performance of two horizontal parallel plates subjected to discrete heating from the upper plate is studied and analyzed under the condition of different gap size between the heating elements with water as the working fluid. The investigation includes the variation of Reynolds number and the heat flux along with the position of the heating elements to discover the effect of different boundary conditions on the gap size variation. Results show that gap size between the heating elements has a crucial impact on the heat transfer process inside the channel, when the gap size increased a remarkable enhancement is achieved. This result is also confirmed with the investigated range of Reynolds number and the heating value. Results also show that the mean Nusselt number for the heating elements decrease downstream towards the exit section

Wireless movement system for a 3D printed robotic hand

Zain AlDein Mahmoud Ahmad — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 18:32:23 +0300

In this research, we designed and implemented a robotic system in the form of a wirelessly controlled hand, which is one of the applications of robotic systems specialized in the medical field. Its mission is to imitate the movements of a glove worn by the user, that is, to imitate natural human hand gestures, which are considered an information base for the implemented robotic system, and to verify From the ability and efficiency of the robotic hand to respond to these incoming signals, the control glove consists of an Arduino nano microcontroller and five flexibility sensors to sense the curvature of the fingers in addition to an nRF24L01 transmitter-receiver circuit and an external 9V power source, which is transmitted by the glove using the transmitter and receiver unit to the robotic arm. Printed through a 3D printer, which receives and processes this signal to determine how to move based on the executed gesture. As for the robotic hand, it was composed of parts manufactured by a 3D printer, where the shape was designed using the program GrabCAD, which contains an open source library 3D CAD Model Library. And five servo motors, where each finger had its own servo motor. The design of the robotic hand showed a good ability to imitate the movements of a control glove without noticeable delay, and it was able to pick up various objects. The parts were designed and assembled from locally available materials, and the circuits were manufactured from elements available in the local market. The results indicated the possibility of improving the ability to grasp objects with hard surfaces, by providing additional degrees of freedom for the fingers. This arm could be an innovative solution for people who suffer from movement deficits, such as people who suffer from upper paralysis or who cannot hold objects. Well. In addition, it can be used by all individuals, as it does not require specific measurement, and another important advantage is that it does not consume much energy.