Determination of Saline Soils Specific Gravity

The existence of salts as part of the solid phase of the soil or dissolved within the pore fluid may cause significant errors in the values of specific gravity of such soils by using conventional determination methods. Errors may arise from effects of wrong measurements of weights or volumes that take place due to dissolution of the salt during testing, precipitation during drying or dehydration of the crystals of certain salts such as gypsum. To overcome this confusion, the standard procedure for specific gravity determination is reconsidered and the calculation methods are reanalyzed. Suggestions for a more adequate procedure for gypseous or other types of saline soils are presented and corrections required for computations are derived

Deaggregation of Probabilistic Ground Motions for Selected Jordanian Cities

Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) approach was adopted to investigate seismic hazard distribution across Jordan. Potential sources of seismic activities in the region were identified, and their earthquake recurrence relationships were developed from instrumental and historical data. Maps of peak ground acceleration and spectral accelerations (T=0.2 and T=1.0 sec.) of 2% and 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years were developed. This study deaggregated the PSHA results of 2% and 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years results of twelve Jordanian cities to help understand the relative control of these sources in terms of distances and magnitudes. Results indicated that seismic hazard across these cities is mainly controlled by area sources located along the Dead Sea Transform (DST) fault system. Cities located at short distances from the DST tend to show close deaggregation behavior. Some discrepancies may exist due to the proximity or remoteness of these cities relative to the DST seismic sources and local seismicity. The modal or most probable distance distribution indicated that the distance to the earthquake which contributes most to the hazard at each city is mainly controlled by shaking along faults associated with near seismic area sources. The influence of adjacent seismic sources to the seismic hazard of each city is more evident for the long period spectral acceleration. Distant sources, such as the eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus, Suez and the southern region of the Gulf of Aqaba are relatively low, but can not be neglected due to the intrinsic uncertainties and incomplete seismic data

Establishing Regional Power Sustainability and Feasibility Using Wind Farm Land-Use Optimization

Wind-farm planning optimization is important for decision-making concerning regional energy planning in developing countries. This process is governed by restrictions on site selection based on land suitability metric variables, wind turbine technology variables, and land-use governing criteria. This study aims to create a framework for land appropriation strategies for locating optimum sites suitable for wind farms. It is using Jordan as an Area of Interest (AOI), where the scope is to illustrate how this framework will employ wind turbine energy to positively enhance the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The methodology employs thirteen GIS thematic layers with a 250-m spatial resolution to substantiate how site-specific criteria, turbine type, and turbine hub height variables are determining factors in the optimal solution. This method involves selecting relevant factors, database construction, data layer generation and preparation, numerical ranking and weighting of each factor, and computation of the potential wind farm locations map by overlaying all the thematic GIS layers. The results showed that the establishment of wind farms would not only meet the AOI’s growing energy needs, rather exceed them to generating income for the developing nation. The results of the feasibility study will boost the national GDP by 3.4%; where, for example, one governorate alone could produce 274.3% of the total required national consumption at a turbine hub height of 50 m. The study attests to a valuable framework that can be implemented elsewhere to establish regional power sustainability and feasibility for other nations. The results show that an added land-use layer indicating the potential value of land in terms of its suitability for establishing wind farms should be considered in future sustainable regional planning studies when considering networks for smart cities, industrial cities, smart agriculture, and new agglomerations