The impact of open-plan office spatial components on the perceived human behaviour and level of collaboration: The United Arab Emirates

The concept of workplace collaboration has been extensively studied over the past years. The evaluation of employee perceptions and workplace behaviours dates back more than 70 years and serves as the topic's basis. The majority of these studies ignored the office layout environment in favour of focusing on job satisfaction. In contrast, studies that analysed the indoor office environment only considered thermal and acoustic comfort, lighting, and indoor air quality in relation to employees' job satisfaction. A limited focus in organizational studies has been done on individuals' communication and collaboration patterns in various layouts, and contradictions are common in the ongoing debate about the benefits and drawbacks of open-plan versus cellular office spaces. The reduced concern for perceived effective collaboration has been observed locally in the United Arab Emirates, where offices are increasingly embracing the concept of employee engagement in the workplace. Therefore, this research aims to address the association between individual-group tasks perceived collaboration and office layouts. In order to explore further into the topic of workplace perceived collaboration, there are three primary objectives of this study that might help in achieving the research aim: First, establish a conceptual framework for collaborative workplaces in interior design utilizing a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. This study relied on four investigation tools to gather the data it needed: two qualitative approaches were used: "observations" and "design analysis"; and two quantitative: "interview questionnaires" and "space syntax". The qualitative data relevant to the field observation indicating the occupant’s movement, interactions and visual co-presence will be translated to quantitative data. The second objective is to demonstrate the appropriateness of the conceptual framework to the selected multiple offices in the UAE. The third purpose is to provide design guidelines for the selected case studies for any potential future improvement and for the benefit of other similar examples both locally and globally. These examinations enable this study to address the primary research question of: " How should existing open-office spaces been designed to encourage a collaborative working environment?" It is anticipated that the outcomes of the study will inform and help interior designers, architects, and company directors in better understanding employees' perceptions of collaboration in different selected office layouts. Consideration of these factors early in the workplace design process is envisioned to yield significant long-term benefits, as well as increase workers' productivity and engagement

Shear Behavior of High-Performance Reinforced Concrete Beams

High-performance concrete (HPC) is one of such new material that has a major improvement over conventional concrete; however, its behavior has to be fully understood. This paper presents experimental and numerical investigations in order to study the shear behavior of high-performance reinforced concrete beams. Four RC-HPC beams were tested experimentally in order to study the effect of the existence of web reinforcement and bar diameter of the web reinforcement as well as the amount of the tensile longitudinal steel bars on the shear behavior. Test results showed higher values of shear strength, stiffness, ductility and controlled the concrete cracking behavior due to the presence of stirrups. The ultimate load for beam having shear reinforcement of 6 mm diameter increased by about 16% compared to that of control beam BI-1 without shear reinforcement, while, that increase reached up to 34% for beam having 8 mm diameter web reinforcement. Besides, the numerical modeling enabled to capture satisfactory the behavior of HPC beam so that it can be used to study the effect of more parameters on the behavior of HPC beams

Shear Behavior of High-Performance Reinforced Concrete Beams

High-performance concrete (HPC) is one of such new material that has a major improvement over conventional concrete; however, its behavior has to be fully understood. This paper presents experimental and numerical investigations in order to study the shear behavior of high-performance reinforced concrete beams. Four RC-HPC beams were tested experimentally in order to study the effect of the existence of web reinforcement and bar diameter of the web reinforcement as well as the amount of the tensile longitudinal steel bars on the shear behavior. Test results showed higher values of shear strength, stiffness, ductility and controlled the concrete cracking behavior due to the presence of stirrups. The ultimate load for beam having shear reinforcement of 6 mm diameter increased by about 16% compared to that of control beam BI-1 without shear reinforcement, while, that increase reached up to 34% for beam having 8 mm diameter web reinforcement. Besides, the numerical modeling enabled to capture satisfactory the behavior of HPC beam so that it can be used to study the effect of more parameters on the behavior of HPC beams

A Combined Conjugate Gradient Quasi-Newton Method with Modification BFGS Formula

The conjugate gradient and Quasi-Newton methods have advantages and drawbacks, as although quasi-Newton algorithm has more rapid convergence than conjugate gradient, they require more storage compared to conjugate gradient algorithms. In 1976, Buckley designed a method that combines the CG method with QN updates, which is better than that observed for conjugate gradient algorithms but not as good as the quasi-Newton approach. This type of method is called the preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) method. In this paper, we introduce two new preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) methods that combine conjugate gradient with a new update of quasi-Newton methods. The new quasi-Newton method satisfied the positive define, and the direction of the new preconditioned conjugate gradient is descent direction. In numerical results, it is showing the new preconditioned conjugate gradient method is more effective on several high-dimension test problems than standard preconditioning

Rheological Characterization of Clay-PolyesterComposites

AbstractPolymer-clay composites, which consist of clay particles dispersed in a polymeric matrix, have been used in different applications. Clay fillers are widely used in polymers as ways to produce cost-effective, strong, and energy efficient materials. The compounding and inclusion of particulate fillers in the polymers to get a homogenous material is a rather complex process. The processing of these materials, like mixing and moulding is strongly dependent on the particle-particle and particle-polymer interactions. Therefore, the fundamental understanding of the rheological properties of the polymer-clay composites is very important in the design of their processing. In this study, the rheological behaviour of bentonite clay dispersed in unsaturated polyester was investigated. Herschel-Bulkley model and Structural Kinetic model were used to describe the dependence of the apparent viscosity of the composite on shear rate and shearing time, respectively. The effects of the filler/polyester ratio and filler size on the rheological properties of the composite were studied

Optical Parameters of Varies Thickness of Bismuth (Iii) Iodide Thin Films for Photovoltaic and Nonlinear Applications

We report in varies thickness of BiI3 thin films by thermal evaporation techniques onto glass substrate. The films were strongly oriented along the (113) plane. The structural parameters of these films (crystallite size and lattice strain) were determined using (XRD) pattern. The thicknesses and refractive indices of the films were considered using Swanepoels method. The band gap was determined in terms of T and R spectrum in the UV-region of the absorption. The possible optical transitions of all films are found to be allowed direct transition with energy gap fluctuate bout 1.96 ± 2% eV. Dielectric constant, volume-energy-loss function (VELF) and surface-energy-loss function (SELF) for as deposited films were discussed in terms of film thickness rising. The change in optical parameters have been interpreted in terms of the change in microstructure parameters. BiI3 is recommended for photovoltaics and nonlinear optics because of its higher absorption coefficient, dielectric constant, and fair band gap

Preparation and characterization of water-absorbing composite membrane for medical applications

The present work introduces a novel method for the formation of water absorbing composite membrane. The prepared composite is based on chitosan, carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), and Montmorillonite. Prepared composite membrane exhibits high water absorbing and holding capacity with increasing clay content. The water absorbency was studied as a function of the hydrogel composition and the medium pH. Structure and morphologies of the prepared composite have been characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), and transmission electron microscope (TEM). TEM study showed that the formed membrane is homogenous and prepared uniformly.Keywords: Composite, clay, superabsorber, chitosan, carboxymethyl cellulose, composite membrane