Prospect of Using Permeable Pavement in Some Regions of Najaf Region

التبليط النفاذ له استخدامات واسعة كبديل عن التبليط الصلب غير النفاذ كما في الشوارع والساحات والارصفة ومناطق المخصصة للمشاة. هذا التبليط يقود الى فوائد ادارة مياه الامطار وفوائد بيئية. لذلك هذه الدراسة ركزت على تقديم مختصر عن انظمة التلبيط النفاذ. هذه الانواع من التبليط النفاذ قد تم استعراضها بالإضافة الى فائدة كل نوع. النتائج بينت امكانية استخدام هكذا نوع في مواقع مختلفة من العراق كمدينة النجف الاشرف. نقاط عديدة من تحريات التربة والتي اجريت بدراسة سابقة في حدود بلدية النجف بينت بان طبيعة تربتها هي تربة رملية وان مستوى المياه الجوفية منخفضة جدا. لذلك فان هذه النقاط اثبتت ان خصائص التربة هي جدا مناسبة لهذا نوع من التبليط.Permeable paving has been vastly utilized as an alternate to traditional impervious hard surfaces, such as street, parking lots, sidewalk and pedestrian areas. This leads to several rain water management and environmental advantage. Therefore, this study has focused on brief the wide-range of permeable pavement systems These types of permeable pavements have been reviewed in addition to the usefulness of each kind. The results indicated the potential of using such kind in different locations in Iraq is more likely such as Al-Najaf city. Several points of soil investigations have been conducted by previous studies within Al-Najaf city (boundary of Al-Najaf Municipal) prove that Al-Najfa soil is sandy soil. These tested points also demonstrate that the soil characteristics of the city are so suitable for such type of pavement

Suggested Safe Design for U-turn Under Different Levels of Flow

مؤخرا عدد من الحوادث تحدث في الاستدارة نوع U  المنتشرة في انواع مختلفة من الطرق في مدينة النجف الاشرف. علاوة على ذلك اغلب الازدحامات القاسية قد شوهدت في تلك الاستدارة خلال ساعات الذروة. لذلك هذه الدراسة قد ركزت على دراسة الخصائص هذه الاستدارة بمصطلح الجريان لكل موقع. نقطة مراقبة مصنعة تم عملها للحصول على الحركات المتماوجة باستخدام الكاميرا الفيديويه. برنامج محاكاة يدعى برامكس قد تم استخدامه بعد معايرته ببيانات حقليه من تلك المواقع حيث استخدم البرنامج في فحص اختيار افضل موقع بالنسبة للاستدارة من موقع اقرب طريق فرعي. النتائج اظهرت ان هذا الموقع يجب ان يكون على مسافة لاتقل عن 300 متر وذلك لتجنب الازدحامات وكذلك تقليل احتمالية الحوادث. كما تم اقتراح معالجات لسلوك السائق غير الصحيح في الاستدارات.Nowadays, a lot of accidents occur at U-turn spreading at different types of roads in Al-Najaf city. Moreover, the most severe congestion also has been seen in these U-turn during peak hours. Therefore, this study has focused on studying the characteristics of these U-turns in terms of flow for different movements for each site. The manufactured vantage point has been made to capture the weaving movement along these sections using video camera. Simulation model called S-Paramics has been used after calibrating it with filed data collected from several U-turn sites. The simulated model has been used to select the best location for the U-turn regarding to the nearest access point. The results show that the distance should be not less than 300m in order to avoid congestion.  In addition, new improvements have been suggested to correct violated behaviors of drivers

Sustainable Performance of Iraqi Asphalt Base Course Using Recycled Glass as Aggregate Replacement

في الوقت الحاضر كميات كبيرة من نفايات الزجاج تنتج في مختلف جوانب الحياة. وتطبيق مبدأ الاستدامة يستخدم عالميا بصورة واسعة في مختلف المواد الانشائية ومواد التبليط المرن والتي احتوت على مواد معادة (مستخدمه) عبر دراسات مختلفة. الزجاج المستخدم والذي هو مادة غير معدنيه ولا عضويه ولامحروقه ولا متحلله  والتي من الصعب اعادة  تدويرها قد استخدمت  كمواد مالئة وركام ناعم وخشن في طبقة الاساس.  في هذه الدراسة عدة فحوصات تم اجرائها كفحص الثبات والجريان والكثافة ونسبة الفراغات الهوائية في الخلطة المرجعية وفي الخلطات التي تحتوي نسب مختلفة من الزجاج عند استخدامه كمواد مالئة او ركام ناعم او خشن في طبقة الاساس . النتائج بصورة عامة بينت مؤشر جيد عند استخدام 10% من الزجاج المعاد استخدامه بدلا من الركام الخشن مع اسفلت نوع 40-50. هذه النسبة حسنت الكثير من الخصائص مثل مؤشر مقاومة الرجوع والتي كان ادائها افضل من الخلطة المرجعية.Nowadays, a lot of waste glass produced through different sides of life. Applying sustainability has been widely used in different construction materials and flexible pavement was contained different recycled materials through different studies. Recycled glass, where it is nonmetallic and inorganic, it can neither be incinerated nor decomposed, so it may be difficult to reclaim, has been used as filler, fine and coarse aggregates in the asphalt base course. In this study, various standard asphalt tests, such as stability, flow, density and air voids, have been conducted on reference mix asphalt and mix asphalt with different percentages of recycled glass when it has been used as filler, fine and coarse aggregates in the base course. Generally, the results show good indication, especially when using 10% of the recycled glass instead of coarse aggregate with 40-50 asphalt grades. This percentage improves most characteristics such as strength retained index which indicates better performance than reference mix. &nbsp

Evaluation of Pedestrian Facilities in Al-Najaf City

Less attention to pedestrian facilities significantly affects traffic flow, such as side friction and delay. It was noted that a high interaction, in Al-Najaf city, with the vehicular stream by pedestrians resulted in a reduction in the performance of this urban road network with high pedestrian interactions. Compared to vehicular movements, pedestrians continuously interact with each other and their surrounding environment, constantly changing characteristics and direction. This study aims to evaluate Al-Najaf City pedestrian facilities (Footbridges). The number and location of these bridges were investigated in 2010 and 2022 using Arc GIS10.5. Furthermore, some specific sites have been selected to indicate the intensity of interaction between the pedestrian and traffic flow. The results showed a significant lack of pedestrian footbridges in the city with high pedestrian interaction (side friction) in the selected sites

Toward converting some individual parks into smart parks in Kerbela city

The city of Kerbela is from the famous holy cities in Iraq and in the world where the holy shrine of Imam Hussein there. This city suffers from lack of suitable parking area for the vehicles coming to this city. This study selects a surrounding section which is approximately the same as other sections surrounding the city center. Knowing the problems in this section give a comprehensive picture for parking problems in the whole city. The study area has serious parking problems; therefore five off-street parks have been surveyed for two days during ordinary day and the other one in religious day (Thursday at day and night). Other types of data have been collected such as vehicular flow and pedestrian flow in order to select the best management for this area. The location of these five parks is on the north side of the city facing the main arterial street surrounding the holy city and in the opposing direction to the main garage called Al-Garage Al-Muhad from which different trips end and start. The analysis results of field data show that parking behavior differs in the ordinary day from the day of religious issues. It is a specific location has been assigned for one park with multi-stories in the same area as alternative of these separated parks. In addition, it was found that there is a need for managing pedestrian movement related to the parking vehicles in this area. This study also suggests using smart parking system as first step towards building intelligent transportation system to manage the parking facilities

DEVELOPING A NEW HYBRID SAFETY CAR-FOLLOWING MODEL

 For more than five decades, car-following models have been developed based on different theoretical backgrounds and conditions. The importance of these models belongs to their representation of longitudinal movement for any simulation model. Therefore, the accuracy of the car-following model is still the core of strength of any simulation model.  For the purpose of this study, a hybrid car-following model has been developed to represent “go and stop” conditions. These conditions mostly occur in a weaving section. This model has been developed as a corner stone for a microscopic simulation model of representation of driver behaviour at a weaving section.  A new condition that improves a driver behaviour in a situation at which the driver should not accelerate under specific condition as approaching from decelerated leading vehicle.  Some assumptions of this model have been adopted from the CARSIM model. After developing this model using Visual Compact Fortran (version 6.5), the developed model has been calibrated with a set of field data from Germany. The results show that this model is more reasonable than other models such as Paramics, VISSIM, AIMSUN and CARSIM using the same set of data. This model show significantly improvement in representing the reality than the others.

CONTRIBUTION TO THE U-TURN DESIGN AT MEDIAN OPENINGS IN IRAQ: Al-NAJAF CITY AS A CASE STUDY

Field observations indicate that left turning vehicles at U-turn sections lead to a significantly bottleneck (congestion) at both origin and destination (opposing) roads. The bottlenecks have been observed in several U-turns such as Kufa –Najaf U-turn sections, Najaf –Karbala U-turn sections. It was found that left turn flow from U-turn leads to high congestion on both origin and destination roads. Therefore, field improvements have been done by the traffic policemen who create a temporary barrier from traffic plastic signs in order to protect left turning vehicles from through traffic in opposing direction. This study introduces new design for U-turn in order to protect both turning and through traffic to increase the level of performance. This design has been tested by using simulation model.  The developed model (S-Paramics) has been calibrated using field data collected from Al-Najaf city. Then, the validation for the developed model has been implemented using another set of field data. Finally, the simulation model has been adopted to test the new design for U-turn. It was found that the new design gives higher capacity than the current design

Developing a simulation model to evaluate the capacity of weaving sections

Weaving sections have proved to cause bottlenecks on motorways because of the relatively frequent lane changes in these sections. The use of analytical models in assessing weaving section capacity (such as those suggested by the Highway Capacity Manual-HCM) has proved to produce some inaccurate results. This could be due to the more complex nature of this section compared with an isolated merging or diverging ones. In this study, a new weaving micro-simulation model has been developed to focus on the behaviour of drivers along a weaving section. This model consists mainly of four essential algorithms to represent car-following, lane changing, gap acceptance and weaving rules. The model was developed with data on drivers' characteristics at weaving sections which was used in its calibration and validation processes. A large amount of data from loop detectors obtained from the Highways Agency (i.e. the Motorway Incident Detection and Automated Signalling-MIDAS) was collected. However, such data alone was found to be inadequate for studying weaving section characteristics. Therefore, over 50 hours of video recordings were collected from several weaving sections within the Greater Manchester Area. Such comprehensive resource of field data helped in investigating other characterises such as effective length, the percentage of segregation vehicles and merging/diverging points. The results suggest that the effective length could be considered as about 200m for ramp weaving sections where the actual weaving length is greater or equal to 300m. whereas this effective length represents the whole weaving length when the actual weaving length is less than 300m. In addition, the majority of drivers performed their merging as early as the first 100m from the entrance point. Similarly, high proportions of diverging drivers entered the auxiliary lane very close to the entrance point. The newly developed model was applied in testing the effect on capacity of having different percentages of heavy goods vehicles and a range of volume ratios. New management scenarios were also applied using the developed model such as changing the configuration type of weaving sections from Type A to Type B and shifting the point of diverging (i.e. moving to the auxiliary lane) further downstream of the entrance point for a certain specified distance. The results suggested an improved operational performance in terms of reducing theEThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo