Search results for: deep soil mixing

Authors: Trung Le Thanh

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Soil permeability coefficient is an important parameter that affects the effectiveness of mortar restoration work to reinforce soft soil. Currently, there are many methods to determine the permeability coefficient of ground through laboratory and field experiments. However, the value of the permeability coefficient is determined very differently depending on the geology in general and the sand base in particular. This article presents how to determine the permeability coefficient of sand foundation in Phu My Ward, Tan Uyen City, Binh Duong. The author analyzes and evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of assessment methods based on the data and results obtained, and on that basis recommends a suitable method for determining the permeability coefficient for sand foundations. The research results serve the evaluation of the effectiveness of grouting to reinforce soft ground in general, and grouting of bored piles in particular.

Keywords: permeability coefficient, soft soil, shaft grouting, post grouting, jet grouting

Procedia PDF Downloads 58

Authors: Hossein Navid, Maryam Adeli Khadem, Shahin Oustan, Mahmoud Zareie

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Among the nutrients needed by the plants, three elements containing nitrate, phosphorus and potassium are more important. The objective of this research was measuring these nutrient amounts in soil using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in range of 400- 4000 cm-1. Soil samples for different soil types (sandy, clay and loam) were collected from different areas of East Azerbaijan. Three types of fertilizers in conventional farming (urea, triple superphosphate, potassium sulphate) were used for soil treatment. Each specimen was divided into two categories: The first group was used in the laboratory (direct measurement) to extract nitrate, phosphorus and potassium uptake by colorimetric method of Olsen and ammonium acetate. The second group was used to measure drug absorption spectrometry. In spectrometry, the small amount of soil samples mixed with KBr and was taken in a small pill form. For the tests, the pills were put in the center of infrared spectrometer and graphs were obtained. Analysis of data was done using MINITAB and PLSR software. The data obtained from spectrometry method were compared with amount of soil nutrients obtained from direct drug absorption using EXCEL software. There were good fitting between these two data series. For nitrate, phosphorus and potassium R2 was 79.5%, 92.0% and 81.9%, respectively. Also, results showed that the range of MIR (mid-infrared) is appropriate for determine the amount of soil nitrate and potassium and can be used in future research to obtain detailed maps of land in agricultural use.

Keywords: nitrate, phosphorus, potassium, soil nutrients, spectroscopy

Procedia PDF Downloads 390

Authors: Yonwaba Atyosi, Moses Cho, Abel Ramoelo, Nobuhle Majozi, Cecilia Masemola, Yoliswa Mkhize

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Spectroscopy has been widely used to understand the hyperspectral remote sensing of soils. Accurate and efficient measurement of soil moisture is essential for precision agriculture. The aim of this study was to understand the spectral behavior of soil at different soil water content levels and identify the significant spectral bands for soil moisture content retrieval at field-scale. The study consisted of 60 soil samples from a maize farm, divided into four different treatments representing different moisture levels. Spectral signatures were measured for each sample in laboratory under artificial light using an Analytical Spectral Device (ASD) spectrometer, covering a wavelength range from 350 nm to 2500 nm, with a spectral resolution of 1 nm. The results showed that the absorption features at 1450 nm, 1900 nm, and 2200 nm were particularly sensitive to soil moisture content and exhibited strong correlations with the water content levels. Continuum removal was developed in the R programming language to enhance the absorption features of soil moisture and to precisely understand its spectral behavior at different water content levels. Statistical analysis using partial least squares regression (PLSR) models were performed to quantify the correlation between the spectral bands and soil moisture content. This study provides insights into the spectral behavior of soil at different water content levels and identifies the significant spectral bands for soil moisture content retrieval. The findings highlight the potential of spectroscopy for non-destructive and rapid soil moisture measurement, which can be applied to various fields such as precision agriculture, hydrology, and environmental monitoring. However, it is important to note that the spectral behavior of soil can be influenced by various factors such as soil type, texture, and organic matter content, and caution should be taken when applying the results to other soil systems. The results of this study showed a good agreement between measured and predicted values of Soil Moisture Content with high R2 and low root mean square error (RMSE) values. Model validation using independent data was satisfactory for all the studied soil samples. The results has significant implications for developing high-resolution and precise field-scale soil moisture retrieval models. These models can be used to understand the spatial and temporal variation of soil moisture content in agricultural fields, which is essential for managing irrigation and optimizing crop yield.

Keywords: soil moisture content retrieval, precision agriculture, continuum removal, remote sensing, machine learning, spectroscopy

Procedia PDF Downloads 82

Authors: Katalin Juhos, Enikő Papdi, Flórián Kovács, Vasileios P. Vasileiadis, Andrea Veres

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Mulching techniques can be a solution for better utilization of precipitation and irrigation water and for mitigating soil degradation and drought damages. Waste fibres as alternative biodegradable mulch materials are increasingly coming to the fore. The effect of wool mulch (WM) on water use efficiency of pepper seedlings were investigated in different soil types (sand, clay loam, peat) in a pot experiment. Two semi-field experiments were also set up to investigate the effect of WM-plant interaction on sweet pepper yield in comparison with agro-textile and straw mulches. Soil parameters (moisture, temperature, DHA, β-glucosidase enzymes, permanganate-oxidizable carbon) were measured during the growing season. The effect of WM on yield and biomass was more significant with less frequent irrigation and the greater the water capacity of soils. The microbiological activity was significantly higher in the presence of plants, because of the water retention of WM, the metabolic products of roots and the more balanced soil temperature caused by plants. On the sandy soil, the straw mulch had a significantly better effect on microbiological parameters and yields than the agro-textile and WM. WM is a sustainable practice for improving soil biological parameters and water use efficiency on soils with a higher water capacity.

Keywords: β-glucosidase, DHA enzyme activity; labile carbon, straw mulch; plastic mulch, evapotranspira-tion coefficient, soil temperature

Procedia PDF Downloads 67

Authors: Komeil Valipourian

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Urban advances and the growing need for developing infrastructures has increased the importance of deep excavations. In this study, after the introducing probability analysis as an important issue, an attempt has been made to apply it for the deep excavation project of Bangkok’s Metro as a case study. For this, the numerical probability model has been developed based on the Finite Difference Method and Monte Carlo sampling approach. The results indicate that disregarding the issue of probability in this project will result in an inappropriate design of the retaining structure. Therefore, probabilistic redesign of the support is proposed and carried out as one of the applications of probability analysis. A 50% reduction in the flexural strength of the structure increases the failure probability just by 8% in the allowable range and helps improve economic conditions, while maintaining mechanical efficiency. With regard to the lack of efficient design in most deep excavations, by considering geometrical and geotechnical variability, an attempt was made to develop an optimum practical design standard for deep excavations based on failure probability. On this basis, a practical relationship is presented for estimating the maximum allowable horizontal displacement, which can help improve design conditions without developing the probability analysis.

Keywords: numerical probability modeling, deep excavation, allowable maximum displacement, finite difference method (FDM)

Procedia PDF Downloads 115

Authors: Amel Bouderhem, Aminata Ould El Hadj Khelil, Amina N. Djrarbaoui, Aroussi Aroussi

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The present work aims to find the influence of the nature of the soil on the effectiveness of the biodegradation of hydrocarbons by a mixture of bacterial strains hydrocarbonoclastes. Processes of bioaugmentation and biostimulation trial are applied to samples of soils polluted voluntarily by the crude oil. For the evaluation of the biodegradation of hydrocarbons, the bacterial load, the pH and organic carbon total are followed in the different experimental batches. He bacterial load of the sandy soil varies among the witnesses of 45,2 .108 CFU/ml at the beginning of the experimentation to 214,07.108 CFU/ml at the end of the experiment. Of the soil silty-clay varies between 103,31 .108 CFU/ml and 614,86.108 CFU/ml . It was found a strong increase in the bacterial biomass during the processing of all samples. This increase is more important in the samples of sand bioaugmente or biomass increased from 63.16 .108 CFU/ml to 309.68 .108 CFU/ml than in soil samples silty clay- bioaugmente whose content in bacteria evolved of 73,01 .108 CFU/ml to 631.80 . 108CFU/ml

Keywords: pollution, hydrocarbons, bioremediation, bacteria hydrocarbonoclastes, ground, texture

Procedia PDF Downloads 460

Authors: Shaik Jilani Basha, Inavolu Avinash, Alla Venu Sai Reddy, Bitragunta Taraka Ramu

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We can use the neural style transfer technique to build a picture with the same "content" as the beginning image but the "style" of the picture we've chosen. Neural style transfer is a technique for merging the style of one image into another while retaining its original information. The only change is how the image is formatted to give it an additional artistic sense. The content image depicts the plan or drawing, as well as the colors of the drawing or paintings used to portray the style. It is a computer vision programme that learns and processes images through deep convolutional neural networks. To implement software, we used to train deep learning models with the train data, and whenever a user takes an image and a styled image, the output will be as the style gets transferred to the original image, and it will be shown as the output.

Keywords: neural networks, computer vision, deep learning, convolutional neural networks

Procedia PDF Downloads 73

Authors: Pawan Kumar Mishra, Ganesh Singh Bisht

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Super-resolution is the technique that is being used in computer vision to construct high-resolution images from a single low-resolution image. It is used to increase the frequency component, recover the lost details and removing the down sampling and noises that caused by camera during image acquisition process. High-resolution images or videos are desired part of all image processing tasks and its analysis in most of digital imaging application. The target behind super-resolution is to combine non-repetition information inside single or multiple low-resolution frames to generate a high-resolution image. Many methods have been proposed where multiple images are used as low-resolution images of same scene with different variation in transformation. This is called multi-image super resolution. And another family of methods is single image super-resolution that tries to learn redundancy that presents in image and reconstruction the lost information from a single low-resolution image. Use of deep learning is one of state of art method at present for solving reconstruction high-resolution image. In this research, we proposed Deep Denoising Super Resolution (DDSR) that is a deep neural network for effectively reconstruct the high-resolution image from low-resolution image.

Keywords: resolution, deep-learning, neural network, de-blurring

Procedia PDF Downloads 503

Authors: V. K. Arora, Amit Rastogi

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To understand the anchor pile behaviour and to predict the capacity of piles under uplift loading are important concerns in foundation analysis. Experimental model tests have been conducted on single anchor pile embedded in cohesionless soil and subjected to pure uplift loading. A gravel-filled geogrid layer was located around the enlarged pile base. The experimental tests were conducted on straight-shafted vertical steel piles with an outer diameter of 20 mm in a steel soil tank. The tested piles have embedment depth-to-diameter ratios (L/D) of 2, 3, and 4. The sand bed is prepared at three different values of density of 1.67, 1.59, and 1.50gm/cc. Single piles embedded in sandy soil were tested and the results are presented and analysed in this paper. The influences of pile embedment ratio, reinforcement, relative density of soil on the uplift capacity of piles were investigated. The study revealed that the behaviour of single piles under uplift loading depends mainly on both the pile embedment depth-to-diameter ratio and the soil density. It is believed that the experimental results presented in this study would be beneficial to the professional understanding of the soil–pile-uplift interaction problem.

Keywords: flat under-reamer anchor pile, geogrid, pullout reinforcement, soil reinforcement

Procedia PDF Downloads 455

Authors: Susan Diamond

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Machine Learning workloads have traditionally been run in high-performance computing (HPC) environments, where users log in to dedicated machines and utilize the attached GPUs to run training jobs on huge datasets. Training of large neural network models is very resource intensive, and even after exploiting parallelism and accelerators such as GPUs, a single training job can still take days. Consequently, the cost of hardware is a barrier to entry. Even when upfront cost is not a concern, the lead time to set up such an HPC environment takes months from acquiring hardware to set up the hardware with the right set of firmware, software installed and configured. Furthermore, scalability is hard to achieve in a rigid traditional lab environment. Therefore, it is slow to react to the dynamic change in the artificial intelligent industry. Watson Deep Learning as a service, a cloud-based deep learning platform that mitigates the long lead time and high upfront investment in hardware. It enables robust and scalable sharing of resources among the teams in an organization. It is designed for on-demand cloud environments. Providing a similar user experience in a multi-tenant cloud environment comes with its own unique challenges regarding fault tolerance, performance, and security. Watson Deep Learning as a service tackles these challenges and present a deep learning stack for the cloud environments in a secure, scalable and fault-tolerant manner. It supports a wide range of deep-learning frameworks such as Tensorflow, PyTorch, Caffe, Torch, Theano, and MXNet etc. These frameworks reduce the effort and skillset required to design, train, and use deep learning models. Deep Learning as a service is used at IBM by AI researchers in areas including machine translation, computer vision, and healthcare. 

Keywords: deep learning, machine learning, cognitive computing, model training

Procedia PDF Downloads 198

Authors: Shantosa Yudha Siswanto, Rachmat Harryanto

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The aim of the research was to investigate the effect of land use and slope steepness on soil erodibility index. The research was conducted from September to December 2013 in Mekarwangi catchment area, sub watershed of Cikapundung Hulu, Indonesia. The study was carried out using descriptive method. Physiographic free survey method was used as survey method, it was a survey based on land physiographic appearance. Soil sampling was carried out into transect on the similarity of slope without calculating the range between points of observation. Soil samples were carried onto three classes of land use such as: forest, plantation and dry cultivation area. Each land use consists of three slope classes such as: 8-15%, 16-25%, and 26-40% class. Five samples of soil were taken from each of them, resulting 45 points of observation. The result of the research showed that type of land use and slope classes gave different effect on soil erodibility. The highest C-organic and permeability was found on forest with slope 16-25%. Slope of 8-15% with forest land use give the lowest effect on soil erodibility.

Keywords: land use, slope, erodibility, erosion

Procedia PDF Downloads 240

Authors: Menuka Maharjan

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In the name of food security, agriculture intensification through conventional farming is being implemented in Nepal. Government focus on increasing agriculture production completely ignores soil as well human health. This leads to create serious soil degradation, i.e., reduction of soil fertility and microbial activity and health hazard in the country. On this note, organic farming is sustainable agriculture approach which can address challenge of sustaining food security while protecting the environment. This creates a win-win situation both for people and the environment. However, people have limited knowledge on significance of organic farming for environment conservation and food security especially developing countries like Nepal. Thus, the objective of the study was to assess the impacts of organic farming on soil fertility and microbial activity compared to conventional farming and forest in Chitwan, Nepal. Total soil organic carbon (C) was highest in organic farming (24 mg C g⁻¹ soil) followed by conventional farming (15 mg C g⁻¹ soil) and forest (9 mg C g⁻¹ soil) in the topsoil layer (0-10 cm depth). A similar trend was found for total nitrogen (N) content in all three land uses with organic farming soil possessing the highest total N content in both 0-10 cm and 10-20 cm depth. Microbial biomass C and N were also highest under organic farming, especially in the topsoil layer (350 and 46 mg g⁻¹ soil, respectively). Similarly, microbial biomass phosphorus (P) was higher (3.6 and 1.0 mg P kg⁻¹ at 0-10 and 10-20 cm depth, respectively) in organic farming compared to conventional farming and forest at both depths. However, conventional farming and forest soils had similar microbial biomass (C, N, and P) content. After conversion of forest, the P stock significantly increased by 373% and 170% in soil under organic farming at 0-10 and 10-20 cm depth, respectively. In conventional farming, the P stock increased by 64% and 36% at 0-10 cm and 10-20 cm depth, respectively, compared to forest. Overall, organic farming practices, i.e., crop rotation, residue input and farmyard manure application, significantly alters soil fertility and microbial activity. Organic farming system is emerging as a sustainable land use system which can address the issues of food security and environment conservation by increasing sustainable agriculture production and carbon sequestration, respectively, supporting to achieve goals of sustainable development.

Keywords: organic farming, soil fertility, micobial biomas, food security

Procedia PDF Downloads 166

Authors: A. Ghadbane, M. N. Bouaziz, S. Hanini, B. Baggoura, M. Abbaci

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The spacer grids are used to fix the rods bundle in a nuclear reactor core also act as turbulence-enhancing devices to improve the heat transfer from the hot surfaces of the rods to the surrounding coolant stream. Therefore, the investigation of thermal-hydraulic characteristics inside the rod bundles is important for optima design and safety operation of a nuclear reactor power plant. This contribution presents a feasibility study to use the ribbed spacer grids as mixing devices. The present study evaluates the effects of different ribbed spacer grids configurations on flow pattern and heat transfer in the downstream of the mixing devices in a 2 x 2 rod bundle array. This is done by obtaining velocity and pressure fields, turbulent intensity and the heat transfer coefficient using a three-dimensional CFD analysis. Numerical calculations are performed by employing K-ε turbulent model. The computational results obtained are promising and the comparison with standard spacer grids shows a clear difference which required the experimental approach to validate.

Keywords: PWR fuel assembly, spacer grid, mixing vane, swirl flow, turbulent heat transfer, CFD

Procedia PDF Downloads 480

Authors: Rayan Elsiddig Eltaib, Yamanaka Norikazu, Mubarak Abdelrahman Abdalla

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This study investigated the effects of Acacia Senegal, Calotropis procera, Leptadenia pyrotechnica, Ziziphus spina Christi, Balanites aegyptiaca, Indigofera oblongigolia, Arachis hypogea and Sesimum indicum grown in the western region of White Nile State on soil properties of the 0-10, 10-30, 30-60 and 60-90 cm depths. Soil properties were: pH(paste), electrical conductivity of the saturation extract (ECe), total N (TN), organic carbon (OC), soluble K, available P, aggregate stability and water holding capacity. Triplicate Soil samples were collected after the end of the rainy season using 5 cm diameter auger. Results indicated that pH, ECe and TN were not significantly different among plant cover types. In the top 10-30 cm depth, OC under all types was significantly higher than the control (4.1 to 7.7 fold). The highest (0.085%) OC was found under the Z. spina Christi and A. Senegal whereas the lowest (0.045%) was reported under the A. hypogea. In the 10-30 cm depth, with the exception of A. hypogea, Z. spina christi and S. indicum, P content was almost similar but significantly higher than the control by 72 to 129%. In the 10-30 cm depth, K content under the S. indicum (0.46 meq/L) was exceptionally high followed by Z. spina christi (0.102 meq/L) as compared to the control (0.029 meq/L). Water holding capacity and aggregate stability of the top 0-10 cm depth were not significantly different among plant cover types. Based on the fact that accumulation of organic matter in the soil profile of any ecosystem is an important indicator of soil quality, results of this study may conclude that (1) cultivation of A.senegal, B.aegyptiaca and Z. spina Christi improved soil quality whereas (2) cultivation of A. hypogea or soil that is solely invaded with C. procera and L.pyrotechnica may induce soil degradation.

Keywords: canopy, crops, shrubs, soil properties, trees

Procedia PDF Downloads 269

Authors: Bowen Ding, Yihao Kuang

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In recent years, with the development of large-scale pre-trained lan-guage models, building vector representations of text through deep neural network models has become a standard practice for natural language processing tasks. From the performance on downstream tasks, we can know that the text representation constructed by these models contains linguistic information, but its encoding mode and extent are unclear. In this work, a structural probe is proposed to detect whether the vector representation produced by a deep neural network is embedded with a syntax tree. The probe is trained with the deep metric learning method, so that the distance between word vectors in the metric space it defines encodes the distance of words on the syntax tree, and the norm of word vectors encodes the depth of words on the syntax tree. The experiment results on ELMo and BERT show that the syntax tree is encoded in their parameters and the word representations they produce.

Keywords: deep metric learning, syntax tree probing, natural language processing, word representations

Procedia PDF Downloads 51

Authors: Vaclav Novak, Katerina Krizova, Petr Sarec

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Modern agriculture has to face many issues from which soil degradation and lack of organic matter in the soil are only a few of them. Apart from Climate Change, human utilization of landscape is the cause of a majority part of these problems. Cattle production in Czechia has been reduced by more than half in recent 30 years. However, cattle manure is considered as staple organic fertilizer, and its role in attempts for sustainable agriculture is irreplaceable. This study aims to describe the impact of so-called activators of biological manure transformation (Z´fix, Olmix Group) mainly on physical soil properties but also on crop status. The experiment has been established in 2017; nevertheless, initial measurements of implement draft have been performed before the treated manure application. In 2018, the physical soil properties and crop status (sugar beet) has been determined and compared with the untreated manure and control variant. Significant results have been observed already in the first year, where the implement draft decreased by 9.2 % within the treated manure variant in comparison with the control variant.

Keywords: field experiment, implement draft, vegetation index, sugar beet

Procedia PDF Downloads 140

Authors: Tesfaye Sisay Dessalegn

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The long-term performance of concrete structures is affected by the properties and behavior of concrete at an early age. However, the fundamental mechanisms affecting the early-age behavior of concrete have not yet been fully studied. The effect of water temperature on concrete is not sufficiently studied, and at the same time, the majority of studies focused on the effect of mixing water temperature on the workability and mechanical properties of concrete. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the effect of mixing water temperatures on plastic shrinkage cracking of concrete has not been studied yet.

Keywords: water temperature, early age concrete strength, mechanical properties of concrete, strength

Procedia PDF Downloads 36

Authors: M. Lebrini, L. Salhi, C. Deyrat, C. Roos, O. Nait-Rabah

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The paper presents a large experimental study on the corrosion of zinc in tropical soil and in the ground water at the various depths. Through this study, the corrosion rate prediction was done on the basis of two methods the electrochemical method and the gravimetric. The electrochemical results showed that the corrosion rate is more important at the depth levels 0 m to 0.5 m and 0.5 m to 1 m and beyond these depth levels, the corrosion rate is less important. The electrochemical results indicated also that a passive layer is formed on the zinc surface. The found SEM and EDX micrographs displayed that the surface is extremely attacked and confirmed that a zinc oxide layer is present on the surface whose thickness and relief increase as the contact with soil increases.

Keywords: soil corrosion, galvanized steel, electrochemical technique, SEM and EDX

Procedia PDF Downloads 114

Authors: Z. Adnan, M. M. Habib

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The laboratory tests for measuring the effects of small strain to the shear strength and maximum stiffness development of post-cyclic degradation of hemic peat are reviewed in this paper. A series of laboratory testing has been conducted to fulfil the objective of this research to study the post-cyclic behaviour of peat soil and focuses on the small strain characteristics. For this purpose, a number of strain-controlled static, cyclic and post-cyclic triaxial tests were carried out in undrained condition on hemic peat soil. The shear strength and maximum stiffness of hemic peat are evaluated immediately after post-cyclic monotonic testing. There are two soil samples taken from West Johor and East Malaysia peat soil. Based on these laboratories and field testing data, it was found that the shear strength and maximum stiffness of peat soil decreased in post-cyclic monotonic loading than its initial shear strength and stiffness. In particular, degradation in shear strength and stiffness is more sensitive for peat soil due to fragile and uniform fibre structures. Shear strength of peat soil, τ_max = 12.53 kPa (Beaufort peat, BFpt) and 36.61 kPa (Parit Nipah peat, PNpt) decreased than its initial 58.46 kPa and 91.67 kPa. The maximum stiffness, G_max = 0.23 and 0.25 decreased markedly with post-cyclic, G_max = 0.04 and 0.09. Simple correlations between the G_max and the τ_max effects due to small strain, ε = 0.1, the G_max values for post-cyclic are relatively low compared to its initial G_max. As a consequence, the reported values and patterns of both the West Johor and East Malaysia peat soil are generally the same.

Keywords: post-cyclic, strain, maximum stiffness, shear strength

Procedia PDF Downloads 288

Authors: Mayank Raj, V. G. Narendra

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Ever since the DARPA challenge on autonomous vehicles in 2005, there has been a lot of buzz about ‘Autonomous Vehicles’ amongst the major tech giants such as Google, Uber, and Tesla. Numerous approaches have been adopted to solve this problem, which can have a long-lasting impact on mankind. In this paper, we have used Deep Learning techniques and TensorFlow framework with the goal of building a neural network model to predict (speed, acceleration, steering angle, and brake) features needed for navigation of autonomous vehicles. The Deep Neural Network has been trained on images and sensor data obtained from the comma.ai dataset. A heatmap was used to check for correlation among the features, and finally, four important features were selected. This was a multivariate regression problem. The final model had five convolutional layers, followed by five dense layers. Finally, the calculated values were tested against the labeled data, where the mean squared error was used as a performance metric.

Keywords: autonomous vehicles, deep learning, computer vision, artificial intelligence

Procedia PDF Downloads 145

Authors: Meenakshi Srivastava, A. K. Mishra

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This study characterizes the metabolic versatility of denitrifying bacterial communities residing in the paddy soil using the GC-MS based Phospholipid Fatty Acid (PLFA) analyses simultaneously with nosZ gene based PCR-DGGE (Polymerase Chain Reaction-Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis) and real time Q-PCR analysis. We have analyzed the abundance of nitrous oxide reductase (nosZ) genes, which was subsequently related to soil PLFA profile and DGGE based denitrifier community structure. Soil denitrifying bacterial community comprised majority or dominance of Ochrobactrum sp. following Cupriavidus and uncultured bacteria strains in paddy soil of selected sites. Initially, we have analyzed the abundance of the nitrous oxide reductase gene (nosZ), which was found to be related with PLFA based lipid profile. Chandauli of Eastern UP, India represented greater amount of lipid content (C18-C20) and denitrifier’s diversity. This study suggests the positive co-relation between soil PLFA profiles, DGGE, and Q-PCR data. Thus, a close networking among metabolic abilities and taxonomic composition of soil microbial communities existed, and subsequently, such work at greater extent could be helpful in managing nutrient dynamics as well as microbial dynamics of paddy soil ecosystem.

Keywords: denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, DGGE, nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria, PLFA, Q-PCR

Procedia PDF Downloads 114

Authors: Roberta Ranielle M. de Freitas, Vagner R. Botaro

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The relationship between biodegradation and mechanical behavior is fundamental for studies of the application of cellulose acetate films as a possible material for biodegradable packaging. In this work, the biodegradation of cellulose acetate (CA) with DS 2.5 was analyzed in simulated soil. CA films were prepared by casting and buried in the simulated soil. Samples were taken monthly and analyzed, the total time of biodegradation was 6 months. To characterize the biodegradable CA, the DMA technique was employed. The main result showed that the time of exposure to the simulated soil affects the mechanical properties of the films and the values of crystallinity. By DMA analysis, it was possible to conclude that as the CA is biodegraded, its mechanical properties were altered, for example, storage modulus has increased with biodegradation and the modulus of loss has decreased. Analyzes of DSC, XRD, and FTIR were also carried out to characterize the biodegradation of CA, which corroborated with the results of DMA. The observation of the carbonyl band by FTIR and crystalline indices obtained by XRD were important to evaluate the degradation of CA during the exposure time.

Keywords: biodegradation, cellulose acetate, DMA, simulated soil

Procedia PDF Downloads 208

Authors: Nurul Izzati Abd Karim, Samira Albati Kamaruddin, Rozaimi Che Hasan

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The appropriate petrophysical relationship is needed for Soil Water Content (SWC) estimation especially when using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). Ground penetrating radar is a geophysical tool that provides indirectly the parameter of SWC. This paper examines the performance of few published petrophysical relationships to obtain SWC estimates from in-situ GPR common- offset survey measurements with gravimetric measurements at peat soil area. Gravimetric measurements were conducted to support of GPR measurements for the accuracy assessment. Further, GPR with dual frequencies (250MHhz and 700MHz) were used in the survey measurements to obtain the dielectric permittivity. Three empirical equations (i.e., Roth’s equation, Schaap’s equation and Idi’s equation) were selected for the study, used to compute the soil water content from dielectric permittivity of the GPR profile. The results indicate that Schaap’s equation provides strong correlation with SWC as measured by GPR data sets and gravimetric measurements.

Keywords: common-offset measurements, ground penetrating radar, petrophysical relationship, soil water content

Procedia PDF Downloads 243

Authors: Chaima Babi, Said Gadri

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The rapid increase in fake news continues to grow at a very fast rate; this requires implementing efficient techniques that allow testing the re-liability of online content. For that, the current research strives to illuminate the fake news problem using deep learning DL and machine learning ML ap-proaches. We have developed the traditional LSTM (Long short-term memory), and the bidirectional BiLSTM model. A such process is to perform a training task on almost of samples of the dataset, validate the model on a subset called the test set to provide an unbiased evaluation of the final model fit on the training dataset, then compute the accuracy of detecting classifica-tion and comparing the results. For the programming stage, we used Tensor-Flow and Keras libraries on Python to support Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) that are being used for developing deep learning applications.

Keywords: machine learning, deep learning, natural language, fake news, Bi-LSTM, LSTM, multiclass classification

Procedia PDF Downloads 72

Authors: A. Benmoussa, M. Bouanini, M. Rebhi

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The mixing and agitation of fluid in stirred tank is one of the most important unit operations for many industries such as chemical, biotechnological, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, cosmetic, and food processing. Therefore, determining the level of mixing and overall behaviour and performance of the mixing tanks are crucial from the product quality and process economics point of views. The most fundamental needs for the analysis of these processes from both a theoretical and industrial perspective is the knowledge of the hydrodynamic behaviour and the flow structure in such tanks. Depending on the purpose of the operation carried out in mixer, the best choice for geometry of the tank and agitator type can vary widely. Initially, a local and global study namely the velocity and power number on a typical agitation system agitated by a mobile-type two-blade straight (d/D=0.5) allowed us to test the reliability of the CFD, the result were compared with those of experimental literature, a very good concordance was observed. The stream function, the velocity profile, the velocity fields and power number are analyzed. It was shown that the hydrodynamics is modified by the curvature of the mobile which plays a key role.

Keywords: agitated tanks, curved blade agitator, laminar flow, CFD modelling

Procedia PDF Downloads 397

Authors: A. Soualem

Abstract:

The design of multi stage deep drawing processes requires the evaluation of many process parameters such as the intermediate die geometry, the blank shape, the sheet thickness, the blank holder force, friction, lubrication etc..These process parameters have to be determined for the optimum forming conditions before the process design. In general sheet metal forming may involve stretching drawing or various combinations of these basic modes of deformation. It is important to determine the influence of the process variables in the design of sheet metal working process. Especially, the punch and die corner for deep drawing will affect the formability. At the same time the prediction of sheet metals springback after deep drawing is an important issue to solve for the control of manufacturing processes. Nowadays, the importance of this problem increases because of the use of steel sheeting with high stress and also aluminum alloys. The aim of this paper is to give a better understanding of the springback and its effect in various sheet metals forming process such as expansion and restraint deep drawing in the cup drawing process, by varying radius die, lubricant for two commercially available materials e.g. galvanized steel and Aluminum sheet. To achieve these goals experiments were carried out and compared with other results. The original of our purpose consist on tests which are ensured by adapting a U-type stretching-bending device on a tensile testing machine, where we studied and quantified the variation of the springback.

Keywords: springback, deep drawing, expansion, restricted deep drawing

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Authors: Kaleeswari R. K., Seevagan L .

Abstract:

Soil quality in an agroecosystem is influenced by the cropping system, water and soil fertility management. A valid soil quality index would help to assess the soil and crop management practices for desired productivity and soil health. The soil quality indices also provide an early indication of soil degradation and needy remedial and rehabilitation measures. Imbalanced fertilization and inadequate organic carbon dynamics deteriorate soil quality in an intensive cropping system. The rice soil ecosystem is different from other arable systems since rice is grown under submergence, which requires a different set of key soil attributes for enhancing soil quality and productivity. Assessment of the soil quality index involves indicator selection, indicator scoring and comprehensive score into one index. The most appropriate indicator to evaluate soil quality can be selected by establishing the minimum data set, which can be screened by linear and multiple regression factor analysis and score function. This investigation was carried out in intensive rice cultivating regions (having >1.0 lakh hectares) of Tamil Nadu viz., Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Villupuram, Thiruvannamalai, Cuddalore and Ramanathapuram districts. In each district, intensive rice growing block was identified. In each block, two sampling grids (10 x 10 sq.km) were used with a sampling depth of 10 – 15 cm. Using GIS coordinates, and soil sampling was carried out at various locations in the study area. The number of soil sampling points were 41, 28, 28, 32, 37, 29 and 29 in Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Cuddalore, Villupuram, Thiruvannamalai and Ramanathapuram districts, respectively. Principal Component Analysis is a data reduction tool to select some of the potential indicators. Principal Component is a linear combination of different variables that represents the maximum variance of the dataset. Principal Component that has eigenvalues equal or higher than 1.0 was taken as the minimum data set. Principal Component Analysis was used to select the representative soil quality indicators in rice soils based on factor loading values and contribution percent values. Variables having significant differences within the production system were used for the preparation of the minimum data set. Each Principal Component explained a certain amount of variation (%) in the total dataset. This percentage provided the weight for variables. The final Principal Component Analysis based soil quality equation is SQI = ∑ i=1 (W ᵢ x S ᵢ); where S- score for the subscripted variable; W-weighing factor derived from PCA. Higher index scores meant better soil quality. Soil respiration, Soil available Nitrogen and Potentially Mineralizable Nitrogen were assessed as soil quality indicators in rice soil of the Cauvery Delta zone covering Thanjavur, Thiruvavur and Nagapattinam districts. Soil available phosphorus could be used as a soil quality indicator of rice soils in the Cuddalore district. In rain-fed rice ecosystems of coastal sandy soil, DTPA – Zn could be used as an effective soil quality indicator. Among the soil parameters selected from Principal Component Analysis, Microbial Biomass Nitrogen could be used quality indicator for rice soils of the Villupuram district. Cauvery Delta zone has better SQI as compared with other intensive rice growing zone of Tamil Nadu.

Keywords: soil quality index, soil attributes, soil mapping, and rice soil

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Authors: Sumaiya Amir Khan, Shayma Al-Sharif, Samiha Mazher, Neha Intikhab Khan

Abstract:

This research paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of sleep-tracking AI applications in smart-watches. It focuses on comparing the sleep analyses of two different smartwatch brands, Samsung and Fitbit, and measuring sleep at three different stages – REM (Rapid-Eye-Movement), NREM (Non-Rapid-Eye-Movement), and deep sleep. The methodology involves the participation of different users and analyzing their sleep data. The results reveal that although light sleep is the longest stage, deep sleep is higher than average in the participants. The study also suggests that light sleep is not uniform, and getting higher levels of deep sleep can prevent debilitating health conditions. Based on the findings, it is recommended that individuals should aim to achieve higher levels of deep sleep to maintain good health. Overall, this research contributes to the growing literature on the effectiveness of sleep-tracking AI applications and their potential to improve sleep quality.

Keywords: sleep tracking, lifestyle, accuracy, health, AI, AI features, ML

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Authors: Celia Marilia Martins, Sonia I. V. Guilundo, Iris M. Victorino, Antonio O. Quilambo

Abstract:

In Mozambique rapid industrialization (mining, aluminium and cement activities) and urbanization processes has led to the incorporation of heavy metals on soil, thus degrading not only the quality of the environment, but also affecting plants, animals and human healthy. Several methods have been used to remediate contaminated soils, but most of them are costly and difficult to get optimum results. Currently, phytoremediation is an effective and affordable technological solution used to extract or remove inactive metals from contaminated soil. Phytoremediation is the use of plants to clean up a contamination from soils, sediments, and water. This technology is environmental friendly and potentially cost effective. The present investigation summarised the potential of edible vegetable to grow under the high level of heavy metals such as lead and zinc. The plants used in these studies include Tomatoes, lettuce and Soya beans. The studies have shown that edible plants can be grown under the high level of heavy metals on the soil. Further investigations are identifying mechanisms used by plants to ensure a safe and sustainable use for remediation of contaminated soils by heavy metals.

Keywords: contaminated soil, edible plants, heavy metals, phytoremediation

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Authors: Mrinalini Amritkar, Disha Patil, Swapna Kulkarni, Sukratu Barve, Suresh Gosavi

Abstract:

Micro-mixers play an important role in the lab-on-a-chip applications and micro total analysis systems to acquire the correct level of mixing for any given process. The mixing process can be classified as active or passive according to the use of external energy. Literature of microfluidics reports that most of the work is done on the models of steady laminar flow; however, the study of unsteady laminar flow is an active area of research at present. There are wide applications of this, out of which, we consider nanoparticle synthesis in micro-mixers. In this work, we have developed a model for unsteady flow to study the mixing performance of a passive micro mixer for reactants used for such synthesis. The model is developed in Finite Volume Method (FVM)-based software, OpenFOAM. The model is tested by carrying out the simulations at Re of 0.5. Mixing performance of the micro-mixer is investigated using simulated concentration values of mixed species across the width of the micro-mixer and calculating the variance across a line profile. Experimental validation is done by passing dyes through a Y shape micro-mixer fabricated using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer and comparing variances with the simulated ones. Gold nanoparticles are later synthesized through the micro-mixer and collected at two different times leading to significantly different size distributions. These times match with the time scales over which reactant concentrations vary as obtained from simulations. Our simulations could thus be used to create design aids for passive micro-mixers used in nanoparticle synthesis.

Keywords: Lab-on-chip, LOC, micro-mixer, OpenFOAM, PDMS

Procedia PDF Downloads 147