Search results for: middle manager performance
8638 Application of Basic Principles of Educational Administration for the Enhancement of Senior Secondary School Principals in Kano State Nigeria
Authors: Ibrahim Auwal
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This study focuses on senior secondary education towards the development of younger generation in general terms, and specifically for the enhancement of senior secondary school principals. Investigation was made to correlate between principals’ application of basic principles of educational administration and principals’ productivity in senior secondary schools in Kano State. The instrument used to collect relevant data was self designed Observation Inventory for School Principals (OISP). The observation inventory items were scrutinized by experts from the School of Education Federal College of Education Kano to ascertain the contents validity, and the reliability coefficient was 0.83. Using purposive sampling technique, 30 schools were chosen from 85 senior secondary schools in Kano state and 30 principals were deliberately sampled due to their small number. Pearson Product Moment Correlation (r) Coefficient was used to test the hypothesis generated for the study. The results of the analysis showed that principals’ application of basic principles of educational administration was significantly correlated with principals’ productivity and it promote the performance of the students. Based on the findings, it was recommended that, government should in as much as possible encourage school principals to obtain degrees in relevant and specialized areas in education specifically educational administration and planning so as to get all the necessary knowledge and skills of leader ship procedures that will definitely promote teachers morale, improve students’ academic performance and enhances principals’ productivity in senior secondary schools in Kano State.Keywords: principles of educational administration, principals of senior secondary schools, Kano, educational sciences
Procedia PDF Downloads 4848637 Update Mosquito Species Composition and Distribution in Qatar
Authors: Fatima Alkhayat, Abu Hassan Ahmed
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Qatar as the one of Middle East and Gulf country is growing rapidly due to urbanization. Urbanization, population’s movement and goods transportation in addition to climatic change all together create suitable environments for remerging and/or introduction of new disease vectors species. Unfortunately, knowledge on mosquito species composition and their geographical distribution in Qatar is extremely limited. The objective of present study is to provide update information on species composition and distribution. Mosquito larval survey carried out in six sentinel sites in Qatar. The collection was made on monthly basis in period from October 2013 to May 2015 using dipping techniques and identified to species level using appropriate pictorial keys. In total about 3,085 mosquito larvae were collected and identified to species compromising three mosquito genera, Culex 87.4% (n=2697), Ochlerotatus 9.9% (n= 305) and Anopheles 2.6% (n= 81). Among Culex genera; Culex quinquefasciatus represent 87.8% (n= 2369), Cx. pipiens 8.7% (n=237), and Cx. mattinglyi 3.4% (n=91). Culex quinquefasciatus was the most commonly collected species, representing 93.5% in Alwakra (n= 2216) which was observed in November, December, March, April and May when reached the peak. 6.4% in Nuaija (n= 151) was found in February and March and reached the peak in March. 0.1% in Alkaraana (n=2) only observed in April. Cx. pipiens was observed 50.2% in Rwdat Alfaras (n=120) and 48.9% in Hazm Almurkhiya (n=117). While in Rowdat Alfaras it was observed in Oct-May and in Hazm Almurkhiya from Oct-April. Cx. mattinglyi (n= 91) was only found in Nuaija from October to December. Ochlerotatus genera account 1 species Oc. dorsalis (n=305). The majority of Oc. dorsalis were observed in March and May, 98% in Nuaija (n= 299), followed by 2% in Alkhor (n=6) which was observed in January and February. Anopheles was only represented by An. stephensi which was found 69% in Alwakra (n= 56) in November, December, April and May, while 25.9% in Hazm Almurkhiya (n=21) and found in May and November. 6.2% in Rwadat Alfaras and was observed only in November and 1.2% in Nuaija (n=1) and observed in October. Further investigation is required on the composition and distribution of mosquito for implementing a surveillance program and control of mosquito-borne diseases in Qatar.Keywords: composition, distribution, mosquito, Qatar
Procedia PDF Downloads 2768636 Parameter Identification Analysis in the Design of Rock Fill Dams
Authors: G. Shahzadi, A. Soulaimani
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This research work aims to identify the physical parameters of the constitutive soil model in the design of a rockfill dam by inverse analysis. The best parameters of the constitutive soil model, are those that minimize the objective function, defined as the difference between the measured and numerical results. The Finite Element code (Plaxis) has been utilized for numerical simulation. Polynomial and neural network-based response surfaces have been generated to analyze the relationship between soil parameters and displacements. The performance of surrogate models has been analyzed and compared by evaluating the root mean square error. A comparative study has been done based on objective functions and optimization techniques. Objective functions are categorized by considering measured data with and without uncertainty in instruments, defined by the least square method, which estimates the norm between the predicted displacements and the measured values. Hydro Quebec provided data sets for the measured values of the Romaine-2 dam. Stochastic optimization, an approach that can overcome local minima, and solve non-convex and non-differentiable problems with ease, is used to obtain an optimum value. Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Differential Evolution (DE) are compared for the minimization problem, although all these techniques take time to converge to an optimum value; however, PSO provided the better convergence and best soil parameters. Overall, parameter identification analysis could be effectively used for the rockfill dam application and has the potential to become a valuable tool for geotechnical engineers for assessing dam performance and dam safety.Keywords: Rockfill dam, parameter identification, stochastic analysis, regression, PLAXIS
Procedia PDF Downloads 1408635 Factors Influencing the Enjoyment and Performance of Students in Statistics Service Courses: A Mixed-Method Study
Authors: Wilma Coetzee
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Statistics lecturers experience that many students who are taking a service course in statistics do not like statistics. Students in these courses tend to struggle and do not perform well. This research takes a look at the student’s perspective, with the aim to determine how to change the teaching of statistics so that students will enjoy it more and perform better. Questionnaires were used to determine the perspectives of first year service statistics students at a South African university. Factors addressed included motivation to study, attitude toward statistics, statistical anxiety, mathematical abilities and tendency to procrastinate. Logistic regression was used to determine what contributes to students performing badly in statistics. The results show that the factors that contribute the most to students performing badly are: statistical anxiety, not being motivated and having had mathematical literacy instead of mathematics in secondary school. Two open ended questions were included in the questionnaire: 'I will enjoy statistics more if…' and 'I will perform better in statistics if…'. The answers to these questions were analyzed using qualitative methods. Frequent themes were identified for each of the questions. A simulation study incorporating bootstrapping was done to determine the saturation of the themes. The majority of the students indicated that they would perform better in statistics if they studied more, managed their time better, had a flare for mathematics and if the lecturer was able to explain difficult concepts better. They also want more active learning. To ensure that students enjoy statistics more, they want an active learning experience. They want fun activities, more interaction with the lecturer and with one another, more computer based problems, and more challenges. They want a better understanding of the subject, want to understand the relevance of statistics to their future career and want excellent lecturers. These findings can be used to direct the improvement of the tuition of statistics.Keywords: active learning, performance in statistics, statistical anxiety, statistics education
Procedia PDF Downloads 1468634 Regional Variation of Cancer Incidence in Nepal
Authors: Rudra Prasad Khanal
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Introduction: Non-communicable disease, such as cancer, has spread all over the world for some last decades. However, every nation has experienced a burden from the development of technology. In the context of Nepal, 10 to 15 thousand new cancer incidences are being registered in different hospitals for treatment. Since the date of starting nuclear medicine at Bir Hospital in 1998, cancer patients have been getting treatment regularly. According to the data of the population-based cancer registry, approximately 60% of the population having a middle-class income is being affected by cancer in Nepal. Methods and Materials: The study is aimed to find out the particular place where the population density of new cancer incidence is highest in Nepal and to inform the concerned regulatory body that is working on cancer screening and early detection for the proper treatment from the beginning. In order to identify the areas with the highest population density of new cancer incidence, all the data of cancer patients were collected from five different renowned hospitals and also from the population-based cancer registry center and then analyzed the data. The history of cancer patients was studied from 2003 to 2020, but here the data are analyzed from 2015 to 2020 only to find the latest trend in cancer incidence. Results: In the five major hospitals in Nepal, the total new cancer incidence was 61783 from 2015 to 2020. Out of those, 34617 were female, and 27176 were male. This research shows that female cancer patients were more every year. In the male, lung cancer patients more than cancer of other organs, but in females, the number of breast cancer patients was greatest. The age-adjusted mortality rate for males in Kathmandu valley was 36.3, and for females was 27.0 per 100,000 population. The cancer incidence and mortality rate were slightly lesser in other districts of Nepal. This rate increased with the increase in the age of people. Over 60 years, cancer incidence and mortality rates have been found to increase rapidly. Conclusion: This research supports conducting the program of cancer screening and early detection at Kathmandu valley with high priority and then Morang, Rukum, SSDM, etc., to control cancer.Keywords: cancer incidence, research scholar, Tribhuvan University, Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital, Nepal
Procedia PDF Downloads 698633 A Semi-Automated GIS-Based Implementation of Slope Angle Design Reconciliation Process at Debswana Jwaneng Mine, Botswana
Authors: K. Mokatse, O. M. Barei, K. Gabanakgosi, P. Matlhabaphiri
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The mining of pit slopes is often associated with some level of deviation from design recommendations, and this may translate to associated changes in the stability of the excavated pit slopes. Therefore slope angle design reconciliations are essential for assessing and monitoring compliance of excavated pit slopes to accepted slope designs. These associated changes in slope stability may be reflected by changes in the calculated factors of safety and/or probabilities of failure. Reconciliations of as-mined and slope design profiles are conducted periodically to assess the implications of these deviations on pit slope stability. Currently, the slope design reconciliation process being implemented in Jwaneng Mine involves the measurement of as-mined and design slope angles along vertical sections cut along the established geotechnical design section lines on the GEOVIA GEMS™ software. Bench retentions are calculated as a percentage of the available catchment area, less over-mined and under-mined areas, to that of the designed catchment area. This process has proven to be both tedious and requires a lot of manual effort and time to execute. Consequently, a new semi-automated mine-to-design reconciliation approach that utilizes laser scanning and GIS-based tools is being proposed at Jwaneng Mine. This method involves high-resolution scanning of targeted bench walls, subsequent creation of 3D surfaces from point cloud data and the derivation of slope toe lines and crest lines on the Maptek I-Site Studio software. The toe lines and crest lines are then exported to the ArcGIS software where distance offsets between the design and actual bench toe lines and crest lines are calculated. Retained bench catchment capacity is measured as distances between the toe lines and crest lines on the same bench elevations. The assessment of the performance of the inter-ramp and overall slopes entails the measurement of excavated and design slope angles along vertical sections on the ArcGIS software. Excavated and design toe-to-toe or crest-to-crest slope angles are measured for inter-ramp stack slope reconciliations. Crest-to-toe slope angles are also measured for overall slope angle design reconciliations. The proposed approach allows for a more automated, accurate, quick and easier workflow for carrying out slope angle design reconciliations. This process has proved highly effective and timeous in the assessment of slope performance in Jwaneng Mine. This paper presents a newly proposed process for assessing compliance to slope angle designs for Jwaneng Mine.Keywords: slope angle designs, slope design recommendations, slope performance, slope stability
Procedia PDF Downloads 2228632 Algebraic Coupled Level Set-Volume of Fluid Method with Capillary Pressure Treatment for Surface Tension Dominant Two-Phase Flows
Authors: Majid Haghshenas, James Wilson, Ranganathan Kumar
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In this study, an Algebraic Coupled Level Set-Volume of Fluid (A-CLSVOF) method with capillary pressure treatment is proposed for the modeling of two-phase capillary flows. The Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is utilized to incorporate one-way coupling with the Level Set (LS) function in order to further improve the accuracy of the interface curvature calculation and resulting surface tension force. The capillary pressure is determined and treated independently of the hydrodynamic pressure in the momentum balance in order to maintain consistency between cell centered and interpolated values, resulting in a reduction in parasitic currents. In this method, both VOF and LS functions are transported where the new volume fraction determines the interface seed position used to reinitialize the LS field. The Hamilton-Godunov function is used with a second order (in space and time) discretization scheme to produce a signed distance function. The performance of the current methodology has been tested against some common test cases in order to assess the reduction in non-physical velocities and improvements in the interfacial pressure jump. The cases of a static drop, non-linear Rayleigh-Taylor instability and finally a droplets impact on a liquid pool were simulated to compare the performance of the present method to other well-known methods in the area of parasitic current reduction, interface location evolution and overall agreement with experimental results.Keywords: two-phase flow, capillary flow, surface tension force, coupled LS with VOF
Procedia PDF Downloads 3558631 Comparing Hotels' Official Websites with Their Pages on Booking Sites: An Exploratory Study
Authors: Iman Shawky
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Hotel websites frequently aim at encouraging visitors to become potential guests by completing their booking procedures, and accordingly, they have been proved to be attractive and appealing. That might be due to the consideration of them as one of the direct efficacious tools to promote and sell hotels' facilities, besides building strong communication with guests to create unforgettable brand images. This study tried to find out a step for five-star and four-star hotels to develop their websites to meet their visitors' or guests' requirements for an effective site. In addition, it aimed at exploring to what extent hotels' official websites compared with their pages on hotel booking sites still influence visitors' or guests' desires to book. Besides, it also aimed at investigating to what extent visitors or guests widely trust and use those sites to accomplish their booking. Furthermore, it tried to explore to what extent visitors' or guests' preferences of those sites can influence on hotels' financial performance. To achieve these objectives, the researcher conducted an exploratory study by surfing both hotels' official websites and their pages on booking sites of such hotels in Alexandria city in Egypt to make a comparison between them. Moreover, another separate comparison was made on Arab and foreign guests' views conducted by using a questionnaire during the past seven months to investigate the effectiveness of hotels' official websites against their pages on booking sites to trust and motive them to book. The results indicated that hotels' pages on booking sites represented widely trusted and used sites compared with their official websites for achieving visitors' or guests' booking process, while a few other visitors or guests still trusted official hotel websites for completing their booking.Keywords: five-star and four-star hotels, hotel booking sites, hotels' financial performance, hotels' official websites
Procedia PDF Downloads 1358630 Vibration Analysis and Optimization Design of Ultrasonic Horn
Authors: Kuen Ming Shu, Ren Kai Ho
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Ultrasonic horn has the functions of amplifying amplitude and reducing resonant impedance in ultrasonic system. Its primary function is to amplify deformation or velocity during vibration and focus ultrasonic energy on the small area. It is a crucial component in design of ultrasonic vibration system. There are five common design methods for ultrasonic horns: analytical method, equivalent circuit method, equal mechanical impedance, transfer matrix method, finite element method. In addition, the general optimization design process is to change the geometric parameters to improve a single performance. Therefore, in the general optimization design process, we couldn't find the relation of parameter and objective. However, a good optimization design must be able to establish the relationship between input parameters and output parameters so that the designer can choose between parameters according to different performance objectives and obtain the results of the optimization design. In this study, an ultrasonic horn provided by Maxwide Ultrasonic co., Ltd. was used as the contrast of optimized ultrasonic horn. The ANSYS finite element analysis (FEA) software was used to simulate the distribution of the horn amplitudes and the natural frequency value. The results showed that the frequency for the simulation values and actual measurement values were similar, verifying the accuracy of the simulation values. The ANSYS DesignXplorer was used to perform Response Surface optimization, which could shows the relation of parameter and objective. Therefore, this method can be used to substitute the traditional experience method or the trial-and-error method for design to reduce material costs and design cycles.Keywords: horn, natural frequency, response surface optimization, ultrasonic vibration
Procedia PDF Downloads 1088629 Virtual Team Performance: A Transactive Memory System Perspective
Authors: Belbaly Nassim
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Virtual teams (VT) initiatives, in which teams are geographically dispersed and communicate via modern computer-driven technologies, have attracted increasing attention from researchers and professionals. The growing need to examine how to balance and optimize VT is particularly important given the exposure experienced by companies when their employees encounter globalization and decentralization pressures to monitor VT performance. Hence, organization is regularly limited due to misalignment between the behavioral capabilities of the team’s dispersed competences and knowledge capabilities and how trust issues interplay and influence these VT dimensions and the effects of such exchanges. In fact, the future success of business depends on the extent to which VTs are managing efficiently their dispersed expertise, skills and knowledge to stimulate VT creativity. Transactive memory system (TMS) may enhance VT creativity using its three dimensons: knowledge specialization, credibility and knowledge coordination. TMS can be understood as a composition of both a structural component residing of individual knowledge and a set of communication processes among individuals. The individual knowledge is shared while being retrieved, applied and the learning is coordinated. TMS is driven by the central concept that the system is built on the distinction between internal and external memory encoding. A VT learns something new and catalogs it in memory for future retrieval and use. TMS uses the role of information technology to explain VT behaviors by offering VT members the possibility to encode, store, and retrieve information. TMS considers the members of a team as a processing system in which the location of expertise both enhances knowledge coordination and builds trust among members over time. We build on TMS dimensions to hypothesize the effects of specialization, coordination, and credibility on VT creativity. In fact, VTs consist of dispersed expertise, skills and knowledge that can positively enhance coordination and collaboration. Ultimately, this team composition may lead to recognition of both who has expertise and where that expertise is located; over time, the team composition may also build trust among VT members over time developing the ability to coordinate their knowledge which can stimulate creativity. We also assess the reciprocal relationship between TMS dimensions and VT creativity. We wish to use TMS to provide researchers with a theoretically driven model that is empirically validated through survey evidence. We propose that TMS provides a new way to enhance and balance VT creativity. This study also provides researchers insight into the use of TMS to influence positively VT creativity. In addition to our research contributions, we provide several managerial insights into how TMS components can be used to increase performance within dispersed VTs.Keywords: virtual team creativity, transactive memory systems, specialization, credibility, coordination
Procedia PDF Downloads 1618628 Tuning the Surface Roughness of Patterned Nanocellulose Films: An Alternative to Plastic Based Substrates for Circuit Priniting in High-Performance Electronics
Authors: Kunal Bhardwaj, Christine Browne
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With the increase in global awareness of the environmental impacts of plastic-based products, there has been a massive drive to reduce our use of these products. Use of plastic-based substrates in electronic circuits has been a matter of concern recently. Plastics provide a very smooth and cheap surface for printing high-performance electronics due to their non-permeability to ink and easy mouldability. In this research, we explore the use of nano cellulose (NC) films in electronics as they provide an advantage of being 100% recyclable and eco-friendly. The main hindrance in the mass adoption of NC film as a substitute for plastic is its higher surface roughness which leads to ink penetration, and dispersion in the channels on the film. This research was conducted to tune the RMS roughness of NC films to a range where they can replace plastics in electronics(310-470nm). We studied the dependence of the surface roughness of the NC film on the following tunable aspects: 1) composition by weight of the NC suspension that is sprayed on a silicon wafer 2) the width and the depth of the channels on the silicon wafer used as a base. Various silicon wafers with channel depths ranging from 6 to 18 um and channel widths ranging from 5 to 500um were used as a base. Spray coating method for NC film production was used and two solutions namely, 1.5wt% NC and a 50-50 NC-CNC (cellulose nanocrystal) mixture in distilled water, were sprayed through a Wagner sprayer system model 117 at an angle of 90 degrees. The silicon wafer was kept on a conveyor moving at a velocity of 1.3+-0.1 cm/sec. Once the suspension was uniformly sprayed, the mould was left to dry in an oven at 50°C overnight. The images of the films were taken with the help of an optical profilometer, Olympus OLS 5000. These images were converted into a ‘.lext’ format and analyzed using Gwyddion, a data and image analysis software. Lowest measured RMS roughness of 291nm was with a 50-50 CNC-NC mixture, sprayed on a silicon wafer with a channel width of 5 µm and a channel depth of 12 µm. Surface roughness values of 320+-17nm were achieved at lower (5 to 10 µm) channel widths on a silicon wafer. This research opened the possibility of the usage of 100% recyclable NC films with an additive (50% CNC) in high-performance electronics. Possibility of using additives like Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC) is also being explored due to the hypothesis that CMC would reduce friction amongst fibers, which in turn would lead to better conformations amongst the NC fibers. CMC addition would thus be able to help tune the surface roughness of the NC film to an even greater extent in future.Keywords: nano cellulose films, electronic circuits, nanocrystals and surface roughness
Procedia PDF Downloads 1198627 The Impact of Hosting an On-Site Vocal Concert in Preschool on Music Inspiration and Learning Among Preschoolers
Authors: Meiying Liao, Poya Huang
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The aesthetic domain is one of the six major domains in the Taiwanese preschool curriculum, encompassing visual arts, music, and dramatic play. Its primary objective is to cultivate children’s abilities in exploration and awareness, expression and creation, and response and appreciation. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of hosting a vocal music concert on aesthetic inspiration and learning among preschoolers in a preschool setting. The primary research method employed was a case study focusing on a private preschool in Northern Taiwan that organized a school-wide event featuring two vocalists. The concert repertoires included children’s songs, folk songs, and arias performed in Mandarin, Hakka, English, German, and Italian. In addition to professional performances, preschool teachers actively participated by presenting a children’s song. A total of 5 classes, comprising approximately 150 preschoolers, along with 16 teachers and staff, participated in the event. Data collection methods included observation, interviews, and documents. Results indicated that both teachers and children thoroughly enjoyed the concert, with high levels of acceptance when the program was appropriately designed and hosted. Teachers reported that post-concert discussions with children revealed the latter’s ability to recall people, events, and elements observed during the performance, expressing their impressions of the most memorable segments. The concert effectively achieved the goals of the aesthetic domain, particularly in fostering response and appreciation. It also inspired preschoolers’ interest in music. Many teachers noted an increased desire for performance among preschoolers after exposure to the concert, with children imitating the performers and their expressions. Remarkably, one class extended this experience by incorporating it into the curriculum, autonomously organizing a high-quality concert in the music learning center. Parents also reported that preschoolers enthusiastically shared their concert experiences at home. In conclusion, despite being a single event, the positive responses from preschoolers towards the music performance suggest a meaningful impact. These experiences extended into the curriculum, as firsthand exposure to performances allowed teachers to deepen related topics, fostering a habit of autonomous learning in the designated learning centers.Keywords: concert, early childhood music education, aesthetic education, music develpment
Procedia PDF Downloads 468626 The Semiosis of 'We' Narrative: Examining Collectivity in Tahrir Memoir
Authors: May Al Sahib
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This paper draws together an analysis of two autobiographical writings; Ahdaf Soueif’s Cairo: My City, Our Revolution (2012), Radwa Ashour’s Heavier than Radwa (2013), and Revolution is My Name: An Egyptian Woman’s Diary from Eighteen Days in Tahrir (2015). Soueif, Ashour, and Prince are Egyptian authors, activists, and cultural commentators who are fully aware that being a ‘third world’ citizen constrains the writer into taking a specific pattern in writing. However, this paper will analyze the choice of literary form in writing the 2011 January revolution. All texts give factual accounts of the revolution with all its contesting powers lingering with mixed references of anxiety and merriment that accentuates their sense of communal solidarity against social corruption and political positioning. Through shifting between the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’, these narratives do not solely engage with the personal life of the memorialist; but rather give an account of the collective. Both writers take us to the heart of high-spirited Tahrir Square in 2011 while millions are ranting to oust Hosni Mubarak, the 30 years ruling dictator. By utilizing the instrumentality of collective memory for expressing textual collectivity in their non-fictional writings, these writers are depicting the people power of Egyptians and the historical civil-resistance against governmental unfairness and establishing a certain type of patriotism that elevates and priorities itself from minor conflicts. Their de-individualizing type of life narrative represents the Arabic nation through vital socio-political situations that perpetuate the politics of resistance and collectivity with a constant fear of betraying it and erupts historical moments aiming for an improved future. The texts incorporate an explicit set of reported political series of thought that shape an overall public argument and representational ideas.Keywords: resistance narrative, life-writing, Tahrir memoir, Middle Eastern literature
Procedia PDF Downloads 1618625 A Two-Stage Bayesian Variable Selection Method with the Extension of Lasso for Geo-Referenced Data
Authors: Georgiana Onicescu, Yuqian Shen
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Due to the complex nature of geo-referenced data, multicollinearity of the risk factors in public health spatial studies is a commonly encountered issue, which leads to low parameter estimation accuracy because it inflates the variance in the regression analysis. To address this issue, we proposed a two-stage variable selection method by extending the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) to the Bayesian spatial setting, investigating the impact of risk factors to health outcomes. Specifically, in stage I, we performed the variable selection using Bayesian Lasso and several other variable selection approaches. Then, in stage II, we performed the model selection with only the selected variables from stage I and compared again the methods. To evaluate the performance of the two-stage variable selection methods, we conducted a simulation study with different distributions for the risk factors, using geo-referenced count data as the outcome and Michigan as the research region. We considered the cases when all candidate risk factors are independently normally distributed, or follow a multivariate normal distribution with different correlation levels. Two other Bayesian variable selection methods, Binary indicator, and the combination of Binary indicator and Lasso were considered and compared as alternative methods. The simulation results indicated that the proposed two-stage Bayesian Lasso variable selection method has the best performance for both independent and dependent cases considered. When compared with the one-stage approach, and the other two alternative methods, the two-stage Bayesian Lasso approach provides the highest estimation accuracy in all scenarios considered.Keywords: Lasso, Bayesian analysis, spatial analysis, variable selection
Procedia PDF Downloads 1368624 Effect of Many Levels of Undegradable Protein on Performance, Blood Parameters, Colostrum Composition and Lamb Birth Weight in Pregnant Ewes
Authors: Maria Magdy Danial Riad
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The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of different protein sources with different degradability ratios during late gestation of ewes on colostrum composition and its IgG concentration, body weight change of dams, and birth weight of their lambs. Objectives: 35 multiparous native crossbred ewes (BW= 59±2.5kg) were randomly allocated to five dietary treatments (7 ewes / treatment) for 2 months prior to lambing. Methods: Experimental diets were isonitrogenous (12.27% CP) and isocaloric (2.22 Mcal ME/kg DM). In diet I (the control), solvent extract soybeans (SESM 33% RUP of CP), II feed grade urea (FGU 31% RUP), III slow release urea (SRU 31% RUP). As sources of undegradable protein, extruded expeller SBM-EESM 40 (37% RUP) and extruded expeller SBM-EESM 60 (41% RUP) were used in groups IV and V, respectively. Results showed no significant effect on feed intake, crude protein (CP), metabolizable energy (ME), and body condition score (BCS). Ewes fed the 37% RUP diet gained more (p<0.05) weight compared with ewes fed the 31% RUP diet (5.62 vs. 2.5kg). Ewes in EESM 60 had the highest levels of fat, protein, total solid, solid not fat, and immunoglobulin and the lowest in urea N content (P< 0.05) in colostrum during the first 24hrs after lambing. Conclusions: Protein source and RUP levels in ewes’ diets had no significant effect (P< 0.05) on lambs’ birth weight and ewes' blood biochemical parameters. Increasing the RUP content of diet during late gestation resulted in an increase in colostrum constituents and its IgG level but had no effect on ewes’ performance and their lambs’ outcome.Keywords: colostrum, ewes, lambs output, pregnancy, undegradable protein
Procedia PDF Downloads 438623 Land Degradation Assessment through Spatial Data Integration in Eastern Chotanagpur Plateau, India
Authors: Avijit Mahala
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Present study is primarily concerned with the physical processes and status of land degradation in a tropical plateau fringe. Chotanagpur plateau is one of the most water erosion related degraded areas of India. The granite gneiss geological formation, low to medium developed soil cover, undulating lateritic uplands, high drainage density, low to medium rainfall (100-140cm), dry tropical deciduous forest cover makes the Silabati River basin a truly representative of the tropical environment. The different physical factors have been taken for land degradation study includes- physiographic formations, hydrologic characteristics, and vegetation cover. Water erosion, vegetal degradation, soil quality decline are the major processes of land degradation in study area. Granite-gneiss geological formation is responsible for developing undulating landforms. Less developed soil profile, low organic matter, poor structure of soil causes high soil erosion. High relief and sloppy areas cause unstable environment. The dissected highland causes topographic hindrance in productivity. High drainage density and frequency in rugged upland and intense erosion in sloppy areas causes high soil erosion of the basin. Decreasing rainfall and increasing aridity (low P/PET) threats water stress condition. Green biomass cover area is also continuously declining. Through overlaying the different physical factors (geological formation, soil characteristics, geomorphological characteristics, etc.) of considerable importance in GIS environment the varying intensities of land degradation areas has been identified. Middle reaches of Silabati basin with highly eroded laterite soil cover areas are more prone to land degradation.Keywords: land degradation, tropical environment, lateritic upland, undulating landform, aridity, GIS environment
Procedia PDF Downloads 1328622 An Approach towards Designing an Energy Efficient Building through Embodied Energy Assessment: A Case of Apartment Building in Composite Climate
Authors: Ambalika Ekka
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In today’s world, the growing demand for urban built forms has resulted in the production and consumption of building materials i.e. embodied energy in building construction, leading to pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, new buildings will offer a unique opportunity to implement more energy efficient building without compromising on building performance of the building. Embodied energy of building materials forms major contribution to embodied energy in buildings. The paper results in an approach towards designing an energy efficient apartment building through embodied energy assessment. This paper discusses the trend of residential development in Rourkela, which includes three case studies of the contemporary houses, followed by architectural elements, number of storeys, predominant material use and plot sizes using primary data. It results in identification of predominant material used and other characteristics in urban area. Further, the embodied energy coefficients of various dominant building materials and alternative materials manufactured in Indian Industry is taken in consideration from secondary source i.e. literature study. The paper analyses the embodied energy by estimating materials and operational energy of proposed building followed by altering the specifications of the materials based on the building components i.e. walls, flooring, windows, insulation and roof through res build India software and comparison of different options is assessed with consideration of sustainable parameters. This paper results that autoclaved aerated concrete block only reaches the energy performance Index benchmark i.e. 69.35 kWh/m2 yr i.e. by saving 4% of operational energy and as embodied energy has no particular index, out of all materials it has the highest EE 23206202.43 MJ.Keywords: energy efficient, embodied energy, EPI, building materials
Procedia PDF Downloads 1828621 Evaluation of Fracture Resistance and Moisture Damage of Hot Mix Asphalt Using Plastic Coated Aggregates
Authors: Malleshappa Japagal, Srinivas Chitragar
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The use of waste plastic in pavement is becoming important alternative worldwide for disposal of plastic as well as to improve the stability of pavement and to meet out environmental issues. However, there are still concerns on fatigue and fracture resistance of Hot Mix Asphalt with the addition of plastic waste, (HMA-Plastic mixes) and moisture damage potential. The present study was undertaken to evaluate fracture resistance of HMA-Plastic mixes using semi-circular bending (SCB) test and moisture damage potential by Indirect Tensile strength (ITS) test using retained tensile strength (TSR). In this study, a dense graded asphalt mix with 19 mm nominal maximum aggregate size was designed in the laboratory using Marshall Mix design method. Aggregates were coated with different percentages of waste plastic (0%, 2%, 3% and 4%) by weight of aggregate and performance evaluation of fracture resistance and Moisture damage was carried out. The following parameters were estimated for the mixes: J-Integral or Jc, strain energy at failure, peak load at failure, and deformation at failure. It was found that the strain energy and peak load of all the mixes decrease with an increase in notch depth, indicating that increased percentage of plastic waste gave better fracture resistance. The moisture damage potential was evaluated by Tensile strength ratio (TSR). The experimental results shown increased TRS value up to 3% addition of waste plastic in HMA mix which gives better performance hence the use of waste plastic in road construction is favorable.Keywords: hot mix asphalt, semi circular bending, marshall mix design, tensile strength ratio
Procedia PDF Downloads 2998620 Automatic Generation of Census Enumeration Area and National Sampling Frame to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals
Authors: Sarchil H. Qader, Andrew Harfoot, Mathias Kuepie, Sabrina Juran, Attila Lazar, Andrew J. Tatem
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The need for high-quality, reliable, and timely population data, including demographic information, to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in all countries was recognized by the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. However, many low and middle-income countries lack reliable and recent census data. To achieve reliable and accurate census and survey outputs, up-to-date census enumeration areas and digital national sampling frames are critical. Census enumeration areas (EAs) are the smallest geographic units for collection, disseminating, and analyzing census data and are often used as a national sampling frame to serve various socio-economic surveys. Even for countries that are wealthy and stable, creating and updating EAs is a difficult yet crucial step in preparing for a national census. Such a process is commonly done manually, either by digitizing small geographic units on high-resolution satellite imagery or walking the boundaries of units, both of which are extremely expensive. We have developed a user-friendly tool that could be employed to generate draft EA boundaries automatically. The tool is based on high-resolution gridded population and settlement datasets, GPS household locations, building footprints and uses publicly available natural, man-made and administrative boundaries. Initial outputs were produced in Burkina Faso, Paraguay, Somalia, Togo, Niger, Guinea, and Zimbabwe. The results indicate that the EAs are in line with international standards, including boundaries that are easily identifiable and follow ground features, have no overlaps, are compact and free of pockets and disjoints, and the boundaries are nested within administrative boundaries.Keywords: enumeration areas, national sampling frame, gridded population data, preEA tool
Procedia PDF Downloads 1338619 Extracting Terrain Points from Airborne Laser Scanning Data in Densely Forested Areas
Authors: Ziad Abdeldayem, Jakub Markiewicz, Kunal Kansara, Laura Edwards
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Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) is one of the main technologies for generating high-resolution digital terrain models (DTMs). DTMs are crucial to several applications, such as topographic mapping, flood zone delineation, geographic information systems (GIS), hydrological modelling, spatial analysis, etc. Laser scanning system generates irregularly spaced three-dimensional cloud of points. Raw ALS data are mainly ground points (that represent the bare earth) and non-ground points (that represent buildings, trees, cars, etc.). Removing all the non-ground points from the raw data is referred to as filtering. Filtering heavily forested areas is considered a difficult and challenging task as the canopy stops laser pulses from reaching the terrain surface. This research presents an approach for removing non-ground points from raw ALS data in densely forested areas. Smoothing splines are exploited to interpolate and fit the noisy ALS data. The presented filter utilizes a weight function to allocate weights for each point of the data. Furthermore, unlike most of the methods, the presented filtering algorithm is designed to be automatic. Three different forested areas in the United Kingdom are used to assess the performance of the algorithm. The results show that the generated DTMs from the filtered data are accurate (when compared against reference terrain data) and the performance of the method is stable for all the heavily forested data samples. The average root mean square error (RMSE) value is 0.35 m.Keywords: airborne laser scanning, digital terrain models, filtering, forested areas
Procedia PDF Downloads 1358618 Using Data Mining in Automotive Safety
Authors: Carine Cridelich, Pablo Juesas Cano, Emmanuel Ramasso, Noureddine Zerhouni, Bernd Weiler
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Safety is one of the most important considerations when buying a new car. While active safety aims at avoiding accidents, passive safety systems such as airbags and seat belts protect the occupant in case of an accident. In addition to legal regulations, organizations like Euro NCAP provide consumers with an independent assessment of the safety performance of cars and drive the development of safety systems in automobile industry. Those ratings are mainly based on injury assessment reference values derived from physical parameters measured in dummies during a car crash test. The components and sub-systems of a safety system are designed to achieve the required restraint performance. Sled tests and other types of tests are then carried out by car makers and their suppliers to confirm the protection level of the safety system. A Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process is proposed in order to minimize the number of tests. The KDD process is based on the data emerging from sled tests according to Euro NCAP specifications. About 30 parameters of the passive safety systems from different data sources (crash data, dummy protocol) are first analysed together with experts opinions. A procedure is proposed to manage missing data and validated on real data sets. Finally, a procedure is developed to estimate a set of rough initial parameters of the passive system before testing aiming at reducing the number of tests.Keywords: KDD process, passive safety systems, sled test, dummy injury assessment reference values, frontal impact
Procedia PDF Downloads 3748617 Membrane Distillation Process Modeling: Dynamical Approach
Authors: Fadi Eleiwi, Taous Meriem Laleg-Kirati
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This paper presents a complete dynamic modeling of a membrane distillation process. The model contains two consistent dynamic models. A 2D advection-diffusion equation for modeling the whole process and a modified heat equation for modeling the membrane itself. The complete model describes the temperature diffusion phenomenon across the feed, membrane, permeate containers and boundary layers of the membrane. It gives an online and complete temperature profile for each point in the domain. It explains heat conduction and convection mechanisms that take place inside the process in terms of mathematical parameters, and justify process behavior during transient and steady state phases. The process is monitored for any sudden change in the performance at any instance of time. In addition, it assists maintaining production rates as desired, and gives recommendations during membrane fabrication stages. System performance and parameters can be optimized and controlled using this complete dynamic model. Evolution of membrane boundary temperature with time, vapor mass transfer along the process, and temperature difference between membrane boundary layers are depicted and included. Simulations were performed over the complete model with real membrane specifications. The plots show consistency between 2D advection-diffusion model and the expected behavior of the systems as well as literature. Evolution of heat inside the membrane starting from transient response till reaching steady state response for fixed and varying times is illustrated.Keywords: membrane distillation, dynamical modeling, advection-diffusion equation, thermal equilibrium, heat equation
Procedia PDF Downloads 2638616 Comparing Xbar Charts: Conventional versus Reweighted Robust Estimation Methods for Univariate Data Sets
Authors: Ece Cigdem Mutlu, Burak Alakent
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Maintaining the quality of manufactured products at a desired level depends on the stability of process dispersion and location parameters and detection of perturbations in these parameters as promptly as possible. Shewhart control chart is the most widely used technique in statistical process monitoring to monitor the quality of products and control process mean and variability. In the application of Xbar control charts, sample standard deviation and sample mean are known to be the most efficient conventional estimators in determining process dispersion and location parameters, respectively, based on the assumption of independent and normally distributed datasets. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that the real-world data would be normally distributed. In the cases of estimated process parameters from Phase I data clouded with outliers, efficiency of traditional estimators is significantly reduced, and performance of Xbar charts are undesirably low, e.g. occasional outliers in the rational subgroups in Phase I data set may considerably affect the sample mean and standard deviation, resulting a serious delay in detection of inferior products in Phase II. For more efficient application of control charts, it is required to use robust estimators against contaminations, which may exist in Phase I. In the current study, we present a simple approach to construct robust Xbar control charts using average distance to the median, Qn-estimator of scale, M-estimator of scale with logistic psi-function in the estimation of process dispersion parameter, and Harrell-Davis qth quantile estimator, Hodge-Lehmann estimator and M-estimator of location with Huber psi-function and logistic psi-function in the estimation of process location parameter. Phase I efficiency of proposed estimators and Phase II performance of Xbar charts constructed from these estimators are compared with the conventional mean and standard deviation statistics both under normality and against diffuse-localized and symmetric-asymmetric contaminations using 50,000 Monte Carlo simulations on MATLAB. Consequently, it is found that robust estimators yield parameter estimates with higher efficiency against all types of contaminations, and Xbar charts constructed using robust estimators have higher power in detecting disturbances, compared to conventional methods. Additionally, utilizing individuals charts to screen outlier subgroups and employing different combination of dispersion and location estimators on subgroups and individual observations are found to improve the performance of Xbar charts.Keywords: average run length, M-estimators, quality control, robust estimators
Procedia PDF Downloads 1838615 Design and Performance Evaluation of Plasma Spouted Bed Reactor for Converting Waste Plastic into Green Hydrogen
Authors: Palash Kumar Mollick, Leire Olazar, Laura Santamaria, Pablo Comendador, Gartzen Lopez, Martin Olazar
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Average calorific value of a mixure of waste plastic is approximately 38 MJ/kg. Present work aims to extract maximum possible energy from a mixure of waste plastic using a DC thermal plasma in a spouted bed reactor. Plasma pyrolysis and steam reforming process has shown a potential to generate hydrogen from plastic with much below of legal limit of producing dioxins and furans as the carcinogenic gases. A spouted bed pyrolysis rector can continuously process plastic beads to produce organic volatiles, which later react with steam in presence of catalyst to results in syngas. lasma being the fourth state of matter, can carry high impact electrons to favour the activation energy of any chemical reactions. Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) simulation using COMSOL Multiphysics software has been performed to evaluate performance of a plasma spouted bed reactor in producing contamination free hydrogen as a green energy from waste plastic beads. The simulation results will showcase a design of a plasma spouted bed reactor for converting plastic waste into green hydrogen in a single step process. The high temperature hydrodynamics of spouted bed with plastic beads and the corresponding temperature distribution inside the reaction chamber will be critically examined for it’s near future installation of demonstration plant.Keywords: green hydrogen, plastic waste, synthetic gas, pyrolysis, steam reforming, spouted bed, reactor design, plasma, dc palsma, cfd simulation
Procedia PDF Downloads 998614 Electricity Price Forecasting: A Comparative Analysis with Shallow-ANN and DNN
Authors: Fazıl Gökgöz, Fahrettin Filiz
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Electricity prices have sophisticated features such as high volatility, nonlinearity and high frequency that make forecasting quite difficult. Electricity price has a volatile and non-random character so that, it is possible to identify the patterns based on the historical data. Intelligent decision-making requires accurate price forecasting for market traders, retailers, and generation companies. So far, many shallow-ANN (artificial neural networks) models have been published in the literature and showed adequate forecasting results. During the last years, neural networks with many hidden layers, which are referred to as DNN (deep neural networks) have been using in the machine learning community. The goal of this study is to investigate electricity price forecasting performance of the shallow-ANN and DNN models for the Turkish day-ahead electricity market. The forecasting accuracy of the models has been evaluated with publicly available data from the Turkish day-ahead electricity market. Both shallow-ANN and DNN approach would give successful result in forecasting problems. Historical load, price and weather temperature data are used as the input variables for the models. The data set includes power consumption measurements gathered between January 2016 and December 2017 with one-hour resolution. In this regard, forecasting studies have been carried out comparatively with shallow-ANN and DNN models for Turkish electricity markets in the related time period. The main contribution of this study is the investigation of different shallow-ANN and DNN models in the field of electricity price forecast. All models are compared regarding their MAE (Mean Absolute Error) and MSE (Mean Square) results. DNN models give better forecasting performance compare to shallow-ANN. Best five MAE results for DNN models are 0.346, 0.372, 0.392, 0,402 and 0.409.Keywords: deep learning, artificial neural networks, energy price forecasting, turkey
Procedia PDF Downloads 2858613 Inducing Flow Experience in Mobile Learning: An Experiment Using a Spanish Learning Mobile Application
Authors: S. Jonsson, D. Millard, C. Bokhove
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Smartphones are ubiquitous and frequently used as learning tools, which makes the design of educational apps an important area of research. A key issue is designing apps to encourage engagement while maintaining a focus on the educational aspects of the app. Flow experience is a promising method for addressing this issue, which refers to a mental state of cognitive absorption and positive emotion. Flow experience has been shown to be associated with positive emotion and increased learning performance. Studies have shown that immediate feedback is an antecedent to Flow. This experiment investigates the effect of immediate feedback on Flow experience. An app teaching Spanish phrases was developed, and 30 participants completed both a 10min session with immediate feedback and a 10min session with delayed feedback. The app contained a task where the user assembles Spanish phrases by pressing bricks with Spanish words. Immediate feedback was implemented by incorrect bricks recoiling, while correct brick moved to form part of the finished phrase. In the delayed feedback condition, the user did not know if the bricks they pressed were correct until the phrase was complete. The level of Flow experienced by the participants was measured after each session using the Flow Short Scale. The results showed that higher levels of Flow were experienced in the immediate feedback session. It was also found that 14 of the participants indicated that the demands of the task were ‘just right’ in the immediate feedback session, while only one did in the delayed feedback session. These results have implications for how to design educational technology and opens up questions for how Flow experience can be used to increase performance and engagement.Keywords: feedback timing, flow experience, L2 language learning, mobile learning
Procedia PDF Downloads 1228612 A Validated High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-UV Method for Determination of Malondialdehyde-Application to Study in Chronic Ciprofloxacin Treated Rats
Authors: Anil P. Dewani, Ravindra L. Bakal, Anil V. Chandewar
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Present work demonstrates the applicability of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with UV detection for the determination of malondialdehyde as malondialdehyde-thiobarbituric acid complex (MDA-TBA) in-vivo in rats. The HPLC-UV method for MDA-TBA was achieved by isocratic mode on a reverse-phase C18 column (250mm×4.6mm) at a flow rate of 1.0mLmin−1 followed by UV detection at 278 nm. The chromatographic conditions were optimized by varying the concentration and pH followed by changes in percentage of organic phase optimal mobile phase consisted of mixture of water (0.2% Triethylamine pH adjusted to 2.3 by ortho-phosphoric acid) and acetonitrile in ratio (80:20 % v/v). The retention time of MDA-TBA complex was 3.7 min. The developed method was sensitive as limit of detection and quantification (LOD and LOQ) for MDA-TBA complex were (standard deviation and slope of calibration curve) 110 ng/ml and 363 ng/ml respectively. The method was linear for MDA spiked in plasma and subjected to derivatization at concentrations ranging from 100 to 1000 ng/ml. The precision of developed method measured in terms of relative standard deviations for intra-day and inter-day studies was 1.6–5.0% and 1.9–3.6% respectively. The HPLC method was applied for monitoring MDA levels in rats subjected to chronic treatment of ciprofloxacin (CFL) (5mg/kg/day) for 21 days. Results were compared by findings in control group rats. Mean peak areas of both study groups was subjected for statistical treatment to unpaired student t-test to find p-values. The p value was < 0.001 indicating significant results and suggesting increased MDA levels in rats subjected to chronic treatment of CFL of 21 days.Keywords: MDA, TBA, ciprofloxacin, HPLC-UV
Procedia PDF Downloads 3178611 Evolutionary Swarm Robotics: Dynamic Subgoal-Based Path Formation and Task Allocation for Exploration and Navigation in Unknown Environments
Authors: Lavanya Ratnabala, Robinroy Peter, E. Y. A. Charles
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This research paper addresses the challenges of exploration and navigation in unknown environments from an evolutionary swarm robotics perspective. Path formation plays a crucial role in enabling cooperative swarm robots to accomplish these tasks. The paper presents a method called the sub-goal-based path formation, which establishes a path between two different locations by exploiting visually connected sub-goals. Simulation experiments conducted in the Argos simulator demonstrate the successful formation of paths in the majority of trials. Furthermore, the paper tackles the problem of inter-collision (traffic) among a large number of robots engaged in path formation, which negatively impacts the performance of the sub-goal-based method. To mitigate this issue, a task allocation strategy is proposed, leveraging local communication protocols and light signal-based communication. The strategy evaluates the distance between points and determines the required number of robots for the path formation task, reducing unwanted exploration and traffic congestion. The performance of the sub-goal-based path formation and task allocation strategy is evaluated by comparing path length, time, and resource reduction against the A* algorithm. The simulation experiments demonstrate promising results, showcasing the scalability, robustness, and fault tolerance characteristics of the proposed approach.Keywords: swarm, path formation, task allocation, Argos, exploration, navigation, sub-goal
Procedia PDF Downloads 378610 Systematic Evaluation of Convolutional Neural Network on Land Cover Classification from Remotely Sensed Images
Authors: Eiman Kattan, Hong Wei
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In using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for classification, there is a set of hyperparameters available for the configuration purpose. This study aims to evaluate the impact of a range of parameters in CNN architecture i.e. AlexNet on land cover classification based on four remotely sensed datasets. The evaluation tests the influence of a set of hyperparameters on the classification performance. The parameters concerned are epoch values, batch size, and convolutional filter size against input image size. Thus, a set of experiments were conducted to specify the effectiveness of the selected parameters using two implementing approaches, named pertained and fine-tuned. We first explore the number of epochs under several selected batch size values (32, 64, 128 and 200). The impact of kernel size of convolutional filters (1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30) was evaluated against the image size under testing (64, 96, 128, 180 and 224), which gave us insight of the relationship between the size of convolutional filters and image size. To generalise the validation, four remote sensing datasets, AID, RSD, UCMerced and RSCCN, which have different land covers and are publicly available, were used in the experiments. These datasets have a wide diversity of input data, such as number of classes, amount of labelled data, and texture patterns. A specifically designed interactive deep learning GPU training platform for image classification (Nvidia Digit) was employed in the experiments. It has shown efficiency in both training and testing. The results have shown that increasing the number of epochs leads to a higher accuracy rate, as expected. However, the convergence state is highly related to datasets. For the batch size evaluation, it has shown that a larger batch size slightly decreases the classification accuracy compared to a small batch size. For example, selecting the value 32 as the batch size on the RSCCN dataset achieves the accuracy rate of 90.34 % at the 11th epoch while decreasing the epoch value to one makes the accuracy rate drop to 74%. On the other extreme, setting an increased value of batch size to 200 decreases the accuracy rate at the 11th epoch is 86.5%, and 63% when using one epoch only. On the other hand, selecting the kernel size is loosely related to data set. From a practical point of view, the filter size 20 produces 70.4286%. The last performed image size experiment shows a dependency in the accuracy improvement. However, an expensive performance gain had been noticed. The represented conclusion opens the opportunities toward a better classification performance in various applications such as planetary remote sensing.Keywords: CNNs, hyperparamters, remote sensing, land cover, land use
Procedia PDF Downloads 1648609 Investigation of the Mechanical Performance of Hot Mix Asphalt Modified with Crushed Waste Glass
Authors: Ayman Othman, Tallat Ali
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The successive increase of generated waste materials like glass has led to many environmental problems. Using crushed waste glass in hot mix asphalt paving has been though as an alternative to landfill disposal and recycling. This paper discusses the possibility of utilizing crushed waste glass, as a part of fine aggregate in hot mix asphalt in Egypt. This is done through evaluation of the mechanical properties of asphalt concrete mixtures mixed with waste glass and determining the appropriate glass content that can be adapted in asphalt pavement. Four asphalt concrete mixtures with various glass contents, namely; 0%, 4%, 8% and 12% by weight of total mixture were studied. Evaluation of the mechanical properties includes performing Marshall stability, indirect tensile strength, fracture energy and unconfined compressive strength tests. Laboratory testing had revealed the enhancement in both compressive strength and Marshall stability test parameters when the crushed glass was added to asphalt concrete mixtures. This enhancement was accompanied with a very slight reduction in both indirect tensile strength and fracture energy when glass content up to 8% was used. Adding more than 8% of glass causes a sharp reduction in both indirect tensile strength and fracture energy. Testing results had also shown a reduction in the optimum asphalt content when the waste glass was used. Measurements of the heat loss rate of asphalt concrete mixtures mixed with glass revealed their ability to hold heat longer than conventional mixtures. This can have useful application in asphalt paving during cold whether or when a long period of post-mix transportation is needed.Keywords: waste glass, hot mix asphalt, mechanical performance, indirect tensile strength, fracture energy, compressive strength
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