Search results for: waste paper

Authors: Alina P. Colling, Robert G. Hekkenberg

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Recent years have seen extensive technological advancement in truck platooning, as reflected in the literature. Its main benefits are the improvement of traffic stability and the reduction of air drag, resulting in less fuel consumption, in comparison to using individual trucks. Platooning is now being adapted to the waterborne transport sector in the NOVIMAR project through the development of a Vessel Train (VT) concept. The main focus of VT’s, as opposed to the truck platoons, is the decrease in manning on board, ultimately working towards autonomous vessel operations. This crew reduction can prove to be an important selling point in achieving economic competitiveness of the waterborne approach when compared to alternative modes of transport. This paper discusses the expected benefits and drawbacks of the VT concept, in terms of the technical logistic performance and generalized costs. More specifically, VT’s can provide flexibility in destination choices for shippers but also add complexity when performing special manoeuvres in VT formation. In order to quantify the cost and performances, a model is developed and simulations are carried out for various case studies. These compare the application of VT’s in the short sea and inland water transport, with specific sailing regimes and technologies installed on board to allow different levels of autonomy. The results enable the identification of the most important boundary conditions for the successful operation of the waterborne platooning concept. These findings serve as a framework for future business applications of the VT.

Keywords: autonomous vessels, NOVIMAR, vessel trains, waterborne platooning

Procedia PDF Downloads 203

Authors: Yong Sun, Vladimir Luzin, Zhen Qian, William J. T. Daniel, Mingxing Zhang, Shichao Ding

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The residual stresses in roll formed products are generally very high and un-predictable. This is due to the occurrence of redundant plastic deformation in roll forming process and it can cause various product defects. Although the residual stresses of a roll formed product consist of longitudinal and transverse residual stresses components, but the longitudinal residual stresses plays a key role to the product defects of a roll formed product and therefore, only the longitudinal residual stresses concerned by the roll forming scholars and engineers. However, how to inspect the residual stresses of a product quickly and economically as a routine operation is still a challenge. This paper introduces a residual stresses measurement method called slope cutting method to study the longitudinal residual stresses through layers geometrically to a roll formed products or a product with similar process such as a rolled sheet. The detailed measuring procedure is given and discussed. The residual stresses variation through the layer can be derived based on the variation of curvature in different layers and steps. The slope cutting method has been explored and validated by experimental study on a roll-formed square tube. The neutron diffraction method is applied to validate the accuracy of the newly proposed layering removal materials results. The two set results agree with each other very well and therefore, the method is expected to be a routine testing method to monitor the quality of a product been formed and that is a great impact to roll forming industry.

Keywords: roll forming, residual stress, measurement method, neutron diffraction

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Authors: A. Ezza, B. M. Babar Ramzan, C. Hira

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This study deliberates emerging design activates in 3D printing technology, the paper provides the insight into the broad opportunities in 3D printing applications in fashion world. 3D printing is becoming a reason for reduction of lead time. The process engenders the precise models and one of prototype components for design approbation; trail and testing significance through the production components to be utilized in true working environments. This emerging technology have given elevate to an emergent realm of digitally fabricated art and design. Bitonic Creations, CONTINUUM (3D printed shoes), Jiri Evenhuis, Michael Schmidt have be giving extensive amassments of haute couture dresses and accessories. Cosyflex TM, N12 undergarments are examples of an innovative process for 3D printing. Varied types of liquid polymers such as latex, silicon, polyurethane and Teflon as well as a variety of textile fibers such as cotton, viscose and polyamide enable tailor made fabrics for any need. Patterns, perforations, embossing and embellishments may be created by printing on 3D structure base plate. Computer solidifies material feedstock layer by layer with micro-millimeter detail. In lieu of producing textiles by meter, then cutting and sewing them into final product, 3D printing can become a reason to make sewing equipment obsolete. The findings positively corroborates the expected advantage of 3D printed sample that seem to facilitate the first steps for designer.

Keywords: 3D printing, customization, fashion industry, Haute couture

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Authors: Tarek M. Alguhane, Ayman H. Khalil, M. N. Fayed, Ayman M. Ismail

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A 15-storey RC building, studied in this paper, is representative of modern building type constructed in Madina City in Saudi Arabia before 10 years ago. These buildings are almost consisting of reinforced concrete skeleton, i. e. columns, beams and flat slab as well as shear walls in the stairs and elevator areas arranged in the way to have a resistance system for lateral loads (wind–earthquake loads). In this study, the dynamic properties of the 15-storey RC building were identified using ambient motions recorded at several spatially-distributed locations within each building. After updating the mathematical models for this building with the experimental results, three dimensional pushover analysis (nonlinear static analysis) was carried out using SAP2000 software incorporating inelastic material properties for concrete, infill and steel. The effect of modeling the building with and without infill walls on the performance point as well as capacity and demand spectra due to EQ design spectrum function in Madina area has been investigated. The response modification factor (R) for the 15 storey RC building is evaluated from capacity and demand spectra (ATC-40). The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate the expected performance of structural systems by estimating, strength and deformation demands in design, and comparing these demands to available capacities at the performance levels of interest. The results are summarized and discussed.

Keywords: seismic assessment, pushover analysis, ambient vibration, modal update

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Authors: Brahim Ouzaka, Said Ouhadi

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Family businesses (FB) represent the oldest and most resilient form of organization. However, they are weakened by problems of entrepreneurial discontinuity. The objective of this paper is to analyze the problem of the succession of FBs created by senior entrepreneurs. This study analyzes and explores the constructs of senior entrepreneurship and the strategy and takeover policies of the Moroccan Family owned Small and Medium-Sized Businesses. Our main research question is formulated as follows: how does senior entrepreneurship promote the takeover of Moroccan family SMEs? So we aim through this study to analyze the challenge of the takeover of the FB created by senior entrepreneurs in order to explore and understand the specificities, choices and strategies as well as the reality of the takeover process among this category of senior entrepreneurs. After a review of the literature on the relationship between the constructs of senior entrepreneurship and the takeover of FBs, the empirical study will consist of an exploratory qualitative approach of 3 family SMEs created by senior entrepreneurs and subsequently transmitted to their descendants. This qualitative research serves to explore the choices, the strategies as well as the specificities of the entrepreneurial acts and processes of this category of entrepreneurs. The interviews were conducted with senior entrepreneurs and successors of three Moroccan family SMEs, focusing on the specificity of entrepreneurial actions and strategies in the case of SMEs launched by senior entrepreneurs and on the reality of the conduct and preparation of the takeover process, the methods of socialization and training of buyers in the context of these companies.

Keywords: senior entrepreneurship, family SME, family business, takeover

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Authors: Alessandra Marino

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This paper thoroughly investigates the design characteristics necessary for intergenerational living and evaluates their applicability within the Italian social panorama in order to identify a model that can serve as a reference for subsequent regulatory adjustments of a new building typology. The applied methodology involves the collaboration of people with various background and architects, all representing the three main ages of life - childhood or youth, adulthood, seniority - through questionnaires aimed at researching the peculiar characteristics that contemporary intergenerational housing should include; the questionnaires are then compared with each other in order to identify any recurring patterns by age group and/or influenced by the specialist knowledge on the subject of the architects compared to the rest of the user sample. The results indicate that among specialist users in the field of architecture, young students identify home automation as the key to the inclusion of the weakest groups within the building, adult architects believe that the identification of intergenerational/community services within the building is the cornerstone, and senior architects focus on widespread spatial accessibility. At the same time, the results among non-specialist users do not identify a significantly diversified model by age group but are generally in agreement in the importance of separation between private environments and collective spaces. The interpretation of the results obtained leads to a compositional study of a new building typology with the future objective of channeling the subsequent outcomes within the regulatory adjustments of the sector.

Keywords: intergenerational living, social sustainability, health, lifestyle, well-being

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Authors: Huiqiang Yang, Domingo Santana

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Reducing parasitic power consumption of concentrating solar power plants is the main challenge to increase the overall efficiency, particularly for molten salt tower technology. One of the most effective approaches to reduce the parasitic power consumption is to implement a natural draft dry cooling system instead of the standard utilized mechanical draft dry cooling system. In this paper, a thermo-economic analysis of a natural draft direct cooling system was performed based on a 100MWe commercial scale molten salt power plant. In this configuration with a natural draft direct cooling system, the exhaust steam from steam turbine flows directly to the heat exchanger bundles inside the natural draft dry cooling tower, which eliminates the power consumption of circulation pumps or fans, although the cooling tower shadows a portion of the heliostat field. The simulation results also show that compared to a mechanical draft cooling system the annual solar field efficiency is decreased by about 0.2% due to the shadow, which is equal to a reduction of approximately 13% of the solar field area. As a contrast, reducing the solar field size by 13% in purpose in a molten salt power plant with a natural draft drying cooling system actually will lead to a reduction of levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) by about 4.06% without interfering the power generated.

Keywords: molten salt power tower, natural draft dry cooling, parasitic power consumption, commercial scale

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Authors: Eleni Tsalaporta, Sebastien Vaesen, James M. D. MacElroy, Wolfgang Schmitt

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Carbon dioxide capture has attracted the attention of many governments, industries and scientists over the last few decades, due to the rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 composition, with several studies being conducted in this area over the last few years. In many of these studies, CO2 capture in complex Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) cycles has been associated with high energy consumption despite the promising capture performance of such processes. The purpose of this study is the economic capture of atmospheric carbon dioxide for its transformation into a clean type of energy. A single column Temperature /Vacuum Swing Adsorption (TSA/VSA) process is proposed as an alternative option to multi column Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) processes. The proposed adsorbent is SIFSIX-3-Ni, a newly developed MOF (Metal Organic Framework), with extended CO2 selectivity and capacity. There are three stages involved in this paper: (i) SIFSIX-3-Ni is synthesized and pelletized and its physical and chemical properties are examined before and after the pelletization process, (ii) experiments are designed and undertaken for the estimation of the diffusion and adsorption parameters and limitations for CO2 undergoing capture from the air; and (iii) the CO2 adsorption capacity and dynamical characteristics of SIFSIX-3-Ni are investigated both experimentally and mathematically by employing a single column TSA/VSA, for the capture of atmospheric CO2. This work is further supported by a technical-economical study for the estimation of the investment cost and the energy consumption of the single column TSA/VSA process. The simulations are performed using gProms.

Keywords: carbon dioxide capture, temperature/vacuum swing adsorption, metal organic frameworks, SIFSIX-3-Ni

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Authors: Zipei Yin

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Community space is the main place for children's daily outdoor activities. The mountain community space has the typical characteristics of a closed natural environment, a scattered population layout with height differences, and a relatively independent group structure. This has resulted in special limitations on children's outdoor activities in terms of safety, accessibility, and appropriateness, which urgently makes it necessary to explore how to construct children's activity spaces in mountainous societies under the special limitations. This study investigated the activity spaces for children aged 3-11 years old in typical old communities in Chongqing and evaluated them based on the dimensions of spatial characteristics, environmental safety, and connectivity to summarise three typical patterns of children's outdoor activity spaces in old communities in mountainous cities. Then, under the framework of the appeal of the child-friendly urban environment, taking advantage of the characteristics of the old community in mountain cities compared with the plain urban community, such as complex social form, diversified functional positioning, and good foundation of autonomy, this paper explores the micro-renewal path and strategy of the compound utilization of community public space from the two levels of design and governance, so as to further promote the research and practice of the healthy development of mountain urban community environment.

Keywords: child-friendly, healthy community, community public space, mountainous urban community, community renewal

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Authors: Nidhal Jamia, Sami El-Borgi

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In this paper, the problem of a mixed-Mode crack embedded in an infinite medium made of a functionally graded piezoelectric material (FGPM) with crack surfaces subjected to electro-mechanical loadings is investigated. Eringen’s non-local theory of elasticity is adopted to formulate the governing electro-elastic equations. The properties of the piezoelectric material are assumed to vary exponentially along a perpendicular plane to the crack. Using Fourier transform, three integral equations are obtained in which the unknown variables are the jumps of mechanical displacements and electric potentials across the crack surfaces. To solve the integral equations, the unknowns are directly expanded as a series of Jacobi polynomials, and the resulting equations solved using the Schmidt method. In contrast to the classical solutions based on the local theory, it is found that no mechanical stress and electric displacement singularities are present at the crack tips when nonlocal theory is employed to investigate the problem. A direct benefit is the ability to use the calculated maximum stress as a fracture criterion. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the effects of crack length, material gradient parameter describing FGPMs, and lattice parameter on the mechanical stress and electric displacement field near crack tips.

Keywords: functionally graded piezoelectric material (FGPM), mixed-mode crack, non-local theory, Schmidt method

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Authors: Jing Fang, Yao Cui, Mingming Wang, Shengli She, Jianping Yuan

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Wearable robotics is a potential solution in aiding gait rehabilitation of lower limbs dyskinesia patients, such as knee osteoarthritis or stroke afflicted patients. Many wearable robots have been developed in the form of rigid exoskeletons, but their bulk devices, high cost and control complexity hinder their popularity in the field of gait rehabilitation. Thus, the development of a portable, compliant and low-cost wearable robot for gait rehabilitation is necessary. Inspired by Chinese traditional folding fans and balloon inflators, the authors present an inflatable, foldable and variable stiffness knee exosuit (IFVSKE) in this paper. The pneumatic actuator of IFVSKE was fabricated in the shape of folding fans by using thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) fabric materials. The geometric and mechanical properties of IFVSKE were characterized with experimental methods. To assist the knee joint smartly, an intelligent control profile for IFVSKE was proposed based on the concept of full-cycle energy management of the biomechanical energy during human movement. The biomechanical energy of knee joints in a walking gait cycle of patients could be collected and released to assist the joint motion just by adjusting the inner pressure of IFVSKE. Finally, a healthy subject was involved to walk with and without the IFVSKE to evaluate the assisting effects.

Keywords: biomechanical energy management, knee exosuit, gait rehabilitation, wearable robotics

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Authors: Kingsley Okoro Nwannennaya

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The 21st century seems to have been eclipsed by social conflict, giving vent to a mentality construct that accepts conflict as inextricable part of the social system. This is justified by the escalation of conflict in all the zones of the world. We therefore, query whether a peaceful society is a mere illusion? It is in an attempt to give lucid answer to this question that the researcher began critical investigations on various peace building and conflict management models. Here the researcher discovered that these models as good as they may be have not addressed the root of conflicts which revolves on the social structure in place in any society. Hence the current social structure is organized around class system, which gave birth to competition, greed, selfishness, power struggle etc. and also promotes mono-culture based on Euro-American traditions. This placed some cultures on a disadvantageous position, with conflict as its outgrowth. However, the researcher being interested to finding a peace building and conflict management model that will address this gap discovered that Taoism has the seed that can offer the world the desired peace. This tradition anchors on the principles of Tao, Yin-yang and Wu-wei. Basic to the trio concepts are the idea of Pluralism, non-interference, non-action and flowing with the order of nature. This paper, having adopted, historical and sociological methods of investigations opines that if Taoist tradition shall be adopted as a peace building model, the desired peace of our dream shall soon become a reality.

Keywords: critical option, oriental traditions, peace initiative, taoism

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Authors: John Angelo Labuguen, Sarah Joy Salvio

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Despite the low prevalence rate of Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) in the Philippines, the country is one of the seven countries in the world and the only country in Southeast Asia which reported an increasing trend in the number of people infected with HIV. Furthermore, people getting infected with HIV are becoming younger every year. Eighty-five percent (7,103) of the total number of youth (15-24 years old) with HIV were recorded in the past five years. The rising rates of HIV infection suggest the need to understand HIV knowledge, attitudes, and sexual behaviors among the youth in the Philippines. The University of the Philippines (UP), having a population that represents all regions of the country, can be reflective of the current situation of the Filipino youth in the issue of HIV/AIDS. This paper attempted to: (1) assess the level of knowledge on HIV/AIDS; (2) describe the attitude towards people living with HIV/AIDS; (3) identify socio-demographic and sexual behaviors associated with the level of HIV/AIDS knowledge; and (4) determine how knowledge on HIV/AIDS is related with attitude towards people living with HIV/AIDS among tertiary students of the UP Diliman. Self-administered survey was used to collect data from 308 randomly selected respondents. Data was encoded using CS Pro 6.2 and it was exported to SPSS v23 for further analysis. Findings of the study revealed that comprehensive correct knowledge on HIV/AIDS is associated with a somewhat accepting attitude towards PLWHA. Sociodemographic and sexual behavior characteristics do not contribute to the association between level of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and attitude towards PLWHA.

Keywords: attitude towards people living with HIV/AIDS, comprehensive HIV/AIDS knowledge, Philippines, university students

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Authors: Kenneth Kapalu Muzata, Dikeledi Mahlo, Pinkie Mabunda Mabunda

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This paper presents results of a study conducted to establish special education teachers’ knowledge and application of curriculum adaptation of the 2013 revised curriculum in Zambia. From a sample of 134 respondents (120 special education teachers, 12 education officers, and 2 curriculum specialists), the study collected both quantitative and qualitative data to establish whether teachers understood and applied the concept of curriculum adaptation in teaching learners with special education needs. To obtain data validity and reliability, the researchers collected data by use of mixed methods. Semi-structured questionnaires and interviews were administered. Lesson Observations and post-lesson discussions were conducted on 12 selected teachers from the 120 sample that answered the questionnaires. Frequencies, percentages, and significant differences were derived through the statistical package for social sciences. Qualitative data were analyzed with the help of NVIVO qualitative software to create themes and obtain coding density to help with conclusions. Both quantitative and qualitative data were concurrently compared and related. The results revealed that special education teachers lacked a thorough understanding of the concept of curriculum adaptation, thus denying learners with special education needs the opportunity to benefit from the revised curriculum. The teachers were not oriented on the revised curriculum and hence facing numerous challenges trying to adapt the curriculum. The study recommended training of special education teachers in curriculum adaptation.

Keywords: curriculum adaptation, special education, learners with special education needs, special education teachers

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Authors: Rouhallah Bagheri, Morteza Mahmoudi, Hadi Moheb-Alizadeh

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In this paper, we develop a supplier selection and order allocation multi-objective model in stochastic environment in which purchasing cost, percentage of delivered items with delay and percentage of rejected items provided by each supplier are supposed to be stochastic parameters following any arbitrary probability distribution. To do so, we use dependent chance programming (DCP) that maximizes probability of the event that total purchasing cost, total delivered items with delay and total rejected items are less than or equal to pre-determined values given by decision maker. After transforming the above mentioned stochastic multi-objective programming problem into a stochastic single objective problem using minimum deviation method, we apply a genetic algorithm to get the later single objective problem solved. The employed genetic algorithm performs a simulation process in order to calculate the stochastic objective function as its fitness function. At the end, we explore the impact of stochastic parameters on the given solution via a sensitivity analysis exploiting coefficient of variation. The results show that as stochastic parameters have greater coefficients of variation, the value of objective function in the stochastic single objective programming problem is worsened.

Keywords: dependent chance programming, genetic algorithm, minimum deviation method, order allocation, supplier selection

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Authors: A. Vinod Kumar, G. Sunny Deol, Rakesh Kumar, B. Chandra

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Application of fiber reinforcement in road construction is gaining some interest in enhancing soil strength. In this paper, the natural Geotextile material obtained from gunny bags was used due to vast local availability material. Construction of flexible pavement on weaker soil such as clay soils are a significant problem in construction as well as in design due to its expansive characteristics. Jute Geotextile (JGT) was used on a foundation layer of flexible pavement on rural roads. This problem will be conquered by increasing the subgrade strength by decreasing sub-base layer thickness by improving their overall pavement strength characteristics which ultimately reduces the cost of construction and leads to economically design. The California Bearing Ratio (CBR), unconfined compressive strength (UCS) and triaxial laboratory tests were conducted on two different soil samples CI and MI. Weaker soil is reinforced with JGT, JGT+Bitumen; JGT+polythene sheet was varied with heights while performing the laboratory tests. Subgrade strength evaluation was investigated by conducting soak CBR test in the laboratory for clayey and silt soils. Laboratory results reveal that reinforced soak CBR value of clayey soil (CI) observed was 10.35%, and silty soil (MI) was 15.6%. This study intends to develop new technique for reinforcing weaker soil with JGT varying parameters for the need of low volume flexible pavements. It was observed that the performance of JGT is inferior when used with bitumen and polyethylene sheets.

Keywords: CBR, Jute geotextile, low volume road, weaker soil

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Authors: Szu-Kai Hsu, Po-Ching Lin

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As more and more multi-core processors emerge, traditional sequential programming paradigm no longer suffice. Yet only few modern dynamic programming languages can leverage such advantage. Ruby, for example, despite its wide adoption, only includes threads as a simple parallel primitive. The global virtual machine lock of official Ruby runtime makes it impossible to exploit full parallelism. Though various alternative Ruby implementations do eliminate the global virtual machine lock, they only provide developers dated locking mechanism for data synchronization. However, traditional locking mechanism error-prone by nature. Software Transactional Memory is one of the promising alternatives among others. This paper introduces a new virtual machine: GobiesVM to provide a native software transactional memory based solution for dynamic programming languages to exploit parallelism. We also proposed a simplified variation of Transactional Locking II algorithm. The empirical results of our experiments show that support of STM at virtual machine level enables developers to write straightforward code without compromising parallelism or sacrificing thread safety. Existing source code only requires minimal or even none modi cation, which allows developers to easily switch their legacy codebase to a parallel environment. The performance evaluations of GobiesVM also indicate the difference between sequential and parallel execution is significant.

Keywords: global interpreter lock, ruby, software transactional memory, virtual machine

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Authors: Majid Al-Busafi, Alexe Cristina Ioana, Alexe Dan Iulian

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The specific competition and pre-competition stress in professional track and field determined an increasing engagement, from a biological and psychological point of view, of the middle distance and long distance runners, to obtain the top performances that would get them to win in a competition. Under these conditions, if the psychological stress is not properly managed, the negative effects can lead to a total drop in self-confidence, and can affect the value, the talent, and the self-trust, which generates an even higher stress. One of the means at our disposal is the psychological training, specially adapted to the athlete's individual characteristics, to the characteristics of the athletic event, or of the competition. This paper aims to highlight certain original aspects regarding the effects of a specific psychological training program on the mood states characterized by psychological activation, vigor, vitality. The subjects were represented by 12 professional middle distance and long distance runners, subjected to an applicative intervention to which they have participated voluntarily, over the course of 6 months (a competition season). The results indicated that The application of a psychological training program, adapted to the track and field competition system, over a period of time characterized by high competition stress, can determine an increase in the states of vigor and psychological activation, at the same time diminishing those moods that have negative effects on the performance, in the middle distance and long distance running events. This conclusion confirms the hypothesis of this research.

Keywords: competition stress, psychological training, track and field, vigor-activity

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Authors: Tanja Salary

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This paper discusses a study conducted in a juvenile justice facility regarding medication errors. It includes an introduction to data collected about medication errors in a juvenile justice facility from 2011 - 2019 and explores contributing factors that relate to those errors. The data was obtained from electronic incident records of medication errors that were documented from the years 2011 through 2019. In addition, the presentation reviews both current and historical research of empirical data about patient safety standards and quality care comparing traditional health care facilities to juvenile justice residential facilities and acknowledges a gap in research. The theoretical/conceptual framework for the research study was Bandura and Adams’s self-efficacy theory of behavioral change and Mark Friedman’s results-based accountability theory. Despite the lack of evidence in previous studies addressing medication errors in juvenile justice facilities, this presenter will share information that adds to the body of knowledge, including the potential relationship of medication errors and contributing factors of race and age. Implications for future research include the effect that education and training will have on the communication among juvenile justice staff, including nurses, who administer medications to juveniles to ensure adherence to patient safety standards. There are several opportunities for future research concerning other characteristics about factors that may affect medication administration errors within the residential juvenile justice facility.

Keywords: Juvenile justice, medication errors, juveniles, error reduction strategies

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Authors: Tahir Mehmood, Pennung Warnitchai

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Simplified static analysis procedures such Nonlinear Static Procedure (NSP) are gaining popularity for the seismic evaluation of buildings. However, these simplified procedures accounts only for the seismic responses of the fundamental vibration mode of the structure. Some other procedures which can take into account the higher modes of vibration, lack in accuracy to determine the component responses. Hence, such procedures are not suitable for evaluating the structures where many vibration modes may participate significantly or where component responses are needed to be evaluated. Moreover, these procedures were found to either computationally expensive or tedious to obtain individual component responses. In this paper, a simplified but accurate procedure is studied. It is called the Uncoupled Modal Response History Analysis (UMRHA) procedure. In this procedure, the nonlinear response of each vibration mode is first computed, and they are later on combined into the total response of the structure. The responses of four tall buildings are computed by this simplified UMRHA procedure and compared with those obtained from the NLRHA procedure. The comparison shows that the UMRHA procedure is able to accurately compute the global responses, i.e., story shears and story overturning moments, floor accelerations and inter-story drifts as well as the component level responses of these tall buildings with heights varying from 20 to 44 stories. The required computational effort is also extremely low compared to that of the Nonlinear Response History Analysis (NLRHA) procedure.

Keywords: higher mode effects, seismic evaluation procedure, tall buildings, component responses

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Authors: Nassib Abdallah, Pierre Chauvet, Abd El Salam Hajjar, Bassam Daya

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In this paper, we propose an optimized brain computer interface (BCI) system for unspoken speech recognition, based on the fact that the constructions of unspoken words rely strongly on the Wernicke area, situated in the temporal lobe. Our BCI system has four modules: (i) the EEG Acquisition module based on a non-invasive headset with 14 electrodes; (ii) the Preprocessing module to remove noise and artifacts, using the Common Average Reference method; (iii) the Features Extraction module, using Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT); (iv) the Classification module based on a one-hidden layer artificial neural network. The present study consists of comparing the recognition accuracy of 5 Arabic words, when using all the headset electrodes or only the 4 electrodes situated near the Wernicke area, as well as the selection effect of the subbands produced by the WPT module. After applying the articial neural network on the produced database, we obtain, on the test dataset, an accuracy of 83.4% with all the electrodes and all the subbands of 8 levels of the WPT decomposition. However, by using only the 4 electrodes near Wernicke Area and the 6 middle subbands of the WPT, we obtain a high reduction of the dataset size, equal to approximately 19% of the total dataset, with 67.5% of accuracy rate. This reduction appears particularly important to improve the design of a low cost and simple to use BCI, trained for several words.

Keywords: brain-computer interface, speech recognition, artificial neural network, electroencephalography, EEG, wernicke area

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Authors: Deeman Yousif Mahmood, Mohammed Abdullah Hussein

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The goal of a network-based intrusion detection system is to classify activities of network traffics into two major categories: normal and attack (intrusive) activities. Nowadays, data mining and machine learning plays an important role in many sciences; including intrusion detection system (IDS) using both supervised and unsupervised techniques. However, one of the essential steps of data mining is feature selection that helps in improving the efficiency, performance and prediction rate of proposed approach. This paper applies unsupervised K-means clustering algorithm with information gain (IG) for feature selection and reduction to build a network intrusion detection system. For our experimental analysis, we have used the new NSL-KDD dataset, which is a modified dataset for KDDCup 1999 intrusion detection benchmark dataset. With a split of 60.0% for the training set and the remainder for the testing set, a 2 class classifications have been implemented (Normal, Attack). Weka framework which is a java based open source software consists of a collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining tasks has been used in the testing process. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is very accurate with low false positive rate and high true positive rate and it takes less learning time in comparison with using the full features of the dataset with the same algorithm.

Keywords: information gain (IG), intrusion detection system (IDS), k-means clustering, Weka

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Authors: Malihe Shahidan, Azin Madhi, Meisam Shahbaz

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In recent decades, the role of supply chains in sustaining businesses and establishing their superiority in the market has been under focus. The realization of the goals and strategies of a business enterprise is largely dependent on the cooperation of the chain, including suppliers, distributors, retailers, etc. Supply chains can potentially be disrupted by both internal and external factors. In this paper, resilience strategies have been identified and analyzed in three levels: sourcing, producing, and distributing by considering economic depression as a current risk factor for the machine-made rugs industry. In this study, semi-structured interviews for data gathering and thematic analysis for data analysis are applied. Supply chain data has been gathered from seven rug factories before and after the economic depression through semi-structured interviews. The identified strategies were derived from literature review and validated by collecting data from a group of eighteen industry and university experts, and the results were analyzed using statistical tests. Finally, the outsourcing of new products and products in the new market, the development and completion of the product portfolio, the flexibility in the composition and volume of products, the expansion of the market to price-sensitive, direct sales, and disintermediation have been determined as strategies affecting supply chain resilience of machine-made rugs' industry during an economic depression.

Keywords: distribution, economic depression, machine-made rug, outsourcing, production, sourcing, supply chain, supply chain resilience

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Authors: Josephine Mirador

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Too often, one hears teachers complaining about how uncritical students can be, yet the notion of ‘criticality’ may be subject to variable understandings or interpretations. One challenge facing postgraduate students is the writing of essays responding to a specific reading assignment. Such an essay requires students not only to summarise, but to engage in a discussion of the significant points of the article, pointing out its strengths as well as its weaknesses. This paper presents the results of an investigation on criticality in written assignments of postgraduate students in applied linguistics and TESOL. The guiding questions for this investigation were: -How ‘critical’ are postgraduate students when writing their assignments? -What kind of ‘critical’ comments are they able to offer? A total of 70 essays were analysed, using two sets of corpora in the initial and follow-through phases of the research from three different universities in Asia. The essays were written by MA applied linguistics and TESOL students. Students were told that the response essay should definitely not just summarise, but should offer a reflection or critique on the ideas presented in the subject article. The initial findings from the investigation include: the identification of at least 10 general ‘moves’ each of which has a number of possible specific categories; presence of critique ‘nodes’ as distinguished from ‘support’ comments; and the identification of at least 4 moves as the most recurrent and possibly obligatory categories. This investigation has unearthed a few more questions or issues that are definitely worth investigating as extensions of this research, and will be of interest (most especially) to genre analysts and teachers of writing.

Keywords: criticality, discourse and genre analysis, postgraduate students, applied linguistics

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Authors: Sang-Woo Kim, Young-Seon Lee

Abstract:

An important concern in metal forming, even at elevated temperatures, is whether a desired deformation can be accomplished without any failure of the material. A detailed understanding of the critical condition for crack initiation provides not only the workability limit of a material but also a guide-line for process design. This paper describes the utilization of ductile fracture criteria in conjunction with the finite element method (FEM) for predicting the onset of fracture in warm metal working processes of magnesium alloy sheets. Critical damage values for various ductile fracture criteria were determined from uniaxial tensile tests and were expressed as the function of strain rate and temperature. In order to find the best criterion for failure prediction, Erichsen cupping tests under isothermal conditions and FE simulations combined with ductile fracture criteria were carried out. Based on the plastic deformation histories obtained from the FE analyses of the Erichsen cupping tests and the critical damage value curves, the initiation time and location of fracture were predicted under a bi-axial tensile condition. The results were compared with experimental results and the best criterion was recommended. In addition, the proposed methodology was used to predict the onset of fracture in non-isothermal deep drawing processes using an irregular shaped blank, and the results were verified experimentally.

Keywords: magnesium, AZ31 alloy, ductile fracture, FEM, sheet forming, Erichsen cupping test

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Authors: Mohamed Eltarabily, Abdelazim Negm, Chihiro Yoshimura

Abstract:

Recently, the pollution of groundwater from the use of nitrogenous fertilizer is at the increase. Also, due to the increase in area under cultivation and regular use of fertilizer in irrigated agriculture, groundwater pollution from agricultural activities is becoming a major concern. Because of the high mobility of Nitrate (NO3-) in soil which is governed by electrostatic processes, particularly anion exclusion, nitrate can be intercepted by shallow subsurface drainage pipe systems and then discharged offsite into streams, rivers, and lakes causing many hazards. In order to solve these environmental problems associated with nitrate, a better understanding of how NO3- moves through the soil profile under flow conditions is required. In the present paper, the results of a comparative study between experimental and numerical modeling of Nitrate transport through a saturated soil column are presented and analyzed. In order to achieve that, three water fluxes densities; 0.008, 0.007, and 0.006 m sec-1 and N concentration rates 10 mol cm-3 were used. The same concentrations were used in the simulation using HYDRUS-2D. The physical and chemical properties of the collected soil samples were calculated. Besides, the soil texture was determined which was silty sand. Results showed that HYDRUS-2D can successfully predict the relative behavior of N transport in the present experiment. Nitrate concentrations will reach deeper depth with the increase in the water flux. Overall, it was overestimated in the final concentration of (NO3-) in the soil by numerical simulation than by experimental column test. The column experiment is a useful tool for assessing the nitrate concentrations in the soil profile.

Keywords: groundwater, nitrate leaching, HYDRUS-2D, soil column

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Authors: Megh Patel, Arjun Chauhan, Jay Thakkar

Abstract:

Hydrofracturing is the most prominent but at the same time expensive, highly skilled and time consuming well stimulation technique. Due to high cost and skilled labor involved, it is generally carried out as the consummate solution among other well stimulation techniques. Considering today’s global petroleum market, no gaffe or complications could be entertained during fracturing, as it would further hamper the current dwindling economy. The literature would be dealing with the challenges encountered during fracturing low temperature waxy reservoirs and the prominent solutions to overcome such teething troubles. During fracturing treatment for, shallow and high freezing point waxy oil reservoirs, the first line problems are to overcome uncompleted breakdown, uncompleted cleanup of fracturing fluids and cold damages to the formations by injecting cold fluid (fluid at ambient conditions). Injecting fracturing fluids at ambient conditions have the tendency to decrease the near wellbore reservoir temperature below the freezing point of oil reservoir and hence leading to wax deposition around the wellbore thereby hampering the fluid production as well as fracture propagation. To overcome such problems, solutions such as hot fracturing fluid injection, encapsulated heat generating hydraulic fracturing fluid system, and injection of wax inhibitor techniques would be discussed. The paper would also be throwing light on changes in rheological properties occurred during heating fracturing fluids and solutions to deal with it taking economic considerations into account.

Keywords: hydrofracturing, waxy reservoirs, low temperature, viscosity, crosslinkers

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Authors: Riaan Kleyn

Abstract:

Mass wine production companies across the globe are provided with grapes from winegrowers that predominantly utilize mechanical harvesting machines to harvest wine grapes. Mechanical harvesting accelerates the rate at which grapes are harvested, allowing grapes to be delivered faster to meet the demands of wine cellars. The disadvantage of the mechanical harvesting method is the inclusion of material-other-than-grapes (MOG) in the harvested wine grape loads arriving at the cellar which degrades the quality of wine that can be produced. Currently, wine cellars do not have a method to determine the amount of MOG present within wine grape loads. This paper seeks to find an optimal computer vision method capable of detecting the amount of MOG within a wine grape load. A MOG detection method will encourage winegrowers to deliver MOG-free wine grape loads to avoid penalties which will indirectly enhance the quality of the wine to be produced. Traditional image segmentation methods were compared to deep learning segmentation methods based on images of wine grape loads that were captured at a wine cellar. The Mask R-CNN model with a ResNet-50 convolutional neural network backbone emerged as the optimal method for this study to determine the amount of MOG in an image of a wine grape load. Furthermore, a statistical analysis was conducted to determine how the MOG on the surface of a grape load relates to the mass of MOG within the corresponding grape load.

Keywords: computer vision, wine grapes, machine learning, machine harvested grapes

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Authors: Zhipeng Chen, Peng Zhang, Qingyun Liu, Li Guo

Abstract:

With the Internet becoming the dominant channel for business and life, many IPs are increasingly masked using web proxies for illegal purposes such as propagating malware, impersonate phishing pages to steal sensitive data or redirect victims to other malicious targets. Moreover, as Internet traffic continues to grow in size and complexity, it has become an increasingly challenging task to detect the proxy service due to their dynamic update and high anonymity. In this paper, we present an approach based on behavioral graph analysis to study the behavior similarity of web proxy users. Specifically, we use bipartite graphs to model host communications from network traffic and build one-mode projections of bipartite graphs for discovering social-behavior similarity of web proxy users. Based on the similarity matrices of end-users from the derived one-mode projection graphs, we apply a simple yet effective spectral clustering algorithm to discover the inherent web proxy users behavior clusters. The web proxy URL may vary from time to time. Still, the inherent interest would not. So, based on the intuition, by dint of our private tools implemented by WebDriver, we examine whether the top URLs visited by the web proxy users are web proxies. Our experiment results based on real datasets show that the behavior clusters not only reduce the number of URLs analysis but also provide an effective way to detect the web proxies, especially for the unknown web proxies.

Keywords: bipartite graph, one-mode projection, clustering, web proxy detection

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Authors: A. Iaaly, O. Jadayel, R. Jadayel

Abstract:

This paper explores the effectiveness of approaches used for the implementation of technology within central governments specifically Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It examines the extent to which various strategies to GIS implementation and its roll out to users within an organization is crucial for its long term assimilation. Depending on the contextual requirements, various implementation strategies exist spanning from the most revolutionary to the most evolutionary, which have an influence on the success of GIS projects and the realization of resulting business benefits within the central governments. This research compares between two strategies of GIS implementation within the Lebanese Municipalities. The first strategy is the “Technological Approach” which is focused on technology acquisition, overlaid on existing governmental frameworks. This approach gives minimal attention to capability building and the long term sustainability of the implemented program. The second strategy, referred to as the “Ecological Approach”, is naturally oriented to the function of the organization. This approach stresses on fostering the evolution of the program and on building the human capabilities. The Union of the Joumeh Municipalities will be presented as a case study under the “Ecological Approach” and the role of the GIS Center at the University of Balamand will be highlighted. Thus, this research contributes to the development of knowledge on technology implementation and the vital role of academia in the specific context of the Lebanese public sector so that this experience may pave the way for further applications.

Keywords: ecological approach GIS, low income countries, technological approach

Procedia PDF Downloads 288