Search results for: Estimation of Distribution Algorithms

Authors: Syed Muhammad Aqil Burney, Tahseen Ahmed Jilani, C. Ardil

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Using neural network we try to model the unknown function f for given input-output data pairs. The connection strength of each neuron is updated through learning. Repeated simulations of crisp neural network produce different values of weight factors that are directly affected by the change of different parameters. We propose the idea that for each neuron in the network, we can obtain quasi-fuzzy weight sets (QFWS) using repeated simulation of the crisp neural network. Such type of fuzzy weight functions may be applied where we have multivariate crisp input that needs to be adjusted after iterative learning, like claim amount distribution analysis. As real data is subjected to noise and uncertainty, therefore, QFWS may be helpful in the simplification of such complex problems. Secondly, these QFWS provide good initial solution for training of fuzzy neural networks with reduced computational complexity.

Keywords: Crisp neural networks, fuzzy systems, extraction of logical rules, quasi-fuzzy numbers.

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Authors: Yi-Feng Su, Chia-Tseng Chen, Hsueh-Lung Liao

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The objective of this research is to develop an advanced driver assistance system characterized with the functions of lane departure warning (LDW), forward collision warning (FCW) and adaptive front-lighting system (AFS). The system is mainly configured a CCD/CMOS camera to acquire the images of roadway ahead in association with the analysis made by an image-processing unit concerning the lane ahead and the preceding vehicles. The input image captured by a camera is used to recognize the lane and the preceding vehicle positions by image detection and DROI (Dynamic Range of Interesting) algorithms. Therefore, the system is able to issue real-time auditory and visual outputs of warning when a driver is departing the lane or driving too close to approach the preceding vehicle unwittingly so that the danger could be prevented from occurring. During the nighttime, in addition to the foregoing warning functions, the system is able to control the bending light of headlamp to provide an immediate light illumination when making a turn at a curved lane and adjust the level automatically to reduce the lighting interference against the oncoming vehicles driving in the opposite direction by the curvature of lane and the vanishing point estimations. The experimental results show that the integrated vehicle image system is robust to most environments such as the lane detection and preceding vehicle detection average accuracy performances are both above 90 %.

Keywords: Lane mark detection, lane departure warning (LDW), dynamic range of interesting (DROI), forward collision warning (FCW), adaptive front-lighting system (AFS).

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Authors: Meghna Maiti, Utpal Roy

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In India, till today, malaria is considered to be one of the significant infectious diseases. Most of the cases regional geographical factors are the principal elements to let the places a unique identity. The incidence and intensity of infectious diseases are quite common and affect different places differently across the nation. The present study aims to identify spatial clusters of hot spots and cold spots of malaria incidence and their seasonal variation during the three periods of 2012-2014, 2015-2017 and 2018-20 in the state of West Bengal in India. As malaria is a vector-borne disease, numbers of positive test results are to be reported by the laboratories to the Department of Health, West Bengal (through the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme). Data on block-wise monthly malaria positive cases are collected from Health Management Information System (HMIS), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. Moran’s I statistic is performed to assess the spatial autocorrelation of malaria incidence. The spatial statistical analysis mainly Local Indicators of Spatial Autocorrelation (LISA) cluster and Local Geary Cluster are applied to find the spatial clusters of hot spots and cold spots and seasonal variability of malaria incidence over the three periods. The result indicates that the spatial distribution of malaria is clustered during each of the three periods of 2012-2014, 2015-2017 and 2018-20. The analysis shows that in all the cases, high-high clusters are primarily concentrated in the western (Purulia, Paschim Medinipur districts), central (Maldah, Murshidabad districts) and the northern parts (Jalpaiguri, Kochbihar districts) and low-low clusters are found in the lower Gangetic plain (central-south) mainly and northern parts of West Bengal during the stipulated period. Apart from this seasonal variability inter-year variation is also visible. The results from different methods of this study indicate significant variation in the spatial distribution of malaria incidence in West Bengal and high incidence clusters are primarily persistently concentrated over the western part during 2012-2020 along with a strong seasonal pattern with a peak in rainy and autumn. By applying the different techniques in identifying the different degrees of incidence zones of malaria across West Bengal, some specific pockets or malaria hotspots are marked and identified where the incidence rates are quite harmonious over the different periods. From this analysis, it is clear that malaria is not a disease that is distributed uniformly across the state; some specific pockets are more prone to be affected in particular seasons of each year. Disease ecology and spatial patterns must be the factors in explaining the real factors for the higher incidence of this issue within those affected districts. The further study mainly by applying empirical approach is needed for discerning the strong relationship between communicable disease and other associated affecting factors.

Keywords: Malaria, infectious diseases, spatial statistics, spatial autocorrelation, LISA.

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Authors: K. Matušínská, H. Starzyczná, M. Stoklasa

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The paper deals with behaviour of the segment 50+ in the financial market in the Czech Republic. This segment could be said as the strong market power and it can be a crucial business potential for financial business units. The main defined objective of this paper is analysis of the customers´ behaviour of the segment 50- 60 years in the financial market in the Czech Republic and proposal making of the suitable marketing approach to satisfy their demands in the area of product, price, distribution and marketing communication policy. This paper is based on data from one part of primary marketing research. Paper determinates the basic problem areas as well as definition of financial services marketing, defining the primary research problem, hypothesis and primary research methodology. Finally suitable marketing approach to selected sub segment at age of 50-60 years is proposed according to marketing research findings.

Keywords: Population aging in the Czech Republic, Segment 50-60 years, Financial services marketing, Marketing research, Marketing approach.

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Authors: D. K. Lee, S. M. Shin, J. H. Lee

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Topology optimization technique utilizes constant element densities as design parameters. Finally, optimal distribution contours of the material densities between voids (0) and solids (1) in design domain represent the determination of topology. It means that regions with element density values become occupied by solids in design domain, while there are only void phases in regions where no density values exist. Therefore the void regions of topology optimization results provide design information to decide appropriate depositions of web-opening in structure. Contrary to the basic objective of the topology optimization technique which is to obtain optimal topology of structures, this present study proposes a new idea that topology optimization results can be also utilized for decision of proper web-opening’s position. Numerical examples of linear elastostatic structures demonstrate efficiency of methodological design processes using topology optimization in order to determinate the proper deposition of web-openings.

Keywords: Topology optimization, web-opening, structure, element density, material.

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Authors: Abobaker Mohammed Qasem Farhan, Shangming Yang, Mohammed Al-Nehari

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Pneumonia is a kind of lung disease that creates congestion in the chest. Such pneumonic conditions lead to loss of life due to the severity of high congestion. Pneumonic lung disease is caused by viral pneumonia, bacterial pneumonia, or COVID-19 induced pneumonia. The early prediction and classification of such lung diseases help reduce the mortality rate. We propose the automatic Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system in this paper using the deep learning approach. The proposed CAD system takes input from raw computerized tomography (CT) scans of the patient's chest and automatically predicts disease classification. We designed the Hybrid Deep Learning Algorithm (HDLA) to improve accuracy and reduce processing requirements. The raw CT scans are pre-processed first to enhance their quality for further analysis. We then applied a hybrid model that consists of automatic feature extraction and classification. We propose the robust 2D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model to extract the automatic features from the pre-processed CT image. This CNN model assures feature learning with extremely effective 1D feature extraction for each input CT image. The outcome of the 2D CNN model is then normalized using the Min-Max technique. The second step of the proposed hybrid model is related to training and classification using different classifiers. The simulation outcomes using the publicly available dataset prove the robustness and efficiency of the proposed model compared to state-of-art algorithms.

Keywords: CT scans, COVID-19, deep learning, image processing, pneumonia, lung disease.

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Authors: G. Malumbela, E. U. Masuku

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The economy of Botswana has increased extensively since its independence. In contrast to this increase, the construction industry which is one of the key indicators of a developing nation continues to be highly dependent on imported building material products from the neighbouring countries of South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. Only two companies in the country currently blend cement. Even then, the overwhelming majority of raw materials used in the blends are imported. Furthermore, there are no glass manufacturers in Botswana. The ceramic industry is limited to the manufacture of clay bricks notwithstanding a few studios on crockery and sanitary ware which nonetheless use imported clay. This paper presents natural resources and industrial waste products in Botswana that can be used for the development of sustainable building materials. It also investigates at the distribution and cost of other widely used building materials in the country. Finally, the present paper looks at projects and national strategies aimed at a country-wide development of a sustainable building materials industry together with their successes and hitches.

Keywords: Botswana construction industry, construction materials, natural resources, sustainable materials.

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Authors: Sarabjeet Kaur Kochhar

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With a surge of stream processing applications novel techniques are required for generation and analysis of association rules in streams. The traditional rule mining solutions cannot handle streams because they generally require multiple passes over the data and do not guarantee the results in a predictable, small time. Though researchers have been proposing algorithms for generation of rules from streams, there has not been much focus on their analysis. We propose Association rule profiling, a user centric process for analyzing association rules and attaching suitable profiles to them depending on their changing frequency behavior over a previous snapshot of time in a data stream. Association rule profiles provide insights into the changing nature of associations and can be used to characterize the associations. We discuss importance of characteristics such as predictability of linkages present in the data and propose metric to quantify it. We also show how association rule profiles can aid in generation of user specific, more understandable and actionable rules. The framework is implemented as SUPAR: System for Usercentric Profiling of Association Rules in streaming data. The proposed system offers following capabilities: i) Continuous monitoring of frequency of streaming item-sets and detection of significant changes therein for association rule profiling. ii) Computation of metrics for quantifying predictability of associations present in the data. iii) User-centric control of the characterization process: user can control the framework through a) constraint specification and b) non-interesting rule elimination.

Keywords: Data Streams, User subjectivity, Change detection, Association rule profiles, Predictability.

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Authors: Omer Rashid, Ayoub Al-Hamadi, Axel Panning, Bernd Michaelis

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It is hard to percept the interaction process with machines when visual information is not available. In this paper, we have addressed this issue to provide interaction through visual techniques. Posture recognition is done for American Sign Language to recognize static alphabets and numbers. 3D information is exploited to obtain segmentation of hands and face using normal Gaussian distribution and depth information. Features for posture recognition are computed using statistical and geometrical properties which are translation, rotation and scale invariant. Hu-Moment as statistical features and; circularity and rectangularity as geometrical features are incorporated to build the feature vectors. These feature vectors are used to train SVM for classification that recognizes static alphabets and numbers. For the alphabets, curvature analysis is carried out to reduce the misclassifications. The experimental results show that proposed system recognizes posture symbols by achieving recognition rate of 98.65% and 98.6% for ASL alphabets and numbers respectively.

Keywords: Feature Extraction, Posture Recognition, Pattern Recognition, Application.

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Authors: J. Gazzola, I. M. Dal Fabbro, J. Soriano, M. V. G. Silva, S. Rodrigues

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Application of wood in rural construction is diffused all around the world since remote times. However, its inclusion in structural design deserves strong support from broad knowledge of material properties. The pertinent literature reveals the application of optical methods in determining the complete field displacement on bodies exhibiting regular as well as irregular surfaces. The use of moiré techniques in experimental mechanics consists in analyzing the patterns generated on the body surface before and after deformation. The objective of this research work is to study the qualitative deformation behavior of wooden testing specimens under specific loading situations. The experiment setup follows the literature description of shadow moiré methods. Results indicate strong anisotropy influence of the generated displacement field. Important qualitative as well as quantitative stress and strain distribution were obtained wooden members which are applicable to rural constructions.

Keywords: Moiré methods, wooden structural material, rural constructions.

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Authors: S. Khoshemehry, M. J. Pourvaghar

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Inflammatory markers are known as the main predictors of cardiovascular diseases. This study aimed at determining the effect of 8 weeks of interval endurance training on hs-CRP level and some anthropometric parameters in overweight men. Following the call for participation in research project in Kashan, 73 volunteers participated in it and constituted the statistical population of the study. Then, 28 overweight young men from the age of 22 to 25 years old were randomly assigned into two groups of experimental and control group (n=14). Anthropometric and the blood sample was collected before and after the termination of the program for measuring hs-CRP. The interval endurance program was performed at 60 to 75% of maximum heart rate in 2 sessions per week for 8 weeks. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to test whether two samples come from the same distribution and T-test was used to assess the difference of two groups which were statistically significant at the level of 0.05. The result indicated that there was a significant difference between the hs-RP, weight, BMI and W/H ratio of overweight men in posttest in the exercise group (P≤0.05) but not in the control group. Interval endurance training program causes decrease in hs-CRP level and anthropometric parameters.

Keywords: Interval endurance training program, hs-CRP, overweight, anthropometric.

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Authors: Ali Dehgan Moroozeh, B. Farhadi Bansouleh

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Evapotranspiration is one of the most important components of the hydrological cycle. Evapotranspiration (ETo) is an important variable in water and energy balances on the earth’s surface, and knowledge of the distribution of ET is a key factor in hydrology, climatology, agronomy and ecology studies. Many researchers have a valid relationship, which is a function of climate factors, to estimate the potential evapotranspiration presented to the plant water stress or water loss, prevent. The FAO-Penman method (PM) had been recommended as a standard method. This method requires many data and these data are not available in every area of world. So, other methods should be evaluated for these conditions. When sufficient or reliable data to solve the PM equation are not available then Hargreaves equation can be used. The Hargreaves equation (HG) requires only daily mean, maximum and minimum air temperature extraterrestrial radiation .In this study, Hargreaves method (HG) were evaluated in 12 stations in the North West region of Iran. Results of HG and M.HG methods were compared with results of PM method. Statistical analysis of this comparison showed that calibration process has had significant effect on efficiency of Hargreaves method.

Keywords: Evapotranspiration, Hargreaves equation, FAOPenman method.

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Authors: M. Z. Alsawalha

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The main objective of this study is to investigate basic properties of different natural clays, by two methods. The first method is a gas phase conversion of methylbutynol (MBOH). The second method is the application of Pyrrole-tpd. Based on the product distribution from the first method, the acidic, basic and coordinately unsaturated sites were differentiated. It was shown that both the conversion and the selectivity for basic products did not change with reaction time. Nevertheless, a deviation from the stoichiometric ratio R of formed acetylene to acetone was observed (R=0.8…0.97). The conversion normalized to the surface area was used for establishing the activity sequence: White kaolinite > red kaolinite > bentonite > zeolite > di­ato­mite. In addition, the results were compared with synthetic amorphous alumosilicates and typical basic materials like MgO and ZnO. The basic properties were characterized using the Pyrrole-tpd.  The Pyrrole-tpd results showed the same basicity sequence as the MBOH gas phase reaction.

Keywords: Alumosilicates, basic surface properties, natural clays, normalized conversions with acetylene and acetone, pyrrole-TPD adsorption.

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Authors: Ioannis Manikas

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The increased consumer demand for environmentally friendly production and distribution practices and the stricter environmental regulations turned environmental aspects into important criteria in business decision-making. On the other hand, Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) has evolved dramatically during the last decades in theory and practice serving as a reference point for exchanging experiences among all agents involved in programs and projects to fostering policy and strategy development. Global pressures make it more important than ever to gain a better understanding of the contribution that agrifood businesses make to FNS and to examine ways to make them more resilient in an increasingly globalized and uncertain world. This study extends the standard three-dimensional model of sustainability to include two more dimensions: A technological dimension and a policy/political dimension. Apart from the economic, environmental and social dimensions regularly used in sustainability literature, the extended model will accurately represent the measures and policies addressing food and nutrition security.

Keywords: Food and nutrition security, sustainability, food safety, resilience.

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Authors: Srikanth L., Neelima Satyam D.

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The transmission line towers are one of the important life line structures in the distribution of power from the source to the various places for several purposes. The predominant external loads which act on these towers are wind and earthquake loads. In this present study tower is analyzed using Indian Standards IS: 875:1987(Wind Load), IS: 802:1995(Structural steel), IS:1893:2002 (Earthquake) and dynamic analysis of tower has been performed considering ground motion of 2001 Bhuj Earthquake (India). The dynamic analysis was performed considering a tower system consisting two towers spaced 800m apart and 35m height each. This analysis has been performed using numerical time stepping finite difference method which is central difference method were employed by a developed MATLAB program to get the normalized ground motion parameters includes acceleration, frequency, velocity which are important in designing the tower. The tower is analyzed using response spectrum analysis.

Keywords: Response Spectra, Dynamic Analysis, Central Difference Method, Transmission Tower.

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Authors: Toan Vu Duc, Son Ha Viet

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This research presents the first comprehensive survey of congener profiles (7 indicator congeners) of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in sediment samples covering ten sites in CauBay River, Vietnam. Chemical analyses were carried out in gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) for tri- to hepta- brominated congeners. Results pointed out a non-homogenous contamination of the sediment with ∑₇ PBDE values ranging from 8.93 to 25.64ng g⁻¹, reflecting moderate to low contamination closely in conformity to other Asian aquatic environments. The general order of decreasing congener contribution to the total load was: BDE 47 > 99 > 100 > 154, similar to the distribution pattern worldwide. PBDEs had rare risks in the sediment of studied area.  However, due to the propensity of PBDEs to accumulate in various compartments of wildlife and human food webs, evaluation of biological tissues should be undertaken as a high priority. 

Keywords: Residue, Risk assessment, PBDEs, Sediment.

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Authors: Tanit P ruktara

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This research aims to study the preferable tourism and the elements of choosing tourist destination from domestic tourist in Bangkok and the nearby areas in Thailand.The data were collected by using 1249 set of questionnaires, in mid-August 2012. The result illustrates that religious destinations are the most preferable places for the tourist. The average expense per travel is approximately 47 USD a time. Travellers travel based on the advertisement in the television and internet and their decisions is based on the reputation of the destinations. The result on a place dimension demonstrates the neatness and well managed location play a crucial role on tourist destination. Gender, age, marriage status and their origins are affecting their spending and travelling behaviour. The researcher reckon that providing the area of arcade, selling the souvenir and promoting tourism among a young professional group would be an important key follow the income distribution policy, including managing the destination to welcome the family group, which the result is to identified as the highest spending.

Keywords: Domestic Tourist, Tourism, Tourist Behaviours, Tourism Place.

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Authors: Ching-Shoei Chiang

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The Malfatti’s problem solves the problem of fitting three circles into a right triangle such that these three circles are tangent to each other, and each circle is also tangent to a pair of the triangle’s sides. This problem has been extended to any triangle (called general Malfatti’s problem). Furthermore, the problem has been extended to have 1 + 2 + … + n circles inside the triangle with special tangency properties among circles and triangle sides; it is called the extended general Malfatti’s problem. In the extended general Malfatti’s problem, call it Tri(Tn), where Tn is the triangle number, there are closed-form solutions for the Tri(T₁) (inscribed circle) problem and Tri(T₂) (3 Malfatti’s circles) problem. These problems become more complex when n is greater than 2. In solving the Tri(Tn) problem, n > 2, algorithms have been proposed to solve these problems numerically. With a similar idea, this paper proposed an algorithm to find the radii of circles with the same tangency properties. Instead of the boundary of the triangle being a straight line, we use a convex circular arc as the boundary and try to find Tn circles inside this convex circular triangle with the same tangency properties among circles and boundary as in Tri(Tn) problems. We call these problems the Carc(Tn) problems. The algorithm is a mO(Tn) algorithm, where m is the number of iterations in the loop. It takes less than 1000 iterations and less than 1 second for the Carc(T16) problem, which finds 136 circles inside a convex circular triangle with specified tangency properties. This algorithm gives a solution for circle packing problem inside convex circular triangle with arbitrarily-sized circles. Many applications concerning circle packing may come from the result of the algorithm, such as logo design, architecture design, etc.

Keywords: Circle packing, computer-aided geometric design, geometric constraint solver, Malfatti’s problem.

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Authors: Anouar Ben Khalifa, Sami Gazzah, Najoua Essoukri BenAmara

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Multimodal biometric systems integrate the data presented by multiple biometric sources, hence offering a better performance than the systems based on a single biometric modality. Although the coupling of biometric systems can be done at different levels, the fusion at the scores level is the most common since it has been proven effective than the rest of the fusion levels. However, the scores from different modalities are generally heterogeneous. A step of normalizing the scores is needed to transform these scores into a common domain before combining them. In this paper, we study the performance of several normalization techniques with various fusion methods in a context relating to the merger of three unimodal systems based on the face, the palmprint and the fingerprint. We also propose a new adaptive normalization method that takes into account the distribution of client scores and impostor scores. Experiments conducted on a database of 100 people show that the performances of a multimodal system depend on the choice of the normalization method and the fusion technique. The proposed normalization method has given the best results.

Keywords: Multibiometrics, Fusion, Score level, Score normalization, Adaptive normalization.

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Authors: Guguloth Ramesh, T. K. Sunil Kumar

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This paper presents congestion management in deregulated power systems. In a deregulated environment, every buyer wants to buy power from the cheapest generator available, irrespective of relative geographical location of buyer and seller. As a consequence of this, the transmission corridors evacuating the power of cheaper generators would get overloaded if all such transactions are approved. Congestion management is a mechanism to prioritize the transactions and commit to such a schedule which would not overload the network. The congestions in the transmission lines are determined by Optimal Power Flow (OPF) solution, which is carried by primal liner programming method. Congestion in the transmission lines are alleviated by connected Distributed Generation (DG) of micro grid at load bus. A method to determine the optimal location of DG unit has been suggested based on transmission line relief sensitivity based approach. The effectiveness of proposed method has been demonstrated on modified IEEE-14 and 30 bus test systems.

Keywords: Congestion management, Distribution Generation (DG), Transmission Line Relief (TLR) sensitivity index, OPF.

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Authors: Venkatesh Kumar, Kasun Hewage, Rehan Sadiq

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Residential buildings consume significant amounts of energy and produce large amount of emissions and waste. However, there is a substantial potential for energy savings in this sector which needs to be evaluated over the life cycle of residential buildings. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been employed to study the primary energy uses and associated environmental impacts of different phases (i.e., product, construction, use, end of life, and beyond building life) for residential buildings. Four different alternatives of residential buildings in Vancouver (BC, Canada) with a 50-year lifespan have been evaluated, including High Rise Apartment (HRA), Low Rise Apartment (LRA), Single family Attached House (SAH), and Single family Detached House (SDH). Life cycle performance of the buildings is evaluated for embodied energy, embodied environmental impacts, operational energy, operational environmental impacts, total life-cycle energy, and total life cycle environmental impacts. Estimation of operational energy and LCA are performed using DesignBuilder software and Athena Impact estimator software respectively. The study results revealed that over the life span of the buildings, the relationship between the energy use and the environmental impacts are identical. LRA is found to be the best alternative in terms of embodied energy use and embodied environmental impacts; while, HRA showed the best life-cycle performance in terms of minimum energy use and environmental impacts. Sensitivity analysis has also been carried out to study the influence of building service lifespan over 50, 75, and 100 years on the relative significance of embodied energy and total life cycle energy. The life-cycle energy requirements for SDH are found to be a significant component among the four types of residential buildings. The overall disclose that the primary operations of these buildings accounts for 90% of the total life cycle energy which far outweighs minor differences in embodied effects between the buildings.

Keywords: Building simulation, environmental impacts, life cycle assessment, life cycle energy analysis, residential buildings.

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Authors: Domenico Pirozzi, Angelo Ausiello, Gaetano Zuccaro, Filomena Sannino, Abu Yousuf

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The oleaginous yeasts Lipomyces starkey were grown in the presence of dairy industry wastewaters (DIW). The yeasts were able to degrade the organic components of DIW and to produce a significant fraction of their biomass as triglycerides. When using DIW from the Ricotta cheese production or residual whey as growth medium, the L. starkey could be cultured without dilution nor external organic supplement. On the contrary, the yeasts could only partially degrade the DIW from the Mozzarella cheese production, due to the accumulation of a metabolic product beyond the threshold of toxicity. In this case, a dilution of the DIW was required to obtain a more efficient degradation of the carbon compounds and an higher yield in oleaginous biomass. The fatty acid distribution of the microbial oils obtained showed a prevalence of oleic acid, and is compatible with the production of a II generation biodiesel offering a good resistance to oxidation as well as an excellent cold-performance.

Keywords: Yeasts, Lipids, Biodiesel, Dairy industry wastewaters.

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Authors: Y. J. Chen, T. M. Yue, Z. N. Guo

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This paper reports the effects of laser energy on the characteristics of bubbles generated in the weld zone and the formation of new chemical bonds at the Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)/Ti joint interface in laser joining of PET to Ti. The samples were produced by using different laser energies ranging from 1.5 J – 6 J in steps of 1.5 J, while all other joining parameters remained unchanged. The types of chemical bonding at the joint interface were analysed by the x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) depth-profiling method. The results show that the characteristics of the bubbles and the thickness of the chemically bonded interface, which contains the laser generated bonds of Ti–C and Ti–O, increase markedly with increasing laser energy input. The tensile failure load of the joint depends on the combined effect of the amount and distribution of the bubbles formed and the chemical bonding intensity of the joint interface.

Keywords: Laser direct joining, Ti/PET interface, laser energy, XPS depth profiling, chemical bond, tensile failure load.

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Authors: M. Mohebbi, K. Shakeri

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The effect of different combinations of response feedback on the performance of active control system on nonlinear frames has been studied in this paper. To this end different feedback combinations including displacement, velocity, acceleration and full response feedback have been utilized in controlling the response of an eight story bilinear hysteretic frame which has been subjected to a white noise excitation and controlled by eight actuators which could fully control the frame. For active control of nonlinear frame Newmark nonlinear instantaneous optimal control algorithm has been used which a diagonal matrix has been selected for weighting matrices in performance index. For optimal design of active control system while the objective has been to reduce the maximum drift to below the yielding level, Distributed Genetic Algorithm (DGA) has been used to determine the proper set of weighting matrices. The criteria to assess the effect of each combination of response feedback have been the minimum required control force to reduce the maximum drift to below the yielding drift. The results of numerical simulation show that the performance of active control system is dependent on the type of response feedback where the velocity feedback is more effective in designing optimal control system in comparison with displacement and acceleration feedback. Also using full feedback of response in controller design leads to minimum control force amongst other combinations. Also the distributed genetic algorithm shows acceptable convergence speed in solving the optimization problem of designing active control systems.

Keywords: Active control, Distributed genetic algorithms, Response feedback, Weighting matrices.

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Authors: Chansopheak Seang, Afia David Kouadri, Eric Ragneau

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Three dimensional analysis of thermal model in laser full penetration welding, Nd:YAG, by transparent mode DP600 alloy steel 1.25mm of thickness and gap of 0.1mm. Three models studied the influence of thermal dependent temperature properties, thermal independent temperature and the effect of peak value of specific heat at phase transformation temperature, AC1, on the transient temperature. Another seven models studied the influence of discretization, meshes on the temperature distribution in weld plate. It is shown that for the effects of thermal properties, the errors less 4% of maximum temperature in FZ and HAZ have identified. The minimum value of discretization are at least one third increment per radius for temporal discretization and the spatial discretization requires two elements per radius and four elements through thickness of the assembled plate, which therefore represent the minimum requirements of modeling for the laser welding in order to get minimum errors less than 5% compared to the fine mesh.

Keywords: FEA, welding, discretization, ABAQUS user subroutine DFLUX

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Authors: Kamand Bagherian, Nariman Niknejad

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A vibration isolation technology for precise position control of a rotary system powered by two permanent magnet DC (PMDC) motors is proposed, where this system is mounted on an oscillatory frame. To achieve vibration isolation for this system, active damping and disturbance rejection (ADDR) technology is presented which introduces a cooperation of a main and an auxiliary PMDC, controlled by discrete-time sliding mode control (DTSMC) based schemes. The controller of the main actuator tracks a desired position and the auxiliary actuator simultaneously isolates the induced vibration, as its controller follows a torque trend. To determine this torque trend, a combination of two algorithms is introduced by the ADDR technology. The first torque-trend producing algorithm rejects the disturbance by counteracting the perturbation, estimated using a model-based observer. The second torque trend applies active variable damping to minimize the oscillation of the output shaft. In this practice, the presented technology is implemented on a rotary system with a pendulum attached, mounted on a linear actuator simulating an oscillation-transmitting structure. In addition, the obtained results illustrate the functionality of the proposed technology.

Keywords: Vibration isolation, position control, discrete-time nonlinear controller, active damping, disturbance tracking algorithm, oscillation transmitting support, stability robustness.

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Authors: N. W. U. D. Chathurani, Shlomo Geva, Vinod Chandran, Proboda Rajapaksha

Abstract:

Selecting an appropriate image representation is the most important factor in implementing an effective Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) system. This paper presents a multi-feature fusion approach for efficient CBIR, based on the distance distribution of features and relative feature weights at the time of query processing. It is a simple yet effective approach, which is free from the effect of features' dimensions, ranges, internal feature normalization and the distance measure. This approach can easily be adopted in any feature combination to improve retrieval quality. The proposed approach is empirically evaluated using two benchmark datasets for image classification (a subset of the Corel dataset and Oliva and Torralba) and compared with existing approaches. The performance of the proposed approach is confirmed with the significantly improved performance in comparison with the independently evaluated baseline of the previously proposed feature fusion approaches.

Keywords: Feature fusion, image retrieval, membership function, normalization.

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Authors: V. Pérez-Herranz, C. González-Buch, E. M. Ortega, S. Mestre

Abstract:

In this work new macroporous Ni electrodes modified with Au nanoparticles for hydrogen production have been developed. The supporting macroporous Ni electrodes have been obtained by means of the electrodeposition at high current densities. Then, the Au nanoparticles were synthesized and added to the electrode surface. The electrocatalytic behaviour of the developed electrocatalysts was studied by means of pseudo-steady-state polarization curves, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and hydrogen discharge curves. The size of the Au synthetized nanoparticles shows a monomodal distribution, with a very sharp band between 10 and 50 nm. The characteristic parameters d10, d50 and d90 were 14, 20 and 31 nm respectively. From Tafel polarization data has been concluded that the Au nanoparticles improve the catalytic activity of the developed electrodes towards the HER respect to the macroporous Ni electrodes. EIS permits to obtain the electrochemically active area by means of the roughness factor value. All the developed electrodes show roughness factor values in the same order of magnitude. From the activation energy results it can be concluded that the Au nanoparticles improve the intrinsic catalytic activity of the macroporous Ni electrodes.

Keywords: Au nanoparticles, hydrogen evolution reaction, porous Ni electrodes.

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Authors: Maja Benkovic, Ingrid Bauman

Abstract:

The objective of this work was to investigate flow properties of powdered infant formula samples. Samples were purchased at a local pharmacy and differed in composition. Lactose free infant formula, gluten free infant formula and infant formulas containing dietary fibers and probiotics were tested and compared with a regular infant formula sample which did not contain any of these supplements. Particle size and bulk density were determined and their influence on flow properties was discussed. There were no significant differences in bulk densities of the samples, therefore the connection between flow properties and bulk density could not be determined. Lactose free infant formula showed flow properties different to standard supplement-free sample. Gluten free infant formula with addition of probiotic microorganisms and dietary fiber had the narrowest particle size distribution range and exhibited the best flow properties. All the other samples exhibited the same tendency of decreasing compaction coefficient with increasing flow speed, which means they all become freer flowing with higher flow speeds.

Keywords: flow properties, infant formula, powderedmaterial

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Authors: A. Abdikian

Abstract:

A quantum breathing mode has been theatrically studied in quantum dusty plasma. By using linear quantum hydrodynamic model, not only the quantum dispersion relation of rotation mode but also void structure has been derived in the presence of an external magnetic field. Although the phase velocity of the magnetized quantum breathing mode is greater than that of unmagnetized quantum breathing mode, attenuation of the magnetized quantum breathing mode along radial distance seems to be slower than that of unmagnetized quantum breathing mode. Clearly, drawing the quantum breathing mode in the presence and absence of a magnetic field, we found that the magnetic field alters the distribution of dust particles and changes the radial and azimuthal velocities around the axis. Because the magnetic field rotates the dust particles and collects them, it could compensate the void structure.

Keywords: The linear quantum hydrodynamic model, the magnetized quantum breathing mode, the quantum dispersion relation of rotation mode, void structure.

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