Search results for: Coronal Hole Area Feed-Forward neural network models

Authors: Rachid Zentar, Mokrane Bala, Pascal Boustingorry

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The prediction of the rheological behavior of concrete is at the center of current concerns of the concrete industry for different reasons. The shortage of good quality standard materials combined with variable properties of available materials imposes to improve existing models to take into account these variations at the design stage of concrete. The main reasons for improving the predictive models are, of course, saving time and cost at the design stage as well as to optimize concrete performances. In this study, we will highlight the different properties of the granular mixtures that affect the rheological properties of concrete. Our objective is to identify the intrinsic parameters of the aggregates which make it possible to predict the yield stress of concrete. The work was done using two typologies of grains: crushed and rolled aggregates. The experimental results have shown that the rheology of concrete is improved by increasing the packing density of the granular mixture using rolled aggregates. The experimental program realized allowed to model the yield stress of concrete by a modified model of Chateau et al. through a dimensionless parameter following Krieger-Dougherty law. The modelling confirms that the yield stress of concrete depends not only on the properties of cement paste but also on the packing density of the granular skeleton and the shape of grains.

Keywords: Crushed aggregates, intrinsic viscosity, packing density, rolled aggregates, slump, yield stress of concrete.

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Authors: Abdelgawad, Salah El-Tahawy

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This paper aimed to establish econometrical equation models for the Nile delta region in Egypt, which will represent a basement for future predictions of Lumpy skin disease outbreaks and its pathway in relation to climate change. Data of lumpy skin disease (LSD) outbreaks were collected from the cattle farms located in the provinces representing the Nile delta region during 1 January, 2015 to December, 2015. The obtained results indicated that there was a significant association between the degree of the LSD outbreaks and the investigated climate factors (temperature, wind speed, and humidity) and the outbreaks peaked during the months of June, July, and August and gradually decreased to the lowest rate in January, February, and December. The model obtained depicted that the increment of these climate factors were associated with evidently increment on LSD outbreaks on the Nile Delta of Egypt. The model validation process was done by the root mean square error (RMSE) and means bias (MB) which compared the number of LSD outbreaks expected with the number of observed outbreaks and estimated the confidence level of the model. The value of RMSE was 1.38% and MB was 99.50% confirming that this established model described the current association between the LSD outbreaks and the change on climate factors and also can be used as a base for predicting the of LSD outbreaks depending on the climatic change on the future.

Keywords: LSD, climate factors, econometric models, Nile Delta.

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Authors: Juliana C. Alencar, Monica Ferreira do Amaral Porto

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The blue-green infrastructure in recent years has been pointed out as a possibility to increase the environmental quality of watersheds. The regulation ecosystem services brought by these areas are many, such as the improvement of the air quality of the air, water, soil, microclimate, besides helping to control the peak flows and to promote the quality of life of the population. This study proposes a blue-green infrastructure scenario for the Jaguaré watershed, located in the western zone of the São Paulo city in Brazil. Based on the proposed scenario, it was verified the impact of the adoption of the blue and green infrastructure in the control of the peak flow of the basin, the benefits for the avifauna that are also reflected in the flora and finally, the quantification of the regulation ecosystem services brought by the adoption of the scenario proposed. A survey of existing green areas and potential areas for expansion and connection of these areas to form a network in the watershed was carried out. Based on this proposed new network of green areas, the peak flow for the proposed scenario was calculated with the help of software, ABC6. Finally, a survey of the ecosystem services contemplated in the proposed scenario was made. It was possible to conclude that the blue and green infrastructure would provide several regulation ecosystem services for the watershed, such as the control of the peak flow, the connection frame between the forest fragments that promoted the environmental enrichment of these fragments, improvement of the microclimate and the provision of leisure areas for the population.

Keywords: Blue and green infrastructure, sustainable drainage, urban waters, ecosystem services.

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Authors: Mojtaba Mahmoodian, Joshua Phelan, Mehdi Shahparvari

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With a large percentage of countries’ total infrastructure expenditure attributed to water network maintenance, it is essential to optimise maintenance strategies to rehabilitate or replace underground pipes before failure occurs. The aim of this paper is to provide water utility managers with a maintenance management approach for underground water pipes, subject to external loading and material corrosion, to give the lowest life cycle cost over a predetermined time period. This reliability-based maintenance management methodology details the optimal years for intervention, the ideal number of maintenance activities to perform before replacement and specifies feasible renewal options and intervention prioritisation to minimise the life cycle cost. The study was then extended to include feasible renewal methods by determining the structural condition index and potential for soil loss, then obtaining the failure impact rating to assist in prioritising pipe replacement. A case study on optimisation of maintenance plans for the Melbourne water pipe network is considered in this paper to evaluate the practicality of the proposed methodology. The results confirm that the suggested methodology can provide water utility managers with a reliable systematic approach to determining optimum maintenance plans for pipe networks.

Keywords: Water pipe networks, maintenance management, reliability analysis, optimum maintenance plan.

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Authors: B. Lorestani, M. Cheraghi, N. Yousefi

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A research project dealing with the phytoremediation of a soil polluted by some heavy metals is currently running. The case study is represented by a mining area in Hamedan province in the central west part of Iran. The potential of phytoextraction and phytostabilization of plants was evaluated considering the concentration of heavy metals in the plant tissues and also the bioconcentration factor (BCF) and the translocation factor (TF). Also the several established criteria were applied to define hyperaccumulator plants in the studied area. Results showed that none of the collected plant species were suitable for phytoextraction of Cu, Zn, Fe and Mn, but among the plants, Euphorbia macroclada was the most efficient in phytostabilization of Cu and Fe, while, Ziziphora clinopodioides, Cousinia sp. and Chenopodium botrys were the most suitable for phytostabilization of Zn and Chondrila juncea and Stipa barbata had the potential for phytostabilization of Mn. Using the most common criterion, Euphorbia macroclada and Verbascum speciosum were Fe hyperaccumulator plants. Present study showed that native plant species growing on contaminated sites may have the potential for phytoremediation.

Keywords: Bioconcentration factor, Heavy metals, Hyperaccumulator, Phytoremediation, Translocation factor

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Authors: Ying Shang, Chencheng Wang

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The wind field is the main driving factor for the spread of forest fires. For the simulation results of forest fire spread to be more accurate, it is necessary to obtain more detailed wind field data. Therefore, this paper studied the mountainous fine wind field simulation method coupled with WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting Model) and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) to realize the numerical simulation of the wind field in a mountainous area with a scale of 30 m and a small measurement error. Local topographical changes have an important impact on the wind field. Based on the Rothermel fire spread model, a forest fire in Idaho in the western United States was simulated. The historical data proved that the simulation results had a good accuracy. They showed that the fire spread rate will decrease rapidly with time and then reach a steady state. After reaching a steady state, the fire spread growth area will not only be affected by the slope, but will also show a significant quadratic linear positive correlation with the wind speed change.

Keywords: Wind field, numerical simulation, forest fire spread, fire behavior model, complex terrain.

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Authors: Watcharachan Sukcharoenvipharat, Prathuang Usaborisut, Sirisak Choedkiatphon

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Farmers try to reduce steps of soil preparation by using subsoiler and then following by equipment for soil pulverization such as a rotary tiller and a power harrow which take advantage of using a power take-off of a tractor. Therefore, this study was conducted to compare the tilling performances of a rotary tiller and a power harrow applying after subsoiling. The results showed that both the rotary tiller and the power harrow had negative slip, indicating that they generated force to push a tractor. The rotary tiller created negative vertical force to lift up the tractor whereas opposite result was found when using the power harrow. Since working depths were different, vertical forces, torques and PTO powers for two equipment types were significantly different. However, no significant differences were found for the forward speeds, slips, drawbar pulls and drawbar powers. Comparative analysis showed that two equipment types had significant difference in PTO power to working depth, drawbar power to working depth, PTO power to working area, drawbar power to working area and soil pulverization.

Keywords: Rotary tiller, power harrow, drawbar pull, drawbar power, PTO power.

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Authors: Seongcheol Kwon, Jeongmin Kim, Kwang Ryel Ryu

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We assume an IoT-based smart-home environment where the on-off status of each of the electrical appliances including the room lights can be recognized in a real time by monitoring and analyzing the smart meter data. At any moment in such an environment, we can recognize what the household or the user is doing by referring to the status data of the appliances. In this paper, we focus on a smart-home service that is to activate a robot vacuum cleaner at right time by recognizing the user situation, which requires a situation-aware model that can distinguish the situations that allow vacuum cleaning (Yes) from those that do not (No). We learn as our candidate models a few classifiers such as naïve Bayes, decision tree, and logistic regression that can map the appliance-status data into Yes and No situations. Our training and test data are obtained from simulations of user behaviors, in which a sequence of user situations such as cooking, eating, dish washing, and so on is generated with the status of the relevant appliances changed in accordance with the situation changes. During the simulation, both the situation transition and the resulting appliance status are determined stochastically. To compare the performances of the aforementioned classifiers we obtain their learning curves for different types of users through simulations. The result of our empirical study reveals that naïve Bayes achieves a slightly better classification accuracy than the other compared classifiers.

Keywords: Situation-awareness, Smart home, IoT, Machine learning, Classifier.

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Authors: Esther T. Akinlabi, Stephen A. Akinlabi

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The purpose of this research study is to investigate the manner in which various loads affect the mechanical properties of the formed mild steel plates. The investigation focuses on examining the cross-sectional area of the metal plate at the centre of the formed mild steel plate. Six mild steel plates were deformed with different loads. The loads applied on the plates had a magnitude of 5 kg, 10 kg, 15 kg, 20 kg, 25 kg and 30 kg. The radius of the punching die was 120 mm and the loads were applied at room temperature. The investigations established that the applied load causes the Vickers microhardness at the cross-sectional area of the plate to increase due to strain hardening. Hence, the percentage increase of the hardness due to the load was found to be directly proportional to the increase in the load. Furthermore, the tensile test results for the parent material showed that the average Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) for the three samples was 308 MPa while the average Yield Strength and Percentage Elongation were 227 MPa and 38 % respectively. Similarly, the UTS of the formed components increased after the deformation of the plate, as such it can be concluded that the forming loads alter the mechanical properties of the materials by improving and strengthening the material properties.

Keywords: Applied load, forming and Mechanical Properties.

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Authors: J. P. Dubois, O. M. Abdul-Latif

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Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a recent class of statistical classification and regression techniques playing an increasing role in applications to detection problems in various engineering problems, notably in statistical signal processing, pattern recognition, image analysis, and communication systems. In this paper, SVM is applied to an infrared (IR) binary communication system with different types of channel models including Ricean multipath fading and partially developed scattering channel with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) at the receiver. The structure and performance of SVM in terms of the bit error rate (BER) metric is derived and simulated for these channel stochastic models and the computational complexity of the implementation, in terms of average computational time per bit, is also presented. The performance of SVM is then compared to classical binary signal maximum likelihood detection using a matched filter driven by On-Off keying (OOK) modulation. We found that the performance of SVM is superior to that of the traditional optimal detection schemes used in statistical communication, especially for very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ranges. For large SNR, the performance of the SVM is similar to that of the classical detectors. The implication of these results is that SVM can prove very beneficial to IR communication systems that notoriously suffer from low SNR at the cost of increased computational complexity.

Keywords: Least square-support vector machine, on-off keying, matched filter, maximum likelihood detector, wireless infrared communication.

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Authors: L. Siva Rama Krishna, Sriram Venkatesh, M. Sastish Kumar, M. Uma Maheswara Chary

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Rapid Prototyping (RP) is a technology that produces models and prototype parts from 3D CAD model data, CT/MRI scan data, and model data created from 3D object digitizing systems. There are several RP process like Stereolithography (SLA), Solid Ground Curing (SGC), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), 3D Printing (3DP) among them SLS and FDM RP processes are used to fabricate pattern of custom cranial implant. RP technology is useful in engineering and biomedical application. This is helpful in engineering for product design, tooling and manufacture etc. RP biomedical applications are design and development of medical devices, instruments, prosthetics and implantation; it is also helpful in planning complex surgical operation. The traditional approach limits the full appreciation of various bony structure movements and therefore the custom implants produced are difficult to measure the anatomy of parts and analyze the changes in facial appearances accurately. Cranioplasty surgery is a surgical correction of a defect in cranial bone by implanting a metal or plastic replacement to restore the missing part. This paper aims to do a comparative study on the dimensional error of CAD and SLS RP Models for reconstruction of cranial defect by comparing the virtual CAD with the physical RP model of a cranial defect.

Keywords: Rapid Prototyping, Selective Laser Sintering, Cranial defect, Dimensional Error.

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Authors: Arun Goel

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The present paper attempts to investigate the prediction of air entrainment rate and aeration efficiency of a free overfall jets issuing from a triangular sharp crested weir by using regression based modelling. The empirical equations, Support vector machine (polynomial and radial basis function) models and the linear regression techniques were applied on the triangular sharp crested weirs relating the air entrainment rate and the aeration efficiency to the input parameters namely drop height, discharge, and vertex angle. It was observed that there exists a good agreement between the measured values and the values obtained using empirical equations, Support vector machine (Polynomial and rbf) models and the linear regression techniques. The test results demonstrated that the SVM based (Poly & rbf) model also provided acceptable prediction of the measured values with reasonable accuracy along with empirical equations and linear regression techniques in modelling the air entrainment rate and the aeration efficiency of a free overfall jets issuing from triangular sharp crested weir. Further sensitivity analysis has also been performed to study the impact of input parameter on the output in terms of air entrainment rate and aeration efficiency.

Keywords: Air entrainment rate, dissolved oxygen, regression, SVM, weir.

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Authors: D. Berdous, H. Ferfera-Harrar

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Superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) or hydrogels with three-dimensional hydrophilic network structure are high-performance water absorbent and retention materials. The in situ synthesis of metal nanoparticles within polymeric network as antibacterial agents for bio-applications is an approach that takes advantage of the existing free-space into networks, which not only acts as a template for nucleation of nanoparticles, but also provides long term stability and reduces their toxicity by delaying their oxidation and release. In this work, SAP/nanosilver nanocomposites were successfully developed by a unique green process at room temperature, which involves in situ formation of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) within hydrogels as a template. The aim of this study is to investigate whether these AgNPs-loaded hydrogels are potential candidates for antimicrobial applications. Firstly, the superabsorbents were prepared through radical copolymerization via grafting and crosslinking of acrylamide (AAm) onto chitosan backbone (Cs) using potassium persulfate as initiator and N,N’-methylenebisacrylamide as the crosslinker. Then, they were hydrolyzed to achieve superabsorbents with ampholytic properties and uppermost swelling capacity. Lastly, the AgNPs were biosynthesized and entrapped into hydrogels through a simple, eco-friendly and cost-effective method using aqueous silver nitrate as a silver precursor and curcuma longa tuber-powder extracts as both reducing and stabilizing agent. The formed superabsorbents nanocomposites (Cs-g-PAAm)/AgNPs were characterized by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), UV-visible Spectroscopy, Attenuated Total reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP), and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA). Microscopic surface structure analyzed by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) has showed spherical shapes of AgNPs with size in the range of 3-15 nm. The extent of nanosilver loading was decreased by increasing Cs content into network. The silver-loaded hydrogel was thermally more stable than the unloaded dry hydrogel counterpart. The swelling equilibrium degree (Q) and centrifuge retention capacity (CRC) in deionized water were affected by both contents of Cs and the entrapped AgNPs. The nanosilver-embedded hydrogels exhibited antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. These comprehensive results suggest that the elaborated AgNPs-loaded nanomaterials could be used to produce valuable wound dressing.

Keywords: Antibacterial activity, nanocomposites, silver nanoparticles, superabsorbent hydrogel.

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Authors: Xuguang Leng

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The theory of tectonic plate asteroid driver provides that comet and asteroid collisions have ample energy to fracture, move, and deform tectonic plate. The enormous kinetic energy of an asteroid collision is dissipated through the fracture and violent movement of the tectonic plates, and stored in the plate deformations. The stored energy will be released in the future through plate slow movement. The reflection of plate edge upwards upon collision impact causes the plate to sit on top of adjacent plate and creates the subduction plate. Higher probability and higher energy of asteroid collision in the equator area provides the net energy to drive heavier land plates to higher latitudes, offsetting the tidal and self spin forces, creating a more random land plates distribution. The trend of asteroid collisions is less frequency and intensity as loose objects are merging into the planets and Jupiter is taking ever larger shares of collisions. As overall energy input from asteroid collision decreases, plate movement is slowing down and eventually land plates will congregate towards equator area. The current trajectory of plate movements is the cumulative effect of past asteroid collisions, and can be altered, new plates be created, by future collisions.

Keywords: Tectonic plate, Earth, asteroid, comet.

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Authors: D. I. De Souza, D. R. Fonseca, G. P. Azevedo

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Sometimes the amount of time available for testing could be considerably less than the expected lifetime of the component. To overcome such a problem, there is the accelerated life-testing alternative aimed at forcing components to fail by testing them at much higher-than-intended application conditions. These models are known as acceleration models. One possible way to translate test results obtained under accelerated conditions to normal using conditions could be through the application of the “Maxwell Distribution Law.” In this paper we will apply a combined approach of a sequential life testing and an accelerated life testing to a low alloy high-strength steel component used in the construction of overpasses in Brazil. The underlying sampling distribution will be three-parameter Inverse Weibull model. To estimate the three parameters of the Inverse Weibull model we will use a maximum likelihood approach for censored failure data. We will be assuming a linear acceleration condition. To evaluate the accuracy (significance) of the parameter values obtained under normal conditions for the underlying Inverse Weibull model we will apply to the expected normal failure times a sequential life testing using a truncation mechanism. An example will illustrate the application of this procedure.

Keywords: Sequential Life Testing, Accelerated Life Testing, Underlying Three-Parameter Weibull Model, Maximum Likelihood Approach, Hypothesis Testing.

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Authors: Eleftheria Tzamali, Panayiota Poirazi, Ioannis G. Tollis, Martin Reczko

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Stable bacterial polymorphism on a single limiting resource may appear if between the evolved strains metabolic interactions take place that allow the exchange of essential nutrients [8]. Towards an attempt to predict the possible outcome of longrunning evolution experiments, a network based on the metabolic capabilities of homogeneous populations of every single gene knockout strain (nodes) of the bacterium E. coli is reconstructed. Potential metabolic interactions (edges) are allowed only between strains of different metabolic capabilities. Bacterial communities are determined by finding cliques in this network. Growth of the emerged hypothetical bacterial communities is simulated by extending the metabolic flux balance analysis model of Varma et al [2] to embody heterogeneous cell population growth in a mutual environment. Results from aerobic growth on 10 different carbon sources are presented. The upper bounds of the diversity that can emerge from single-cloned populations of E. coli such as the number of strains that appears to metabolically differ from most strains (highly connected nodes), the maximum clique size as well as the number of all the possible communities are determined. Certain single gene deletions are identified to consistently participate in our hypothetical bacterial communities under most environmental conditions implying a pattern of growth-condition- invariant strains with similar metabolic effects. Moreover, evaluation of all the hypothetical bacterial communities under growth on pyruvate reveals heterogeneous populations that can exhibit superior growth performance when compared to the performance of the homogeneous wild-type population.

Keywords: Bacterial polymorphism, clique identification, dynamic FBA, evolution, metabolic interactions.

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Authors: Ahasanul Haque, Abdullah Sarwar, Khaliq Ahmad

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Networking is important among students to achieve better understanding. Social networking plays an important role in the education. Realizing its huge potential, various organizations, including institutions of higher learning have moved to the area of social networks to interact with their students especially through Facebook. Therefore, measuring the effectiveness of Facebook as a learning tool has become an area of interest to academicians and researchers. Therefore, this study tried to integrate and propose new theoretical and empirical evidences by linking the western idea of adopting Facebook as an alternative learning platform from a Malaysian perspective. This study, thus, aimed to fill a gap by being among the pioneering research that tries to study the effectiveness of adopting Facebook as a learning platform across other cultural settings, namely Malaysia. Structural equation modeling was employed for data analysis and hypothesis testing. This study finding has provided some insights that would likely affect students’ awareness towards using Facebook as an alternative learning platform in the Malaysian higher learning institutions. At the end, future direction is proposed.

Keywords: Learning Management Tool, Social Networking, Education, Malaysia.

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Authors: Abdelhalim. N. Mohammed, Mohammed. Y. Esmail

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In the course of recent decades, medical imaging has been dominated by the use of costly film media for review and archival of medical investigation, however due to developments in networks technologies and common acceptance of a standard digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) another approach in light of World Wide Web was produced. Web technologies successfully used in telemedicine applications, the combination of web technologies together with DICOM used to design a web-based and open source DICOM viewer. The Web server allowance to inquiry and recovery of images and the images viewed/manipulated inside a Web browser without need for any preinstalling software. The dynamic site page for medical images visualization and processing created by using JavaScript and HTML5 advancements. The XAMPP ‘apache server’ is used to create a local web server for testing and deployment of the dynamic site. The web-based viewer connected to multiples devices through local area network (LAN) to distribute the images inside healthcare facilities. The system offers a few focal points over ordinary picture archiving and communication systems (PACS): easy to introduce, maintain and independently platforms that allow images to display and manipulated efficiently, the system also user-friendly and easy to integrate with an existing system that have already been making use of web technologies. The wavelet-based image compression technique on which 2-D discrete wavelet transform used to decompose the image then wavelet coefficients are transmitted by entropy encoding after threshold to decrease transmission time, stockpiling cost and capacity. The performance of compression was estimated by using images quality metrics such as mean square error ‘MSE’, peak signal to noise ratio ‘PSNR’ and compression ratio ‘CR’ that achieved (83.86%) when ‘coif3’ wavelet filter is used.

Keywords: DICOM, discrete wavelet transform, PACS, HIS, LAN.

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Authors: Hyun-Ho Lee, Kee-Won Kim

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The arithmetic operations over GF(2m) have been extensively used in error correcting codes and public-key cryptography schemes. Finite field arithmetic includes addition, multiplication, division and inversion operations. Addition is very simple and can be implemented with an extremely simple circuit. The other operations are much more complex. The multiplication is the most important for cryptosystems, such as the elliptic curve cryptosystem, since computing exponentiation, division, and computing multiplicative inverse can be performed by computing multiplication iteratively. In this paper, we present a parallel computation algorithm that operates Montgomery multiplication over finite field using redundant basis. Also, based on the multiplication algorithm, we present an efficient semi-systolic multiplier over finite field. The multiplier has less space and time complexities compared to related multipliers. As compared to the corresponding existing structures, the multiplier saves at least 5% area, 50% time, and 53% area-time (AT) complexity. Accordingly, it is well suited for VLSI implementation and can be easily applied as a basic component for computing complex operations over finite field, such as inversion and division operation.

Keywords: Finite field, Montgomery multiplication, systolic array, cryptography.

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Authors: Waqqas-ur-Rehman Butt, Martin Servin, Marion Pause

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In recent years, object detection has gained much attention and very encouraging research area in the field of computer vision. The robust object boundaries detection in an image is demanded in numerous applications of human computer interaction and automated surveillance systems. Many methods and approaches have been developed for automatic object detection in various fields, such as automotive, quality control management and environmental services. Inappropriately, to the best of our knowledge, object detection under illumination with shadow consideration has not been well solved yet. Furthermore, this problem is also one of the major hurdles to keeping an object detection method from the practical applications. This paper presents an approach to automatic object detection in images under non-standardized environmental conditions. A key challenge is how to detect the object, particularly under uneven illumination conditions. Image capturing conditions the algorithms need to consider a variety of possible environmental factors as the colour information, lightening and shadows varies from image to image. Existing methods mostly failed to produce the appropriate result due to variation in colour information, lightening effects, threshold specifications, histogram dependencies and colour ranges. To overcome these limitations we propose an object detection algorithm, with pre-processing methods, to reduce the interference caused by shadow and illumination effects without fixed parameters. We use the Y CrCb colour model without any specific colour ranges and predefined threshold values. The segmented object regions are further classified using morphological operations (Erosion and Dilation) and contours. Proposed approach applied on a large image data set acquired under various environmental conditions for wood stack detection. Experiments show the promising result of the proposed approach in comparison with existing methods.

Keywords: Image processing, Illumination equalization, Shadow filtering, Object detection, Colour models, Image segmentation.

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Authors: M. Mikušová, P. Horváthová

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The paper structures research approaches to the crisis and its management. It focuses on approaches – psychological, sociological, economic, ethical and technological. Furthermore, it describes the basic features of models chosen according to those approaches. By their comparison it shows how the crisis influences organizations and individuals, and their mutual interaction.

Keywords: approaches, crisis, model.

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Authors: Malinwo Estone Ayikpa

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With the rapid increase of grid-connected PV systems over the last decades, genuine challenges have arisen for engineers and professionals of energy field in the planning and operation of existing distribution networks with the integration of new generation sources. However, the conventional distribution network, in its design was not expected to receive other generation outside the main power supply. The tools generally used to analyze the networks become inefficient and cannot take into account all the constraints related to the operation of grid-connected PV systems. Some of these constraints are voltage control difficulty, reverse power flow, and especially voltage unbalance which could be due to the poor distribution of single-phase PV systems in the network. In order to analyze the impact of the connection of small and large number of PV systems to the distribution networks, this paper presents an efficient optimization tool that minimizes voltage unbalance in three-phase distribution networks with active and reactive power injections from the allocation of single-phase and three-phase PV plants. Reactive power can be generated or absorbed using the available capacity and the adjustable power factor of the inverter. Good reduction of voltage unbalance can be achieved by reactive power control of the PV systems. The presented tool is based on the three-phase current injection method and the PV systems are modeled via an equivalent circuit. The primal-dual interior point method is used to obtain the optimal operating points for the systems.

Keywords: Photovoltaic generation, primal-dual interior point method, three-phase optimal power flow, unbalanced system.

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Authors: Yannick Verbelen, Sam De Winne, Niek Blondeel, Ann Peeters, An Braeken, Abdellah Touhafi

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The growing popularity of solid state thermoelectric devices in cooling applications has sparked an increasing diversity of thermoelectric coolers (TECs) on the market, commonly known as “Peltier modules”. They can also be used as generators, converting a temperature difference into electric power, and opportunities are plentiful to make use of these devices as thermoelectric generators (TEGs) to supply energy to low power, autonomous embedded electronic applications. Their adoption as energy harvesters in this new domain of usage is obstructed by the complex thermoelectric models commonly associated with TEGs. Low cost TECs for the consumer market lack the required parameters to use the models because they are not intended for this mode of operation, thereby urging an alternative method to obtain electric power estimations in specific operating conditions. The design of the test setup implemented in this paper is specifically targeted at benchmarking commercial, off-the-shelf TECs for use as energy harvesters in domestic environments: applications with limited temperature differences and space available. The usefulness is demonstrated by testing and comparing single and multi stage TECs with different sizes. The effect of a boost converter stage on the thermoelectric end-to-end efficiency is also discussed.

Keywords: Thermoelectric cooler, TEC, complementary balanced energy harvesting, step-up converter, DC/DC converter, embedded systems, energy harvesting, thermal harvesting.

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Authors: Ritu Ahlawat

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Among all geo-hydrological relationships, rainfallrunoff relationship is of utmost importance in any hydrological investigation and water resource planning. Spatial variation, lag time involved in obtaining areal estimates for the basin as a whole can affect the parameterization in design stage as well as in planning stage. In conventional hydrological processing of data, spatial aspect is either ignored or interpolated at sub-basin level. Temporal variation when analysed for different stages can provide clues for its spatial effectiveness. The interplay of space-time variation at pixel level can provide better understanding of basin parameters. Sustenance of design structures for different return periods and their spatial auto-correlations should be studied at different geographical scales for better management and planning of water resources. In order to understand the relative effect of spatio-temporal variation in hydrological data network, a detailed geo-hydrological analysis of Betwa river catchment falling in Lower Yamuna Basin is presented in this paper. Moreover, the exact estimates about the availability of water in the Betwa river catchment, especially in the wake of recent Betwa-Ken linkage project, need thorough scientific investigation for better planning. Therefore, an attempt in this direction is made here to analyse the existing hydrological and meteorological data with the help of SPSS, GIS and MS-EXCEL software. A comparison of spatial and temporal correlations at subcatchment level in case of upper Betwa reaches has been made to demonstrate the representativeness of rain gauges. First, flows at different locations are used to derive correlation and regression coefficients. Then, long-term normal water yield estimates based on pixel-wise regression coefficients of rainfall-runoff relationship have been mapped. The areal values obtained from these maps can definitely improve upon estimates based on point-based extrapolations or areal interpolations.

Keywords: Catchment's runoff estimates, influence area regional regression coefficients, runoff yield series,

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Authors: Justinian Anatory

Abstract:

power-line networks are promise infrastructure for broadband services provision to end users. However, the network performance is affected by stochastic channel changing which is due to load impedances, number of branches and branched line lengths. It has been proposed that multi-carrier modulations techniques such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), Multi-Carrier Spread Spectrum (MC-SS), wavelet OFDM can be used in such environment. This paper investigates the performance of different indoor topologies of power-line networks that uses MC-SS modulation scheme.It is observed that when a branch is added in the link between sending and receiving end of an indoor channel an average of 2.5dB power loss is found. In additional, when the branch is added at a node an average of 1dB power loss is found. Additionally when the terminal impedances of the branch change from line characteristic impedance to impedance either higher or lower values the channel performances were tremendously improved. For example changing terminal load from characteristic impedance (85 .) to 5 . the signal to noise ratio (SNR) required to attain the same performances were decreased from 37dB to 24dB respectively. Also, changing the terminal load from channel characteristic impedance (85 .) to very higher impedance (1600 .) the SNR required to maintain the same performances were decreased from 37dB to 23dB. The result concludes that MC-SS performs better compared with OFDM techniques in all aspects and especially when the channel is terminated in either higher or lower impedances.

Keywords: Communication channel model; Broadband Powerlinecommunication; Branched network; OFDM; Delay Spread, MCSS;impulsive noise; load impedance

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Authors: Kréhi Serge Agbli, Samuel Portebos, Michaël Salomon

Abstract:

Here a methodology is considered aiming at evaluating the economic benefit of the provision of a primary frequency control unit using a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). In this methodology, two control types (basic and hysteresis) are implemented and the corresponding minimum energy storage system power allowing to maintain the frequency drop inside a given threshold under a given contingency is identified and compared using DigSilent’s PowerFactory software. Following this step, the corresponding energy storage capacity (in MWh) is calculated. As PowerFactory is dedicated to dynamic simulation for transient analysis, a first order model related to the IEEE 9 bus grid used for the analysis under PowerFactory is characterized and implemented on MATLAB-Simulink. Primary frequency control is simulated using the two control types over one-month grid's frequency deviation data on this Simulink model. This simulation results in the energy throughput both basic and hysteresis BESSs. It emerges that the 15 minutes operation band of the battery capacity allocated to frequency control is sufficient under the considered disturbances. A sensitivity analysis on the width of the control deadband is then performed for the two control types. The deadband width variation leads to an identical sizing with the hysteresis control showing a better frequency control at the cost of a higher delivered throughput compared to the basic control. An economic analysis comparing the cost of the sized BESS to the potential revenues is then performed.

Keywords: Battery Energy Storage System, electrical network frequency stability, frequency control unit, PowerFactory.

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Authors: Ayman Abd-Elhamed, Sayed Mahmoud

Abstract:

The present research work investigates the seismic response of reinforced concrete (RC) frame building considering the effect of modeling masonry infill (MI) walls. The seismic behavior of a residential 6-storey RC frame building, considering and ignoring the effect of masonry, is numerically investigated using response spectrum (RS) analysis. The considered herein building is designed as a moment resisting frame (MRF) system following the Egyptian code (EC) requirements. Two developed models in terms of bare frame and infill walls frame are used in the study. Equivalent diagonal strut methodology is used to represent the behavior of infill walls, whilst the well-known software package ETABS is used for implementing all frame models and performing the analysis. The results of the numerical simulations such as base shear, displacements, and internal forces for the bare frame as well as the infill wall frame are presented in a comparative way. The results of the study indicate that the interaction between infill walls and frames significantly change the responses of buildings during earthquakes compared to the results of bare frame building model. Specifically, the seismic analysis of RC bare frame structure leads to underestimation of base shear and consequently damage or even collapse of buildings may occur under strong shakings. On the other hand, considering infill walls significantly decrease the peak floor displacements and drifts in both X and Y-directions.

Keywords: Masonry infill, bare frame, response spectrum, seismic response.

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Authors: Wat Ploysri

Abstract:

The objectives of this research are to produce prototype coconut oil based solvent offset printing inks and to analyze a basic quality of printing work derived from coconut oil based solvent offset printing inks, by mean of bringing coconut oil for producing varnish and bringing such varnish to produce black offset printing inks. Then, analysis of qualities i.e. CIELAB value, density value, and dot gain value of printing work from coconut oil based solvent offset printing inks which printed on gloss-coated woodfree paper weighs 130 grams were done. The research result of coconut oil based solvent offset printing inks indicated that the suitable varnish formulation is using 51% of coconut oil, 36% of phenolic resin, and 14% of solvent oil 14%, while the result of producing black offset ink displayed that the suitable formula of printing ink is using varnish mixed with 20% of coconut oil, and the analyzing printing work of coconut oil based solvent offset printing inks which printed on paper, the results were as follows: CIELAB value of black offset printing ink is at L* = 31.90, a* = 0.27, and b* = 1.86, density value is at 1.27 and dot gain value was high at mid tone area of image area.

Keywords: Offset Printing, Coconut Oil, Printing Ink, Printing Quality.

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Authors: Moustafa A. Bani-Hasan, Yasser M. Kadah, Fatma M. El-Hefnawi

Abstract:

An electrocardiogram (ECG) feature extraction system based on the calculation of the complex resonance frequency employing Prony-s method is developed. Prony-s method is applied on five different classes of ECG signals- arrhythmia as a finite sum of exponentials depending on the signal-s poles and the resonant complex frequencies. Those poles and resonance frequencies of the ECG signals- arrhythmia are evaluated for a large number of each arrhythmia. The ECG signals of lead II (ML II) were taken from MIT-BIH database for five different types. These are the ventricular couplet (VC), ventricular tachycardia (VT), ventricular bigeminy (VB), and ventricular fibrillation (VF) and the normal (NR). This novel method can be extended to any number of arrhythmias. Different classification techniques were tried using neural networks (NN), K nearest neighbor (KNN), linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and multi-class support vector machine (MC-SVM).

Keywords: Arrhythmias analysis, electrocardiogram, featureextraction, statistical classifiers.

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Authors: Rafiullah Chamlawi, Asifullah Khan, Adnan Idris, Zahid Munir

Abstract:

Authentication of multimedia contents has gained much attention in recent times. In this paper, we propose a secure semi-fragile watermarking, with a choice of two watermarks to be embedded. This technique operates in integer wavelet domain and makes use of semi fragile watermarks for achieving better robustness. A self-recovering algorithm is employed, that hides the image digest into some Wavelet subbands to detect possible malevolent object manipulation undergone by the image (object replacing and/or deletion). The Semi-fragility makes the scheme tolerant for JPEG lossy compression as low as quality of 70%, and locate the tempered area accurately. In addition, the system ensures more security because the embedded watermarks are protected with private keys. The computational complexity is reduced using parameterized integer wavelet transform. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme guarantees the safety of watermark, image recovery and location of the tempered area accurately.

Keywords: Integer Wavelet Transform (IWT), Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), JPEG Compression, Authentication and Self- Recovery.

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