Search results for: wind energy potential
1068 Warm Mix and Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement: A Greener Road Approach
Authors: Lillian Gungat, Meor Othman Hamzah, Mohd Rosli Mohd Hasan, Jan Valentin
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Utilization of a high percentage of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) requires higher production temperatures and consumes more energy. High production temperature expedites the aging of bitumen in RAP, which could affect the mixture performance. Warm mix asphalt (WMA) additive enables reduced production temperatures as a result of viscosity reduction. This paper evaluates the integration of a high percentage of RAP with a WMA additive known as RH-WMA. The optimum dosage of RH-WMA was determined from basic properties tests. A total of 0%, 30% and 50% RAP contents from two roads sources were modified with RH-WMA. The modified RAP bitumen were examined for viscosity, stiffness, rutting resistance and greenhouse gas emissions. The addition of RH-WMA improved the flow of bitumen by reducing the viscosity, and thus, decreased the construction temperature. The stiffness of the RAP modified bitumen reduced with the incorporation of RH-WMA. The positive improvement in rutting resistance was observed on bitumen with the addition of RAP and RH-WMA in comparison with control. It was estimated that the addition of RH-WMA could potentially reduce fuel usage and GHG emissions by 22 %. Hence, the synergy of RAP and WMA technology can be an alternative in green road construction.
Keywords: Reclaimed asphalt pavement, WMA additive, viscosity, stiffness, emissions.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8101067 Influence of Ball Milling Time on Mechanical Properties of Porous Ti-20Nb-5Ag Alloy
Authors: M. J. Shivaram, Shashi Bhushan Arya, Jagannath Nayak, Bharat Bhooshan Panigrahi
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Titanium and its alloys have become more significant implant materials due to their mechanical properties, excellent biocompatibility and high corrosion resistance. Biomaterials can be produce by using the powder metallurgy (PM) methods and required properties can tailored by varying the processing parameters, such as ball milling time, space holder particles, and sintering temperature. The desired properties such as, structural and mechanical properties can be obtained by powder metallurgy method. In the present study, deals with fabrication of solid and porous Ti-20Nb-5Ag alloy using high energy ball milling for different times (5 and 20 h). The resultant powder particles were used to fabricate solid and porous Ti-20Nb-5Ag alloy by adding space holder particles (NH4HCO3). The resultant powder particles, fabricated solid and porous samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The compressive strength, elastic modulus and microhardness properties were investigated. Solid and porous Ti-20Nb-5Ag alloy samples showed good mechanical properties for 20 h ball milling time as compare to 5 h ball milling.Keywords: Ball Milling, compressive strengths, microstructure, porous Titanium alloy.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8801066 Viscosity Reduction and Upgrading of Athabasca Oilsands Bitumen by Natural Zeolite Cracking
Authors: Abu S.M. Junaid, Wei Wang, Christopher Street, Moshfiqur Rahman, Matt Gersbach, Sarah Zhou, William McCaffrey, Steven M. Kuznicki
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Oilsands bitumen is an extremely important source of energy for North America. However, due to the presence of large molecules such as asphaltenes, the density and viscosity of the bitumen recovered from these sands are much higher than those of conventional crude oil. As a result the extracted bitumen has to be diluted with expensive solvents, or thermochemically upgraded in large, capital-intensive conventional upgrading facilities prior to pipeline transport. This study demonstrates that globally abundant natural zeolites such as clinoptilolite from Saint Clouds, New Mexico and Ca-chabazite from Bowie, Arizona can be used as very effective reagents for cracking and visbreaking of oilsands bitumen. Natural zeolite cracked oilsands bitumen products are highly recoverable (up to ~ 83%) using light hydrocarbons such as pentane, which indicates substantial conversion of heavier fractions to lighter components. The resultant liquid products are much less viscous, and have lighter product distribution compared to those produced from pure thermal treatment. These natural minerals impart similar effect on industrially extracted Athabasca bitumen.Keywords: Natural Zeolites, Oilsands Bitumen, Cracking, Viscosity Reduction, Upgrading.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 28571065 Ultra-Wideband Slot Antenna with Notched Band for World Interoperability for Microwave Access
Authors: Rezaul Azim, A. Toaha Mobashsher, M. Tariqul Islam
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In this paper a novel ultra-wideband (UWB) slot antenna with band notch characteristics for world interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) is proposed. The designed antenna consists of a rectangular radiating patch and a ground plane with tapered shape slot. To realize a notch band, a curved parasitic element has been etched out along with the radiating patch. It is observed that by adjusting the length, thickness and position of the parasitic element, the proposed antenna can achieved an impedance bandwidth of 8.01GHz (2.84 to 10.85GHz) with a notched band of 3.28-3.85GHz. Compared to the recently reported band notch antennas, the proposed antenna has a simple configuration to realize band notch characteristics in order to mitigate the potential interference between WiMAX and UWB system. Furthermore, a stable radiation pattern and moderate gain except at the notched band makes the proposed antenna suitable for various UWB applications.
Keywords: Band notch, Filter element, Ultra-wideband (UWB), WiMAX.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21941064 Granularity Analysis for Spatio-Temporal Web Sensors
Authors: Shun Hattori
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In recent years, many researches to mine the exploding Web world, especially User Generated Content (UGC) such as weblogs, for knowledge about various phenomena and events in the physical world have been done actively, and also Web services with the Web-mined knowledge have begun to be developed for the public. However, there are few detailed investigations on how accurately Web-mined data reflect physical-world data. It must be problematic to idolatrously utilize the Web-mined data in public Web services without ensuring their accuracy sufficiently. Therefore, this paper introduces the simplest Web Sensor and spatiotemporallynormalized Web Sensor to extract spatiotemporal data about a target phenomenon from weblogs searched by keyword(s) representing the target phenomenon, and tries to validate the potential and reliability of the Web-sensed spatiotemporal data by four kinds of granularity analyses of coefficient correlation with temperature, rainfall, snowfall, and earthquake statistics per day by region of Japan Meteorological Agency as physical-world data: spatial granularity (region-s population density), temporal granularity (time period, e.g., per day vs. per week), representation granularity (e.g., “rain" vs. “heavy rain"), and media granularity (weblogs vs. microblogs such as Tweets).Keywords: Granularity analysis, knowledge extraction, spatiotemporal data mining, Web credibility, Web mining, Web sensor.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18821063 Confronting the Uncertainty of Systemic Innovation in Public Welfare Services
Authors: Harri Jalonen
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Faced with social and health system capacity constraints and rising and changing demand for welfare services, governments and welfare providers are increasingly relying on innovation to help support and enhance services. However, the evidence reported by several studies indicates that the realization of that potential is not an easy task. Innovations can be deemed inherently complex to implement and operate, because many of them involve a combination of technological and organizational renewal within an environment featuring a diversity of stakeholders. Many public welfare service innovations are markedly systemic in their nature, which means that they emerge from, and must address, the complex interplay between political, administrative, technological, institutional and legal issues. This paper suggests that stakeholders dealing with systemic innovation in welfare services must deal with ambiguous and incomplete information in circumstances of uncertainty. Employing a literature review methodology and case study, this paper identifies, categorizes and discusses different aspects of the uncertainty of systemic innovation in public welfare services, and argues that uncertainty can be classified into eight categories: technological uncertainty, market uncertainty, regulatory/institutional uncertainty, social/political uncertainty, acceptance/legitimacy uncertainty, managerial uncertainty, timing uncertainty and consequence uncertainty.Keywords: Systemic innovation, uncertainty, welfare services
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16171062 Knowledge Management Factors Affecting the Level of Commitment
Authors: Abbas Keramati, Abtin Boostani, Mohammad Jamal Sadeghi
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This paper examines the influence of knowledge management factors on organizational commitment for employees in the oil and gas drilling industry of Iran. We determine what knowledge factors have the greatest impact on the personnel loyalty and commitment to the organization using collected data from a survey of over 300 full-time personnel working in three large companies active in oil and gas drilling industry of Iran. To specify the effect of knowledge factors in the organizational commitment of the personnel in the studied organizations, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used. Findings of our study show that the factors such as knowledge and expertise, in-service training, the knowledge value and the application of individuals’ knowledge in the organization as the factor “learning and perception of personnel from the value of knowledge within the organization” has the greatest impact on the organizational commitment. After this factor, “existence of knowledge and knowledge sharing environment in the organization”; “existence of potential knowledge exchanging in the organization”; and “organizational knowledge level” factors have the most impact on the organizational commitment of personnel, respectively.
Keywords: Knowledge management, organizational commitment, loyalty, drilling industry, principle component analysis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8771061 Impact of Increasing Distributed Solar PV Systems on Distribution Networks in South Africa
Authors: Aradhna Pandarum
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South Africa is experiencing an exponential growth of distributed solar PV installations. This is due to various factors with the predominant one being increasing electricity tariffs along with decreasing installation costs, resulting in attractive business cases to some end-users. Despite there being a variety of economic and environmental advantages associated with the installation of PV, their potential impact on distribution grids has yet to be thoroughly investigated. This is especially true since the locations of these units cannot be controlled by Network Service Providers (NSPs) and their output power is stochastic and non-dispatchable. This report details two case studies that were completed to determine the possible voltage and technical losses impact of increasing PV penetration in the Northern Cape of South Africa. Some major impacts considered for the simulations were ramping of PV generation due to intermittency caused by moving clouds, the size and overall hosting capacity and the location of the systems. The main finding is that the technical impact is different on a constrained feeder vs a non-constrained feeder. The acceptable PV penetration level is much lower for a constrained feeder than a non-constrained feeder, depending on where the systems are located.
Keywords: Medium voltage networks, power system losses, power system voltage, solar photovoltaic, PV.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5541060 Optimizing Electrospinning Parameters for Finest Diameter of Nano Fibers
Authors: M. Maleki, M. Latifi, M. Amani-Tehran
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Nano fibers produced by electrospinning are of industrial and scientific attention due to their special characteristics such as long length, small diameter and high surface area. Applications of electrospun structures in nanotechnology are included tissue scaffolds, fibers for drug delivery, composite reinforcement, chemical sensing, enzyme immobilization, membrane-based filtration, protective clothing, catalysis, solar cells, electronic devices and others. Many polymer and ceramic precursor nano fibers have been successfully electrospun with diameters in the range from 1 nm to several microns. The process is complex so that fiber diameter is influenced by various material, design and operating parameters. The objective of this work is to apply genetic algorithm on the parameters of electrospinning which have the most significant effect on the nano fiber diameter to determine the optimum parameter values before doing experimental set up. Effective factors including initial polymer concentration, initial jet radius, electrical potential, relaxation time, initial elongation, viscosity and distance between nozzle and collector are considered to determine finest diameter which is selected by user.
Keywords: Electrospinning, genetic algorithm, nano fiber diameter, optimization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20331059 An Analysis of Uncoupled Designs in Chicken Egg
Authors: Pratap Sriram Sundar, Chandan Chowdhury, Sagar Kamarthi
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Nature has perfected her designs over 3.5 billion years of evolution. Research fields such as biomimicry, biomimetics, bionics, bio-inspired computing, and nature-inspired designs have explored nature-made artifacts and systems to understand nature’s mechanisms and intelligence. Learning from nature, the researchers have generated sustainable designs and innovation in a variety of fields such as energy, architecture, agriculture, transportation, communication, and medicine. Axiomatic design offers a method to judge if a design is good. This paper analyzes design aspects of one of the nature’s amazing object: chicken egg. The functional requirements (FRs) of components of the object are tabulated and mapped on to nature-chosen design parameters (DPs). The ‘independence axiom’ of the axiomatic design methodology is applied to analyze couplings and to evaluate if eggs’ design is good (i.e., uncoupled design) or bad (i.e., coupled design). The analysis revealed that eggs design is a good design, i.e., uncoupled design. This approach can be applied to any nature’s artifacts to judge whether their design is a good or a bad. This methodology is valuable for biomimicry studies. This approach can also be a very useful teaching design consideration of biology and bio-inspired innovation.Keywords: Uncoupled design, axiomatic design, nature design, design evaluation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6841058 Role of Process Parameters on Pocket Milling with Abrasive Water Jet Machining Technique
Authors: T. V. K. Gupta, J. Ramkumar, Puneet Tandon, N. S. Vyas
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Abrasive Water Jet Machining is an unconventional machining process well known for machining hard to cut materials. The primary research focus on the process was for through cutting and a very limited literature is available on pocket milling using AWJM. The present work is an attempt to use this process for milling applications considering a set of various process parameters. Four different input parameters, which were considered by researchers for part separation, are selected for the above application, i.e., abrasive size, flow rate, standoff distance and traverse speed. Pockets of definite size are machined to investigate surface roughness, material removal rate and pocket depth. Based on the data available through experiments on SS304 material, it is observed that higher traverse speeds gives a better finish because of reduction in the particle energy density and lower depth is also observed. Increase in the standoff distance and abrasive flow rate reduces the rate of material removal as the jet loses its focus and occurrence of collisions within the particles. ANOVA for individual output parameter has been studied to know the significant process parameters.
Keywords: Abrasive flow rate, surface finish, abrasive size, standoff distance, traverse speed.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 42321057 Statistical Distributions of the Lapped Transform Coefficients for Images
Authors: Vijay Kumar Nath, Deepika Hazarika, Anil Mahanta,
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Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) based transform coding is very popular in image, video and speech compression due to its good energy compaction and decorrelating properties. However, at low bit rates, the reconstructed images generally suffer from visually annoying blocking artifacts as a result of coarse quantization. Lapped transform was proposed as an alternative to the DCT with reduced blocking artifacts and increased coding gain. Lapped transforms are popular for their good performance, robustness against oversmoothing and availability of fast implementation algorithms. However, there is no proper study reported in the literature regarding the statistical distributions of block Lapped Orthogonal Transform (LOT) and Lapped Biorthogonal Transform (LBT) coefficients. This study performs two goodness-of-fit tests, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test and the 2- test, to determine the distribution that best fits the LOT and LBT coefficients. The experimental results show that the distribution of a majority of the significant AC coefficients can be modeled by the Generalized Gaussian distribution. The knowledge of the statistical distribution of transform coefficients greatly helps in the design of optimal quantizers that may lead to minimum distortion and hence achieve optimal coding efficiency.
Keywords: Lapped orthogonal transform, Lapped biorthogonal transform, Image compression, KS test,
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16061056 A Novel Low Power, High Speed 14 Transistor CMOS Full Adder Cell with 50% Improvement in Threshold Loss Problem
Authors: T. Vigneswaran, B. Mukundhan, P. Subbarami Reddy
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Full adders are important components in applications such as digital signal processors (DSP) architectures and microprocessors. In addition to its main task, which is adding two numbers, it participates in many other useful operations such as subtraction, multiplication, division,, address calculation,..etc. In most of these systems the adder lies in the critical path that determines the overall speed of the system. So enhancing the performance of the 1-bit full adder cell (the building block of the adder) is a significant goal.Demands for the low power VLSI have been pushing the development of aggressive design methodologies to reduce the power consumption drastically. To meet the growing demand, we propose a new low power adder cell by sacrificing the MOS Transistor count that reduces the serious threshold loss problem, considerably increases the speed and decreases the power when compared to the static energy recovery full (SERF) adder. So a new improved 14T CMOS l-bit full adder cell is presented in this paper. Results show 50% improvement in threshold loss problem, 45% improvement in speed and considerable power consumption over the SERF adder and other different types of adders with comparable performance.Keywords: Arithmetic circuit, full adder, multiplier, low power, very Large-scale integration (VLSI).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 39591055 Exergy Analysis of a Solar Humidification- Dehumidification Desalination Unit
Authors: Mohammed A. Elhaj, Jamal S. Yassin
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This paper presents the exergy analysis of a desalination unit using humidification-dehumidification process. Here, this unit is considered as a thermal system with three main components, which are the heating unit by using a solar collector, the evaporator or the humidifier, and the condenser or the dehumidifier. In these components the exergy is a measure of the quality or grade of energy and it can be destroyed in them. According to the second law of thermodynamics this destroyed part is due to irreversibilities which must be determined to obtain the exergetic efficiency of the system. In the current paper a computer program has been developed using visual basic to determine the exergy destruction and the exergetic efficiencies of the components of the desalination unit at variable operation conditions such as feed water temperature, outlet air temperature, air to feed water mass ratio and salinity, in addition to cooling water mass flow rate and inlet temperature, as well as quantity of solar irradiance. The results obtained indicate that the exergy efficiency of the humidifier increases by increasing the mass ratio and decreasing the outlet air temperature. In the other hand the exergy efficiency of the condenser increases with the increase of this ratio and also with the increase of the outlet air temperature.
Keywords: Exergy analysis, desalination, solar, humidifier, condenser.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 24711054 Numerical Investigation of Flow Patterns and Thermal Comfort in Air-Conditioned Lecture Rooms
Authors: Taher M. Abou-deif, Mahmoud A. Fouad, Essam E. Khalil
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The present paper was concerned primarily with the analysis, simulation of the air flow and thermal patterns in a lecture room. The paper is devoted to numerically investigate the influence of location and number of ventilation and air conditioning supply and extracts openings on air flow properties in a lecture room. The work focuses on air flow patterns, thermal behaviour in lecture room where large number of students. The effectiveness of an air flow system is commonly assessed by the successful removal of sensible and latent loads from occupants with additional of attaining air pollutant at a prescribed level to attain the human thermal comfort conditions and to improve the indoor air quality; this is the main target during the present paper. The study is carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation techniques as embedded in the commercially available CFD code (FLUENT 6.2). The CFD modelling techniques solved the continuity, momentum and energy conservation equations in addition to standard k – ε model equations for turbulence closure. Throughout the investigations, numerical validation is carried out by way of comparisons of numerical and experimental results. Good agreement is found among both predictions.Keywords: Air Conditioning, CFD, Lecture Rooms, Thermal Comfort
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22261053 Mechanical Behavior of Deep-Drawn Cups with Aluminum/Duralumin Multi-Layered Clad Structures
Authors: Hideaki Tsukamoto, Yoshiki Komiya, Hisashi Sato, Yoshimi Watanabe
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This study aims to investigate mechanical behavior of deep-drawn cups consisting of aluminum (A1050)/ duralumin (A2017) multi-layered clad structures with micro- and macro-scale functional gradients. Such multi-layered clad structures are possibly used for a new type of crash-boxes in automobiles to effectively absorb the impact forces generated when automobiles having collisions. The effect of heat treatments on microstructure, compositional gradient, micro hardness in 2 and 6-layered aluminum/ duralumin clad structures, which were fabricated by hot rolling, have been investigated. Impact compressive behavior of deep-drawn cups consisting of such aluminum/ duralumin clad structures has been also investigated in terms of energy absorption and maximum force. Deep-drawn cups consisting of 6-layerd clad structures with microand macro-scale functional gradients exhibit superior properties in impact compressive tests.Keywords: Crash box, functionally graded material (FGM), Impact compressive property, Multi-layered clad structure.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21301052 Are PEG Molecules a Universal Protein Repellent?
Authors: Norzita Ngadi, John Abrahamson, Conan Fee, Ken Morison
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Poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG) molecules attached to surfaces have shown high potential as a protein repellent due to their flexibility and highly water solubility. A quartz crystal microbalance recording frequency and dissipation changes (QCM-D) has been used to study the adsorption from aqueous solutions, of lysozyme and α-lactalbumin proteins (the last with and without calcium) onto modified stainless steel surfaces. Surfaces were coated with poly(ethylene imine) (PEI) and silicate before grafting on PEG molecules. Protein adsorption was also performed on the bare stainless steel surface as a control. All adsorptions were conducted at 23°C and pH 7.2. The results showed that the presence of PEG molecules significantly reduced the adsorption of lysozyme and α- lactalbumin (with calcium) onto the stainless steel surface. By contrast, and unexpected, PEG molecules enhanced the adsorption of α-lactalbumin (without calcium). It is suggested that the PEG -α- lactalbumin hydrophobic interaction plays a dominant role which leads to protein aggregation at the surface for this latter observation. The findings also lead to the general conclusion that PEG molecules are not a universal protein repellent. PEG-on-PEI surfaces were better at inhibiting the adsorption of lysozyme and α-lactalbumin (with calcium) than with PEG-on-silicate surfaces.
Keywords: Stainless steel, PEG, QCM-D, protein, PEI layer, silicate layer.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22871051 Design and Analysis of Electric Power Production Unit for Low Enthalpy Geothermal Reservoir Applications
Authors: Ildar Akhmadullin, Mayank Tyagi
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The subject of this paper is the design analysis of a single well power production unit from low enthalpy geothermal resources. A complexity of the project is defined by a low temperature heat source that usually makes such projects economically disadvantageous using the conventional binary power plant approach. A proposed new compact design is numerically analyzed. This paper describes a thermodynamic analysis, a working fluid choice, downhole heat exchanger (DHE) and turbine calculation results. The unit is able to produce 321 kW of electric power from a low enthalpy underground heat source utilizing n-Pentane as a working fluid. A geo-pressured reservoir located in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, USA is selected as a prototype for the field application. With a brine temperature of 126 , the optimal length of DHE is determined as 304.8 m (1000ft). All units (pipes, turbine, and pumps) are chosen from commercially available parts to bring this project closer to the industry requirements. Numerical calculations are based on petroleum industry standards. The project is sponsored by the Department of Energy of the US.
Keywords: Downhole Heat Exchangers, Geothermal Power Generation, Organic Rankine Cycle, Refrigerants, Working Fluids.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 26701050 Handover for Dense Small Cells Heterogeneous Networks: A Power-Efficient Game Theoretical Approach
Authors: Mohanad Alhabo, Li Zhang, Naveed Nawaz
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In this paper, a non-cooperative game method is formulated where all players compete to transmit at higher power. Every base station represents a player in the game. The game is solved by obtaining the Nash equilibrium (NE) where the game converges to optimality. The proposed method, named Power Efficient Handover Game Theoretic (PEHO-GT) approach, aims to control the handover in dense small cell networks. Players optimize their payoff by adjusting the transmission power to improve the performance in terms of throughput, handover, power consumption and load balancing. To select the desired transmission power for a player, the payoff function considers the gain of increasing the transmission power. Then, the cell selection takes place by deploying Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). A game theoretical method is implemented for heterogeneous networks to validate the improvement obtained. Results reveal that the proposed method gives a throughput improvement while reducing the power consumption and minimizing the frequent handover.Keywords: Energy efficiency, game theory, handover, HetNets, small cells.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4691049 Nonlinear Analysis of Shear Wall Using Finite Element Model
Authors: M. A. Ghorbani, M. Pasbani Khiavi, F. Rezaie Moghaddam
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In the analysis of structures, the nonlinear effects due to large displacement, large rotation and materially-nonlinear are very important and must be considered for the reliable analysis. The non-linear fmite element analysis has potential as usable and reliable means for analyzing of civil structures with the availability of computer technology. In this research the large displacements and materially nonlinear behavior of shear wall is presented with developing of fmite element code using the standard Galerkin weighted residual formulation. Two-dimensional plane stress model was carried out to present the shear wall response. Total Lagangian formulation, which is computationally more effective, is used in the formulation of stiffness matrices and the Newton-Raphson method is applied for the solution of nonlinear transient equations. The details of the program formulation are highlighted and the results of the analyses are presented, along with a comparison of the response of the structure with Ansys software results. The presented model in this paper can be developed for nonlinear analysis of civil engineering structures with different material behavior and complicated geometry.
Keywords: Finite element, large displacements, materially nonlinear, shear wall.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17541048 Experimental Study on Modified Double Slope Solar Still and Modified Basin Type Double Slope Multiwick Solar Still
Authors: Piyush Pal, Rahul Dev
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Water is essential for life and fresh water is a finite resource that is becoming scarce day by day even though it is recycled by hydrological cycle. The fresh water reserves are being polluted due to expanding irrigation, industries, urban population and its development. Contaminated water leads to several health problems. With the increasing demand of fresh water, solar distillation is an alternate solution which uses solar energy to evaporate water and then to condense it, thereby collecting distilled water within or outside the same system to use it as potable water. The structure that houses the process is known as a 'solar still'. In this paper, ‘Modified double slope solar still (MDSSS)’ & 'Modified double slope basin type multiwick solar still (MDSBMSS)' have been designed to convert saline, brackish water into drinking water. In this work two different modified solar stills are fabricated to study the performance of these solar stills. For modification of solar stills, Fibre Reinforced Plastic (FRP) and Acrylic sheets are used. The experiments in MDSBMSS and MDSSS was carried on 10 September 2015 & 5 November 2015 respectively. Performances of the stills were investigated. The amount of distillate has been found 3624 Ml/day in MDSBMSS on 10 September 2015 and 2400 Ml/day in MDSSS on 5 November 2015.Keywords: Contaminated water, Conventional solar still, Modified solar still, Wick.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22281047 Performance Analysis of a Single-Phase Thermosyphon Solar Water Heating System
Authors: S. Sadhishkumar, T. Balusamy
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A single-phase closed thermosyphon has been fabricated and experimented to utilize solar energy for water heating. The working fluid of the closed thermosyphon is heated at the flatplate collector and the hot water goes to the water tank due to density gradient caused by temperature differences. This experimental work was done using insulated water tank and insulated connecting pipe between the tank and the flat-plate collector. From the collected data, performance parameters such as instantaneous collector efficiency and heat removal factor are calculated. In this study, the effects of glazing were also observed. The water temperature rise and the maximum instantaneous efficiency obtained from this experiment with glazing using insulated water tank and insulated connecting pipe are 17°C in a period of 5 hours and 60% respectively. Whereas the water temperature rise and the maximum instantaneous efficiency obtained from this experiment with glazing using non-insulated water tank and non-insulated connecting pipe are 14°C in a period of 5 hours and 39% respectively.
Keywords: Solar water heating systems, Single-phase thermosyphon, Flat-plate collector, Insulated tank and pipe.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 31321046 Cell Biomass and Lipid Productivities of Meyerella planktonica under Autotrophic and Heterotrophic Growth Conditions
Authors: Rory Anthony Hutagalung, Leonardus Widjaya
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Microalgae Meyerella planktonica is a potential biofuel source because it can grow in bulk in either autotrophic or heterotrophic condition. However, the quantitative growth of this algal type is still low as it tends to precipitates on the bottom. Besides, the lipid concentration is still low when grown in autotrophic condition. In contrast, heterotrophic condition can enhance the lipid concentration. The combination of autotrophic condition and agitation treatment was conducted to increase the density of the culture. On the other hand, a heterotrophic condition was set up to raise the lipid production. A two-stage experiment was applied to increase the density at the first step and to increase the lipid concentration in the next step. The autotrophic condition resulted higher density but lower lipid concentration compared to heterotrophic one. The agitation treatment produced higher density in both autotrophic and heterotrophic conditions. The two-stage experiment managed to enhance the density during the autotrophic stage and the lipid concentration during the heterotrophic stage. The highest yield was performed by using 0.4% v/v glycerol as a carbon source (2.9±0.016 x 10^6 cells w/w) attained 7 days after the heterotrophic stage began. The lipid concentration was stable starting from day 7.
Keywords: Agitation, Glycerol, Heterotrophic, Lipid Productivity, Meyerella planktonica.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20901045 Territories' Challenges and Opportunities to Promote Circular Economy in the Building Sector
Authors: R. Tirado, G. Habert, A. Mailhac, S. Laurenceau
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The rapid development of cities implies significant material inflows and outflows. The construction sector is one of the main consumers of raw materials and producers of waste. The waste from the building sector, for its quantity and potential for recovery, constitutes significant deposits requiring major efforts, by combining different actors, to achieve the circular economy's objectives. It is necessary to understand and know the current construction actors' knowledge of stocks, urban metabolism, deposits, and recovery practices in this context. This article aims to explore the role of local governments in planning strategies by facilitating a circular economy. In particular, the principal opportunities and challenges of communities for applying the principles of the circular economy in the building sector will be identified. The approach used for the study was to conduct semi-structured interviews with those responsible for circular economy projects within local administrations of some communities in France. The results show territories' involvement in the inclusion and application of the principles of the circular economy in the building sector. The main challenges encountered are numerous, hence the importance of having identified and described them so that the different actors can work to meet them.
Keywords: Building stock, circular economy, interview, local authorities.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5311044 Design Standardization in Aramco: Strategic Analysis
Authors: Mujahid S. Alharbi
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The construction of process plants in oil and gas-producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, necessitates substantial investment in design and building. Each new plant, while unique, includes common building types, suggesting an opportunity for design standardization. This study investigates the adoption of standardized Issue for Construction (IFC) packages for non-process buildings in Saudi Aramco. A SWOT analysis presents the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of this approach. The approach's benefits are illustrated using the Hawiyah Unayzah Gas Reservoir Storage Program (HUGRSP) as a case study. Standardization not only offers significant cost savings and operational efficiencies, but also expedites project timelines, reduces the potential for change orders, and fosters local economic growth by allocating building tasks to local contractors. Standardization also improves project management by easing interface constraints between different contractors and promoting adaptability to future industry changes. This research underscores the standardization of non-process buildings as a powerful strategy for cost optimization, efficiency enhancement, and local economic development in process plant construction within the oil and gas sector.
Keywords: Building, construction, management, project, standardization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 631043 Using Facebook as an Alternative Learning Tool in Malaysian Higher Learning Institutions: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach
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.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 24261042 Beijerinckia indica Extracellular Extract Mediated Green Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles with Antioxidant and Antibacterial Activities against Clinical Pathogens
Authors: Gopalu Karunakaran, Matheswaran Jagathambal, Nguyen Van Minh, Evgeny Kolesnikov, Denis Kuznetsov
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This work investigated the use of Beijerinckia indica extracellular extract for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles using AgNO3. The formation of nanoparticles was confirmed by different methods, such as UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy, XRD, FTIR, EDX, and TEM analysis. The formation of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) was confirmed by the change in color from light yellow to dark brown. The absorbance peak obtained at 430 nm confirmed the presence of silver nanoparticles. The XRD analysis showed the cubic crystalline phase of the synthesized nanoparticles. FTIR revealed the presence of groups that acts as stabilizing and reducing agents for silver nanoparticles formation. The synthesized silver nanoparticles were generally found to be spherical in shape with size ranging from 5 to 20 nm, as evident by TEM analysis. These nanoparticles were found to inhibit pathogenic bacterial strains. This work proved that the bacterial extract is a potential eco-friendly candidate for the synthesis of silver nanoparticles with promising antibacterial and antioxidant properties.
Keywords: Antioxidant activity, antimicrobial activity, Beijerinckia indica, characterisation, extracellular extracts, silver nanoparticles.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 11061041 A Data-Driven Approach for Studying the Washout Effects of Rain on Air Pollution
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Air pollution is a serious environmental threat on a global scale and can cause harm to human health, morbidity and premature mortality. Reliable monitoring and control systems are therefore necessary to develop coping skills against the hazards associated with this phenomenon. However, existing environmental monitoring means often do not provide a sufficient response due to practical and technical limitations. Commercial microwave links that form the infrastructure for transmitting data between cell phone towers can be harnessed to map rain at high tempo-spatial resolution. Rainfall causes a decrease in the signal strength received by these wireless communication links allowing it to be used as a built-in sensor network to map the phenomenon. In this study, we point to the potential that lies in this system to indirectly monitor areas where air pollution is reduced. The relationship between pollutant wash-off and rainfall provides an opportunity to acquire important spatial information about air quality using existing cell-phone tower signals. Since the density of microwave communication networks is high relative to any dedicated sensor arrays, it could be possible to rely on this available observation tool for studying precipitation scavenging on air pollutants, for model needs and more.
Keywords: Air pollution, commercial microwave links, rainfall.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9051040 Person Identification by Using AR Model for EEG Signals
Authors: Gelareh Mohammadi, Parisa Shoushtari, Behnam Molaee Ardekani, Mohammad B. Shamsollahi
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A direct connection between ElectroEncephaloGram (EEG) and the genetic information of individuals has been investigated by neurophysiologists and psychiatrists since 1960-s; and it opens a new research area in the science. This paper focuses on the person identification based on feature extracted from the EEG which can show a direct connection between EEG and the genetic information of subjects. In this work the full EO EEG signal of healthy individuals are estimated by an autoregressive (AR) model and the AR parameters are extracted as features. Here for feature vector constitution, two methods have been proposed; in the first method the extracted parameters of each channel are used as a feature vector in the classification step which employs a competitive neural network and in the second method a combination of different channel parameters are used as a feature vector. Correct classification scores at the range of 80% to 100% reveal the potential of our approach for person classification/identification and are in agreement to the previous researches showing evidence that the EEG signal carries genetic information. The novelty of this work is in the combination of AR parameters and the network type (competitive network) that we have used. A comparison between the first and the second approach imply preference of the second one.Keywords: Person Identification, Autoregressive Model, EEG, Neural Network
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17411039 Family-size Biogas Plant Using Manure and Urine Mixture at Ambient Temperature in Semi-arid Regions of Northwestern China
Authors: Wenguang Ding, Yang Wu, Xia Wang, Yayu Gao
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Biogas, a clean renewable energy, is attracting a growing concern of researchers and professionals in many fields. Based on the natural and climatic conditions in semi-arid regions of northwestern China, the present study introduces a specifically-designed family-size biogas plant (with a digester of 10m3) with manure and urine of animals and humanity as raw materials. The biogas plant is applicable to areas with altitudes of more than 2000 meters in northwestern China. In addition to the installation cost, a little operational expenditure, structure, characteristics, benefits of this small-scale biogas plant, this article introduces a wide range of specific popularization methods such as training, financial support, guided tour to the biogas plant, community-based group study and delivery of operational manuals. The feasibility of the biogas plant is explored on the basis of the availability of the raw materials. Simple operations contained in the current work increase the possibility of the wide use of this small-scale biogas plant in similar regions of the world.Keywords: biogas, family-size biogas plant, northwestern China, popularization
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