Search results for: Elliptical Basis Function Network

Authors: Thomas Bryan, Veton Kepuska, Ivica Kostanic

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Speaker recognition is performed in high Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) environments using principals of Computational Auditory Scene Analysis (CASA). CASA methods often classify sounds from images in the time-frequency (T-F) plane using spectrograms or cochleargrams as the image. In this paper atomic decomposition implemented by matching pursuit performs a transform from time series speech signals to the T-F plane. The atomic decomposition creates a sparsely populated T-F vector in “weight space” where each populated T-F position contains an amplitude weight. The weight space vector along with the atomic dictionary represents a denoised, compressed version of the original signal. The arraignment or of the atomic indices in the T-F vector are used for classification. Unsupervised feature learning implemented by a sparse autoencoder learns a single dictionary of basis features from a collection of envelope samples from all speakers. The approach is demonstrated using pairs of speakers from the TIMIT data set. Pairs of speakers are selected randomly from a single district. Each speak has 10 sentences. Two are used for training and 8 for testing. Atomic index probabilities are created for each training sentence and also for each test sentence. Classification is performed by finding the lowest Euclidean distance between then probabilities from the training sentences and the test sentences. Training is done at a 30dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). Testing is performed at SNR’s of 0 dB, 5 dB, 10 dB and 30dB. The algorithm has a baseline classification accuracy of ~93% averaged over 10 pairs of speakers from the TIMIT data set. The baseline accuracy is attributable to short sequences of training and test data as well as the overall simplicity of the classification algorithm. The accuracy is not affected by AWGN and produces ~93% accuracy at 0dB SNR.

Keywords: Time-frequency plane, atomic decomposition, envelope sampling, Gabor atoms, matching pursuit, sparse dictionary learning, sparse autoencoder.

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Authors: R. Akbari, M. A. Ehyaei, R. Shahi Shavvon

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Nowadays, solar energy is used for energy purposes such as the use of thermal energy for domestic, industrial and power applications, as well as the conversion of the sunlight into electricity by photovoltaic cells. In this study, the thermodynamic simulation of the solar Rankin cycle with phase change material (paraffin) was first studied. Then energy and exergy analyses were performed. For optimization, a single and multi-objective genetic optimization algorithm to maximize thermal and exergy efficiency was used. The parameters discussed in this paper included the effects of input pressure on turbines, input mass flow to turbines, the surface of converters and collector angles on thermal and exergy efficiency. In the organic Rankin cycle, where solar energy is used as input energy, the fluid selection is considered as a necessary factor to achieve reliable and efficient operation. Therefore, silicon oil is selected for a high-temperature cycle and water for a low-temperature cycle as an operating fluid. The results showed that increasing the mass flow to turbines 1 and 2 would increase thermal efficiency, while it reduces and increases the exergy efficiency in turbines 1 and 2, respectively. Increasing the inlet pressure to the turbine 1 decreases the thermal and exergy efficiency, and increasing the inlet pressure to the turbine 2 increases the thermal efficiency and exergy efficiency. Also, increasing the angle of the collector increased thermal efficiency and exergy. The thermal efficiency of the system was 22.3% which improves to 33.2 and 27.2% in single-objective and multi-objective optimization, respectively. Also, the exergy efficiency of the system was 1.33% which has been improved to 1.719 and 1.529% in single-objective and multi-objective optimization, respectively. These results showed that the thermal and exergy efficiency in a single-objective optimization is greater than the multi-objective optimization.

Keywords: Exergy analysis, Genetic algorithm, Rankine cycle, Single and Multi-objective function.

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Authors: M. T. Yazdani Sabouni, Rasaratnam Logendran

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We consider a typical problem in the assembly of printed circuit boards (PCBs) in a two-machine flow shop system to simultaneously minimize the weighted sum of weighted tardiness and weighted flow time. The investigated problem is a group scheduling problem in which PCBs are assembled in groups and the interest is to find the best sequence of groups as well as the boards within each group to minimize the objective function value. The type of setup operation between any two board groups is characterized as carryover sequence-dependent setup time, which exactly matches with the real application of this problem. As a technical constraint, all of the boards must be kitted before the assembly operation starts (kitting operation) and by kitting staff. The main idea developed in this paper is to completely eliminate the role of kitting staff by assigning the task of kitting to the machine operator during the time he is idle which is referred to as integration of internal (machine) and external (kitting) setup times. Performing the kitting operation, which is a preparation process of the next set of boards while the other boards are currently being assembled, results in the boards to continuously enter the system or have dynamic arrival times. Consequently, a dynamic PCB assembly system is introduced for the first time in the assembly of PCBs, which also has characteristics similar to that of just-in-time manufacturing. The problem investigated is computationally very complex, meaning that finding the optimal solutions especially when the problem size gets larger is impossible. Thus, a heuristic based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) is employed. An example problem on the application of the GA developed is demonstrated and also numerical results of applying the GA on solving several instances are provided.

Keywords: Genetic algorithm, Dynamic PCB assembly, Carryover sequence-dependent setup times, Multi-objective.

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Authors: B. Sathyanandhi, P. M. Balasubramaniam

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This paper presents Buck-Boost converter topology to maintain the input power factor by using the power factor stage control and regulation stage control. Suppose, if we are using the RL load the power factor will be reduced due to the presence of total harmonic distortion in the current wave. To improve the power factor the current waveform should follow the fundamental component of the voltage waveform. These can be achieved by using the high -frequency power converter. Based on the resonant circuit the converter is able to perform the function of Buck, Boost, and buck-boost converter. Here ,we have used Buck-Boost converter, because, the buck-boost converter has more advantages than the boost converter. Here the switching action of the power converter can  take place by using the external zero comparator PFC stage control. The power converter consisting of the resonant  circuit which is used to control the output voltage gain of the converter. The power converter is operated at a very high switching frequency in the range of 400KHz in order to overcome the switching losses of the power converter. Due to  presence of high switching frequency, the power factor will improve. Therefore, the total harmonics distortion present in the current waveform has also reduced. These results has generated in the form of simulation by using MATLAB/SIMULINK software.  Similar to the Buck and Boost converters, the operation of the Buck-Boost has best understood, in terms of the inductor's "reluctance" for allowing rapid change in current, which also reduces the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) in the input current waveform, which can improve the input Power factor, based on the type of load used.

Keywords: Buck-boost converter, High switching frequency, Power factor correction, power factor correction stage Regulation stage, Total harmonic distortion (THD).

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Authors: R. A. Isabel, E. Baburaj

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Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are essential for real-time health monitoring of patients and in diagnosing of many diseases. WBANs comprise many sensors to monitor a large range of ambient conditions. Quality of Service (QoS) is a key challenge in WBAN, because the different state information of the neighboring nodes has to be monitored in an accurate manner. However, energy consumption gets increased while predicting and maintaining the exact information in highly dynamic environments. In order to reduce energy consumption and end to end delay, Markov Chain Based Quality of Service Support (MC-QoSS) method is designed in the health monitoring services of WBAN communication. The energy consumption gets reduced by forming a Markov chain with high energy nodes in the sensor networks communication path. The low energy level sensor nodes are removed using transitional probability in order to reduce end to end delay. High energy nodes are formed in the chain structure of its corresponding path to enhance communication. After choosing the communication path through high energy nodes, the packets are sent to the sink node from the source node with a higher Packet Delivery Ratio. The simulation result shows that MC-QoSS method improves the packet delivery ratio and reduces energy consumption with minimum end to end delay, compared to existing methods.

Keywords: Wireless body area networks, quality of service, Markov chain, health monitoring services.

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Authors: Alireza Ansariyar, Safieh Laaly

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Over the last decades, the vehicle industry has shown increased interest in integrating autonomous, connected, and electrical technologies in vehicle design with the primary hope of improving mobility and road safety while reducing transportation’s environmental impact. Using the State of Maryland (M.D.) in the United States as a pilot study, this research investigates Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) fuel consumption and air pollutants including Carbon Monoxide (CO), Particulate Matter (PM), and Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and utilizes meaningful linear regression models to predict CAV’s environmental effects. Maryland transportation network was simulated in VISUM software, and data on a set of variables were collected through a comprehensive survey. The number of pollutants and fuel consumption were obtained for the time interval 2010 to 2021 from the macro simulation. Eventually, four linear regression models were proposed to predict the amount of C.O., NOx, PM pollutants, and fuel consumption in the future. The results highlighted that CAVs’ pollutants and fuel consumption have a significant correlation with the income, age, and race of the CAV customers. Furthermore, the reliability of four statistical models was compared with the reliability of macro simulation model outputs in the year 2030. The error of three pollutants and fuel consumption was obtained at less than 9% by statistical models in SPSS. This study is expected to assist researchers and policymakers with planning decisions to reduce CAV environmental impacts in M.D.

Keywords: Connected and autonomous vehicles, statistical model, environmental effects, pollutants and fuel consumption, VISUM, linear regression models.

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Authors: Keiko Shimazu, Yasuhiro Maida, Tetsuya Sugata, Daisuke Tamakoshi, Kenji Makabe, Haruki Suzuki

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In this paper, we report how to acquire serious victims’ locations in the Acute Stage of Large-scale Disasters, in an Emergency Information Network System designed by us. The background of our concept is based on the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11^th, 2011. Through many experiences of national crises caused by earthquakes and tsunamis, we have established advanced communication systems and advanced disaster medical response systems. However, Japan was devastated by huge tsunamis swept a vast area of Tohoku causing a complete breakdown of all the infrastructures including telecommunications. Therefore, we noticed that we need interdisciplinary collaboration between science of disaster medicine, regional administrative sociology, satellite communication technology and systems engineering experts. Communication of emergency information was limited causing a serious delay in the initial rescue and medical operation. For the emergency rescue and medical operations, the most important thing is to identify the number of casualties, their locations and status and to dispatch doctors and rescue workers from multiple organizations. In the case of the Tohoku earthquake, the dispatching mechanism and/or decision support system did not exist to allocate the appropriate number of doctors and locate disaster victims. Even though the doctors and rescue workers from multiple government organizations have their own dedicated communication system, the systems are not interoperable.

Keywords: Crisis management, disaster mitigation, messing, MGRS, Satellite communication system.

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Authors: P. Valsalal, S. Thangalakshmi

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There is a widespread changeover in the electrical power industry universally from old-style monopolistic outline towards a horizontally distributed competitive structure to come across the demand of rising consumption. When the transmission lines of derestricted system are incapable to oblige the entire service needs, the lines are overloaded or congested. The governor between customer and power producer is nominated as Independent System Operator (ISO) to lessen the congestion without obstructing transmission line restrictions. Among the existing approaches for congestion management, the frequently used approaches are reorganizing the generation and load curbing. There is a boundary for reorganizing the generators, and further loads may not be supplemented with the prevailing resources unless more private power producers are added in the system by considerably raising the cost. Hence, congestion is relaxed by appropriate Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices which boost the existing transfer capacity of transmission lines. The FACTs device, namely, Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) is preferred, and the correct placement of UPFC is more vital and should be positioned in the highly congested line. Hence, the weak line is identified by using power flow performance index with the new objective function with proposed hybrid Fish – Bee algorithm. Further, the location of UPFC at appropriate line reduces the branch loading and minimizes the voltage deviation. The power transfer capacity of lines is determined with and without UPFC in the identified congested line of IEEE 30 bus structure and the simulated results are compared with prevailing algorithms. It is observed that the transfer capacity of existing line is increased with the presented algorithm and thus alleviating the congestion.

Keywords: Available line transfer capability, congestion management, FACTS device, hybrid fish-bee algorithm, ISO, UPFC.

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Authors: Raymond Xu, Ashley Hua, Andrew Wang, Yuru Lin

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During COVID-19, the depression rate has increased dramatically. Young adults are most vulnerable to the mental health effects of the pandemic. Lower-income families have a higher ratio to be diagnosed with depression than the general population, but less access to clinics. This research aims to achieve early depression detection at low cost, large scale, and high accuracy with an interdisciplinary approach by incorporating clinical practices defined by American Psychiatric Association (APA) as well as multimodal AI framework. The proposed approach detected the nine depression symptoms with Natural Language Processing sentiment analysis and a symptom-based Lexicon uniquely designed for young adults. The experiments were conducted on the multimedia survey results from adolescents and young adults and unbiased Twitter communications. The result was further aggregated with the facial emotional cues analyzed by the Convolutional Neural Network on the multimedia survey videos. Five experiments each conducted on 10k data entries reached consistent results with an average accuracy of 88.31%, higher than the existing natural language analysis models. This approach can reach 300+ million daily active Twitter users and is highly accessible by low-income populations to promote early depression detection to raise awareness in adolescents and young adults and reveal complementary cues to assist clinical depression diagnosis.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, depression detection, facial emotion recognition, natural language processing, mental disorder.

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Authors: Hijun Kim, Jungkeun Sung, Seungwoo Kim

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In this paper, a Smart Home Service Robot, McBot II, which performs mess-cleanup function etc. in house, is designed much more optimally than other service robots. It is newly developed in much more practical system than McBot I which we had developed two years ago. One characteristic attribute of mobile platforms equipped with a set of dependent wheels is their omni- directionality and the ability to realize complex translational and rotational trajectories for agile navigation in door. An accurate coordination of steering angle and spinning rate of each wheel is necessary for a consistent motion. This paper develops trajectory controller of 3-wheels omni-directional mobile robot using fuzzy azimuth estimator. A specialized anthropomorphic robot manipulator which can be attached to the housemaid robot McBot II, is developed in this paper. This built-in type manipulator consists of both arms with 3 DOF (Degree of Freedom) each and both hands with 3 DOF each. The robotic arm is optimally designed to satisfy both the minimum mechanical size and the maximum workspace. Minimum mass and length are required for the built-in cooperated-arms system. But that makes the workspace so small. This paper proposes optimal design method to overcome the problem by using neck joint to move the arms horizontally forward/backward and waist joint to move them vertically up/down. The robotic hand, which has two fingers and a thumb, is also optimally designed in task-based concept. Finally, the good performance of the developed McBot II is confirmed through live tests of the mess-cleanup task.

Keywords: Holonomic Omni-wheeled Mobile Robot, Special-purpose, Manipulation, Home Service Robot

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Authors: Chakraborty Sudipta, A. R. Kambekar, Sarma Arnab

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Sea-level rise being one of the most important impacts of anthropogenic induced climate change resulting from global warming and melting of icebergs at Arctic and Antarctic, the investigations done by various researchers both on Indian Coast and elsewhere during the last decade has been reviewed in this paper. The paper aims to ascertain the propensity of consistency of different suggested methods to predict the near-accurate future sea level rise along the coast of Mumbai. Case studies at East Coast, Southern Tip and West and South West coast of India have been reviewed. Coastal Vulnerability Index of several important international places has been compared, which matched with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecasts. The application of Geographic Information System mapping, use of remote sensing technology, both Multi Spectral Scanner and Thematic Mapping data from Landsat classified through Iterative Self-Organizing Data Analysis Technique for arriving at high, moderate and low Coastal Vulnerability Index at various important coastal cities have been observed. Instead of data driven, hindcast based forecast for Significant Wave Height, additional impact of sea level rise has been suggested. Efficacy and limitations of numerical methods vis-à-vis Artificial Neural Network has been assessed, importance of Root Mean Square error on numerical results is mentioned. Comparing between various computerized methods on forecast results obtained from MIKE 21 has been opined to be more reliable than Delft 3D model.

Keywords: Climate change, coastal vulnerability index, global warming, sea level rise.

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Authors: P. S. Thein, S. Pramumijoyo, K. S. Brotopuspito, J. Kiyono, W. Wilopo, A. Furukawa, A. Setianto

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In this study, we estimated the seismic ground motion parameters based on microtremor measurements atPalu City. Several earthquakes have struck along the Palu-Koro Fault during recent years. The USGS epicenter, magnitude Mw 6.3 event that occurred on January 23, 2005 caused several casualties. We conducted a microtremor survey to estimate the strong ground motion distribution during the earthquake. From this surveywe produced a map of the peak ground acceleration, velocity, seismic vulnerability index and ground shear strain maps in Palu City. We performed single observations of microtremor at 151 sites in Palu City. We also conducted8-site microtremors array investigation to gain a representative determination of the soil condition of subsurface structures in Palu City.From the array observations, Palu City corresponds to relatively soil condition with Vs ≤ 300m/s, the predominant periods due to horizontal vertical ratios (HVSRs) are in the range of 0.4 to 1.8 s and the frequency are in the range of 0.7 to 3.3 Hz. Strong ground motions of the Palu area were predicted based on the empirical stochastic green’s function method. Peak ground acceleration and velocity becomes more than 400 gal and 30 kine in some areas, which causes severe damage for buildings in high probability. Microtremor survey results showed that in hilly areas had low seismic vulnerability index and ground shear strain, whereas in coastal alluvium was composed of material having a high seismic vulnerability and ground shear strain indication.

Keywords: Palu-Koro Fault, Microtremor, Peak Ground Acceleration, Peak Ground Velocity and Seismic Vulnerability Index.

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Authors: Diriba Gemechu, Lamessa Abebe

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The aim of this study was to examine the effect of cooperative learning method on student’s academic achievement and on the achievement level over a usual method in teaching different topics of mathematics. The study also examines the perceptions of students towards cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is the instructional strategy in which pairs or small groups of students with different levels of ability work together to accomplish a shared goal. The aim of this cooperation is for students to maximize their own and each other learning, with members striving for joint benefit. The teacher’s role changes from wise on the wise to guide on the side. Cooperative learning due to its influential aspects is the most prevalent teaching-learning technique in the modern world. Therefore the study was conducted in order to examine the effect of cooperative learning on the academic achievement of grade 9 students in Mathematics in case of Mettu secondary school. Two sample sections are randomly selected by which one section served randomly as an experimental and the other as a comparison group. Data gathering instruments are achievement tests and questionnaires. A treatment of STAD method of cooperative learning was provided to the experimental group while the usual method is used in the comparison group. The experiment lasted for one semester. To determine the effect of cooperative learning on the student’s academic achievement, the significance of difference between the scores of groups at 0.05 levels was tested by applying t test. The effect size was calculated to see the strength of the treatment. The student’s perceptions about the method were tested by percentiles of the questionnaires. During data analysis, each group was divided into high and low achievers on basis of their previous Mathematics result. Data analysis revealed that both the experimental and comparison groups were almost equal in Mathematics at the beginning of the experiment. The experimental group out scored significantly than comparison group on posttest. Additionally, the comparison of mean posttest scores of high achievers indicates significant difference between the two groups. The same is true for low achiever students of both groups on posttest. Hence, the result of the study indicates the effectiveness of the method for Mathematics topics as compared to usual method of teaching.

Keywords: Cooperative learning, academic achievement, experimental group, comparison group.

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Authors: R.M. Kainkwa

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The African Great Lakes Region refers to the zone around lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, Albert, Edward, Kivu, and Malawi. The main source of electricity in this region is hydropower whose systems are generally characterized by relatively weak, isolated power schemes, poor maintenance and technical deficiencies with limited electricity infrastructures. Most of the hydro sources are rain fed, and as such there is normally a deficiency of water during the dry seasons and extended droughts. In such calamities fossil fuels sources, in particular petroleum products and natural gas, are normally used to rescue the situation but apart from them being nonrenewable, they also release huge amount of green house gases to our environment which in turn accelerates the global warming that has at present reached an amazing stage. Wind power is ample, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and free energy source that does not consume or pollute water. Wind generated electricity is one of the most practical and commercially viable option for grid quality and utility scale electricity production. However, the main shortcoming associated with electric wind power generation is fluctuation in its output both in space and time. Before making a decision to establish a wind park at a site, the wind speed features there should therefore be known thoroughly as well as local demand or transmission capacity. The main objective of this paper is to utilise monthly average wind speed data collected from one prospective site within the African Great Lakes Region to demonstrate that the available wind power there is high enough to generate electricity. The mean monthly values were calculated from records gathered on hourly basis for a period of 5 years (2001 to 2005) from a site in Tanzania. The documentations that were collected at a height of 2 m were projected to a height of 50 m which is the standard hub height of wind turbines. The overall monthly average wind speed was found to be 12.11 m/s whereas June to November was established to be the windy season as the wind speed during the session is above the overall monthly wind speed. The available wind power density corresponding to the overall mean monthly wind speed was evaluated to be 1072 W/m2, a potential that is worthwhile harvesting for the purpose of electric generation.

Keywords: Hydro power, windy season, available wind powerdensity.

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Authors: F. Ayça Varol Saraçoğlu, Hayrullah Ağaçcıoğlu

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Experimental studies to investigate the depth of the scour conducted at a side-weir intersection located at the 1800 curved flume which located Hydraulic Laboratory of Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. Side weirs were located at the middle of the straight part of the main channel. Three different lengths (25, 40 and 50 cm) and three different weir crest height (7, 10 and 12 cm) of the side weir placed on the side weir station. There is no scour when the material is only kaolin. Therefore, the cohesive bed was prepared by properly mixing clay material (kaolin) with 31% sand in all experiments. Following 24h consolidation time, in order to observe the effect of flow intensity on the scour depth, experiments were carried out for five different upstream Froude numbers in the range of 0.33-0.81. As a result of this study the relation between scour depth and upstream flow intensity as a function of time have been established. The longitudinal velocities decreased along the side weir; towards the downstream due to overflow over the side-weirs. At the beginning, the scour depth increases rapidly with time and then asymptotically approached constant values in all experiments for all side weir dimensions as in non-cohesive sediment. Thus, the scour depth reached equilibrium conditions. Time to equilibrium depends on the approach flow intensity and the dimensions of side weirs. For different heights of the weir crest, dimensionless scour depths increased with increasing upstream Froude number. Equilibrium scour depths which formed 7 cm side-weir crest height were obtained higher than that of the 12 cm side-weir crest height. This means when side-weir crest height increased equilibrium scour depths decreased. Although the upstream side of the scour hole is almost vertical, the downstream side of the hole is inclined.

Keywords: Clay-sand mixed sediments, scour, side weir.

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Authors: Shahram Nowrouzieh, Abbas Rezaei Asl, Mohamad Ali Jafari

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Cotton, as a strategic crop, plays an important role in providing human food and clothing need, because of its oil, protein, and fiber. Iran has been one of the largest cotton producers in the world in the past, but unfortunately, for economic reasons, its production is reduced now. One of the ways to reduce the cost of cotton production is to expand the mechanization of cotton harvesting. Iranian farmers do not accept the function of cotton harvesters. One reason for this lack of acceptance of cotton harvesting machines is the number of field losses on these machines. So, the majority of cotton fields are harvested by hand. Although the correct setting of the harvesting machine is very important in the cotton losses, the morphological properties of the cotton plant also affect the performance of cotton harvesters. In this study, the effect of some cotton morphological properties such as the height of the cotton plant, number, and length of sympodial and monopodial branches, boll dimensions, boll weight, number of carpels and bracts angle were evaluated on the performance of cotton picker. In this research, the efficiency of John Deere 9920 spindle Cotton picker is investigated on five different Iranian cotton cultivars. The results indicate that there was a significant difference between the five cultivars in terms of machine harvest efficiency. Golestan cultivar showed the best cotton harvester performance with an average of 87.6% of total harvestable seed cotton and Khorshid cultivar had the least cotton harvester performance. The principal component analysis showed that, at 50.76% probability, the cotton picker efficiency is affected by the bracts angle positively and by boll dimensions, the number of carpels and the height of cotton plants negatively. The seed cotton remains (in the plant and on the ground) after harvester in PCA scatter plot were in the same zone with boll dimensions and several carpels.

Keywords: Cotton, bract, harvester, carpel.

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Authors: Yu-Min Chang, Kuo-Sheng Tsai, Hung-Te Tsai, Chia-Hsin Li

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This paper presents the early-warning lights classification management system for industrial parks promoted by the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) since 2011, including the definition of each early-warning light, objectives, action program and accomplishments. All of the 151 industrial parks in Taiwan were classified into four early-warning lights, including red, orange, yellow and green, for carrying out respective pollution management according to the monitoring data of soil and groundwater quality, regulatory compliance, and regulatory listing of control site or remediation site. The Taiwan EPA set up a priority list for high potential polluted industrial parks and investigated their soil and groundwater qualities based on the results of the light classification and pollution potential assessment. In 2011-2013, there were 44 industrial parks selected and carried out different investigation, such as the early warning groundwater well networks establishment and pollution investigation/verification for the red and orange-light industrial parks and the environmental background survey for the yellow-light industrial parks. Among them, 22 industrial parks were newly or continuously confirmed that the concentrations of pollutants exceeded those in soil or groundwater pollution control standards. Thus, the further investigation, groundwater use restriction, listing of pollution control site or remediation site, and pollutant isolation measures were implemented by the local environmental protection and industry competent authorities; the early warning lights of those industrial parks were proposed to adjust up to orange or red-light. Up to the present, the preliminary positive effect of the soil and groundwater quality management system for industrial parks has been noticed in several aspects, such as environmental background information collection, early warning of pollution risk, pollution investigation and control, information integration and application, and inter-agency collaboration. Finally, the work and goal of self-initiated quality management of industrial parks will be carried out on the basis of the inter-agency collaboration by the classified lights system of early warning and management as well as the regular announcement of the status of each industrial park.

Keywords: Industrial park, soil and groundwater quality management, early-warning lights classification, SOP for reporting and treatment of monitored abnormal events.

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Authors: Prasad Senadheera, Younousse Saidi, Frans JM Maathuis

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Rice seed expression (cDNA) library in the Lambda Zap 11® phage constructed from the developing grain 10-20 days after flowering was transformed into yeast for functional complementation assays in three salt sensitive yeast mutants S. cerevisiae strain CY162, G19 and Axt3K. Transformed cells of G19 and Axt3K with pYES vector with cDNA inserts showed enhance tolerance than those with empty pYes vector. Sequencing of the cDNA inserts revealed that they encode for the putative proteins with the sequence homologous to rice putative protein PROLM24 (Os06g31070), a prolamin precursor. Expression of this cDNA did not affect yeast growth in absence of salt. Axt3k and G19 strains expressing the PROLM24 were able to grow upto 400 mM and 600 mM of NaCl respectively. Similarly, Axt3k mutant with PROLM24 expression showed comparatively higher growth rate in the medium with excess LiCl (50 mM). The observation that expression of PROLM24 rescued the salt sensitive phenotypes of G19 and Axt3k indicates the existence of a regulatory system that ameliorates the effect of salt stress in the transformed yeast mutants. However, the exact function of the cDNA sequence, which shows partial sequence homology to yeast UTR1 is not clear. Although UTR1 involved in ferrous uptake and iron homeostasis in yeast cells, there is no evidence to prove its role in Na+ homeostasis in yeast cells. Absence of transmembrane regions in Os06g31070 protein indicates that salt tolerance is achieved not through the direct functional complementation of the mutant genes but through an alternative mechanism.

Keywords: Rice seed expression, salt stress, prolamin, salinitytolerance, Oryza sativa

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Authors: Benazeer Md. Shahzada, Verelst Jan, Van Grembergen Wim, Mannaert Herwig

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This article is an extension and a practical application approach of Wheeler-s NEBIC theory (Net Enabled Business Innovation Cycle). NEBIC theory is a new approach in IS research and can be used for dynamic environment related to new technology. Firms can follow the market changes rapidly with support of the IT resources. Flexible firms adapt their market strategies, and respond more quickly to customers changing behaviors. When every leading firm in an industry has access to the same IT resources, the way that these IT resources are managed will determine the competitive advantages or disadvantages of firm. From Dynamic Capabilities Perspective and from newly introduced NEBIC theory by Wheeler, we know that only IT resources cannot deliver customer value but good configuration of those resources can guarantee customer value by choosing the right emerging technology, grasping the right economic opportunities through business innovation and growth. We found evidences in literature that SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is a promising emerging technology which can deliver the desired economic opportunity through modularity, flexibility and loose-coupling. SOA can also help firms to connect in network which can open a new window of opportunity to collaborate in innovation and right kind of outsourcing. There are many articles and research reports indicates that failure rate in outsourcing is very high but at the same time research indicates that successful outsourcing projects adds tangible and intangible benefits to the service consumer. Business executives and policy makers in the west should not afraid of outsourcing but they should choose the right strategy through the use of emerging technology to significantly reduce the failure rate in outsourcing.

Keywords: Absorptive capacity, Dynamic Capability, Netenabled business innovation cycle, Service oriented architecture.

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Authors: M. Karimpour, L. Hitihamillage, N. Elkhoury, S. Moridpour, R. Hesami

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Rail transport authorities around the world have been facing a significant challenge when predicting rail infrastructure maintenance work for a long period of time. Generally, maintenance monitoring and prediction is conducted manually. With the restrictions in economy, the rail transport authorities are in pursuit of improved modern methods, which can provide precise prediction of rail maintenance time and location. The expectation from such a method is to develop models to minimize the human error that is strongly related to manual prediction. Such models will help them in understanding how the track degradation occurs overtime under the change in different conditions (e.g. rail load, rail type, rail profile). They need a well-structured technique to identify the precise time that rail tracks fail in order to minimize the maintenance cost/time and secure the vehicles. The rail track characteristics that have been collected over the years will be used in developing rail track degradation prediction models. Since these data have been collected in large volumes and the data collection is done both electronically and manually, it is possible to have some errors. Sometimes these errors make it impossible to use them in prediction model development. This is one of the major drawbacks in rail track degradation prediction. An accurate model can play a key role in the estimation of the long-term behavior of rail tracks. Accurate models increase the track safety and decrease the cost of maintenance in long term. In this research, a short review of rail track degradation prediction models has been discussed before estimating rail track degradation for the curve sections of Melbourne tram track system using Adaptive Network-based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) model.

Keywords: ANFIS, MGT, Prediction modeling, rail track degradation.

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Authors: M. Okan Tasar

Abstract:

Basel III (or the Third Basel Accord) is a global regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy, stress testing and market liquidity risk agreed upon by the members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 2010-2011, and scheduled to be introduced from 2013 until 2018. Basel III is a comprehensive set of reform measures. These measures aim to; (1) improve the banking sector-s ability to absorb shocks arising from financial and economic stress, whatever the source, (2) improve risk management and governance, (3) strengthen banks- transparency and disclosures. Similarly the reform target; (1) bank level or micro-prudential, regulation, which will help raise the resilience of individual banking institutions to periods of stress. (2) Macro-prudential regulations, system wide risk that can build up across the banking sector as well as the pro-cyclical implication of these risks over time. These two approaches to supervision are complementary as greater resilience at the individual bank level reduces the risk system wide shocks. Macroeconomic impact of Basel III; OECD estimates that the medium-term impact of Basel III implementation on GDP growth is in the range -0,05 percent to -0,15 percent per year. On the other hand economic output is mainly affected by an increase in bank lending spreads as banks pass a rise in banking funding costs, due to higher capital requirements, to their customers. Consequently the estimated effects on GDP growth assume no active response from monetary policy. Basel III impact on economic output could be offset by a reduction (or delayed increase) in monetary policy rates by about 30 to 80 basis points. The aim of this paper is to create a framework based on the recent regulations in order to prevent financial crises. Thus the need to overcome the global financial crisis will contribute to financial crises that may occur in the future periods. In the first part of the paper, the effects of the global crisis on the banking system examine the concept of financial regulations. In the second part; especially in the financial regulations and Basel III are analyzed. The last section in this paper explored the possible consequences of the macroeconomic impacts of Basel III.

Keywords: Banking Systems, Basel III, Financial regulation, Global Financial Crisis.

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Authors: K. Shimola, M. Krishnaveni

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This paper examines vulnerability assessment of water resources in a semi-arid basin using the 4-step approach. The vulnerability assessment framework is developed to study the water resources vulnerability which includes the creation of GIS-based vulnerability maps. These maps represent the spatial variability of the vulnerability index. This paper introduces the 4-step approach to assess vulnerability that incorporates a new set of indicators. The approach is demonstrated using a framework composed of a precipitation data for (1975–2010) period, temperature data for (1965–2010) period, hydrological model outputs and the water resources GIS data base. The vulnerability assessment is a function of three components such as exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. The current water resources vulnerability is assessed using GIS based spatio-temporal information. Rainfall Coefficient of Variation, monsoon onset and end date, rainy days, seasonality indices, temperature are selected for the criterion ‘exposure’. Water yield, ground water recharge, evapotranspiration (ET) are selected for the criterion ‘sensitivity’. Type of irrigation and storage structures are selected for the criterion ‘Adaptive capacity’. These indicators were mapped and integrated in GIS environment using overlay analysis. The five sub-basins, namely Arjunanadhi, Kousiganadhi, Sindapalli-Uppodai and Vallampatti Odai, fall under medium vulnerability profile, which indicates that the basin is under moderate stress of water resources. The paper also explores prioritization of sub-basinwise adaptation strategies to climate change based on the vulnerability indices.

Keywords: Adaptive capacity, exposure, overlay analysis, sensitivity, vulnerability.

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Authors: Mohsen Masoomi, Fazel Asadi Amjad, Monireh Arvin

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According to Naturalistic principles, human destiny in the form of blind chance and determinism, entraps the individual, so man is a defenceless creature unable to escape from the ruthless paws of a stoical universe. In Naturalism; nonetheless, melodrama mirrors a conscious alternative with a peculiar function. A typical American Naturalistic character thus cannot be a subject for social criticism of American society since they are not victims of the ongoing virtual slavery, capitalist system, nor of a ruined milieu, but of their own volition, and more importantly, their character frailty. Through a Postmodern viewpoint, each Naturalistic work can encompass some entropic trends and changes culminating in an entire failure and devastation. Frank Norris in McTeague displays the futile struggles of ordinary men and how they end up brutes. McTeague encompasses intoxication, abuse, violation, and ruthless homicides. Norris’ depictions of the falling individual as a demon represent the entropic dimension of Naturalistic novels. McTeague’s defeat is somewhat his own fault, the result of his own blunders and resolution, not the result of sheer accident. Throughout the novel, each character is a kind of insane quester indicating McTeague’s decadence and, by inference, the decadence of Western civilisation. McTeague seems to designate Norris’ solicitude for a community fabricated by the elements of human negative demeanours and conducts hauling acute symptoms of infectious dehumanisation. The aim of this article is to illustrate how one specific negative human disposition gradually, like a running fire, can spread everywhere and burn everything in itself. The author applies the concept of entropy metaphorically to describe the individual devolutions that necessarily comprise community entropy in McTeague, a dying universe.

Keywords: Animal imagery, entropy, Gypsy, melodrama.

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Authors: Citlali Aguilera Lira, David Lynch Steinicke, Andrea León Garcia

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One of the challenges that higher education faces is to find how to approach the sustainability in an inclusive way to the student within all the different academic areas, how to move the sustainable development from the abstract field to the operational field. This research comes from the ecoliteracy and the pedagogical praxis as tools for rebuilding the teaching processes inside of universities. The purpose is to determine and describe which are the factors involved in the process of learning particularly in the Greenhouse-School Siembra UV. In the Greenhouse-School Siembra UV, of the University of Veracruz, are cultivated vegetables, medicinal plants and small cornfields under the usage of eco-technologies such as hydroponics, Wickingbed and Hugelkultur, which main purpose is the saving of space, labor and natural resources, as well as function as agricultural production alternatives in the urban and periurban zones. The sample was formed with students from different academic areas and who are actively involved in the greenhouse, as well as institutes from the University of Veracruz and governmental and nongovernmental departments. This project comes from a pedagogic praxis approach, from filling the needs that the different professional profiles of the university students have. All this with the purpose of generate a pragmatic dialogue with the sustainability. It also comes from the necessity to understand the factors that intervene in the students’ praxis. In this manner is how the students are the fundamental unit in the sphere of sustainability. As a result, it is observed that those University of Veracruz students who are involved in the Greenhouse-school, Siembra UV, have enriched in different levels the sense of urban and periurban agriculture because of the diverse academic approaches they have and the interaction between them. It is concluded that the ecotechnologies act as fundamental tools for ecoliteracy in society, where it is strengthen the nutritional and food security from a sustainable development approach.

Keywords: Farming eco-technologies, food security, multidisciplinary, pedagogical praxis.

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Authors: Hala S. Mekawy

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Affordable housing delivery for low and lower middle income families is a prominent problem in many developing countries; governments alone are unable to address this challenge due to diverse financial and regulatory constraints, and the private sector's contribution is rare and assists only middle-income households even when institutional and legal reforms are conducted to persuade it to go down market. Also, the market-enabling policy measures advocated by the World Bank since the early nineties have been strongly criticized and proven to be inappropriate to developing country contexts, where it is highly unlikely that the formal private sector can reach low income population. In addition to governments and private developers, affordable housing delivery systems involve an intricate network of relationships between a diverse range of actors. Collaboration between them was proven to be vital, and hence, an approach towards partnership schemes for affordable housing delivery has emerged. The basic premise of this paper is that addressing housing affordability challenges in Egypt demands direct public support, as markets and market actors alone would never succeed in delivering decent affordable housing to low and lower middle income groups. It argues that this support would ideally be through local level partnership schemes, with a leading decentralized local government role, and partners being identified according to specific local conditions. It attempts to identify major attributes that would ensure the fulfillment of the goals of such schemes in the Egyptian context. This is based upon evidence from diversified worldwide experiences, in addition to the main outcomes of a questionnaire that was conducted to specialists and chief actors in the field.

Keywords: Affordable housing, partnership schemes.

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Authors: Feng-Sheng Wang, Wu-Hsiung Wu, Kai-Cheng Hsu

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The optimization of biological systems, which is a branch of metabolic engineering, has generated a lot of industrial and academic interest for a long time. In the last decade, metabolic engineering approaches based on mathematical optimizations have been used extensively for the analysis and manipulation of metabolic networks. In practical optimization of metabolic reaction networks, designers have to manage the nature of uncertainty resulting from qualitative characters of metabolic reactions, e.g., the possibility of enzyme effects. A deterministic approach does not give an adequate representation for metabolic reaction networks with uncertain characters. Fuzzy optimization formulations can be applied to cope with this problem. A fuzzy multi-objective optimization problem can be introduced for finding the optimal engineering interventions on metabolic network systems considering the resilience phenomenon and cell viability constraints. The accuracy of optimization results depends heavily on the development of essential kinetic models of metabolic networks. Kinetic models can quantitatively capture the experimentally observed regulation data of metabolic systems and are often used to find the optimal manipulation of external inputs. To address the issues of optimizing the regulatory structure of metabolic networks, it is necessary to consider qualitative effects, e.g., the resilience phenomena and cell viability constraints. Combining the qualitative and quantitative descriptions for metabolic networks makes it possible to design a viable strain and accurately predict the maximum possible flux rates of desired products. Considering the resilience phenomena in metabolic networks can improve the predictions of gene intervention and maximum synthesis rates in metabolic engineering. Two case studies will present in the conference to illustrate the phenomena.

Keywords: Fuzzy multi-objective optimization problem, kinetic model, metabolic engineering.

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Authors: Bernardo C. P. Albuquerque, Darym J. F. Campos

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Increasing our ability to solve complex engineering problems is directly related to the processing capacity of computers. By means of such equipments, one is able to fast and accurately run numerical algorithms. Besides the increasing interest in numerical simulations, probabilistic approaches are also of great importance. This way, statistical tools have shown their relevance to the modelling of practical engineering problems. In general, statistical approaches to such problems consider that the random variables involved follow a normal distribution. This assumption tends to provide incorrect results when skew data is present since normal distributions are symmetric about their means. Thus, in order to visualize and quantify this aspect, 9 statistical distributions (symmetric and skew) have been considered to model a hypothetical slope stability problem. The data modeled is the friction angle of a superficial soil in Brasilia, Brazil. Despite the apparent universality, the normal distribution did not qualify as the best fit. In the present effort, data obtained in consolidated-drained triaxial tests and saturated direct shear tests have been modeled and used to analytically derive the probability density function (PDF) of the safety factor of a hypothetical slope based on Mohr-Coulomb rupture criterion. Therefore, based on this analysis, it is possible to explicitly derive the failure probability considering the friction angle as a random variable. Furthermore, it is possible to compare the stability analysis when the friction angle is modelled as a Dagum distribution (distribution that presented the best fit to the histogram) and as a Normal distribution. This comparison leads to relevant differences when analyzed in light of the risk management.

Keywords: Statistical slope stability analysis, Skew distributions, Probability of failure, Functions of random variables.

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Authors: Tahani Aljohani, Jialin Yu, Alexandra. I. Cristea

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The more an educational system knows about a learner, the more personalised interaction it can provide, which leads to better learning. However, asking a learner directly is potentially disruptive, and often ignored by learners. Especially in the booming realm of MOOC Massive Online Learning platforms, only a very low percentage of users disclose demographic information about themselves. Thus, in this paper, we aim to predict learners’ demographic characteristics, by proposing an approach using linguistically motivated Deep Learning Architectures for Learner Profiling, particularly targeting gender prediction on a FutureLearn MOOC platform. Additionally, we tackle here the difficult problem of predicting the gender of learners based on their comments only – which are often available across MOOCs. The most common current approaches to text classification use the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model, considering sentences as sequences. However, human language also has structures. In this research, rather than considering sentences as plain sequences, we hypothesise that higher semantic - and syntactic level sentence processing based on linguistics will render a richer representation. We thus evaluate, the traditional LSTM versus other bleeding edge models, which take into account syntactic structure, such as tree-structured LSTM, Stack-augmented Parser-Interpreter Neural Network (SPINN) and the Structure-Aware Tag Augmented model (SATA). Additionally, we explore using different word-level encoding functions. We have implemented these methods on Our MOOC dataset, which is the most performant one comparing with a public dataset on sentiment analysis that is further used as a cross-examining for the models' results.

Keywords: Deep learning, data mining, gender predication, MOOCs.

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Authors: A. A. Zaidan, Anas Majeed, B. B. Zaidan

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Nowadays, the rapid development of multimedia and internet allows for wide distribution of digital media data. It becomes much easier to edit, modify and duplicate digital information Besides that, digital documents are also easy to copy and distribute, therefore it will be faced by many threatens. It-s a big security and privacy issue with the large flood of information and the development of the digital format, it become necessary to find appropriate protection because of the significance, accuracy and sensitivity of the information. Nowadays protection system classified with more specific as hiding information, encryption information, and combination between hiding and encryption to increase information security, the strength of the information hiding science is due to the non-existence of standard algorithms to be used in hiding secret messages. Also there is randomness in hiding methods such as combining several media (covers) with different methods to pass a secret message. In addition, there are no formal methods to be followed to discover the hidden data. For this reason, the task of this research becomes difficult. In this paper, a new system of information hiding is presented. The proposed system aim to hidden information (data file) in any execution file (EXE) and to detect the hidden file and we will see implementation of steganography system which embeds information in an execution file. (EXE) files have been investigated. The system tries to find a solution to the size of the cover file and making it undetectable by anti-virus software. The system includes two main functions; first is the hiding of the information in a Portable Executable File (EXE), through the execution of four process (specify the cover file, specify the information file, encryption of the information, and hiding the information) and the second function is the extraction of the hiding information through three process (specify the steno file, extract the information, and decryption of the information). The system has achieved the main goals, such as make the relation of the size of the cover file and the size of information independent and the result file does not make any conflict with anti-virus software.

Keywords: Cryptography, Steganography, Portable ExecutableFile.

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Authors: Majid Yazdandoust

Abstract:

This study, tries to suggest a design method based on displacement using finite difference numerical modeling in reinforcing soil retaining wall with steel strip. In this case, dynamic loading characteristics such as duration, frequency, peak ground acceleration, geometrical characteristics of reinforced soil structure and type of the site are considered to correct the pseudo static method and finally introduce the pseudo static coefficient as a function of seismic performance level and peak ground acceleration. For this purpose, the influence of dynamic loading characteristics, reinforcement length, height of reinforced system and type of the site are investigated on seismic behavior of reinforcing soil retaining wall with steel strip. Numerical results illustrate that the seismic response of this type of wall is highly dependent to cumulative absolute velocity, maximum acceleration, and height and reinforcement length so that the reinforcement length can be introduced as the main factor in shape of failure. Considering the loading parameters, geometric parameters of the wall and type of the site showed that the used method in this study leads to efficient designs in comparison with other methods, which are usually based on limit-equilibrium concept. The outputs show the over-estimation of equilibrium design methods in comparison with proposed displacement based methods here.

Keywords: Pseudo static coefficient, seismic performance design, numerical modeling, steel strip reinforcement, retaining walls, cumulative absolute velocity, failure shape.

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