Search results for: performance factors

Authors: Noor Zainab Habib, Ibrahim Kamaruddin, Madzalan Napiah, Isa Mohd Tan

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This paper presents a part of research on the rheological properties of bitumen modified by thermoplastic namely linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), high density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) and its interaction with 80 pen base bitumen. As it is known that the modification of bitumen by the use of polymers enhances its performance characteristics but at the same time significantly alters its rheological properties. The rheological study of polymer modified bitumen (PMB) was made through penetration, ring & ball softening point and viscosity test. The results were then related to the changes in the rheological properties of polymer modified bitumen. It was observed that thermoplastic copolymer shows profound effect on penetration rather than softening point. The viscoelastic behavior of polymer modified bitumen depend on the concentration of polymer, mixing temperature, mixing technique, solvating power of base bitumen and molecular structure of polymer used. PP offer better blend in comparison to HDPE and LLDPE. The viscosity of base bitumen was also enhanced with the addition of polymer. The pseudoplastic behavior was more prominent for HDPE and LLDPE than PP. Best results were obtained when polymer concentration was kept below 3%

Keywords: Polymer modified bitumen, Linear low densitypolyethylene, High density polyethylene, Polypropylene.

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Authors: Parham Azimi, Mohammad Reza Ghanbari

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The dramatic increasing of sea-freight container transportations and the developing trends for using containers in the multimodal handling systems through the sea, rail, road and land in nowadays market cause general managers of container terminals to face challenges such as increasing demand, competitive situation, new investments and expansion of new activities and need to use new methods to fulfil effective operations both along quayside and within the yard. Among these issues, minimizing the turnaround time of vessels is considered to be the first aim of every container port system. Regarding the complex structure of container ports, this paper presents a simulation model that calculates the number of trucks needed in the Iranian Shahid Rajaee Container Port for handling containers between the berth and the yard. In this research, some important criteria such as vessel turnaround time, gantry crane utilization and truck utilization have been considered. By analyzing the results of the model, it has been shown that increasing the number of trucks to 66 units has a significant effect on the performance indices of the port and can increase the capacity of loading and unloading up to 10.8%.

Keywords: Container Terminal, Gantry Crane Utilization, Simulation, Vessel Turnaround Time

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Authors: Jailan Mohamed El Demerdash

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Millennials are a distinctive and dominant consumer group whose behavior, preferences and purchase decisions are broadly explored but not fully understood yet. Making up the largest market segment in the world, and in Egypt, they have the power to reinvent the hospitality industry and contribute to forming prospective demand for green hotels by showing willingness to adopting their environmental-friendly practices. The current study aims to enhance better understanding of Millennials' perception about sustainable initiatives and to increase the prediction power of their intentions regarding green hotel practices in Egypt. In doing so, the study is exploring the relation among different factors; Millennials' environmental awareness, their acceptance of green practices and their willingness to pay more for them. Millennials' profile, their preferences and environmental decision-making process are brought under light to stimulate actions of hospitality decision-makers and hoteliers. Bearing in mind that responsible consumerism is depending on understanding the different influences on consumption. The study questionnaire was composed of four sections and it was distributed to random Egyptian travelers' blogs and Facebook groups, with approximately 8000 members. Analysis of variance test (ANOVA) was used to examine the study variables. The findings indicated that Millennials' environmental awareness will not be a significant factor in their acceptance of hotel green practices, as well as, their willingness to pay more for them. However, Millennials' acceptance of the level of hotel green practices will have an impact on their willingness to pay more. Millennials were found to have a noticeable level of environmental awareness but lack commitment to tolerating hotel green practices and their associated high prices.

Keywords: Millennials, environment, awareness, green practices, paying more, Egypt.

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Authors: Lara F. Horani

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Design is one of the most important stages in the process of product development. Product design has experienced significant changes over the years ranging from concentrating on cost and performance to combining economic, environmental and social considerations in customer requirements. Its evolution is in accordance with rapidly changing technology, economic situations, and climate change and environmental issues, as well as social context. Within product design, sustainability is a concept that balances economic, social and environmental aspects. This research aims to express changes in customer requirements over time from the viewpoint of sustainable design. It does so by systematically reviewing a broad scope of sustainable design literature. There is a need for a model to consider the changes that take place in customer requirements over time to build a successful relationship with customers which has been presented. Today’s literature does very little to even mention it, let alone present any progress in it. Systematic literature reviews are conducted primarily to: summarize the existing literature around a subject, highlight commonalities to build consensus, illuminate differences, identify gaps that can be filled, provide a background to position future research, and build a framework that can help designers meet the challenges of sustainable design.

Keywords: Sustainable design, customer requirements for sustainable design, changing customer requirements for sustainable design, systematic literature reviews.

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Authors: Le Linh, Truong Nguyen Luan Vu, Le Hieu Giang

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In this work, the IMC-PID controller cascaded filter based on Internal Model Control (IMC) scheme is systematically proposed for the simplified decoupling control system. The simplified decoupling is firstly introduced for multivariable processes by using coefficient matching to obtain a stable, proper, and causal simplified decoupler. Accordingly, transfer functions of decoupled apparent processes can be expressed as a set of n equivalent independent processes and then derived as a ratio of the original open-loop transfer function to the diagonal element of the dynamic relative gain array. The IMC-PID controller in series with filter is then directly employed to enhance the overall performance of the decoupling control system while avoiding difficulties arising from properties inherent to simplified decoupling. Some simulation studies are considered to demonstrate the simplicity and effectiveness of the proposed method. Simulations were conducted by tuning various controllers of the multivariate processes with multiple time delays. The results indicate that the proposed method consistently performs well with fast and well-balanced closed-loop time responses.

Keywords: Coefficient matching method, internal model control scheme, PID controller cascaded filter, simplified decoupler.

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Authors: M. Feliciano, F. Rodrigues, A. Gonçalves, J. M. R. C. A. Santos, V. Leite

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With the objective of characterizing the profile and performance of energy use by slaughterhouses, surveys and audits were performed in two different facilities located in the northeastern region of Portugal. Energy consumption from multiple energy sources was assessed monthly, along with production and costs, for the same reference year. Gathered data was analyzed to identify and quantify the main consuming processes and to estimate energy efficiency indicators for benchmarking purposes. Main results show differences between the two slaughterhouses concerning energy sources, consumption by source and sector, and global energy efficiency. Electricity is the most used source in both slaughterhouses with a contribution of around 50%, being essentially used for meat processing and refrigeration. Natural gas, in slaughterhouse A, and pellets, in slaughterhouse B, used for heating water take the second place, with a mean contribution of about 45%. On average, a 62 kgoe/t specific energy consumption (SEC) was found, although with differences between slaughterhouses. A prominent negative correlation between SEC and carcass production was found specially in slaughterhouse A. Estimated Specific Energy Cost and Greenhouse Gases Intensity (GHGI) show mean values of about 50 €/t and 1.8 tCO₂e/toe, respectively. Main results show that there is a significant margin for improving energy efficiency and therefore lowering costs in this type of non-energy intensive industries. 

Keywords: Meat industry, energy intensity, energy efficiency, GHG emissions.

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Authors: Jipeng Yan, Xingchen Yang, Xiaowei Zhou, Mengxing Tang, Honghai Liu

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Shear elastic modulus of skeletal muscles can be obtained by shear wave elastography (SWE) and has been linearly related to muscle force. However, SWE is currently implemented using array probes. Price and volumes of these probes and their driving equipment prevent SWE from being used in wearable human-machine interfaces (HMI). Moreover, beamforming processing for array probes reduces the real-time performance. To achieve SWE by wearable HMIs, a customized three-element probe is adopted in this work, with one element for acoustic radiation force generation and the others for shear wave tracking. In-phase quadrature demodulation and 2D autocorrelation are adopted to estimate velocities of tissues on the sound beams of the latter two elements. Shear wave speeds are calculated by phase shift between the tissue velocities. Three agar phantoms with different elasticities were made by changing the weights of agar. Values of the shear elastic modulus of the phantoms were measured as 8.98, 23.06 and 36.74 kPa at a depth of 7.5 mm respectively. This work verifies the feasibility of measuring shear elastic modulus by wearable devices.

Keywords: Shear elastic modulus, skeletal muscle, ultrasound, wearable human-machine interface.

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Authors: A. Kablan

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The prediction of financial time series is a very complicated process. If the efficient market hypothesis holds, then the predictability of most financial time series would be a rather controversial issue, due to the fact that the current price contains already all available information in the market. This paper extends the Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System for High Frequency Trading which is an expert system that is capable of using fuzzy reasoning combined with the pattern recognition capability of neural networks to be used in financial forecasting and trading in high frequency. However, in order to eliminate unnecessary input in the training phase a new event based volatility model was proposed. Taking volatility and the scaling laws of financial time series into consideration has brought about the development of the Intraday Seasonality Observation Model. This new model allows the observation of specific events and seasonalities in data and subsequently removes any unnecessary data. This new event based volatility model provides the ANFIS system with more accurate input and has increased the overall performance of the system.

Keywords: Adaptive Neuro-fuzzy Inference system, High Frequency Trading, Intraday Seasonality Observation Model.

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Authors: Henrik Prinzhorn, Peter Nyhuis, Johannes Wagner, Peter Burggräf, Torben Schmitz, Christina Reuter

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Assembling large-scale products, such as airplanes, locomotives, or wind turbines, involves frequent process interruptions induced by e.g. delayed material deliveries or missing availability of resources. This leads to a negative impact on the logistical performance of a producer of xxl-products. In industrial practice, in case of interruptions, the identification, evaluation and eventually the selection of an alternative order of assembly activities (‘assembly alternative’) leads to an enormous challenge, especially if an optimized logistical decision should be reached. Therefore, in this paper, an innovative, optimization model for the identification of assembly alternatives that addresses the given problem is presented. It describes make-to-order, large-scale product assembly processes as a resource constrained project scheduling (RCPS) problem which follows given restrictions in practice. For the evaluation of the assembly alternative, a cost-based definition of the logistical objectives (delivery reliability, inventory, make-span and workload) is presented.

Keywords: Assembly scheduling, large-scale products, make-to-order, rescheduling, optimization.

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Authors: S.A.Ahmad, M.N.Taib, N.E.A.Khalid, R.Ahmad, H.Taib

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The purpose of this research is to compare the original intra-oral digital dental radiograph images with images that are enhanced using a combination of image processing algorithms. Intraoral digital dental radiograph images are often noisy, blur edges and low in contrast. A combination of sharpening and enhancement method are used to overcome these problems. Three types of proposed compound algorithms used are Sharp Adaptive Histogram Equalization (SAHE), Sharp Median Adaptive Histogram Equalization (SMAHE) and Sharp Contrast adaptive histogram equalization (SCLAHE). This paper presents an initial study of the perception of six dentists on the details of abnormal pathologies and improvement of image quality in ten intra-oral radiographs. The research focus on the detection of only three types of pathology which is periapical radiolucency, widen periodontal ligament space and loss of lamina dura. The overall result shows that SCLAHE-s slightly improve the appearance of dental abnormalities- over the original image and also outperform the other two proposed compound algorithms.

Keywords: intra-oral dental radiograph, histogram equalization, sharpening, CLAHE.

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Authors: A. Ghaffari, A. S. Mostafavi

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Complex assemblies of interacting proteins carry out most of the interesting jobs in a cell, such as metabolism, DNA synthesis, mitosis and cell division. These physiological properties play out as a subtle molecular dance, choreographed by underlying regulatory networks that control the activities of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK). The network can be modeled by a set of nonlinear differential equations and its behavior predicted by numerical simulation. In this paper, an innovative approach has been proposed that uses genetic algorithms to mine a set of behavior data output by a biological system in order to determine the kinetic parameters of the system. In our approach, the machine learning method is integrated with the framework of existent biological information in a wiring diagram so that its findings are expressed in a form of system dynamic behavior. By numerical simulations it has been illustrated that the model is consistent with experiments and successfully shown that such application of genetic algorithms will highly improve the performance of mathematical model of the cell division cycle to simulate such a complicated bio-system.

Keywords: Cell cycle, Cyclin-dependent kinase, Fission yeast, Genetic algorithms, Mathematical modeling, Wiring diagram

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Authors: Khaled Hamdan, Abid Amorri, Fatima Hamdan

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Involving students in English language learning process and achieving an adequate English language proficiency in the target language can be a great challenge for both teachers and students. This can prove even a far greater challenge to engage students with special needs (Dyslexia) if they have physical impairment and inadequate mastery of basic communicative language competence/proficiency in the target language. From this perspective, technology like robots can probably be used to enhance learning process for the special needs students who have extensive communication needs, who face continuous struggle to interact with their peers and teachers and meet academic requirements. Robots, precisely NAO, can probably provide them with the perfect opportunity to practice social and communication skills, and meet their English academic requirements. This research paper aims to identify to what extent robots can be used to improve students’ social interaction and communication skills and to understand the potential for robotics-based education in motivating and engaging UAEU dyslexic students to meet university requirements. To reach this end, the paper will explore several factors that come into play – Motion Level-involving cognitive activities, Interaction Level-involving language processing, Behavior Level -establishing a close relationship with the robot and Appraisal Level- focusing on dyslexia students’ achievement in the target language.

Keywords: Dyslexia, robot technology, motion, interaction, behavior and appraisal levels, social and communication skills.

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Authors: A. Soikkeli, L. Sorri

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Finnish national research project, User- and Business-oriented Suburb Renovation Concept (KLIKK), was started in January 2012 and will end in June 2014. The perspective of energy efficiency is emphasised in the project, but also it addresses what improving the energy efficiency of suburban apartment buildings means from the standpoint of architecturally valuable buildings representing different periods. The project will also test the impacts of stricter energy efficiency requirements on renovation projects.

The primary goal of the project is to develop a user-oriented, industrial, economic renovation concept for suburban apartment building renovation, extension and construction of additional storeys. The concept will make it possible to change from performance- and cost-based operation to novel service- and user-oriented, site-specifically tailored renovation methods utilizing integrated order and delivery chains.

The present project is collaborating with Ministry of the Environment and participating cities in developing a new type of lighter town planning model for suburban renovations and in-fill construction. To support this, the project will simultaneously develop practices for environmental impact assessment tools in renovation and suburban supplementary and in-fill construction.

 

Keywords: Energy efficiency, Prefabrication, Renovation concept, Suburbs, Sustainability, User-Orientated.

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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,

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Authors: K. Sandjak, B. Tiliouine

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This article presents the main results of three-dimensional (3-D) numerical investigation of asphalt pavement structures behaviour using a coupled Finite Element-Mapped Infinite Element (FE-MIE) model. The validation and numerical performance of this model are assessed by confronting critical pavement responses with Burmister’s solution and FEM simulation results for multi-layered elastic structures. The coupled model is then efficiently utilised to perform 3-D simulations of a typical asphalt pavement structure in order to investigate the impact of two tire configurations (conventional dual and new generation wide-base tires) on critical pavement response parameters. The numerical results obtained show the effectiveness and the accuracy of the coupled (FE-MIE) model. In addition, the simulation results indicate that, compared with conventional dual tire assembly, single wide base tire caused slightly greater fatigue asphalt cracking and subgrade rutting potentials and can thus be utilised in view of its potential to provide numerous mechanical, economic, and environmental benefits.

Keywords: Infinite elements, 3-D numerical investigation, asphalt pavements, dual and wide base tires.

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Authors: Wei-Jong Yang, Yu-Siang Su, Pau-Choo Chung, Jar-Ferr Yang

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Moving object detection (MOD) is an important issue in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). There are two important moving objects, pedestrians and scooters in ADAS. In real-world systems, there exist two important challenges for MOD, including the computational complexity and the detection accuracy. The histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) features can easily detect the edge of object without invariance to changes in illumination and shadowing. However, to reduce the execution time for real-time systems, the image size should be down sampled which would lead the outlier influence to increase. For this reason, we propose the histogram of uniformly-oriented gradient (HUG) features to get better accurate description of the contour of human body. In the testing phase, the support vector machine (SVM) with linear kernel function is involved. Experimental results show the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method. With SVM classifiers, the real testing results show the proposed HUG features achieve better than classification performance than the HOG ones.

Keywords: Moving object detection, histogram of oriented gradient histogram of oriented gradient, histogram of uniformly-oriented gradient, linear support vector machine.

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Authors: Yih-Ferng Peng

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In this paper, the local grid refinement is focused by using a nested grid technique. The Cartesian grid numerical method is developed for simulating unsteady, viscous, incompressible flows with complex immersed boundaries. A finite volume method is used in conjunction with a two-step fractional-step procedure. The key aspects that need to be considered in developing such a nested grid solver are imposition of interface conditions on the inter-block and accurate discretization of the governing equation in cells that are with the inter-block as a control surface. A new interpolation procedure is presented which allows systematic development of a spatial discretization scheme that preserves the spatial accuracy of the underlying solver. The present nested grid method has been tested by two numerical examples to examine its performance in the two dimensional problems. The numerical examples include flow past a circular cylinder symmetrically installed in a Channel and flow past two circular cylinders with different diameters. From the numerical experiments, the ability of the solver to simulate flows with complicated immersed boundaries is demonstrated and the nested grid approach can efficiently speed up the numerical solutions.

Keywords: local grid refinement, Cartesian grid, nested grid, fractional-step method.

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Authors: Takashi Kaburagi, Masashi Takenaka, Yosuke Kurihara, Takashi Matsumoto

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Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most common mental illnesses today. It is believed to be caused by a combination of several factors, including stress. Stress can be quantitatively evaluated using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), one of the best indices to evaluate anxiety. Although STAI scores are widely used in applications ranging from clinical diagnosis to basic research, the scores are calculated based on a self-reported questionnaire. An objective evaluation is required because the subject may intentionally change his/her answers if multiple tests are carried out. In this article, we present a modified index called the “multi-channel Laterality Index at Rest (mc-LIR)” by recording the brain activity from a wider area of the frontal lobe using multi-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The presented index aims to measure multiple positions near the F_pz defined by the international 10-20 system positioning. Using 24 subjects, the dependencies on the number of measuring points used to calculate the mc-LIR and its correlation coefficients with the STAI scores are reported. Furthermore, a simple linear regression was performed to estimate the STAI scores from mc-LIR. The cross-validation error is also reported. The experimental results show that using multiple positions near the Fpz will improve the correlation coefficients and estimation than those using only two positions.

Keywords: Stress, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, frontal lobe, state-trait anxiety inventory score.

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Authors: Farhad Kolahan, Mohsen Manoochehri, Abbas Hosseini

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Machining is an important manufacturing process used to produce a wide variety of metallic parts. Among various machining processes, turning is one of the most important one which is employed to shape cylindrical parts. In turning, the quality of finished product is measured in terms of surface roughness. In turn, surface quality is determined by machining parameters and tool geometry specifications. The main objective of this study is to simultaneously model and optimize machining parameters and tool geometry in order to improve the surface roughness for AISI1045 steel. Several levels of machining parameters and tool geometry specifications are considered as input parameters. The surface roughness is selected as process output measure of performance. A Taguchi approach is employed to gather experimental data. Then, based on signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, the best sets of cutting parameters and tool geometry specifications have been determined. Using these parameters values, the surface roughness of AISI1045 steel parts may be minimized. Experimental results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Keywords: Taguchi method, turning parameters, tool geometry specifications, S/N ratio, statistical analysis.

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Authors: Paula A. Cruise, Carvell McLeary

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Employee turnover leads to lowered productivity, decreased morale and work quality, and psychological effects associated with employee separation and replacement. Yet, it remains unknown why talented employees willingly withdraw from organizations. This uncertainty is worsened as studies; a) priorities organizational over individual predictors resulting in restriction in range in turnover measurement; b) focus on actual rather than intended turnover thereby limiting conceptual understanding of the turnover construct and its relationship with other variables and; c) produce inconsistent findings across cultures, contexts and industries despite a clear need for a unified perspective. The current study addressed these gaps by adopting the theory of planned behavior (TPB) framework to examine socio-cognitive factors in organizational trust and individual turnover intentions among bankers and energy employees in Jamaica. In a comparative study of n=369 [n_bank= 264; male=57 (22.73%); n_energy =105; male =45 (42.86)], it was hypothesized that organizational trust was a predictor of employee turnover intention, and the effect of individual, group, cognitive and socio-affective variables varied across industry. Findings from structural equation modelling confirmed the hypothesis, with a model of both cognitive and socio-affective variables being a better fit [CMIN (χ²) = 800.067, df = 364, p ≤ .000; CFI = 0.950; RMSEA = 0.057 with 90% C.I. (0.052 - 0.062); PCLOSE = 0.016; PNFI = 0.818 in predicting turnover intention. The findings are discussed in relation to socio-cognitive components of trust models and predicting negative employee behaviors across cultures and industries.

Keywords: Context-specific organizational trust, cross-cultural psychology, theory of planned behavior, employee turnover intention.

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Authors: N. M. Nawi, M. R. Ransing, R. S. Ransing

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The conjugate gradient optimization algorithm usually used for nonlinear least squares is presented and is combined with the modified back propagation algorithm yielding a new fast training multilayer perceptron (MLP) algorithm (CGFR/AG). The approaches presented in the paper consist of three steps: (1) Modification on standard back propagation algorithm by introducing gain variation term of the activation function, (2) Calculating the gradient descent on error with respect to the weights and gains values and (3) the determination of the new search direction by exploiting the information calculated by gradient descent in step (2) as well as the previous search direction. The proposed method improved the training efficiency of back propagation algorithm by adaptively modifying the initial search direction. Performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by comparing to the conjugate gradient algorithm from neural network toolbox for the chosen benchmark. The results show that the number of iterations required by the proposed method to converge is less than 20% of what is required by the standard conjugate gradient and neural network toolbox algorithm.

Keywords: Back-propagation, activation function, conjugategradient, search direction, gain variation.

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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.

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Authors: Abdel-Aziz M. Mohamed, Nermeen Coutry

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Lead time is a critical measure of a supply chain's performance. It impacts both the customer satisfactions as well as the total cost of inventory. This paper presents the result of a study on the analysis of the customer order lead-time for a multinational company. In the study, the lead time was divided into three stages respectively: order entry, order fulfillment, and order delivery. A sample of size 2,425 order lines was extracted from the company's records to use for this study. The sample data entails information regarding customer orders from the time of order entry until order delivery. Data regarding the lead time of each stage for different orders were also provided. Summary statistics on lead time data reveals that about 30% of the orders were delivered later than the scheduled due date. The result of the multiple linear regression analysis technique revealed that component type, logistics parameter, order size and the customer type have significant impacts on lead time. Data analysis on the stages of lead time indicates that stage 2 consumed over 50% of the lead time. Pareto analysis was made to study the reasons for the customer order delay in each stage. Recommendation was given to resolve the problem.

Keywords: Lead time reduction, customer satisfaction, service quality, statistical analysis.

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Authors: Dominik Krimpmann

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Cloud computing has provided the impetus for change in the demand, sourcing, and consumption of IT-enabled services. The technology developed from an emerging trend towards a ‘musthave’. Many organizations harnessed on the quick-wins of cloud computing within the last five years but nowadays reach a plateau when it comes to sustainable savings and performance. This study aims to investigate what is needed from an organizational perspective to make cloud computing a sustainable success. The study was carried out in Germany among senior IT professionals, both in management and delivery positions. Our research shows that IT executives must be prepared to realign their IT workforce to sustain the advantage of cloud computing for today and the near future. While new roles will undoubtedly emerge, roles alone cannot ensure the success of cloud deployments. What is needed is a change in the IT workforce’s business behaviour, or put more simply, the ways in which the IT personnel works. It gives clear guidance on which dimensions of an employees’ working behaviour need to be adapted. The practical implications are drawn from a series of semi-structured interviews, resulting in a high-level workforce enablement plan. Lastly, it elaborates on tools and gives clear guidance on which pitfalls might arise along the proposed workforce enablement process.

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Organization Design, Organizational Change, Workforce Enablement.

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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.

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Authors: Ankit Agrawal, Ankush Mittal

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A gene network gives the knowledge of the regulatory relationships among the genes. Each gene has its activators and inhibitors that regulate its expression positively and negatively respectively. Genes themselves are believed to act as activators and inhibitors of other genes. They can even activate one set of genes and inhibit another set. Identifying gene networks is one of the most crucial and challenging problems in Bioinformatics. Most work done so far either assumes that there is no time delay in gene regulation or there is a constant time delay. We here propose a Dynamic Time- Lagged Correlation Based Method (DTCBM) to learn the gene networks, which uses time-lagged correlation to find the potential gene interactions, and then uses a post-processing stage to remove false gene interactions to common parents, and finally uses dynamic correlation thresholds for each gene to construct the gene network. DTCBM finds correlation between gene expression signals shifted in time, and therefore takes into consideration the multi time delay relationships among the genes. The implementation of our method is done in MATLAB and experimental results on Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene expression data and comparison with other methods indicate that it has a better performance.

Keywords: Activators, correlation, dynamic time-lagged correlation based method, inhibitors, multi-time delay gene network.

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Authors: Omid A. Zargar

Abstract:

Vibration analysis of most critical equipment is considered as one of the most challenging activities in preventive maintenance. Utilities are heart of the process in big industrial plants like petrochemical zones. Vibration analysis methods and condition monitoring systems of these kinds of equipments are developed too much in recent years. On the other hand, there are too much operation factors like inlet and outlet pressures and temperatures that should be monitored. In this paper, some of the most effective concepts and techniques related to gas turbine vibration analysis are discussed. In addition, a gas turbine SIEMENS 162MW - V94.2 vibration case history related to Iran power industry in Fars province is explained. Vibration monitoring system and machinery technical specification are introduced. Besides, absolute and relative vibration trends, turbine and compressor orbits, Fast Fourier transform (FFT) in absolute vibrations, vibration modal analysis, turbine and compressor start up and shut down conditions, bode diagrams for relative vibrations, Nyquist diagrams and waterfall or three-dimensional FFT diagrams in startup and trip conditions are discussed with relative graphs. Furthermore, Split Resonance in gas turbines is discussed in details. Moreover, some updated vibration monitoring system, blade manufacturing technique and modern damping mechanism are discussed in this paper.

Keywords: Gas turbine, turbine compressor, vibration data collector, utility, condition monitoring, non-contact probe, Relative Vibration, Absolute Vibration, Split Resonance, Time Wave Form (TWF), Fast Fourier transform (FFT).

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Authors: Ahmad Fahim Nasiry, Shigeo Honma

Abstract:

We examine two-dimensional oil displacement by water in a petroleum reservoir. The pore fluid is immiscible, and the porous media is homogenous and isotropic in the horizontal direction. Buckley-Leverett theory and a combination of Laplacian and Darcy’s law are used to study the fluid flow through porous media, and the Laplacian that defines the dispersion and diffusion of fluid in the sand using heavy oil is discussed. The reservoir is homogenous in the horizontal direction, as expressed by the partial differential equation. Two main factors which are observed are the water saturation and pressure distribution in the reservoir, and they are evaluated for predicting oil recovery in two dimensions by a physical and mathematical simulation model. We review the numerical simulation that solves difficult partial differential reservoir equations. Based on the numerical simulations, the saturation and pressure equations are calculated by the iterative alternating direction implicit method and the iterative alternating direction explicit method, respectively, according to the finite difference assumption. However, to understand the displacement of oil by water and the amount of water dispersion in the reservoir better, an interpolated contour line of the water distribution of the five-spot pattern, that provides an approximate solution which agrees well with the experimental results, is also presented. Finally, a computer program is developed to calculate the equation for pressure and water saturation and to draw the pressure contour line and water distribution contour line for the reservoir.

Keywords: Numerical simulation, immiscible, finite difference, IADI, IADE, waterflooding.

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Authors: Nurhani Kasuan, Zakariah Yusuf, Mohd Nasir Taib, Mohd Hezri Fazalul Rahiman, Nazurah Tajuddin, Mohd Azri Abdul Aziz

Abstract:

This paper presents a hybrid fuzzy-PD plus PID (HFPP) controller and its application to steam distillation process for essential oil extraction system. Steam temperature is one of the most significant parameters that can influence the composition of essential oil yield. Due to parameter variations and changes in operation conditions during distillation, a robust steam temperature controller becomes nontrivial to avoid the degradation of essential oil quality. Initially, the PRBS input is triggered to the system and output of steam temperature is modeled using ARX model structure. The parameter estimation and tuning method is adopted by simulation using HFPP controller scheme. The effectiveness and robustness of proposed controller technique is validated by real time implementation to the system. The performance of HFPP using 25 and 49 fuzzy rules is compared. The experimental result demonstrates the proposed HFPP using 49 fuzzy rules achieves a better, consistent and robust controller compared to PID when considering the test on tracking the set point and the effects due to disturbance.

Keywords: Fuzzy Logic controller, steam temperature, steam distillation, real time control.

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Authors: J. R. Wang, H. T. Lin, Y. S. Tseng, W. Y. Li, H. C. Chen, S. W. Chen, C. Shih

Abstract:

TRACE is developed by U.S. NRC for the nuclear power plants (NPPs) safety analysis. We focus on the establishment and application of TRACE/FRAPTRAN/SNAP models for Chinshan NPP (BWR/4) spent fuel pool in this research. The geometry is 12.17 m × 7.87 m × 11.61 m for the spent fuel pool. In this study, there are three TRACE/SNAP models: one-channel, two-channel, and multi-channel TRACE/SNAP model. Additionally, the cooling system failure of the spent fuel pool was simulated and analyzed by using the above models. According to the analysis results, the peak cladding temperature response was more accurate in the multi-channel TRACE/SNAP model. The results depicted that the uncovered of the fuels occurred at 2.7 day after the cooling system failed. In order to estimate the detailed fuel rods performance, FRAPTRAN code was used in this research. According to the results of FRAPTRAN, the highest cladding temperature located on the node 21 of the fuel rod (the highest node at node 23) and the cladding burst roughly after 3.7 day.

Keywords: TRACE, FRAPTRAN, SNAP, spent fuel pool.

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