Search results for: air quality prediction

Authors: Aravindkumar B. Harwalkar, S. S. Awanti

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Use of fly ash as a supplementary cementing material in large volumes can bring both technological and economic benefits for concrete industry. In this investigation mix proportions for high volume fly ash concrete were determined at cement replacement levels of 50%, 55%, 60% and 65% with low calcium fly ash. Flexural and compressive strengths of different mixes were measured at ages of 7, 28 and 90 days. Flexural strength of composite section prepared from pavement quality and lean high volume fly ash concrete was determined at the age of 28 days. High volume fly ash concrete mixes exhibited higher rate of strength gain and age factors than corresponding reference concrete mixes. The optimum cement replacement level for pavement quality concrete was found to be 60%. The consideration of bond between pavement quality and lean of high volume fly ash concrete will be beneficial in design of rigid pavements.

Keywords: Keywords—Composite section, Compressive strength, Flexural strength, Fly ash.

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Authors: Ankit Sinha, Soham Banerjee, Pratik Chattopadhyay

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Automated product recognition in retail stores is an important real-world application in the domain of Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. In this paper, we consider the problem of automatically identifying the classes of the products placed on racks in retail stores from an image of the rack and information about the query/product images. We improve upon the existing approaches in terms of effectiveness and memory requirement by developing a two-stage object detection and recognition pipeline comprising of a Faster-RCNN-based object localizer that detects the object regions in the rack image and a ResNet-18-based image encoder that classifies  the detected regions into the appropriate classes. Each of the models is fine-tuned using appropriate data sets for better prediction and data augmentation is performed on each query image to prepare an extensive gallery set for fine-tuning the ResNet-18-based product recognition model. This encoder is trained using a triplet loss function following the strategy of online-hard-negative-mining for improved prediction. The proposed models are lightweight and can be connected in an end-to-end manner during deployment to automatically identify each product object placed in a rack image. Extensive experiments using Grozi-32k and GP-180 data sets verify the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Keywords: Retail stores, Faster-RCNN, object localization, ResNet-18, triplet loss, data augmentation, product recognition.

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Authors: Majid Toghyani, Abbas Ali Gheisari, Ali Khodami, Mehdi Toghyani, Mohammad Mohammadrezaei, Ramin Bahadoran

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This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of different levels of dietary chromium yeast (Cr-yeast) on thigh meat quality of broiler chicks reared under heat stress condition. Two hundred and forty Ross male chickens in heat stress condition (33±3°C) were allocated to five treatments in a completely randomized design. Treatments were supplemented with 0 (control), 200, 400, 800 and 1200 μg kg-1 Cr in the form of Cr yeast. Twelve chicks from each treatment were slaughtered at 42 d, to evaluate moisture, protein, lipid, pH and lipid oxidation of thigh meat. Protein, moisture, lipid and pH of thigh meat were not affected by supplemental Cr. Thigh meat lipid tended to decrease in broilers received 1200 μg kg-1. Storage time increased lipid oxidation of meat (P<0.01). Lipid oxidation of thigh muscle for two days of storage were affected by supplemental Cr and decreased (P<0.05). Results of this study showed that dietary Cr-yeast supplementation improved the thigh meat quality of broiler chicks in heat stress condition.

Keywords: Broiler, Heat stress, Chromium yeast, Thigh meat quality.

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Authors: Zaineb Ben Messaoud, Dorra Gargouri, Saida Zribi, Ahmed Ben Hamida

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This paper presents a formant-tracking linear prediction (FTLP) model for speech processing in noise. The main focus of this work is the detection of formant trajectory based on Hidden Markov Models (HMM), for improved formant estimation in noise. The approach proposed in this paper provides a systematic framework for modelling and utilization of a time- sequence of peaks which satisfies continuity constraints on parameter; the within peaks are modelled by the LP parameters. The formant tracking LP model estimation is composed of three stages: (1) a pre-cleaning multi-band spectral subtraction stage to reduce the effect of residue noise on formants (2) estimation stage where an initial estimate of the LP model of speech for each frame is obtained (3) a formant classification using probability models of formants and Viterbi-decoders. The evaluation results for the estimation of the formant tracking LP model tested in Gaussian white noise background, demonstrate that the proposed combination of the initial noise reduction stage with formant tracking and LPC variable order analysis, results in a significant reduction in errors and distortions. The performance was evaluated with noisy natual vowels extracted from international french and English vocabulary speech signals at SNR value of 10dB. In each case, the estimated formants are compared to reference formants.

Keywords: Formants Estimation, HMM, Multi Band Spectral Subtraction, Variable order LPC coding, White Gauusien Noise.

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Authors: Kyu Jin Kim, Byung Kwan Oh, Hyo Seon Park

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The seismic responses-based structural health monitoring system has been performed to prevent seismic damage. Structural seismic damage of building is caused by the instantaneous stress concentration which is related with dynamic characteristic of earthquake. Meanwhile, seismic response analysis to estimate the dynamic responses of building demands significantly high computational cost. To prevent the failure of structural members from the characteristic of the earthquake and the significantly high computational cost for seismic response analysis, this paper presents an artificial neural network (ANN) based prediction model for dynamic responses of building considering specific time length. Through the measured dynamic responses, input and output node of the ANN are formed by the length of specific time, and adopted for the training. In the model, evolutionary radial basis function neural network (ERBFNN), that radial basis function network (RBFN) is integrated with evolutionary optimization algorithm to find variables in RBF, is implemented. The effectiveness of the proposed model is verified through an analytical study applying responses from dynamic analysis for multi-degree of freedom system to training data in ERBFNN.

Keywords: Structural health monitoring, dynamic response, artificial neural network, radial basis function network, genetic algorithm.

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Authors: D. G. Badagha, C. D. Modhera, S. A. Vasanwala

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There is a great challenge for civil engineering field to contribute in environment prevention by finding out alternatives of cement and natural aggregates. There is a problem of global warming due to cement utilization in concrete, so it is necessary to give sustainable solution to produce concrete containing waste. It is very difficult to produce designated grade of concrete containing different ingredient and water cement ratio including waste to achieve desired fresh and harden properties of concrete as per requirement and specifications. To achieve the desired grade of concrete, a number of trials have to be taken, and then after evaluating the different parameters at long time performance, the concrete can be finalized to use for different purposes. This research work is carried out to solve the problem of time, cost and serviceability in the field of construction. In this research work, artificial neural network introduced to fix proportion of concrete ingredient with 50% waste replacement for M20, M25, M30, M35, M40, M45, M50, M55 and M60 grades of concrete. By using the neural network, mix design of high performance concrete was finalized, and the main basic mechanical properties were predicted at 3 days, 7 days and 28 days. The predicted strength was compared with the actual experimental mix design and concrete cube strength after 3 days, 7 days and 28 days. This experimentally and neural network based mix design can be used practically in field to give cost effective, time saving, feasible and sustainable high performance concrete for different types of structures.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, ANN, high performance concrete, rebound hammer, strength prediction.

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Authors: Mou-Yuan Liao, Chien-Wei Wu, Chien-Hua Lin

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Process capability index Cpk is the most widely used index in making managerial decisions since it provides bounds on the process yield for normally distributed processes. However, existent methods for assessing process performance which constructed by statistical inference may unfortunately lead to fine results, because uncertainties exist in most real-world applications. Thus, this study adopts fuzzy inference to deal with testing of Cpk . A brief score is obtained for assessing a supplier’s process instead of a severe evaluation.

Keywords: Process capability analysis, quality control.

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Authors: Abeer Amayri, Akif A. Bulgak

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Due to today’s globalization as well as outsourcing practices of the companies, the Supply Chain (SC) performances have become more dependent on the efficient movement of material among places that are geographically dispersed, where there is more chance for disruptions. One such disruption is the quality and delivery uncertainties of outsourcing. These uncertainties could lead the products to be unsafe and, as is the case in a number of recent examples, companies may have to end up in recalling their products. As a result of these problems, there is a need to develop a methodology for selecting suppliers globally in view of risks associated with low quality and late delivery. Accordingly, we developed a two-stage stochastic model that captures the risks associated with uncertainty in quality and delivery as well as a solution procedure for the model. The stochastic model developed simultaneously optimizes supplier selection and purchase quantities under price discounts over a time horizon. In particular, our target is the study of global organizations with multiple sites and multiple overseas suppliers, where the pricing is offered in suppliers’ local currencies. Our proposed methodology is applied to a case study for a US automotive company having two assembly plants and four potential global suppliers to illustrate how the proposed model works in practice.

Keywords: Global supply chains, quality, stochastic programming, supplier selection.

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Authors: Dejan Tanikić, Jelena Đoković, Saša Kalinović, Miodrag Manić, Saša Ranđelović

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This paper deals with measuring and modelling of the quality of the machined surface of the metal machining process. The average surface roughness (R_a) which represents the quality of the machined part was measured during the dry turning of the AISI 4140 steel. A large number of factors with the unknown relations among them influences this parameter, and that is why mathematical modelling is extremely complicated. Different values of cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut (cutting regime) and workpiece hardness causes different surface roughness values. Modelling with soft computing techniques may be very useful in such cases. This paper presents the usage of the fuzzy logic-based system for determining metal machining process parameter in order to find the proper values of cutting regimes.

Keywords: Metal machining, surface roughness, fuzzy logic, process modelling.

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Authors: M.Davami, M.Zadshakoyan

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Production of hard-to-cut materials with uncoated carbide cutting tools in turning, not only cause tool life reduction but also, impairs the product surface roughness. In this paper, influence of hot machining method were studied and presented in two cases. Case1-Workpiece surface roughness quality with constant cutting parameter and 300 ºC initial workpiece surface temperature. Case 2- Tool temperature variation when cutting with two speeds 78.5 (m/min) and 51 (m/min). The workpiece material and tool used in this study were AISI 1060 steel (45HRC) and uncoated carbide TNNM 120408-SP10(SANDVIK Coromant) respectively. A gas flam heating source was used to preheating of the workpiece surface up to 300 ºC, causing reduction of yield stress about 15%. Results obtained experimentally, show that the method used can considerably improved surface quality of the workpiece.

Keywords: Hard-to-cut material, Hot machining, Surfaceroughness, Tool Temperature

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Authors: Gül Tekin Temur, Tolga Kaya, Serpil Öktem, Sıtkı Gözlü

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The purpose of this study is to reveal the principles, which have the highest impact on determining the Strategic Quality Management (SQM) implementation perceptions of managers. In order to accomplish this goal, first of all, a factor analysis is conducted on the attitudes of managers at 80 large-scale firms in Turkey for SQM principles. Secondly, utilizing t tests and discriminant analysis, the most effective items are determined. The results show that “process improvement" and “assessment of competitiveness" are the management principles, which have the highest impact on determining the SQM implementation perceptions of Turkish managers.

Keywords: Assessment of Competitiveness, Process Improvement, Strategic Quality Management.

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Authors: Wanida Suwunniponth

Abstract:

The objectives of this research paper were to study the expectation and satisfaction of tourists in five tourism service quality dimensions, namely, website quality, service ability, trust ability, customer empathy, and responsiveness to customer and also to study the influences of satisfaction affecting loyalty toward quality service of the online tourism enterprises located in Bangkok Thailand. This research utilized both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In terms of quantitative method, a questionnaire was used as a tool to collect data from 400 tourists who were using in online travel services. Statistics analysis included descriptive statistics, t-test and Multiple Regression Analysis. In terms of qualitative analysis, an in-depth interview and content analysis were used along with 10 individual management levels of e-commerce enterprises.

The results revealed that the respondents had higher expectations than their level of satisfaction in all five categories. However, the respondents were more satisfied with online travel services than without online service. The demographic factors such as gender and age had no influence on the level of satisfaction whereas the demographic factors of education, occupation, and income had influenced the level of satisfaction. The test results also indicated that the level of satisfaction from responsiveness to customer had the highest influence on the loyalty of tourists who used online travel. The level of satisfaction from customer empathy had the highest influence on the tourists to recommend others to use online travel services. Also, the level of satisfaction from service ability had the highest influence on tourists to take an actual trip.

Keywords: Satisfaction, Loyalty, Service Quality, Online Tourism Enterprises.

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Authors: Deepthi Narayan, Srikanta Murthy K., G. Hemantha Kumar

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Graph based image segmentation techniques are considered to be one of the most efficient segmentation techniques which are mainly used as time & space efficient methods for real time applications. How ever, there is need to focus on improving the quality of segmented images obtained from the earlier graph based methods. This paper proposes an improvement to the graph based image segmentation methods already described in the literature. We contribute to the existing method by proposing the use of a weighted Euclidean distance to calculate the edge weight which is the key element in building the graph. We also propose a slight modification of the segmentation method already described in the literature, which results in selection of more prominent edges in the graph. The experimental results show the improvement in the segmentation quality as compared to the methods that already exist, with a slight compromise in efficiency.

Keywords: Graph based image segmentation, threshold, Weighted Euclidean distance.

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Authors: Hamid Reza Alipour, Ali Mohammadi Torkashvand

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In composting process, N high-organic wastes loss the great part of its nitrogen as ammonia; therefore, using compost amendments can promote the quality of compost due to the decrease in ammonia volatilization. With regard to the effect of pH on composting, microorganisms- activity and ammonia volatilization, sulfuric acid and alkaline wastewater of paper mill (as liming agent with Ca and Mg ions) were used as compost amendments. Study results indicated that these amendments are suitable for reclamation of compost quality properties. These held nitrogen in compost caused to reduce C/N ratio. Both amendments had a significant effect on total nitrogen, but it should be used sulfuric acid in fewer amounts (20 ml/kg fresh organic wastes); and the more amounts of acid is not proposed.

Keywords: Compost, Paper mill wastewater, sulfuric acid, Ammonia Volatilization.

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Authors: Harish Krishnamurthy, Anna Lafontant, Ren Yi

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Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) have been an interesting topic for most enthusiasts and hence people all over the United States report such findings online at the National UFO Report Center (NUFORC). Some of these reports are a hoax and among those that seem legitimate, our task is not to establish that these events confirm that they indeed are events related to flying objects from aliens in outer space. Rather, we intend to identify if the report was a hoax as was identified by the UFO database team with their existing curation criterion. However, the database provides a wealth of information that can be exploited to provide various analyses and insights such as social reporting, identifying real-time spatial events and much more. We perform analysis to localize these time-series geospatial events and correlate with known real-time events. This paper does not confirm any legitimacy of alien activity, but rather attempts to gather information from likely legitimate reports of UFOs by studying the online reports. These events happen in geospatial clusters and also are time-based. We look at cluster density and data visualization to search the space of various cluster realizations to decide best probable clusters that provide us information about the proximity of such activity. A random forest classifier is also presented that is used to identify true events and hoax events, using the best possible features available such as region, week, time-period and duration. Lastly, we show the performance of the scheme on various days and correlate with real-time events where one of the UFO reports strongly correlates to a missile test conducted in the United States.

Keywords: Time-series clustering, feature extraction, hoax prediction, geospatial events.

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Authors: A. Nicknam, N. Eftekhari, A. Mazarei, M. Ganjvar

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This article presents an alternative collapse capacity intensity measure in the three elements form which is influenced by the spectral ordinates at periods longer than that of the first mode period at near and far source sites. A parameter, denoted by β, is defined by which the spectral ordinate effects, up to the effective period (2T1), on the intensity measure are taken into account. The methodology permits to meet the hazard-levelled target extreme event in the probabilistic and deterministic forms. A MATLAB code is developed involving OpenSees to calculate the collapse capacities of the 8 archetype RC structures having 2 to 20 stories for regression process. The incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) method is used to calculate the structure’s collapse values accounting for the element stiffness and strength deterioration. The general near field set presented by FEMA is used in a series of performing nonlinear analyses. 8 linear relationships are developed for the 8structutres leading to the correlation coefficient up to 0.93. A collapse capacity near field prediction equation is developed taking into account the results of regression processes obtained from the 8 structures. The proposed prediction equation is validated against a set of actual near field records leading to a good agreement. Implementation of the proposed equation to the four archetype RC structures demonstrated different collapse capacities at near field site compared to those of FEMA. The reasons of differences are believed to be due to accounting for the spectral shape effects.

Keywords: Collapse capacity, fragility analysis, spectral shape effects, IDA method.

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Authors: P. Grasgruber, J. Cacek, S. Hřebíčková

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The purpose of this study was to test the reliability of various standards that assess the quality of proteins via the “amino-acid score” and serve as a nutritional guideline for both children and adults. The height of young men in 42 European countries, Australia, New Zealand and USA was compared with the average consumption of food (after FAOSTAT, 2009) and a subsequent statistical analysis identified types of food with the most pronounced effect on physical growth. The results show that milk products and pork meat are by far the most significant nutritional factors in this regard. Cereals, vegetables and especially wheat played a strongly negative role. The results generally agreed best with the amino-acid score of proteins according to the standard of FAO 1985. In our opinion, the new standard of FAO 2007 underestimates the importance of tryptophan, which should provoke a debate about new modifications of the FAO guidelines.

Keywords: Protein quality, amino-acid score, physical growth, male height.

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Authors: Suwarno, M. Helmi Prakoso

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Mineral oil is commonly used for high voltage transformer insulation. The insulation quality of mineral oil is affecting the operation process of high voltage transformer. There are many contaminations which could decrease the insulation quality of mineral oil. One of them is water. This research talks about the effect of water content on dielectric properties, physic properties, and partial discharge pattern on mineral oil. Samples were varied with 10 varieties of water content value. And then all samples would be tested to measure the dielectric properties, physic properties, and partial discharge pattern. The result of this research showed that an increment of water content value would decrease the insulation quality of mineral oil.

Keywords: Dielectric properties, high voltage transformer, mineral oil, water content.

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Authors: Burcu Kaya, Jan-Martin Kaiser, Karl-Friedrich Becker, Tanja Braun, Klaus-Dieter Lang

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Quality of the molded packages is strongly influenced by the process parameters of the transfer molding. To achieve a better package quality and a stable transfer molding process, it is necessary to understand the influence of the process parameters on the package quality. This work aims to comprehend the relationship between the process parameters, and to identify the optimum process parameters for the transfer molding process in order to achieve less voids and wire sweep. To achieve this, a DoE is executed for process optimization and a regression analysis is carried out. A systematic approach is represented to generate models which enable an estimation of the number of voids and wire sweep. Validation experiments are conducted to verify the model and the results are presented.

Keywords: Epoxy molding compounds, optimization, regression analysis, transfer molding process, voids, wire sweep.

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Authors: Amir Moslemi, Amir Movafeghi, Shahab Moradi

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One of the most important challenging factors in medical images is nominated as noise. Image denoising refers to the improvement of a digital medical image that has been infected by Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). The digital medical image or video can be affected by different types of noises. They are impulse noise, Poisson noise and AWGN. Computed tomography (CT) images are subjects to low quality due to the noise. Quality of CT images is dependent on absorbed dose to patients directly in such a way that increase in absorbed radiation, consequently absorbed dose to patients (ADP), enhances the CT images quality. In this manner, noise reduction techniques on purpose of images quality enhancement exposing no excess radiation to patients is one the challenging problems for CT images processing. In this work, noise reduction in CT images was performed using two different directional 2 dimensional (2D) transformations; i.e., Curvelet and Contourlet and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) thresholding methods of BayesShrink and AdaptShrink, compared to each other and we proposed a new threshold in wavelet domain for not only noise reduction but also edge retaining, consequently the proposed method retains the modified coefficients significantly that result good visual quality. Data evaluations were accomplished by using two criterions; namely, peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and Structure similarity (Ssim).

Keywords: Computed Tomography (CT), noise reduction, curve-let, contour-let, Signal to Noise Peak-Peak Ratio (PSNR), Structure Similarity (Ssim), Absorbed Dose to Patient (ADP).

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Authors: Salem Alsanusi, Loubna Bentaher

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Response Surface Methods (RSM) provide statistically validated predictive models that can then be manipulated for finding optimal process configurations. Variation transmitted to responses from poorly controlled process factors can be accounted for by the mathematical technique of propagation of error (POE), which facilitates ‘finding the flats’ on the surfaces generated by RSM. The dual response approach to RSM captures the standard deviation of the output as well as the average. It accounts for unknown sources of variation. Dual response plus propagation of error (POE) provides a more useful model of overall response variation. In our case, we implemented this technique in predicting compressive strength of concrete of 28 days in age. Since 28 days is quite time consuming, while it is important to ensure the quality control process. This paper investigates the potential of using design of experiments (DOE-RSM) to predict the compressive strength of concrete at 28th day. Data used for this study was carried out from experiment schemes at university of Benghazi, civil engineering department. A total of 114 sets of data were implemented. ACI mix design method was utilized for the mix design. No admixtures were used, only the main concrete mix constituents such as cement, coarseaggregate, fine aggregate and water were utilized in all mixes. Different mix proportions of the ingredients and different water cement ratio were used. The proposed mathematical models are capable of predicting the required concrete compressive strength of concrete from early ages.

Keywords: Mix proportioning, response surface methodology, compressive strength, optimal design.

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Authors: Ebadollah Zohrevandi, Rasoul Roustaei, Omid Moradtalab

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In this paper, we first consider the quality of service problems in heterogeneous wireless networks for sending the video data, which their problem of being real-time is pronounced. At last, we present a method for ensuring the end-to-end quality of service at application layer level for adaptable sending of the video data at heterogeneous wireless networks. To do this, mechanism in different layers has been used. We have used the stop mechanism, the adaptation mechanism and the graceful degrade at the application layer, the multi-level congestion feedback mechanism in the network layer and connection cutting off decision mechanism in the link layer. At the end, the presented method and the achieved improvement is simulated and presented in the NS-2 software.

Keywords: Congestion, Handoff, Heterogeneous wireless networks, Adaptation mechanism, Stop mechanism, Graceful degrade.

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Authors: R. Pudasaini, R. B. Thapa, P. R. Poudel

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An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of pollination on seed quality of rapeseed in Chitwan, Nepal during 2012-2013. The experiment was designed in Randomized Complete Block with four replications and five treatments. The rapeseed plots were caged with mosquito nets at 10% flowering except natural pollination. Two-framed colonies of Apis mellifera L. and Apis cerana F. were introduced separately for pollination, and control plot caged without pollinators. The highest germination percent was observed on Apis cerana F. pollinated plot seeds (90.50% germination) followed by Apis mellifera L. pollinated plots (87.25 %) and lowest on control plots (42.00% germination) seeds. Similarly, seed test weight of Apis cerana F. pollinated plots (3.22 gm/ 1000 seed) and Apis mellifera L. pollinated plots (2.93 gm/1000 seed) were and lowest on control plots (2.26 gm/ 1000 seed) recorded. Likewise, oil content was recorded highest on pollinated by Apis cerana F. (36.1%) followed by pollinated by Apis mellifera L. (35.4%) and lowest on control plots (32.8%). This study clearly indicated pollination increases the seed quality of rapeseed and therefore, management of honeybee is necessary for producing higher quality of rapeseed under Chitwan condition.

Keywords: Apis cerana, Apis mellifera, rapeseed pollination, seed quality.

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Authors: Adriana Ávila Zúñiga Nordfjeld

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This paper provides a literature review to document the state of the art with respect to handling “human bias” in decision making within the established quality management systems (QMS) and LEAN theory, in the context of shipbuilding. Previous research shows that in shipbuilding there is a huge deviation from the planned man-hours under the project management to the actual man-hours used because of errors in planning and reworks caused by human bias in the information flows, among others. This reduces the efficiency, and increases operational costs. Thus, the research question is how QMS and LEAN handle biases. The findings show the gap in studying the integration of methods to handle human bias in decision making into QMS and lean, not only within shipbuilding, but in general. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed for researchers and practitioners in the areas of decision making, QMS and LEAN, and future research is suggested.

Keywords: Human bias, decision making, LEAN Shipbuilding, quality management systems.

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Authors: Redha Elhuni, M. Munir Ahmad

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The main purpose of this research is to construct a generic model for successful implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) in Oil sector, and to find out the effects of this model on the organizational sustainability development (OSD) performance of Libyan oil and gas companies using the structured equation modeling (SEM) approach. The research approach covers both quantitative and qualitative methods. A questionnaire was developed in order to identify the quality factors that are seen by Libyan oil and gas companies to be critical to the success of TQM implementation. Hypotheses were developed to evaluate the impact of TQM implementation on O SD. Data analysis reveals that there is a significant positive effect of the TQM implementation on OSD. 24 quality factors are found to be critical and absolutely essential for successful TQM implementation. The results generated a structure of the TQMSD implementation framework based on the four major road map constructs (Top management commitment, employee involvement and participation, customer-driven processes, and continuous improvement culture).

Keywords: TQM, CQFs, Oil & Gas, OSD, Libya.

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Authors: L. Belkhiri, L. Mouni, A. Tiri, T.S. Narany

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In the present study, the self-organizing map (SOM) clustering technique was applied to identify homogeneous clusters of hydrochemical parameters in El Milia plain, Algeria, to assess the quality of groundwater for potable and agricultural purposes. The visualization of SOM-analysis indicated that 35 groundwater samples collected in the study area were classified into three clusters, which showed progressive increase in electrical conductivity from cluster one to cluster three. Samples belonging to cluster one are mostly located in the recharge zone showing hard fresh water type, however, water type gradually changed to hard-brackish type in the discharge zone, including clusters two and three. Ionic ratio studies indicated the role of carbonate rock dissolution in increases on groundwater hardness, especially in cluster one. However, evaporation and evapotranspiration are the main processes increasing salinity in cluster two and three.

Keywords: Drinking water, groundwater quality, irrigation water, self-organizing maps.

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Authors: Geng Xiangren, Liu Lei, Gui Ye-Wei, Tang Wei, Wang An-ling

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The malfunction of thermal protection system (TPS) caused by aerodynamic heating is a latent trouble to aircraft structure safety. Accurately predicting the structure temperature field is quite important for the TPS design of hypersonic vehicle. Since Thornton’s work in 1988, the coupled method of aerodynamic heating and heat transfer has developed rapidly. However, little attention has been paid to the influence of structural deformation on aerodynamic heating and structural temperature field. In the flight, especially the long-endurance flight, the structural deformation, caused by the aerodynamic heating and temperature rise, has a direct impact on the aerodynamic heating and structural temperature field. Thus, the coupled interaction cannot be neglected. In this paper, based on the method of static aero-thermo-elasticity, considering the influence of aero-thermo-elasticity deformation, the aerodynamic heating and heat transfer coupled results of hypersonic vehicle wing model were calculated. The results show that, for the low-curvature region, such as fuselage or center-section wing, structure deformation has little effect on temperature field. However, for the stagnation region with high curvature, the coupled effect is not negligible. Thus, it is quite important for the structure temperature prediction to take into account the effect of elastic deformation. This work has laid a solid foundation for improving the prediction accuracy of the temperature distribution of aircraft structures and the evaluation capacity of structural performance.

Keywords: Aero-thermo-elasticity, elastic deformation, structural temperature, multi-field coupling.

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Authors: Silva, Fátima, Fernandes, Paula Odete

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The future of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) depend on their ability to attract and retain students, increase recognition and prestige. In order to respond to the 'customers' increasingly demanding, HEI need to identify the key factors that influence the satisfaction of a 'customers', thereby creating competitive advantages. These determinants of satisfaction are important elements that guide the strategy of an institution and allow the successful achievement of strategic plans, both teaching and administrative, to offer their ‘costumers’ services and products with higher quality. Following this way of thinking, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the satisfaction with the service quality of the School of Technology and Management of Bragança (ESTiG), of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, identifying, thus, the dimensions related to the quality of services that might influence students' satisfaction. The results showed that, in general, the students are satisfied with the performance of ESTiG.

Keywords: Customer Satisfaction, Higher Education Institutions, Importance-Satisfaction Model.

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Authors: Harish Chander, Balwinder Singh, Ravinder Khanna

Abstract:

In this paper, we present the comparative subjective analysis of Improved Minima Controlled Recursive Averaging (IMCRA) Algorithm, the Kalman filter and the cascading of IMCRA and Kalman filter algorithms. Performance of speech enhancement algorithms can be predicted in two different ways. One is the objective method of evaluation in which the speech quality parameters are predicted computationally. The second is a subjective listening test in which the processed speech signal is subjected to the listeners who judge the quality of speech on certain parameters. The comparative objective evaluation of these algorithms was analyzed in terms of Global SNR, Segmental SNR and Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) by the authors and it was reported that with cascaded algorithms there is a substantial increase in objective parameters. Since subjective evaluation is the real test to judge the quality of speech enhancement algorithms, the authenticity of superiority of cascaded algorithms over individual IMCRA and Kalman algorithms is tested through subjective analysis in this paper. The results of subjective listening tests have confirmed that the cascaded algorithms perform better under all types of noise conditions.

Keywords: Speech enhancement, spectral domain, time domain, PESQ, subjective analysis, objective analysis.

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Authors: Kensuke Akiyama, Satoru Kaneko, Takeshi Ozawa, Kazuya Yokomizo, Masaru Itakura

Abstract:

The photoluminescence (PL) at 1.55 μm from semiconducting β-FeSi2 has attracted a noticeable interest for silicon-based optoelectronic applications. Moreover, its high optical absorption coefficient (higher than 105 cm-1 above 1.0 eV) allows this semiconducting material to be used as photovoltanics devices. A clear PL spectrum for β-FeSi2 was observed by Cu or Au coating on Si(001). High-crystal-quality β-FeSi2 with a low-level nonradiative center was formed on a Cu- or Au- reated Si layer. This method of deposition can be applied to other materials requiring high crystal quality.

Keywords: iron silicide, semiconductor, epitaxial, photoluminescence.

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