Search results for: Software Product Quality Evaluation

Authors: Nguyen Minh, Tuan, Chung-Ruey, Yen, Bui Lan, Anh

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The study was carried out to evaluated effect of S-gridling on fruit growth and quality of wax apple. The study was laid in Random completed block design with four replicated. Four treatment were applied as follows: S-girdling, fruit thinning plus bagging with 2,4-D sprayed, fruit thinning plus bagging and the control treatment. 2,4D was sprayed at the small bud and petal fall stage. Girdling was applied three week before flowering. The effect of all treatments on fruit growth was measured weekly. Number of flower, fruit set, fruit drop, fruit crack, and fruit quality were recorded. The result indicated that S-girdling, 2,4D application produced the lowest bud drop, fruit drop compared to untreated control. S-girdling improved faster fruit growth producing the best final fruit length and diameter compared to untreated control. S-girdling also markedly enhanced fruit set, fruit weight, and total soluble solid, reduced fruit crack, titratable acidity. On the other hand, it was noticed that with 2,4-D application also increased the fruit growth rate, improved physiological and biochemical characters of fruit than control treatment. It was concluded that S-girdling was recommended as the industry norm to increase fruit set, fruit quality in wax apple. 2,4D application had a distinctive and significant effect on most of the fruit quality characteristics assessed.

Keywords: S-girdling, 2, 4D, wax apple, fruit growth, fruit quality.

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Authors: Soma Roychowdhury

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This paper deals with a periodic-review substitutable inventory system for a finite and an infinite number of periods. Here an upward substitution structure, a substitution of a more costly item by a less costly one, is assumed, with two products. At the beginning of each period, a stochastic demand comes for the first item only, which is quality-wise better and hence costlier. Whenever an arriving demand finds zero inventory of this product, a fraction of unsatisfied customers goes for its substitutable second item. An optimal ordering policy has been derived for each period. The results are illustrated with numerical examples. A sensitivity analysis has been done to examine how sensitive the optimal solution and the maximum profit are to the values of the discount factor, when there is a large number of periods.

Keywords: Multi-period model, inventory, random demand, upward substitution.

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Authors: Salah R. Al Zaidee, Ali S. Mahdi

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Except for simple problems of statically determinate structures, optimum design problems in structural engineering have implicit objective functions where structural analysis and design are essential within each searching loop. With these implicit functions, the structural engineer is usually enforced to write his/her own computer code for analysis, design, and searching for optimum design among many feasible candidates and cannot take advantage of available software for structural analysis, design, and searching for the optimum solution. The meta-model is a regression model used to transform an implicit objective function into objective one and leads in turn to decouple the structural analysis and design processes from the optimum searching process. With the meta-model, well-known software for structural analysis and design can be used in sequence with optimum searching software. In this paper, the meta-model has been used to develop an explicit objective function for plane steel frames subjected to dead, live, and seismic forces. Frame topology is assumed as predefined based on architectural and functional requirements. Columns and beams sections and different connections details are the main design variables in this study. Columns and beams are grouped to reduce the number of design variables and to make the problem similar to that adopted in engineering practice. Data for the implicit objective function have been generated based on analysis and assessment for many design proposals with CSI SAP software. These data have been used later in SPSS software to develop a pure quadratic nonlinear regression model for the explicit objective function. Good correlations with a coefficient, R², in the range from 0.88 to 0.99 have been noted between the original implicit functions and the corresponding explicit functions generated with meta-model.

Keywords: Meta-modal, objective function, steel frames, seismic analysis, design.

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Authors: Jacek Kuraś, Jacek Lembas, Marek Skomorowski

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In this paper, we introduce GODYS-PC software package for modeling, simulating and analyzing dynamic systems. To illustrate the use of GODYS-PC we present a few examples which concern modeling and simulating of engineering systems. In order to compare GODYS-PC with widely used in academia and industry Simulink®, the same examples are provided both in GODYS-PC and Simulink®.

Keywords: Modeling, simulating and analyzing dynamicsystems.

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Authors: Mohd K. Yunus, Murni M. Ahmad, Abrar Inayat, Suzana Yusup

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Due to the environmental and price issues of current energy crisis, scientists and technologists around the globe are intensively searching for new environmentally less-impact form of clean energy that will reduce the high dependency on fossil fuel. Particularly hydrogen can be produced from biomass via thermochemical processes including pyrolysis and gasification due to the economic advantage and can be further enhanced through in-situ carbon dioxide removal using calcium oxide. This work focuses on the synthesis and development of the flowsheet for the enhanced biomass gasification process in PETRONAS-s iCON process simulation software. This hydrogen prediction model is conducted at operating temperature between 600 to 1000oC at atmospheric pressure. Effects of temperature, steam-to-biomass ratio and adsorbent-to-biomass ratio were studied and 0.85 mol fraction of hydrogen is predicted in the product gas. Comparisons of the results are also made with experimental data from literature. The preliminary economic potential of developed system is RM 12.57 x 106 which equivalent to USD 3.77 x 106 annually shows economic viability of this process.

Keywords: Biomass, Gasification, Hydrogen, iCON.

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Authors: Mohammad Ali Tabarzad, Caro Lucas

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The daily growing use of agents in software environments, because of many reasons such as independence and intelligence is not a secret anymore. One of such environments in which there is a prominent job for the agents would be emarketplaces in which a user is able to give those agents the responsibility of buying and selling, instead of searching the emarketplace himself. Making up a framework which has sufficient attention to the required roles and their relations, is the first step of achieving such e-markets. In this paper, we suggest a framework in order to establish such e-markets and we will continue investigating the roles such as seller or buyer and the relations in JADE environment in details.

Keywords: Framework, software agents, e-commerce, e-market.

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Authors: A. M. R. Mosalman Yazdi, B. A. R. Mosalman Yazdi

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In industry, on of the most important subjects is die and it's characteristics in which for cutting and forming different mechanical pieces, various punch and matrix metal die are used. whereas the common parts which form the main frame die are not often proportion with pieces and dies therefore using a part as socalled common part for frames in specified dimension ranges can decrease the time of designing, occupied space of warehouse and manufacturing costs. Parts in dies with getting uniform in their shape and dimension make common parts of dies. Common parts of punch and matrix metal die are as bolster, guide bush, guide pillar and shank. In this paper the common parts and effective parameters in selecting each of them as the primary information are studied, afterward for selection and design of mechanical parts an introduction and investigation based on the Mech. Desk. software is done hence with developing this software can standardize the metal common parts of punch and matrix. These studies will be so useful for designer in their designing and also using it has with very much advantage for manufactures of products in decreasing occupied spaces by dies.

Keywords: Die, Matrix, Punch, Standardize.

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Authors: Modreck Gomo

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The evolution of groundwater chemistry and its quality is largely controlled by hydrogeochemical processes and their understanding is therefore important for groundwater quality assessments and protection of the water resources. A study was conducted in Bloemfontein town of South Africa to assess and compare the groundwater chemistry and quality characteristics in an alluvial aquifer and single-plane fractured-rock aquifers. 9 groundwater samples were collected from monitoring boreholes drilled into the two aquifer systems during a once-off sampling exercise. Samples were collected through low-flow purging technique and analysed for major ions and trace elements. In order to describe the hydrochemical facies and identify dominant hydrogeochemical processes, the groundwater chemistry data are interpreted using stiff diagrams and principal component analysis (PCA), as complimentary tools. The fitness of the groundwater quality for domestic and irrigation uses is also assessed. Results show that the alluvial aquifer is characterised by a Na-HCO₃ hydrochemical facie while fractured-rock aquifer has a Ca-HCO₃ facie. The groundwater in both aquifers originally evolved from the dissolution of calcite rocks that are common on land surface environments. However the groundwater in the alluvial aquifer further goes through another evolution as driven by cation exchange process in which Na in the sediments exchanges with Ca²⁺ in the Ca-HCO₃ hydrochemical type to result in the Na-HCO₃ hydrochemical type. Despite the difference in the hydrogeochemical processes between the alluvial aquifer and single-plane fractured-rock aquifer, this did not influence the groundwater quality. The groundwater in the two aquifers is very hard as influenced by the elevated magnesium and calcium ions that evolve from dissolution of carbonate minerals which typically occurs in surface environments. Based on total dissolved levels (600-900 mg/L), groundwater quality of the two aquifer systems is classified to be of fair quality. The negative potential impacts of the groundwater quality for domestic uses are highlighted.

Keywords: Alluvial aquifer, fractured-rock aquifer, groundwater quality, hydrogeochemical processes.

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Authors: C. Ardil

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This paper aims to present an objective quantitative methodology on how to evaluate individual’s scholarly research output using multiple criteria decision analysis. A multiple criteria decision making analysis (MCDMA) methodological process is adopted to build a multiple criteria evaluation model. With the introduction of the scholar index, which gives significant information about a researcher's productivity and the scholarly impact of his or her publications in a single number (s is the number of publications with at least s citations); cumulative research citation index; the scholar index is included in the citation databases to cover the multidimensional complexity of scholarly research performance and to undertake objective evaluations with scholar index. The scholar index, one of publication activity indexes, is analyzed by considering it to be the most appropriate sciencemetric indicator which allows to smooth over many drawbacks of scholarly output assessment by mere calculation of the number of publications (quantity) and citations (quality). Hence, this study includes a set of indicators-based scholar index to be used for evaluating scholarly researchers. Google Scholar open science database was used to assess and discuss scholarly productivity and impact of researchers. Based on the experiment of computing the scholar index, and its derivative indexes for a set of researchers on open research database platform, quantitative methods of assessing scholarly research output were successfully considered to rank researchers. The proposed methodology considers the ranking, and the selection of data on which a scholarly research performance evaluation was based, the analysis of the data, and the presentation of the multiple criteria analysis results.

Keywords: Multiple Criteria Decision Making Analysis, MCDMA, Research Performance Evaluation, Scholar Index, h index, Science Citation Index, Science Efficiency, Cumulative Citation Index, Sciencemetrics

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Authors: Marta Wyzińska, Jerzy Grabiński, Alicja Sułek

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The grain quality is a decisive factor in its use. In Poland, spring wheat is characterized by more favorable quality parameters in relation to the winter form of this species. In the present study, the effects of three different sowing dates (autumn, delayed autumn, and spring) and cultivar (Tybalt, Cytra, Bombona, Monsun, and Parabola) on the selected technological value parameters of spring wheat over three years were studied. The field trials were carried out in two locations (Bezek, Czesławice) in the Lubelskie Vivodeship, Poland. It was found that the falling number of spring wheat grains from autumn sowing dates was at a similar level to wheat sown in spring. The amount of wet gluten in the grain was variable in years, and its quality was better in wheat sown in spring. Sedimentation index was dependent upon on the cultivar.

Keywords: Sowing term, spring wheat, technological value, quality.

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Authors: Paula M. R. Correia, Marta Gonzaga, Luis M. Batista, Luísa Beirão-Costa, Raquel F. P. Guiné

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The purpose of the present work was to develop an innovative food product with good textural and sensorial characteristics. The product, a new type of bread, was prepared with wheat (90%) and lupin (10%) flours, without the addition of any conservatives. Several experiences were also done to find the most appropriate proportion of lupin flour. The optimized product was characterized considering the rheological, physical-chemical and sensorial properties. The water absorption of wheat flour with 10% of lupin was higher than that of the normal wheat flours, and Wheat Ceres flour presented the lower value, with lower dough development time and high stability time. The breads presented low moisture but a considerable water activity. The density of bread decreased with the introduction of lupin flour. The breads were quite white, and during storage the colour parameters decreased. The lupin flour clearly increased the number of alveolus, but the total area increased significantly just for the Wheat Cerealis bread. The addition of lupin flour increased the hardness and chewiness of breads, but the elasticity did not vary significantly. Lupin bread was sensorially similar to wheat bread produced with WCerealis flour, and the main differences are the crust rugosity, colour and alveolus characteristics.

Keywords: Lupin flour, physical-chemical properties, sensorial analysis, wheat flour.

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Authors: Arthur David Snider, Laiq Azam

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The classic problem of recovering arbitrary values of a band-limited signal from its samples has an added complication in software radio applications; namely, the resampling calculations inevitably fold aliases of the analog signal back into the original bandwidth. The phenomenon is quantified by the spur-free dynamic range. We demonstrate how a novel application of the Remez (Parks- McClellan) algorithm permits optimal signal recovery and SFDR, far surpassing state-of-the-art resamplers.

Keywords: Sampling methods, Signal sampling, Digital radio, Digital-analog conversion.

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Authors: Nonlapun Meenil, Pisitpong Intarapong, Thitima Wongsheree, Pranchalee Samanpiboon

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In Thailand, once pineapples are harvested, they must be classified into two classes based on their sweetness: sweet and unsweet. This paper has studied and developed the assessment of internal quality of pineapples using a low-cost compact spectroscopy sensor according to the spectroscopy approach and Neural Network (NN). During the experiments, Batavia pineapples were utilized, generating 100 samples. The extracted pineapple juice of each sample was used to determine the Soluble Solid Content (SSC) labeling into sweet and unsweet classes. In terms of experimental equipment, the sensor cover was specifically designed to install the sensor and light source to read the reflectance at a five mm depth from pineapple flesh. By using a spectroscopy sensor, data on visible and near-infrared reflectance (Vis-NIR) were collected. The NN was used to classify the pineapple classes. Before the classification step, the preprocessing methods, which are class balancing, data shuffling, and standardization, were applied. The 510 nm and 900 nm reflectance values of the middle parts of pineapples were used as features of the NN. With the sequential model and ReLU activation function, 100% accuracy of the training set and 76.67% accuracy of the test set were achieved. According to the abovementioned information, using a low-cost compact spectroscopy sensor has achieved favorable results in classifying the sweetness of the two classes of pineapples.

Keywords: Spectroscopy, soluble solid content, pineapple, neural network.

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Authors: A. Chowdhury, P. Egodawatta, J. M. McGree, A. Goonetilleke

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Hydrologic models are increasingly used as tools to predict stormwater quantity and quality from urban catchments. However, due to a range of practical issues, most models produce gross errors in simulating complex hydraulic and hydrologic systems. Difficulty in finding a robust approach for model calibration is one of the main issues. Though automatic calibration techniques are available, they are rarely used in common commercial hydraulic and hydrologic modelling software e.g. MIKE URBAN. This is partly due to the need for a large number of parameters and large datasets in the calibration process. To overcome this practical issue, a framework for automatic calibration of a hydrologic model was developed in R platform and presented in this paper. The model was developed based on the time-area conceptualization. Four calibration parameters, including initial loss, reduction factor, time of concentration and time-lag were considered as the primary set of parameters. Using these parameters, automatic calibration was performed using Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC). ABC is a simulation-based technique for performing Bayesian inference when the likelihood is intractable or computationally expensive to compute. To test the performance and usefulness, the technique was used to simulate three small catchments in Gold Coast. For comparison, simulation outcomes from the same three catchments using commercial modelling software, MIKE URBAN were used. The graphical comparison shows strong agreement of MIKE URBAN result within the upper and lower 95% credible intervals of posterior predictions as obtained via ABC. Statistical validation for posterior predictions of runoff result using coefficient of determination (CD), root mean square error (RMSE) and maximum error (ME) was found reasonable for three study catchments. The main benefit of using ABC over MIKE URBAN is that ABC provides a posterior distribution for runoff flow prediction, and therefore associated uncertainty in predictions can be obtained. In contrast, MIKE URBAN just provides a point estimate. Based on the results of the analysis, it appears as though ABC the developed framework performs well for automatic calibration.

Keywords: Automatic calibration framework, approximate Bayesian computation, hydrologic and hydraulic modelling, MIKE URBAN software, R platform.

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Authors: Kahil Amar, Boukais Said, Kezmane Ali, Hamizi Mohand, Hannachi Naceur Eddine

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The principle of the seismic performance evaluation methods is to provide a measure of capability for a building or set of buildings to be damaged by an earthquake. The common objective of many of these methods is to supply classification criteria. The purpose of this study is to present a method for assessing the seismic performance of structures, based on Pushover method; we are particularly interested in reinforced concrete frame structures, which represent a significant percentage of damaged structures after a seismic event. The work is based on the characterization of seismic movement of the various earthquake zones in terms of PGA and PGD that is obtained by means of SIMQK_GR and PRISM software and the correlation between the points of performance and the scalar characterizing the earthquakes will developed.

Keywords: Seismic performance, Pushover method, characterization of seismic motion, harmfulness of the seismic signal

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Authors: S. Azadmard-Damirchi, K. Alirezalu, B. Fathi Achachlouei

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Microwave energy is a superior alternative to several other thermal treatments. Extraction techniques are widely employed for the isolation of bioactive compounds and vegetable oils from oil seeds. Among the different and new available techniques, microwave pretreatment of seeds is a simple and desirable method for production of high quality vegetable oils. Microwave pretreatment for oil extraction has many advantages as follow: improving oil extraction yield and quality, direct extraction capability, lower energy consumption, faster processing time and reduced solvent levels compared with conventional methods. It allows also for better retention and availability of desirable nutraceuticals, such as phytosterols and tocopherols, canolol and phenolic compounds in the extracted oil such as rapeseed oil. This can be a new step to produce nutritional vegetable oils with improved shelf life because of high antioxidant content.

Keywords: Microwave pretreatment, vegetable oil extraction, nutraceuticals, oil quality

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Authors: Sayantan Khanra, Rojers P. Joseph

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This study attempts to analyze the impact of demography and service quality on the adoption and diffusion of e-Government services in the context of India. The objective of this paper is to study the users' perception about e-Government services and investigate the key variables that are most salient to the Indian populace. At the completion of this study, a research model that would help to understand the relationship involving the demographic variables and service quality dimensions, and the willingness to adopt e-Government services is expected to be developed. Dedicated authorities, particularly those in developing economies, may use that model or its augmented versions to design and update e-Government services and promote their use among citizens. After all, enhanced public participation is required to improve efficiency, engagement and transparency in the implementation of the aforementioned services.

Keywords: Adoption and diffusion of e-Government services, demographic variables, hierarchical regression analysis, service quality dimensions.

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Authors: S Kalyani, K Shanti Swarup

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Power System Security is a major concern in real time operation. Conventional method of security evaluation consists of performing continuous load flow and transient stability studies by simulation program. This is highly time consuming and infeasible for on-line application. Pattern Recognition (PR) is a promising tool for on-line security evaluation. This paper proposes a Support Vector Machine (SVM) based binary classification for static and transient security evaluation. The proposed SVM based PR approach is implemented on New England 39 Bus and IEEE 57 Bus systems. The simulation results of SVM classifier is compared with the other classifier algorithms like Method of Least Squares (MLS), Multi- Layer Perceptron (MLP) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) classifiers.

Keywords: Static Security, Transient Security, Pattern Recognition, Classifier, Support Vector Machine.

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Authors: Víctor D. Rodríguez, Edith P. Estupiñán, Juan C. Martínez

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The evolution in mobile broadband technologies has allowed to increase the download rates in users considering the current services. The evaluation of technical parameters at the link level is of vital importance to validate the quality and veracity of the connection, thus avoiding large losses of data, time and productivity. Some of these failures may occur between the eNodeB (Evolved Node B) and the user equipment (UE), so the link between the end device and the base station can be observed. LTE (Long Term Evolution) is considered one of the IP-oriented mobile broadband technologies that work stably for data and VoIP (Voice Over IP) for those devices that have that feature. This research presents a technical analysis of the connection and channeling processes between UE and eNodeB with the TAC (Tracking Area Code) variables, and analysis of performance variables (Throughput, Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR)). Three measurement scenarios were proposed in the city of Bogotá using QualiPoc, where two operators were evaluated (Operator 1 and Operator 2). Once the data were obtained, an analysis of the variables was performed determining that the data obtained in transmission modes vary depending on the parameters BLER (Block Error Rate), performance and SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio). In the case of both operators, differences in transmission modes are detected and this is reflected in the quality of the signal. In addition, due to the fact that both operators work in different frequencies, it can be seen that Operator 1, despite having spectrum in Band 7 (2600 MHz), together with Operator 2, is reassigning to another frequency, a lower band, which is AWS (1700 MHz), but the difference in signal quality with respect to the establishment with data by the provider Operator 2 and the difference found in the transmission modes determined by the eNodeB in Operator 1 is remarkable.

Keywords: BLER, LTE, Network, Qualipoc, SNR.

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Authors: M. Peña Aguilar Juan, Ríos Hernández Ezequiel, R. Valencia Luis

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For certification, certain goods of public interest, such as medicines and food, it is required the preparation and delivery of a dossier. For its elaboration, legal and administrative knowledge must be taken, as well as organization of the documents of the process, and an order that allows the file verification. Therefore, a virtual platform was developed to support the process of management and elaboration of the dossier, providing accessibility to the information and interfaces that allow the user to know the status of projects. The development of dossier system on the cloud allows the inclusion of the technical requirements for the software management, including the validation and the manufacturing in the field industry. The platform guides and facilitates the dossier elaboration (report, file or history), considering Mexican legislation and regulations, it also has auxiliary tools for its management. This technological alternative provides organization support for documents and accessibility to the information required to specify the successful development of a dossier. The platform divides into the following modules: System control, catalog, dossier and enterprise management. The modules are designed per the structure required in a dossier in those areas. However, the structure allows for flexibility, as its goal is to become a tool that facilitates and does not obstruct processes. The architecture and development of the software allows flexibility for future work expansion to other fields, this would imply feeding the system with new regulations.

Keywords: Electronic dossier, technologies for management, web software, dossier elaboration, pharmaceutical industry.

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Authors: Rozilawati Razali, Paul W. Garratt

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Software maintenance, which involves making enhancements, modifications and corrections to existing software systems, consumes more than half of developer time. Specification comprehensibility plays an important role in software maintenance as it permits the understanding of the system properties more easily and quickly. The use of formal notation such as B increases a specification-s precision and consistency. However, the notation is regarded as being difficult to comprehend. Semi-formal notation such as the Unified Modelling Language (UML) is perceived as more accessible but it lacks formality. Perhaps by combining both notations could produce a specification that is not only accurate and consistent but also accessible to users. This paper presents an experiment conducted on a model that integrates the use of both UML and B notations, namely UML-B, versus a B model alone. The objective of the experiment was to evaluate the comprehensibility of a UML-B model compared to a traditional B model. The measurement used in the experiment focused on the efficiency in performing the comprehension tasks. The experiment employed a cross-over design and was conducted on forty-one subjects, including undergraduate and masters students. The results show that the notation used in the UML-B model is more comprehensible than the B model.

Keywords: Model comprehensibility, formal and semi-formal notation, empirical assessment.

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Authors: Ali Pirdavani, Tom Brijs, Tom Bellemans, Geert Wets, Koen Vanhoof

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Signalized intersections on high-volume arterials are often congested during peak hours, causing a decrease in through movement efficiency on the arterial. Much of the vehicle delay incurred at conventional intersections is caused by high left-turn demand. Unconventional intersection designs attempt to reduce intersection delay and travel time by rerouting left-turns away from the main intersection and replacing it with right-turn followed by Uturn. The proposed new type of U-turn intersection is geometrically designed with a raised island which provides a protected U-turn movement. In this study several scenarios based on different distances between U-turn and main intersection, traffic volume of major/minor approaches and percentage of left-turn volumes were simulated by use of AIMSUN, a type of traffic microsimulation software. Subsequently some models are proposed in order to compute travel time of each movement. Eventually by correlating these equations to some in-field collected data of some implemented U-turn facilities, the reliability of the proposed models are approved. With these models it would be possible to calculate travel time of each movement under any kind of geometric and traffic condition. By comparing travel time of a conventional signalized intersection with U-turn intersection travel time, it would be possible to decide on converting signalized intersections into this new kind of U-turn facility or not. However comparison of travel time is not part of the scope of this research. In this paper only travel time of this innovative U-turn facility would be predicted. According to some before and after study about the traffic performance of some executed U-turn facilities, it is found that commonly, this new type of U-turn facility produces lower travel time. Thus, evaluation of using this type of unconventional intersection should be seriously considered.

Keywords: Innovative U-turn facility, Microsimulation, Traveltime, Unconventional intersection design.

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Authors: S. Sadallah

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In this paper, dynamic programming is used to determine the optimal management of financial resources in company. Solution of the problem by consider into simpler substructures is constructed. The optimal management of internal capital of company are simulated. The tools applied in this development are based on graph theory. The software of given problems is built by using greedy algorithm. The obtained model and program maintenance enable us to define the optimal version of management of proper financial flows by using visual diagram on each level of investment.

Keywords: Management, software, optimal, greedy algorithm, graph-diagram.

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Authors: Bogdan Bogdanov, Irena Markovska, Yancho Hristov, Dimitar Georgiev

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Lightweight ceramic materials in the form of bricks and blocks are widely used in modern construction. They may be obtained by adding of rice husk, rye straw, etc, as porous forming materials. Rice husk is a major by-product of the rice milling industry. Its utilization as a valuable product has always been a problem. Various technologies for utilization of rice husk through biological and thermochemical conversion are being developed. The purpose of this work is to develop lightweight ceramic materials with clay matrix and filler of rice husk and examine their main physicomechanical properties. The results obtained allow to suppose that the materials synthesized on the basis of waste materials can be used as lightweight materials for construction purpose.

Keywords: lightweight ceramic materials, properties, agro-waste

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Authors: S. A. Razavian Amrei, G.Ghodrati Amiri, D. Rezaei

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This paper presents probabilistic horizontal seismic hazard assessment of Naghan, Iran. It displays the probabilistic estimate of Peak Ground Horizontal Acceleration (PGHA) for the return period of 475, 950 and 2475 years. The output of the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis is based on peak ground acceleration (PGA), which is the most common criterion in designing of buildings. A catalogue of seismic events that includes both historical and instrumental events was developed and covers the period from 840 to 2009. The seismic sources that affect the hazard in Naghan were identified within the radius of 200 km and the recurrence relationships of these sources were generated by Kijko and Sellevoll. Finally Peak Ground Horizontal Acceleration (PGHA) has been prepared to indicate the earthquake hazard of Naghan for different hazard levels by using SEISRISK III software.

Keywords: Seismic Hazard Assessment, Seismicity Parameters, PGA, Naghan, Iran

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Authors: Juha Kettunen

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This study analyzes the quality and the size of the strategic network of higher education institutions. The study analyses the concept of fitness for purpose in quality assurance. It also analyses the transaction costs of networking that have consequences on the number of members in the network. Empirical evidence is presented of the Consortium on Applied Research and Professional Education, which is a European strategic network of six higher education institutions. The results of the study support the argument that the number of members in the strategic network should be relatively small to provide high quality results. The practical importance is that networking has been able to promote international research and development projects. The results of this study are important for those who want to design and improve international networks in higher education.

Keywords: Higher education, network, research and development, strategic management.

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Authors: Susana Lemos, Neuza Pedro

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Thepurpose of the research is to characterize the levels of satisfaction of the students in e-learning post-graduate courses, taking into account specific dimensions of the course which were considered as benchmarks for the quality of this type of online learning initiative, as well as the levels of satisfaction towards each specific indicator identified in each dimension. It was also an aim of this study to understand how thesedimensions relate to one another. Using a quantitative research approach in the collection and analysis of the data, the study involves the participation of the students who attended on e-learning course in 2010/2011. The conclusions of this study suggest that online students present relatively high levels of satisfaction, which points towards a positive experience during the course. It is possible to note that there is a correlation between the different dimensions studied, consequently leading to different improvement strategies. Ultimately, this investigation aims to contribute to the promotion of quality and the success of e-learning initiatives in Higher Education.

Keywords: e-learning, higher education, quality, students satisfaction

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Authors: Kyonghoon Kim, Wonyoung Park, Taeil Park

Abstract:

Aging infrastructures became a serious social problem. This brought out the increased need for the legislation of a new strict guideline for infrastructure management. Although existing guidelines provided basics of how to evaluate and manage the condition of infrastructures, they needed improvements for their evaluation procedures. Most guidelines mainly focused on the structural condition of infrastructures and did not properly reflect service aspects of infrastructures such as performance, public demand, capacity, etc., which were significantly valuable to public. Regardless of the importance, these factors were often neglected in infrastructure evaluations, because they were quite subjective and difficult to quantify in rational manner. Thus, this study proposed a framework to properly identify and evaluate the service indicators. This study showed that service indicators could be grouped into two categories and properly evaluated using AHP and Fuzzy. Overall, proposed framework is expected to assist governmental agency in establishing effective investment strategies for infrastructure improvements.

Keywords: Infrastructure, evaluation, serviceability, fuzzy.

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Authors: N. Guru Prasath, Sangjin Ma, Chang-Wan Kim

Abstract:

A butterfly valve is a quarter turn valve which is used to control the flow of a fluid through a section of pipe. Generally, butterfly valve is used in wide range of applications such as water distribution, sewage, oil and gas plants. In particular, butterfly valve with larger diameter finds its immense applications in hydro power plants to control the fluid flow. In-lieu with the constraints in cost and size to run laboratory setup, analysis of large diameter values will be mostly studied by computational method which is the best and inexpensive solution. For fluid and structural analysis, CFD and FEM software is used to perform large scale valve analyses, respectively. In order to perform above analysis in butterfly valve, the CAD model has to recreate and perform mesh in conventional software’s for various dimensions of valve. Therefore, its limitation is time consuming process. In-order to overcome that issue, python code was created to outcome complete pre-processing setup automatically in Salome software. Applying dimensions of the model clearly in the python code makes the running time comparatively lower and easier way to perform analysis of the valve. Hence, in this paper, an attempt was made to study the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) of butterfly valves by varying the valve angles and dimensions using python code in pre-processing software, and results are produced.

Keywords: Butterfly valve, fluid-structure interaction, automatic CFD analysis, flow coefficient.

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Authors: Loay A. Altamimi

Abstract:

Collaborative technologies or software known as groupware are key enabling tools for communication, collaboration and co-ordination among individuals, work groups and businesses. Available reviews of the groupware literature are very few, and mostly neither systematic nor recent. This paper is an effort to fill this gap, and to provide researchers, with a more up-to-date and wide systematic literature review. For this purpose, 1087 scholarly articles, published from 1990 to 2013, on the topic of groupware, were collected by the literature search. The study here adopted the systematic approach of lexical analysis for the analysis of those articles.

Keywords: Lexical Analysis, Literature review, Groupware, collaborative Software.

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