Search results for: Requirement Analysis Modal.

Authors: Swapneel U. Naphade, Dushyant A. Patil, Satyabodh M. Kulkarni

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In this work, we propose the concept and geometrical design of a soil moisture control system (SMCS) module by following the product development approach to develop an inexpensive, easy to use and quick to install product targeted towards agriculture practitioners. The module delivers water to the agricultural land efficiently by sensing the soil moisture and activating the delivery valve. We start with identifying the general needs of the potential customer. Then, based on customer needs we establish product specifications and identify important measuring quantities to evaluate our product. Keeping in mind the specifications, we develop various conceptual solutions of the product and select the best solution through concept screening and selection matrices. Then, we develop the product architecture by integrating the systems into the final product. In the end, the geometric design is done using human factors engineering concepts like heuristic analysis, task analysis, and human error reduction analysis. The result of human factors analysis reveals the remedies which should be applied while designing the geometry and software components of the product. We find that to design the best grip in terms of comfort and applied force, for a power-type grip, a grip-diameter of 35 mm is the most ideal.

Keywords: Agriculture, human factors, product design, soil moisture control.

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Authors: Suresh Sagadevan, A. Veeralakshmi

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Cadmium oxide (CdO) nanoparticles have been prepared by chemical coprecipitation method. The synthesized nanoparticles were characterized by X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV analysis, and dielectric studies. The crystalline nature and particle size of the CdO nanoparticles were characterized by Powder X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). The morphology of prepared CdO nanoparticles was studied by scanning electron microscopy. The particle size was studied using the transmission electron microscopy (TEM).The optical properties were obtained from UV-Vis absorption spectrum. The dielectric properties of CdO nanoparticles were studied in the frequency range of 50 Hz–5 MHz at different temperatures. The frequency dependence of the dielectric constant and dielectric loss is found to decrease with an increase in the frequency at different temperatures. The ac conductivity of CdO nanoparticle has been studied.

Keywords: Cadmium Oxide (CdO), XRD, SEM, Dielectric constant and Dielectric loss.

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Authors: Pattamad Panedpojaman

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For fire safety purposes, the fire resistance and the structural behavior of reinforced concrete members are assessed to satisfy specific fire performance criteria. The available prescribed provisions are based on standard fire load. Under various fire scenarios, engineers are in need of both heat transfer analysis and structural analysis. For heat transfer analysis, the study proposed a modified finite difference method to evaluate the temperature profile within a cross section. The research conducted is limited to concrete sections exposed to a fire on their one side. The method is based on the energy conservation principle and a pre-determined power function of the temperature profile. The power value of 2.7 is found to be a suitable value for concrete sections. The temperature profiles of the proposed method are only slightly deviate from those of the experiment, the FEM and the FDM for various fire loads such as ASTM E 119, ASTM 1529, BS EN 1991-1-2 and 550 oC. The proposed method is useful to avoid incontinence of the large matrix system of the typical finite difference method to solve the temperature profile. Furthermore, design engineers can simply apply the proposed method in regular spreadsheet software.

Keywords: temperature profile, finite difference method, concrete section, one-side fire exposed, energy conservation

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Authors: G.H. Montazeri, Z. Dastkhan, H. Aliabadi

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Gas condensate Reservoirs show complicated thermodynamic behavior when their pressure reduces to under dew point pressure. Condensate blockage around the producing well cause significant reduction of production rate as well bottom-hole pressure drops below saturation pressure. The main objective of this work was to examine the well test analysis of naturally fractured lean gas condensate reservoir and investigate the effect of condensate formed around the well-bore on behavior of single phase pseudo pressure and its derivative curves. In this work a naturally fractured lean gas condensate reservoir is simulated with compositional simulator. Different sensitivity analysis done on Corry parameters and result of simulator is feed to analytical well testing software. For consideration of these phenomena eighteen compositional models with Capillary number effect are constructed. Matrix relative permeability obeys Corry relative permeability and relative permeability in fracture is linear. Well testing behavior of these models are studied and interpreted. Results show different sensitivity analysis on relative permeability of matrix does not have strong effect on well testing behavior even most part of the matrix around the well is occupied with condensate.

Keywords: Lean gas, fractured condensate reservoir, capillary number, well testing analysis, relative permeability.

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Authors: Mohammad Ali Hosseinpour, Hossein Ghoreishi, Saeid Gitipour, Mona Jafarnejad

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REY area has been located in Tehran Province and several archaeological ruins of this area indicate that the settlement in this area has been started since several thousand years ago. In this paper, the main investigation items consist of analysis of oil components and groundwater quality inside the wells. By finding the contents of oil in the well, it is possible to find out the pollution source by comparing the oil contents of well with other oil products that are used inside and outside of the oil farm. Investigation items consist of analysis of BTEX (Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl-benzene, Xylene), Gas chromatographic distillation characteristics, Water content, Density, Sulfur content, Lead content, Atmospheric distillation, MTBE(Methyl tertiary butyl ether). Analysis of polluting oil components showed that except MW(Monitoring Well)10 and MW 15 that oil with slightly heavy components was detected in them; with a high possibility the polluting oil is light oil.

Keywords: BTEX, Oil Component, REY Area, Tehran Oil Refining Company (T.O.R.C) .

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Authors: Abbas Vahedian, Rijun Shrestha, Keith Crews

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In recent years, fibre reinforced polymers as applications of strengthening materials have received significant attention by civil engineers and environmentalists because of their excellent characteristics. Currently, these composites have become a mainstream technology for strengthening of infrastructures such as steel, concrete and more recently, timber and masonry structures. However, debonding is identified as the main problem which limit the full utilisation of the FRP material. In this paper, a preliminary analysis of factors affecting bond strength of FRP-to-concrete and timber bonded interface has been conducted. A novel theoretical method through regression analysis has been established to evaluate these factors. Results of proposed model are then assessed with results of pull-out tests and satisfactory comparisons are achieved between measured failure loads (R² = 0.83, P < 0.0001) and the predicted loads (R² = 0.78, P < 0.0001).

Keywords: Debonding, FRP, pull-out test, stepwise regression analysis.

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Authors: Amna Javed, Hisashi Masuda, Youji Kohda

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This study examines the value analysis in Islamic and conventional banking services in Pakistan. Many scholars have focused on co-creation of values in services but mainly economic values not non-economic. As Islamic banking is based on Islamic principles that are more concerned with non-economic values (well-being, partnership, fairness, trust worthy, and justice) than economic values as money in terms of interest.  This study is important to know the providers point of view about the co-created values, because, it may be more sustainable and appropriate for today’s unpredictable socio-economic environment. Data were collected from 4 banks (2 Islamic and 2 conventional banks). Text mining technique is applied for data analysis, and values with 100% occurrences in Islamic banking are chosen. The results reflect that Islamic banking is more centric towards non-economic values than economic values and it promotes team work and partnership concept by applying Islamic spirit and trust worthiness concept.

Keywords: Economic values, Islamic banking, Non-economic values, Value system.

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Authors: Harish Chander, Balwinder Singh, Ravinder Khanna

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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: Daniel Pereiro, Felix Martinez, Iker Urresti, Ana Gomez Gonzalez

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Today modern simulations solutions in the wind turbine industry have achieved a high degree of complexity and detail in result. Limitations exist when it is time to validate model results against measurements. Regarding Model validation it is of special interest to identify mode frequencies and to differentiate them from the different excitations. A wind turbine is a complex device and measurements regarding any part of the assembly show a lot of noise. Input excitations are difficult or even impossible to measure due to the stochastic nature of the environment. Traditional techniques for frequency analysis or features extraction are widely used to analyze wind turbine sensor signals, but have several limitations specially attending to non stationary signals (Events). A new technique based on autoregresive analysis techniques is introduced here for a specific application, a comparison and examples related to different events in the wind turbine operations are presented.

Keywords: Wind turbine, signal processing, mode extraction.

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Authors: Yanhua Jin, Won Suk Lee

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The two-dimensional gel electrophoresis method (2-DE) is widely used in Proteomics to separate thousands of proteins in a sample. By comparing the protein expression levels of proteins in a normal sample with those in a diseased one, it is possible to identify a meaningful set of marker proteins for the targeted disease. The major shortcomings of this approach involve inherent noises and irregular geometric distortions of spots observed in 2-DE images. Various experimental conditions can be the major causes of these problems. In the protein analysis of samples, these problems eventually lead to incorrect conclusions. In order to minimize the influence of these problems, this paper proposes a partition based pair extension method that performs spot-matching on a set of gel images multiple times and segregates more reliable mapping results which can improve the accuracy of gel image analysis. The improved accuracy of the proposed method is analyzed through various experiments on real 2-DE images of human liver tissues.

Keywords: Proteomics, spot-matching, two-dimensionalelectrophoresis.

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Authors: Chang Hsueh-Sheng, Chen Tzu-Ling

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Earthquake is an unpredictable natural disaster and intensive earthquakes have caused serious impacts on social-economic system, environmental and social resilience. Conventional ways to mitigate earthquake disaster are to enhance building codes and advance structural engineering measures. However, earthquake-induced ground damage such as liquefaction, land subsidence, landslide happen on places nearby earthquake prone or poor soil condition areas. Therefore, this study uses spatial statistical analysis to explore the spatial pattern of damaged buildings. Afterwards, principle components analysis (PCA) is applied to categorize the similar features in different kinds of clustered patterns. The results show that serious landslide prone area, close to fault, vegetated ground surface and mudslide prone area are common in those highly damaged buildings. In addition, the oldest building might not be directly referred to the most vulnerable one. In fact, it seems that buildings built between 1974 and 1989 become more fragile during the earthquake. The incorporation of both spatial statistical analyses and PCA can provide more accurate information to subsidize retrofit programs to enhance earthquake resistance in particular areas.

Keywords: Earthquake disaster, spatial statistical analysis, principle components analysis, clustered patterns.

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Authors: Rahil Garnavi, Mohammad Aldeen, M. Emre Celebi, Alauddin Bhuiyan, Constantinos Dolianitis, George Varigos

Abstract:

Automatic segmentation of skin lesions is the first step towards the automated analysis of malignant melanoma. Although numerous segmentation methods have been developed, few studies have focused on determining the most effective color space for melanoma application. This paper proposes an automatic segmentation algorithm based on color space analysis and clustering-based histogram thresholding, a process which is able to determine the optimal color channel for detecting the borders in dermoscopy images. The algorithm is tested on a set of 30 high resolution dermoscopy images. A comprehensive evaluation of the results is provided, where borders manually drawn by four dermatologists, are compared to automated borders detected by the proposed algorithm, applying three previously used metrics of accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity and a new metric of similarity. By performing ROC analysis and ranking the metrics, it is demonstrated that the best results are obtained with the X and XoYoR color channels, resulting in an accuracy of approximately 97%. The proposed method is also compared with two state-of-theart skin lesion segmentation methods.

Keywords: Border detection, Color space analysis, Dermoscopy, Histogram thresholding, Melanoma, Segmentation.

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Authors: Yousef Amer, Mehdi Moayyedian, Zeinab Hajiabolhasani, Lida Moayyedian

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Moulded parts contribute to more than 70% of components in products. However, common defects particularly in plastic injection moulding exist such as: warpage, shrinkage, sink marks, and weld lines. In this paper Taguchi experimental design methods are applied to reduce the warpage defect of thin plate Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and are demonstrated in two levels; namely, orthogonal arrays of Taguchi and the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Eight trials have been run in which the optimal parameters that can minimize the warpage defect in factorial experiment are obtained. The results obtained from ANOVA approach analysis with respect to those derived from MINITAB illustrate the most significant factors which may cause warpage in injection moulding process. Moreover, ANOVA approach in comparison with other approaches like S/N ratio is more accurate and with the interaction of factors it is possible to achieve higher and the better outcomes.

Keywords: Analysis of variance, ANOVA, plastic injection mould, Taguchi methods, Warpage.

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Authors: Kuo-Lung Wu

Abstract:

The weighting exponent m is called the fuzzifier that can have influence on the clustering performance of fuzzy c-means (FCM) and mÎ[1.5,2.5] is suggested by Pal and Bezdek [13]. In this paper, we will discuss the robust properties of FCM and show that the parameter m will have influence on the robustness of FCM. According to our analysis, we find that a large m value will make FCM more robust to noise and outliers. However, if m is larger than the theoretical upper bound proposed by Yu et al. [14], the sample mean will become the unique optimizer. Here, we suggest to implement the FCM algorithm with mÎ[1.5,4] under the restriction when m is smaller than the theoretical upper bound.

Keywords: Fuzzy c-means, robust, fuzzifier.

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Authors: Zeynep Parlar, Şengül Ari, Rıfat Yilmaz, Erdem Özdemir, Arda Kahraman

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New regulations and standards for noise emission increasingly compel the automotive firms to make some improvements about decreasing the engine noise. Nowadays, the perforated reactive mufflers which have an effective damping capability are specifically used for this purpose. New designs should be analyzed with respect to both acoustics and back pressure. In this study, a reactive perforated muffler is investigated numerically and experimentally. For an acoustical analysis, the transmission loss which is independent of sound source of the present cross flow, the perforated muffler was analyzed by COMSOL. To be able to validate the numerical results, transmission loss was measured experimentally. Back pressure was obtained based on the flow field analysis and was also compared with experimental results. Numerical results have an approximate error of 20% compared to experimental results.

Keywords: Back Pressure, Perforated Muffler, Transmission Loss.

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Authors: Muhammad Shahid, Nasir-uddin Khan, Mushtaq Hussain, Muhammad Liaquat Ali, Asif Mansoor

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Tuberculosis (TB) remains a leading cause of infectious mortality. It is primarily transmitted by the respiratory route, individuals with active disease may infect others through airborne particles which releases when they cough, talk, or sing and subsequently inhale by others. In order to study the effect of the Bacilli Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine after vaccination of TB patient, a Vaccinated Susceptible Infected and Recovered (VSIR) mathematical model is being developed to achieve the desired objectives. The mathematical model, so developed, shall be used to quantify the effect of BCG Vaccine to protect the immigrant young adult person. Moreover, equations are to be established for the disease endemic and free equilibrium states and subsequently utilized in disease stability analysis. The stability analysis will give a complete picture of disease annihilation from the total population if the total removal rate from the infectious group should be greater than total number of dormant infections produced throughout infectious period.

Keywords: Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine, disease-free equilibrium state, VSIR Quantification, disease stability analysis.

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Authors: Monica Dudian , Raluca Andreea Popa

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This article analyses the relationship between sovereign credit risk rating and gross domestic product for Central and Eastern European Countries for the period 1996 – 2010. In order to study the metioned relationship, we have used a numerical transformation of the risk qualification, thus: we marked 0 the lowest risk; then, we went on ascending, with a pace of 5, up to the score of 355 corresponding to the maximum risk. The used method of analysis is that of econometric modelling with EViews 7.0. programme. This software allows the analysis of data into a pannel type system, involving a mix of periods of time and series of data for different entities. The main conclusion of the work is the one confirming the negative relationship between the sovereign credit risk and the gross domestic product for the Central European and Eastern countries during the reviewed period.

Keywords: credit rating agencies, economic growth, gross domestic product, sovereign credit risk rating.

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Authors: Shao-lun Zeng, Yu-long Ren

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Benchmarking cleaner production performance is an effective way of pollution control and emission reduction in coal-fired power industry. A benchmarking method using two-stage super-efficiency data envelopment analysis for coal-fired power plants is proposed – firstly, to improve the cleaner production performance of DEA-inefficient or weakly DEA-efficient plants, then to select the benchmark from performance-improved power plants. An empirical study is carried out with the survey data of 24 coal-fired power plants. The result shows that in the first stage the performance of 16 plants is DEA-efficient and that of 8 plants is relatively inefficient. The target values for improving DEA-inefficient plants are acquired by projection analysis. The efficient performance of 24 power plants and the benchmarking plant is achieved in the second stage. The two-stage benchmarking method is practical to select the optimal benchmark in the cleaner production of coal-fired power industry and will continuously improve plants- cleaner production performance.

Keywords: benchmarking, cleaner production performance, coal-fired power plant, super-efficiency data envelopment analysis

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Authors: Manfred Hartmann, Andreas Graef, Hannes Perko, Christoph Baumgartner, Tilmann Kluge

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In this paper we introduce a novel method for the characterization of synchronziation and coupling effects in multivariate time series that can be used for the analysis of EEG or ECoG signals recorded during epileptic seizures. The method allows to visualize the spatio-temporal evolution of synchronization and coupling effects that are characteristic for epileptic seizures. Similar to other methods proposed for this purpose our method is based on a regression analysis. However, a more general definition of the regression together with an effective channel selection procedure allows to use the method even for time series that are highly correlated, which is commonly the case in EEG/ECoG recordings with large numbers of electrodes. The method was experimentally tested on ECoG recordings of epileptic seizures from patients with temporal lobe epilepsies. A comparision with the results from a independent visual inspection by clinical experts showed an excellent agreement with the patterns obtained with the proposed method.

Keywords: EEG, epilepsy, regression analysis, seizurepropagation.

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Authors: Sahil Sharma, Mukesh Gupta, Raj Kumar, N. S Bindra

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This paper presents an experimental investigation on the optimization and the effect of the cutting parameters on Material Removal Rate (MRR) in Plasma Arc Cutting (PAC) of EN-45A Material using Taguchi L ₁₆ orthogonal array method. Four process variables viz. cutting speed, current, stand-off-distance and plasma gas pressure have been considered for this experimental work. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been performed to get the percentage contribution of each process parameter for the response variable i.e. MRR. Based on ANOVA, it has been observed that the cutting speed, current and the plasma gas pressure are the major influencing factors that affect the response variable. Confirmation test based on optimal setting shows the better agreement with the predicted values.

Keywords: Analysis of variance, Material removal rate, plasma arc cutting, Taguchi method.

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Authors: Himanshu V. Gajjar, Anish H. Gandhi, Harit K. Raval

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Air bending is one of the important metal forming processes, because of its simplicity and large field application. Accuracy of analytical and empirical models reported for the analysis of bending processes is governed by simplifying assumption and do not consider the effect of dynamic parameters. Number of researches is reported on the finite element analysis (FEA) of V-bending, Ubending, and air V-bending processes. FEA of bending is found to be very sensitive to many physical and numerical parameters. FE models must be computationally efficient for practical use. Reported work shows the 3D FEA of air bending process using Hyperform LSDYNA and its comparison with, published 3D FEA results of air bending in Ansys LS-DYNA and experimental results. Observing the planer symmetry and based on the assumption of plane strain condition, air bending problem was modeled in 2D with symmetric boundary condition in width. Stress-strain results of 2D FEA were compared with 3D FEA results and experiments. Simplification of air bending problem from 3D to 2D resulted into tremendous reduction in the solution time with only marginal effect on stressstrain results. FE model simplification by studying the problem symmetry is more efficient and practical approach for solution of more complex large dimensions slow forming processes.

Keywords: Air V-bending, Finite element analysis, HyperformLS-DYNA, Planner symmetry.

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Authors: Ali A. Mehna, Mohmed A. Ali, Ali S. Zayed

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A numbers of important developments have led to an increasing attractiveness for very high speed electrical machines (either motor or generator). Specifically the increasing switching speed of power electronics, high energy magnets, high strength retaining materials, better high speed bearings and improvements in design analysis are the primary drivers in a move to higher speed. The design challenges come in the mechanical design both in terms of strength and resonant modes and in the electromagnetic design particularly in respect of iron losses and ac losses in the various conducting parts including the rotor. This paper describes detailed design work which has been done on a 50,000 rpm, 50kW permanent magnet( PM) synchronous machine. It describes work on electromagnetic and rotor eddy current losses using a variety of methods including both 2D finite element analysis

Keywords: High speed, PM motor, rotor and stator losses, finiteelement analysis

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Authors: Srinivasan Chandrasekaran, R. Nagavinothini

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Offshore platforms for ultra-deep waters are form-dominant by design; hybrid systems with large flexibility in horizontal plane and high rigidity in vertical plane are preferred due to functional complexities. Offshore triceratops is relatively a new-generation offshore platform, whose deck is partially isolated from the supporting buoyant legs by ball joints. They allow transfer of partial displacements of buoyant legs to the deck but restrain transfer of rotational response. Buoyant legs are in turn taut-moored to the sea bed using pre-tension tethers. Present study will discuss detailed dynamic analysis and preliminary design of the chosen geometric, which is necessary as a proof of validation for such design applications. A detailed numeric analysis of triceratops at 2400 m water depth under random waves is presented. Preliminary design confirms member-level design requirements under various modes of failure. Tether configuration, proposed in the study confirms no pull-out of tethers as stress variation is comparatively lesser than the yield value. Presented study shall aid offshore engineers and contractors to understand suitability of triceratops, in terms of design and dynamic response behaviour.

Keywords: Buoyant legs, dynamic analysis, offshore structures, preliminary design, random waves, triceratops.

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Authors: Daniel Padilla, Edward Guillen

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Several wireless networks security standards have been proposed and widely implemented in both business and home environments in order to protect the network from unauthorized access. However, the implementation of such standards is usually achieved by network administrators without even knowing the standards- weaknesses and strengths. The intention of this paper is to evaluate and analyze the impact over the network-s security due to the implementation of the wireless networks security standards WEP, WPA and WLAN 802.1X.

Keywords: 802.1X, vulnerabilities analysis, WEP, wireless security, WPA.

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Authors: Victoria L. Nkosi, Parvaneh Farhangpour

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Often a Grade 12 certificate is perceived as a passport to tertiary education and the minimum requirement to enter the world of work. In spite of its importance, many students do not make this milestone in South Africa. It is important to find out why so many students still fail in spite of transformation in the education system in the post-apartheid era. Given the complexity of education and its context, this study adopted a case study design to examine one historically underperforming high school in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa in 2013. The aim was to gain a understanding of the inner and outer school contextual factors associated with the high failure rate among Grade 12 students.  Government documents and reports were consulted to identify factors in the district and the village surrounding the school and a student survey was conducted to identify school, home and student factors. The randomly-sampled half of the population of Grade 12 students (53) participated in the survey and quantitative data are analyzed using descriptive statistical methods. The findings showed that a host of factors is at play. The school is located in a village within a municipality which has been one of the poorest three municipalities in South Africa and the lowest Grade 12 pass rate in the Mpumalanga province.   Moreover, over half of the families of the students are single parents, 43% are unemployed and the majority has a low level of education. In addition, most families (83%) do not have basic study materials such as a dictionary, books, tables, and chairs. A significant number of students (70%) are over-aged (+19 years old); close to half of them (49%) are grade repeaters. The school itself lacks essential resources, namely computers, science laboratories, library, and enough furniture and textbooks. Moreover, teaching and learning are negatively affected by the teachers’ occasional absenteeism, inadequate lesson preparation, and poor communication skills. Overall, the continuous low performance of students in this school mirrors the vicious circle of multiple negative conditions present within and outside of the school. The complexity of factors associated with the underperformance of Grade 12 students in this school calls for a multi-dimensional intervention from government and stakeholders. One important intervention should be the placement of over-aged students and grade-repeaters in suitable educational institutions for the benefit of other students.

Keywords: Inner context, outer context, over-aged students, vicious circle.

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Authors: C. Ardil

Abstract:

This paper presents a software product quality evaluation model based on the ISO/IEC 25010 quality model. The evaluation characteristics and sub characteristics were identified from the ISO/IEC 25010 quality model. The multidimensional structure of the quality model is based on characteristics such as functional suitability, performance efficiency, compatibility, usability, reliability, security, maintainability, and portability, and associated sub characteristics. Random numbers are generated to establish the decision maker’s importance weights for each sub characteristics. Also, random numbers are generated to establish the decision matrix of the decision maker’s final scores for each software product against each sub characteristics. Thus, objective criteria importance weights and index scores for datasets were obtained from the random numbers. In the proposed model, five different software product quality evaluation datasets under three different weight vectors were applied to multiple criteria decision analysis method, preference analysis for reference ideal solution (PARIS) for comparison, and sensitivity analysis procedure. This study contributes to provide a better understanding of the application of MCDMA methods and ISO/IEC 25010 quality model guidelines in software product quality evaluation process.

Keywords: ISO/IEC 25010 quality model, multiple criteria decisions making, multiple criteria decision making analysis, MCDMA, PARIS, Software Product Quality Evaluation Model, Software Product Quality Evaluation, Software Evaluation, Software Selection, Software

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Authors: Chang S. Woo, Hyun S. Park, Wan D. Kim

Abstract:

Fatigue life prediction and evaluation are the key technologies to assure the safety and reliability of automotive rubber components. The objective of this study is to develop the fatigue analysis process for vulcanized rubber components, which is applicable to predict fatigue life at initial product design step. Fatigue life prediction methodology of vulcanized natural rubber was proposed by incorporating the finite element analysis and fatigue damage parameter of maximum strain appearing at the critical location determined from fatigue test. In order to develop an appropriate fatigue damage parameter of the rubber material, a series of displacement controlled fatigue test was conducted using threedimensional dumbbell specimen with different levels of mean displacement. It was shown that the maximum strain was a proper damage parameter, taking the mean displacement effects into account. Nonlinear finite element analyses of three-dimensional dumbbell specimens were performed based on a hyper-elastic material model determined from the uni-axial tension, equi-biaxial tension and planar test. Fatigue analysis procedure employed in this study could be used approximately for the fatigue design.

Keywords: Rubber, Material test, Finite element analysis, Strain, Fatigue test, Fatigue life prediction.

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Authors: Kejun Zhuang

Abstract:

In this paper, a delayed physiological control system is investigated. The sufficient conditions for stability of positive equilibrium and existence of local Hopf bifurcation are derived. Furthermore, global existence of periodic solutions is established by using the global Hopf bifurcation theory. Finally, numerical examples are given to support the theoretical analysis.

Keywords: Physiological control system, global Hopf bifurcation, periodic solutions.

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Authors: G. Çelik Gül, F. Kurtuluş

Abstract:

Rare earths containing complex metal oxides have drawn much attention due to physical, chemical and optical properties which make them feasible in so many areas such as non-linear optical materials and ion exchanger. We have researched a systematic study to obtain rare earth containing zirconium molybdate compound, characterization, investigation of crystal system and calculation of unit cell parameters.  After a successful synthesis of Nd₂Zr₃(MoO₄)₉ which is a member of rare earth metal containing complex oxides family, X-ray diffraction (XRD), High Score Plus/Rietveld refinement analysis, and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) were completed to determine the crystal structure. Morphological properties and elemental composition were determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. Thermal properties were observed via Thermogravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG/DTA).

Keywords: Nd2Zr3(MoO4)9, solid state synthesis, powder x-ray diffraction, zirconium molybdates.

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Authors: Kihyon Kwon, Hyun T. Park, Gil Y. Chung, Sang-Hoon Lee

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This paper focuses on assessing sloshing-induced overflow of the seismically-isolated nuclear tanks based on Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) analysis. Typically, fluid motion in the seismically-isolated nuclear tank systems may be rather amplified and even overflowed under earthquake. Sloshing-induced overflow in those structures has to be reliably assessed and predicted since it can often cause critical damages to humans and environments. FSI analysis is herein performed to compute the total cumulative overflowed water volume more accurately, by coupling ANSYS with CFX for structural and fluid analyses, respectively. The approach is illustrated on a nuclear liquid storage tank, Spent Fuel Pool (SFP), forgiven conditions under consideration: different liquid levels, Peak Ground Accelerations (PGAs), and post earthquakes. 

Keywords: FSI analysis, seismically-isolated nuclear tank system, sloshing-induced overflow.

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