Search results for: full scale laboratory test.

Authors: Anna Słupik, Anna Mosiołek, Sebastian Wójtowicz, Dariusz Białoszewski

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Introduction: Whole-Body Vibration (WBV) uses high frequency mechanical stimuli generated by a vibration plate and transmitted through bone, muscle and connective tissues to the whole body. Research has shown that long-term vibration-plate training improves neuromuscular facilitation, especially in afferent neural pathways, responsible for the conduction of vibration and proprioceptive stimuli, muscle function, balance and proprioception. Some researchers suggest that the vibration stimulus briefly inhibits the conduction of afferent signals from proprioceptors and can interfere with the maintenance of body balance. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of a single set of exercises associated with whole-body vibration on the joint position sense and body balance. Material and methods: The study enrolled 55 people aged 19-24 years. These individuals were randomly divided into a test group (30 persons) and a control group (25 persons). Both groups performed the same set of exercises on a vibration plate. The following vibration parameters: frequency of 20Hz and amplitude of 3mm, were used in the test group. The control group performed exercises on the vibration plate while it was off. All participants were instructed to perform six dynamic exercises lasting 30 seconds each with a 60-second period of rest between them. The exercises involved large muscle groups of the trunk, pelvis and lower limbs. Measurements were carried out before and immediately after exercise. Joint position sense (JPS) was measured in the knee joint for the starting position at 45° in an open kinematic chain. JPS error was measured using a digital inclinometer. Balance was assessed in a standing position with both feet on the ground with the eyes open and closed (each test lasting 30 sec). Balance was assessed using Matscan with FootMat 7.0 SAM software. The surface of the ellipse of confidence and front-back as well as right-left swing were measured to assess balance. Statistical analysis was performed using Statistica 10.0 PL software. Results: There were no significant differences between the groups, both before and after the exercise (p> 0.05). JPS did not change in both the test (10.7° vs. 8.4°) and control groups (9.0° vs. 8.4°). No significant differences were shown in any of the test parameters during balance tests with the eyes open or closed in both the test and control groups (p> 0.05). Conclusions: 1. Deterioration in proprioception or balance was not observed immediately after the vibration stimulus. This suggests that vibrationinduced blockage of proprioceptive stimuli conduction can have only a short-lasting effect that occurs only as long as a vibration stimulus is present. 2. Short-term use of vibration in treatment does not impair proprioception and seems to be safe for patients with proprioceptive impairment. 3. These results need to be supplemented with an assessment of proprioception during the application of vibration stimuli. Additionally, the impact of vibration parameters used in the exercises should be evaluated.

Keywords: Balance, joint position sense, proprioception, whole body vibration.

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Authors: Yen-Ting Wang, Kenny Wen-Chyuan Chen, I-Tsun Chiang, Lung-Ching Liang, Alex J.Y. Lee

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The aim of this study was to establish the feasibility of a minute incremental exercise testing protocol in young asthma children. Twenty-two children with clinically diagnosed mild to moderate asthma volunteered to participate. The maximum incremental exercise test was performed using a cycle ergometer with an electromagnetic braking. A warm-up unloaded for 2 minutes then the workload was started at 40 watts for 2 minutes, and then stepwise increments of 8 watts per 2 minutes were applied. The pedaling frequency was set at 50 rpm. Ventilation and gas exchange were measured with a breath-by-breath automatic metabolic measurement system. Results showed that this test was well tolerated by all asthmatic children. Most of the children reached the VO2 plateau and satisfied the criteria for maximal respiratory exchange ratio of ≥ 1. This Study demonstrated that this testing protocol was suitable for young asthmatic children.

Keywords: Asthma, Child, Exercise, Pediatrics.

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Authors: Amitabh Wahi, Sundaramurthy S.

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Natural outdoor scene classification is active and promising research area around the globe. In this study, the classification is carried out in two phases. In the first phase, the features are extracted from the images by wavelet decomposition method and stored in a database as feature vectors. In the second phase, the neural classifiers such as back-propagation neural network (BPNN) and resilient back-propagation neural network (RPNN) are employed for the classification of scenes. Four hundred color images are considered from MIT database of two classes as forest and street. A comparative study has been carried out on the performance of the two neural classifiers BPNN and RPNN on the increasing number of test samples. RPNN showed better classification results compared to BPNN on the large test samples.

Keywords: BPNN, Classification, Feature extraction, RPNN, Wavelet.

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Authors: Chothmal, Basant Agarwal

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Sentiment analysis means to classify a given review document into positive or negative polar document. Sentiment analysis research has been increased tremendously in recent times due to its large number of applications in the industry and academia. Sentiment analysis models can be used to determine the opinion of the user towards any entity or product. E-commerce companies can use sentiment analysis model to improve their products on the basis of users’ opinion. In this paper, we propose a new One-class Support Vector Machine (One-class SVM) based sentiment analysis model for movie review documents. In the proposed approach, we initially extract features from one class of documents, and further test the given documents with the one-class SVM model if a given new test document lies in the model or it is an outlier. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed sentiment analysis model.

Keywords: Feature selection methods, Machine learning, NB, One-class SVM, Sentiment Analysis, Support Vector Machine.

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Authors: B. S. Boyanov, A. B. Peltekov, K. I. Ivanov

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The ferrites ZnFe2O4, CdFe2O4 and CuFe2O4 are synthesized in laboratory conditions using ceramic technology. Their homogeneity and structure are proven by X-Ray diffraction analysis and Mössbauer spectroscopy. The synthesized ferrites are subjected to strong acid and high temperature leaching with solutions of H2SO4, HCl and HNO3. The results indicate that the highest degree of leaching of Zn, Cd and Cu from the ferrites is achieved by use of HCl. The charging of five zinc sulfide concentrates was optimized using the criterion of minimal amount of zinc ferrite produced when roasting the concentrates in a fluidized bed. The results obtained are interpreted in terms of the hydrometallurgical zinc production and maximum recovery of zinc, copper and cadmium from initial zinc concentrates after their roasting.

Keywords: Hydrometallurgy, inorganic acids, solubility, zinc ferrite.

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Authors: Omid Borazjani, Mahmoud Roosta, Khodakhast Isapour, Ali Reza Rajabi

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This paper presents an application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithm for improving power system voltage stability. The training data is obtained by solving several normal and abnormal conditions using the Linear Programming technique. The selected objective function gives minimum deviation of the reactive power control variables, which leads to the maximization of minimum Eigen value of load flow Jacobian. The considered reactive power control variables are switchable VAR compensators, OLTC transformers and excitation of generators. The method has been implemented on a modified IEEE 30-bus test system. The results obtain from the test clearly show that the trained neural network is capable of improving the voltage stability in power system with a high level of precision and speed.

Keywords: Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Load Flow, Voltage Stability, Power Systems.

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Authors: M. Bougamouza, M. Bouhadef, T. Zitoun

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The aim of this study is to examine, through experimentation in the laboratory, the supercritical flow in the presence of an obstacle in a rectangular channel. The supercritical regime in the whole hydraulic channel is achieved by adding a convergent. We will observe the influence of the obstacle shape and dimension on the characteristics of the supercritical flow, mainly the free-surface elevation and the velocity profile. The velocity measurements have been conducted with the one dimension laser anemometry technique.

Keywords: Experiments, free-surface flow, hydraulic channel, uneven bottom, laser anemometry, supercritical regime.

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Authors: Okafor UAC, Ibeabuchimn, Omidina JO, Igwesi-Chidobe CN, Akinbo SRA

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Purpose: The fear of falling is a major concern among the elderly. Sixty-five percent of individuals older than 60 years of age experience loss of balance often on a daily basis. Therefore, balance assessment in the elderly deserves special attention due to its importance in functional mobility and safety. This study aimed at assessing balance performance and comparing some anthropometric parameters among a Nigerian non-institutionalized elderly population.

Methods: Sixty one elderly subjects (31 males and 30 females) participated in this study. Their ages ranged between 62 and 84 years. Ability to maintain balance was assessed using Functional Reach Test (FRT) and Sharpened Romberg Test (SRT). Anthropometric data including age, weight, height, arm length, leg length, bi-acromial breadth, foot length and trunk length were also collected. Analysis was done using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and Independent T-test, while level of significance was set as p<0.05.

Results: Age-related significant relationship was observed between balance performance and bi-acromial breadth among the elderly population. Gender and visual input also had a significant influence on balance performance. Other anthropometric variables (age, weight, height, arm length, leg length, foot length and trunk length) showed no significant relationship with balance performance among this elderly sample.

Conclusion: Only specific anthropometric variables may affect balance performances among the healthy elderly. The study further highlights the need for routine assessment of both static and dynamic balance to detect and appropriately manage aging-related diseases which could affect balance in the elderly.

Keywords: Balance Performance, Anthropometry, Non-institutionalized Elderly.

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Authors: Gideon J. Bonthuys, Marco van Dijk, Jay N. Bhagwan

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Small scale hydropower used to play a very important role in the provision of energy to urban and rural areas of South Africa. The national electricity grid, however, expanded and offered cheap, coal generated electricity and a large number of hydropower systems were decommissioned. Unfortunately, large numbers of households and communities will not be connected to the national electricity grid for the foreseeable future due to high cost of transmission and distribution systems to remote communities due to the relatively low electricity demand within rural communities and the allocation of current expenditure on upgrading and constructing of new coal fired power stations. This necessitates the development of feasible alternative power generation technologies. A feasibility and implementation model was developed to assist in designing and financially evaluating small-scale hydropower (SSHP) plants. Several sites were identified using the model. The SSHP plants were designed for the selected sites and the designs for the different selected sites were priced using pricing models (civil, mechanical and electrical aspects). Following feasibility studies done on the designed and priced SSHP plants, a feasibility analysis was done and a design chart developed for future similar potential SSHP plant projects. The methodology followed in conducting the feasibility analysis for other potential sites consisted of developing cost and income/saving formulae, developing net present value (NPV) formulae, Capital Cost Comparison Ratio (CCCR) and levelised cost formulae for SSHP projects for the different types of plant installations. It included setting up a model for the development of a design chart for a SSHP, calculating the NPV, CCCR and levelised cost for the different scenarios within the model by varying different parameters within the developed formulae, setting up the design chart for the different scenarios within the model and analyzing and interpreting results. From the interpretation of the develop design charts for feasible SSHP in can be seen that turbine and distribution line cost are the major influences on the cost and feasibility of SSHP. High head, short transmission line and islanded mini-grid SSHP installations are the most feasible and that the levelised cost of SSHP is high for low power generation sites. The main conclusion from the study is that the levelised cost of SSHP projects indicate that the cost of SSHP for low energy generation is high compared to the levelised cost of grid connected electricity supply; however, the remoteness of SSHP for rural electrification and the cost of infrastructure to connect remote rural communities to the local or national electricity grid provides a low CCCR and renders SSHP for rural electrification feasible on this basis.

Keywords: Feasibility, cost, rural electrification, small-scale hydropower.

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Authors: Randhir Singh Baghel

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In this work, long-term spatiotemporal changes in rainfall are investigated and assessed at the meteorological divisional level using whole-year data from Rajasthan, India. Data from each of the district's eight tehsils are studied to see how the rainfall pattern has altered over the last 10 years.  We primarily compare information from the Jaipur district in Rajasthan, India, at the tehsil level. We looked at the full year, and from January to December, there was constantly more rain than any other month.  Furthermore, we compare the research of annual and monthly rainfall. Havey rainfall is also shown for two months, July and August.

Keywords: Climate change, temperature, seasonal monsoons, rainfall variability.

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Authors: Perumal Nallagownden, Ravindra N. Mukerjee, Syafrudin Masri

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In a competitive energy market, system reliability should be maintained at all times. Power system operation being of online in nature, the energy balance requirements must be satisfied to ensure reliable operation the system. To achieve this, information regarding the expected status of the system, the scheduled transactions and the relevant inputs necessary to make either a transaction contract or a transmission contract operational, have to be made available in real time. The real time procedure proposed, facilitates this. This paper proposes a quadratic curve learning procedure, which enables a generator-s contribution to the retailer demand, power loss of transaction in a line at the retail end and its associated losses for an oncoming operating scenario to be predicted. Matlab program was used to test in on a 24-bus IEE Reliability Test System, and the results are found to be acceptable.

Keywords: Deregulation, learning coefficients, reliability, prediction, competitive energy market.

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Authors: Jiri Brozovsky

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Modulus of elasticity is one of the important parameters of construction materials, which considerably influence their deformation properties and which can also be determined by means of non-destructive test methods like ultrasonic pulse method. However, measurement results of ultrasonic pulse methods are influenced by various factors, one of which is the natural frequency of the transducers. The paper states knowledge about influence of natural frequency of the transducers (54; 82 and 150kHz) on ultrasonic pulse velocity and dynamic modulus of elasticity (Young's Dynamic modulus of elasticity). Differences between ultrasonic pulse velocity and dynamic modulus of elasticity were found with the same smallest dimension of test specimen in the direction of sounding and density their value decreases as the natural frequency of transducers grew.

Keywords: Calcium silicate brick, ultrasonic pulse method, ultrasonic pulse velocity, dynamic modulus of elasticity.

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Authors: M. N. Nwodo, Y. P. Cheng, N. H. Minh

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In the process of recovering oil in weak sandstone formations, the strength of sandstones around the wellbore is weakened due to the increase of effective stress/load from the completion activities around the cavity. The weakened and de-bonded sandstone may be eroded away by the produced fluid, which is termed sand production. It is one of the major trending subjects in the petroleum industry because of its significant negative impacts, as well as some observed positive impacts. For efficient sand management therefore, there has been need for a reliable study tool to understand the mechanism of sanding. One method of studying sand production is the use of the widely recognized Discrete Element Method (DEM), Particle Flow Code (PFC^3D) which represents sands as granular individual elements bonded together at contact points. However, there is limited knowledge of the particle-scale behavior of the weak sandstone, and the parameters that affect sanding. This paper aims to investigate the reliability of using PFC^3D and a simple Darcy flow in understanding the sand production behavior of a weak sandstone. An isotropic tri-axial test on a weak oil sandstone sample was first simulated at a confining stress of 1MPa to calibrate and validate the parallel bond models of PFC^3D using a 10m height and 10m diameter solid cylindrical model. The effect of the confining stress on the number of bonds failure was studied using this cylindrical model. With the calibrated data and sample material properties obtained from the tri-axial test, simulations without and with fluid flow were carried out to check on the effect of Darcy flow on bonds failure using the same model geometry. The fluid flow network comprised of every four particles connected with tetrahedral flow pipes with a central pore or flow domain. Parametric studies included the effects of confining stress, and fluid pressure; as well as validating flow rate – permeability relationship to verify Darcy’s fluid flow law. The effect of model size scaling on sanding was also investigated using 4m height, 2m diameter model. The parallel bond model successfully calibrated the sample’s strength of 4.4MPa, showing a sharp peak strength before strain-softening, similar to the behavior of real cemented sandstones. There seems to be an exponential increasing relationship for the bigger model, but a curvilinear shape for the smaller model. The presence of the Darcy flow induced tensile forces and increased the number of broken bonds. For the parametric studies, flow rate has a linear relationship with permeability at constant pressure head. The higher the fluid flow pressure, the higher the number of broken bonds/sanding. The DEM PFC^3D is a promising tool to studying the micromechanical behavior of cemented sandstones.

Keywords: Discrete Element Method, fluid flow, parametric study, sand production/bonds failure.

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Authors: A. D'Alessandro, F. Ubertini, A. L. Materazzi

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In the field of civil engineering, Structural Health Monitoring is a topic of growing interest. Effective monitoring instruments permit the control of the working conditions of structures and infrastructures, through the identification of behavioral anomalies due to incipient damages, especially in areas of high environmental hazards as earthquakes. While traditional sensors can be applied only in a limited number of points, providing a partial information for a structural diagnosis, novel transducers may allow a diffuse sensing. Thanks to the new tools and materials provided by nanotechnology, new types of multifunctional sensors are developing in the scientific panorama. In particular, cement-matrix composite materials capable of diagnosing their own state of strain and tension, could be originated by the addition of specific conductive nanofillers. Because of the nature of the material they are made of, these new cementitious nano-modified transducers can be inserted within the concrete elements, transforming the same structures in sets of widespread sensors. This paper is aimed at presenting the results of a research about a new self-sensing nanocomposite and about the implementation of smart sensors for Structural Health Monitoring. The developed nanocomposite has been obtained by inserting multi walled carbon nanotubes within a cementitious matrix. The insertion of such conductive carbon nanofillers provides the base material with piezoresistive characteristics and peculiar sensitivity to mechanical modifications. The self-sensing ability is achieved by correlating the variation of the external stress or strain with the variation of some electrical properties, such as the electrical resistance or conductivity. Through the measurement of such electrical characteristics, the performance and the working conditions of an element or a structure can be monitored. Among conductive carbon nanofillers, carbon nanotubes seem to be particularly promising for the realization of self-sensing cement-matrix materials. Some issues related to the nanofiller dispersion or to the influence of the nano-inclusions amount in the cement matrix need to be carefully investigated: the strain sensitivity of the resulting sensors is influenced by such factors. This work analyzes the dispersion of the carbon nanofillers, the physical properties of the fresh dough, the electrical properties of the hardened composites and the sensing properties of the realized sensors. The experimental campaign focuses specifically on their dynamic characterization and their applicability to the monitoring of full-scale elements. The results of the electromechanical tests with both slow varying and dynamic loads show that the developed nanocomposite sensors can be effectively used for the health monitoring of structures.

Keywords: Carbon nanotubes, self-sensing nanocomposites, smart cement-matrix sensors, structural health monitoring.

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Authors: Mohammad R. Kavian Nezhad, Carlos F. Lange, Brian A. Fleck

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This research presents the validation study of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model developed to simulate the scalar dispersion emitted from rooftop sources around the buildings at the University of Alberta North Campus. The ANSYS CFX code was used to perform the numerical simulation of the wind regime and pollutant dispersion by solving the 3D steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations on a building-scale high-resolution grid. The validation study was performed in two steps. First, the CFD model performance in 24 cases (eight wind directions and three wind speeds) was evaluated by comparing the predicted flow fields with the available data from the previous measurement campaign designed at the North Campus, using the standard deviation method (SDM), while the estimated results of the numerical model showed maximum average percent errors of approximately 53% and 37% for wind incidents from the North and Northwest, respectively. Good agreement with the measurements was observed for the other six directions, with an average error of less than 30%. In the second step, the reliability of the implemented turbulence model, numerical algorithm, modeling techniques, and the grid generation scheme was further evaluated using the Mock Urban Setting Test (MUST) dispersion dataset. Different statistical measures, including the fractional bias (FB), the mean geometric bias (MG), and the normalized mean square error (NMSE), were used to assess the accuracy of the predicted dispersion field. Our CFD results are in very good agreement with the field measurements.

Keywords: CFD, plume dispersion, complex urban geometry, validation study, wind flow.

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Authors: Nataša Šarlija, Sanja Pfeifer

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This study analyzes the innovative orientation of the Croatian entrepreneurs. Innovative orientation is represented by the perceived extent to which an entrepreneur’s product or service or technology is new, and no other businesses offer the same product. The sample is extracted from the GEM Croatia Adult Population Survey dataset for the years 2003-2013. We apply descriptive statistics, t-test, Chi-square test and logistic regression. Findings indicate that innovative orientations vary with personal, firm, meso and macro level variables, and between different stages in entrepreneurship process. Significant predictors are occupation of the entrepreneurs, size of the firm and export aspiration for both early stage and established entrepreneurs. In addition, fear of failure, expecting to start a new business and seeing an entrepreneurial career as a desirable choice are predictors of innovative orientation among early stage entrepreneurs.

Keywords: Multilevel determinants of the innovative orientation, Croatian early stage entrepreneurs, established businesses, GEM evidence.

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Authors: Gyoutae Park, Woosuk Kim, Sangguk Ahn, Seungmo Kim, Minjun Kim, Jinhan Lee, Youngdo Jo, Jongsam Moon, Hiesik Kim

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In this research, we designed a remote system to test parameters of gas detectors such as gas concentration and initial response time. This testing system is available to measure two gas instruments simultaneously. First of all, we assembled an experimental jig with a square structure. Those parts are included with a glass flask, two high-quality cameras, and two Ethernet modems for transmitting data. This remote gas detector testing system extracts numerals from videos with continually various gas concentrations while LCDs show photographs from cameras. Extracted numeral data are received to a laptop computer through Ethernet modem. And then, the numerical data with gas concentrations and the measured initial response speeds are recorded and graphed. Our remote testing system will be diversely applied on gas detector’s test and will be certificated in domestic and international countries.

Keywords: Gas leakage detector, inspection instrument, extracting numerals, concentration.

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Authors: Mohammad Hadi Zohdi, Mohamad Reza Dalvand, Maryam Zohdi

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In this research relationship between to be smooth the interest and output of accepted companies stock at negotiable paper exchange of Tehran is studied. Static community capacity included 363 companies member of negotiable paper exchange of Tehran that 54 companies were, by considering research limitation, selected from 2004 to 2009. Needed data for model test in librarian method was chosen from RAH AVARDE NOVIN informative banks, TADBIR and collecting needed data was selected from Tehran negotiable paper exchange archive. Given results show that in spite of belief among people based on companies have more smooth interest have more output, but resulted outcomes of test-done reveals that there is no relation between smooth interest and stock output.

Keywords: Smooth interest, interest fluctuation, interest level, output average, cost capital

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Authors: Tasnuva Tamanna, Sanjida Halim Topa

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Sputum smear conversion after one month of antituberculosis therapy in new smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis patients (PTB+) is a vital indicator towards treatment success. The objective of this study is to determine the rate of sputum smear conversion in new PTB+ patients after one month under treatment of National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital (NIDCH). Analysis of sputum smear conversion was done by re-clinical examination with sputum smear microscopic test after one month. Socio-demographic and hematological parameters were evaluated to perceive the correlation with the disease status. Among all enrolled patients only 33.33% were available for follow up diagnosis and of them only 42.86% patients turned to smear negative. Probably this consequence is due to non-coherence to the proper disease management. 66.67% and 78.78% patients reported low haemoglobin and packed cell volume level respectively whereas 80% and 93.33% patients accounted accelerated platelet count and erythrocyte sedimentation rate correspondingly.

Keywords: Followed up patients, PTB+ patients, sputum smear conversion, and sputum smear microscopic test.

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Authors: Federico Amato, Gabriele Bedon, Marco Raciti Castelli, Ernesto Benini

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The aerodynamic performances of vertical axis wind turbines are highly affected by tip vortexes. In the present work, different tip devices are considered and simulated against a baseline rotor configuration, with the aim of identifying the best tip architecture. Three different configurations are tested: winglets, an elliptic termination and an aerodynamic bulkhead. A comparative analysis on the most promising architectures is conducted, focusing also on blade torque evolution during a full revolution of the rotor blade. The most promising technology is concluded to be a well designed winglet.

Keywords: Darrieus Wind Turbine, Tip Devices, Tip Vortexes, Winglet, Elliptic Termination, Aerodynamic Bulkhead

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Authors: Gökhan Polat, Dicle Kocaoğlu Yılmazer, Muhlis Nezihi Sarıdede

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Iron oxides are the main input to produce iron in integrated iron and steel plants. During production of iron from iron oxides, some wastes with high iron content occur. These main wastes can be classified as basic oxygen furnace (BOF) sludge, flue dust and rolling scale. Recycling of these wastes has a great importance for both environmental effects and reduction of production costs. In this study, recycling experiments were performed on basic oxygen furnace sludge, flue dust and rolling scale which contain 53.8%, 54.3% and 70.2% iron respectively. These wastes were mixed together with coke as reducer and these mixtures are pressed to obtain cylindrical briquettes. These briquettes were pressed under various compacting forces from 1 ton to 6 tons. Also, both stoichiometric and twice the stoichiometric cokes were added to investigate effect of coke amount on reduction properties of the waste mixtures. Then, these briquettes were reduced at 1000°C and 1100°C during 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 min in a muffle furnace. According to the results of reduction experiments, the effect of compacting force, temperature and time on reduction ratio of the wastes were determined. It is found that 1 ton compacting force, 150 min reduction time and 1100°C are the optimum conditions to obtain reduction ratio higher than 75%.

Keywords: Iron oxide wastes, reduction, coke, recycling.

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Authors: M. Raciti Castelli, S. De Betta, E. Benini

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The optimal grid spacing and turbulence model for the 2D numerical analysis of a vertical-axis water turbine (VAWaterT) operating in a 2 m/s freestream current has been investigated. The results of five different spatial domain discretizations and two turbulence models (k-ω SST and k-ε RNG) have been compared, in order to gain the optimal y+ parameter distribution along the blade walls during a full rotor revolution. The resulting optimal mesh has appeared to be quite similar to that obtained for the numerical analysis of a vertical-axis wind turbine.

Keywords: CFD, vertical axis water turbine, NACA 0025, blade y+.

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Authors: Julio Cesar Lopes de Oliveira, Carlos Henrique Gonc¸alves Treviso

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The shortage of the automotive market in relation to options for sources of high power car audio systems, led to development of this work. Thus, we developed a source with stabilized voltage with 4320 W effective power. Designed to the voltage of 14.4 V and a choice of two currents: 30 A load option in battery banks and 300 A at full load. This source can also be considered as a source of general use dedicated commercial with a simple control circuit in analog form based on discrete components. The assembly of power circuit uses a methodology for higher power than the initially stipulated.

Keywords: DC-DC power converters, converters, power convertion, pulse width modulation converters.

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Authors: Byeong-Sam Kim, Kangsu Lee, Kyoungwoo Park, Samir Ben Chaabane

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A Vehicle-s door wireing harness arrangement structure is provided. In vehicle-s door wiring harness(W/H) system is more toward to arrange a passenger compartment than a hinge and a weatherstrip. This article gives some insight into the dimensioning process, with special focus on large deflection analysis of wiring harness(W/H) in vehicle-s door structures for durability problem. An Finite elements analysis for door wiring harness(W/H) are used for residual stresses and dimensional stability with bending flexible. Durability test data for slim test specimens were compared with the numerical predicted fatigue life for verification. The final lifing of the component combines the effects of these microstructural features with the complex stress state arising from the combined service loading and residual stresses.

Keywords: Large deflection, wiring harness system, finite element analysis, vehicle's door.

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Authors: F. Husem, M. E. Turan, Y. Sun, H. Ahlatci, I. Tozlu

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Residual stress and fatigue crack growth rates are important to determine mechanical behavior of rails. This study aims to make relationship between residual stress and fatigue crack growth values in rails. For this purpose, three R260 quality rails (0.6-0.8% C, 0.6-1.25 Mn) were chosen. Residual stress of samples was measured by cutting method that is related in railway standard. Then samples were machined for fatigue crack growth test and analyze was completed according to the ASTM E647 standard which gives information about parameters of rails for this test. Microstructure characterizations were examined by Light Optic Microscope (LOM). The results showed that residual stress change with fatigue crack growth rate. The sample has highest residual stress exhibits highest crack growth rate and pearlitic structure can be seen clearly for all samples by microstructure analyze.

Keywords: Residual stress, fatigue crack growth, R260, LOM, ASTM E647.

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Authors: Y. Galerkin, O. Solovieva

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Parameters of flow are calculated in vaneless diffusers with relative width 0,014–0,10. Inlet angles of flow and similarity criteria were varied. There is information on flow separation, boundary layer development, configuration of streamlines. Polytrophic efficiency, loss coefficient and recovery coefficient are used to compare effectiveness of diffusers. The sample of optimization of narrow diffuser with conical walls is presented. Three wide diffusers with narrowing walls are compared. The work is made in the R&D laboratory “Gas dynamics of turbo machines” of the TU SPb.

Keywords: Vaneless diffuser, relative width, flow angle, flow separation, loss coefficient, similarity criteria.

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Authors: Murat Koklu, Yavuz Unal

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Data mining can be called as a technique to extract information from data. It is the process of obtaining hidden information and then turning it into qualified knowledge by statistical and artificial intelligence technique. One of its application areas is medical area to form decision support systems for diagnosis just by inventing meaningful information from given medical data. In this study a decision support system for diagnosis of illness that make use of data mining and three different artificial intelligence classifier algorithms namely Multilayer Perceptron, Naive Bayes Classifier and J.48. Pima Indian dataset of UCI Machine Learning Repository was used. This dataset includes urinary and blood test results of 768 patients. These test results consist of 8 different feature vectors. Obtained classifying results were compared with the previous studies. The suggestions for future studies were presented.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Classifiers, Data Mining, Diabetic Patients.

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Authors: Gary Marlin Sandquist

Abstract:

Currently, a large number of license activities (Early Site Permits, Combined Operating License, reactor certifications, etc.), are pending for review before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US NRC). Much of the senior staff at the NRC is now committed to these review and licensing actions. To address this additional workload, the NRC has recruited a large number of new Regulatory Staff for dealing with these and other regulatory actions such as the US Fleet of Research and Test Reactors (RTRs). These reactors pose unusual demands on Regulatory Staff since the US Fleet of RTRs, although few (32 Licensed RTRs as of 2010), they represent a broad range of reactor types, operations, and research and training aspects that nuclear reactor power plants (such as the 104 LWRs) do not pose. The NRC must inspect and regulate all these facilities. This paper addresses selected training topics and regulatory activities providedNRC Inspectors for RTRs.

Keywords: Regulations, Research and Test Reactors, Training, US NRC

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Authors: T. Hacib, M. R. Mekideche, N. Ferkha

Abstract:

This paper presents an approach which is based on the use of supervised feed forward neural network, namely multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network and finite element method (FEM) to solve the inverse problem of parameters identification. The approach is used to identify unknown parameters of ferromagnetic materials. The methodology used in this study consists in the simulation of a large number of parameters in a material under test, using the finite element method (FEM). Both variations in relative magnetic permeability and electrical conductivity of the material under test are considered. Then, the obtained results are used to generate a set of vectors for the training of MLP neural network. Finally, the obtained neural network is used to evaluate a group of new materials, simulated by the FEM, but not belonging to the original dataset. Noisy data, added to the probe measurements is used to enhance the robustness of the method. The reached results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach, and encourage future works on this subject.

Keywords: Inverse problem, MLP neural network, parametersidentification, FEM.

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Authors: Narges Razeghi

Abstract:

In studies on psychological health and children-s personality development and in researches on emotional distresses, children-s behavioral disorders associated with mother deprivation, are known as the major cause of mental disorders. Therefore, for identification of children-s attachment styles in nursery-s children are of significant importance. For this purpose, to compare the attachment styles between children of nursery with those provided care by their families, the Separation Anxiety Test (SAT) of Slough and et al was administered on 72 children (36 in nursery and 36 family-cared). The results indicated, almost half of children in both groups have insecure attachment styles. Tendency ratio of both groups of children towards Secure and Ambivalent Insecure styles are almost the same. However the avoidant style of attachment in children of nursery is more than those provided care by their families. The children under family care compared to the children of nursery, in the situations of separation from their mothers in the first day of school and sleeping in their room, have shown more self reliance.

Keywords: Attachment style, Separation Anxiety Test (SAT), Children, Nursery, Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

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