Search results for: Recovery Rate
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 3143

Search results for: Recovery Rate

2963 Choice of Exchange Rate Regimes: Case of Ex-Yugoslavia Countries

Authors: Ivan Lovrinović, Gordana Kordić, Martina Nakić

Abstract:

There are little subjects in macroeconomics that are so widely discussed, but at the same time controversial and without a clear solution such as the choice of exchange rate regime. National authorities need to take into consideration numerous fundamentals, trying to fulfil goals of economic growth, low and stable inflation and international stability. This paper focuses on the countries of ex- Yugoslavia and their exchange rate history as independent states. We follow the development of the regimes in 6 countries during the transition through the financial crisis of the second part of the 2000s to the prospects of their final goal: full membership in the European Union. Main question is to what extent has the exchange regime contributed to their economic success, considering other objective factors.

Keywords: European Union, exchange rate regime, ex- Yugoslavia countries

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2962 Operating Equipment Effectiveness with a Reliability Indicator

Authors: Carl D. Hays III

Abstract:

The purpose of this theory paper is to add a reliability indicator to Operating Equipment Effectiveness (OpEE) which is used to evaluate the productivity of machines and equipment with wheels and tracks. OpEE is a derivative of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) which has been widely used for many decades in factories that manufacture products. OEE has three variables, Availability Rate, Work Rate, and Quality Rate. When OpEE was converted from OEE, the Quality Rate variable was replaced with Travel Rate. Travel Rate is essentially utilization which is a common performance indicator in machines and equipment. OpEE was designed for machines operated in remote locations such as forests, roads, fields, and farms. This theory paper intends to add the Quality Rate variable back to OpEE by including a reliability indicator in the dashboard view. This paper will suggest that the OEE quality variable can be used with a reliability metric and combined with the OpEE score. With this dashboard view of both performance metrics and reliability, fleet managers will have a more complete understanding of equipment productivity and reliability. This view will provide both leading and lagging indicators of performance in machines and equipment. The lagging indicators will indicate the trends and the leading indicators will provide an overall performance score to manage.

Keywords: Operating Equipment Effectiveness, Operating Equipment Effectiveness, IoT, Contamination Monitoring.

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2961 Effect of Moisture Content and Loading Rate on Mechanical Strength of Brown Rice Varieties

Authors: I. Bagheri, M.B. Dehpour

Abstract:

The effect of moisture content and loading rate on mechanical strength of 12 brown rice grain varieties was determined. The results showed that the rupture force of brown rice grain decreased by increasing the moisture content and loading rate. The highest rupture force values was obtained at the moisture content of 8% (w.b.) and loading rate of 10 mm/min; while the lowest rupture force corresponded to the moisture content of 14% (w.b.) and loading rate of 15 mm/min. The 12 varieties were divided into three groups, namely local short grain varieties, local long grain varieties and improved long grain varieties. It was observed that the rupture strength of the three groups were statistically different from each other (P<0.01). It was revealed that the brown rice rupture at lower levels of moisture content was in the form of sudden failure with less deformation; while at higher levels of moisture content the grain rupture was in the form of gradually crushing with more deformation.

Keywords: Brown rice, loading rate, moisture content, ruptureforce

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2960 Experimental Investigation and Constitutive Modeling of Volume Strain under Uniaxial Strain Rate Jump Test in HDPE

Authors: Rida B. Arieby, Hameed N. Hameed

Abstract:

In this work, tensile tests on high density polyethylene have been carried out under various constant strain rate and strain rate jump tests. The dependency of the true stress and specially the variation of volume strain have been investigated, the volume strain due to the phenomena of damage was determined in real time during the tests by an optical extensometer called Videotraction. A modified constitutive equations, including strain rate and damage effects, are proposed, such a model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic approach called (DNLR). The ability of the model to predict the complex nonlinear response of this polymer is examined by comparing the model simulation with the available experimental data, which demonstrate that this model can represent the deformation behavior of the polymer reasonably well.

Keywords: Strain rate jump tests, Volume Strain, High Density Polyethylene, Large strain, Thermodynamics approach.

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2959 Iran’s Gas Flare Recovery Options Using MCDM

Authors: Halle Bakhteeyar, Azadeh Maroufmashat, Abbas Maleki, Sourena Sattari Khavas

Abstract:

In this paper, five options of Iran’s gas flare recovery have been compared via MCDM method. For developing the model, the weighing factor of each indicator an AHP method is used via the Expert-choice software. Several cases were considered in this analysis. They are defined where the priorities were defined always keeping one criterion in first position, while the priorities of the other criteria were defined by ordinal information defining the mutual relations of the criteria and the respective indicators. The results, show that amongst these cases, priority is obtained for CHP usage where availability indicator is highly weighted while the pipeline usage is obtained where environmental indicator highly weighted and the injection priority is obtained where economic indicator is highly weighted and also when the weighing factor of all the criteria are the same the Injection priority is obtained.

Keywords: Flare, Gas, Iran.

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2958 Fade Dynamics Investigation Applying Statistics of Fade Duration and Level Crossing Rate

Authors: Balázs Héder, Róbert Singliar, János Bitó

Abstract:

The impact of rain attenuation on wireless communication signals is predominant because of the used high frequency (above 10 GHz). The knowledge of statistics of attenuation is very important for planning point-to-point microwave links operating in high frequency band. Describing the statistics of attenuation is possible for instance with fade duration or level crossing rate. In our examination we determine these statistics from one year measured data for a given microwave link, and we are going to make an attempt to transform the level crossing rate statistic to fade duration statistic.

Keywords: Rain attenuation measurement, fade duration, level crossing rate.

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2957 The Effect of Failure Rate on Repair and Maintenance Costs of Four Agricultural Tractor Models

Authors: Fatemeh Afsharnia, Mohammad Amin Asoodar, Abbas Abdeshahi

Abstract:

In economical evaluation literature, although the combination of some variables such as repair and maintenance costs and accumulated use hours has been widely considered in determining of optimum life for tractor, no investigation has indicated the influence of failure rate on repair and maintenance costs. In this study, the owners of three hundred tractors, which include Massey Ferguson, John Deere and Universal, were interviewed, from five regions of Khouzestan Province. A regression model was used to predict the tractors annual repair and maintenance costs based on failure rate. Results showed that the maximum percentage of annual repair and maintenance costs occurred in engine parts for MF285, JD3140 and U650 tractors while these costs for tire, ring, ball bearing and operator seat were higher compared to other MF399 tractor systems. According to the results of the regression, the failure rate increase would lead to annual repair and maintenance costs increase for all tractors. But, of all the tractors, repair and maintenance costs of JD3140 tractors extremely affected by the failure rate increase.

Keywords: Failure rate, tractor, annual repair and maintenance costs, regression model, Khouzestan.

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2956 Detecting Older Drivers- Stress Level during Real-World Driving Tasks

Authors: Weihong Guo, Dan Brennan, Phil Blythe

Abstract:

This paper presents the effect of driving a motor vehicle on the stress levels of older drivers, indicated by monitoring their hear rate increase whilst completing various everyday driving tasks. Results suggest that whilst older female drivers heart rate varied more significantly than males, the actual age of a participant did not result in a significant change in heart rate due to stress, within the age group tested. The analysis of the results indicates the most stressful manoeuvres undertaken by the older drivers and highlights the tasks which were found difficult with a view to implementing technologies to aid the more senior driver in automotive travel.

Keywords: Driver stress, heart rate, older driver, road safety, speeding.

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2955 Numerical Simulation of the Flow Channel in the Curved Plane Oil Skimmer

Authors: Xing Feng, Yuanbin Li

Abstract:

Oil spills at sea can cause severe marine environmental damage, including bringing huge hazards to living resources and human beings. In situ burning or chemical dispersant methods can be used to handle the oil spills sometimes, but these approaches will bring secondary pollution and fail in some situations. Oil recovery techniques have also been developed to recover oil using oil skimmer equipment installed on ships, while the hydrodynamic process of the oil flowing through the oil skimmer is very complicated and important for evaluating the recovery efficiency. Based on this, a two-dimensional numerical simulation platform for simulating the hydrodynamic process of the oil flowing through the oil skimmer is established based on the Navier-Stokes equations for viscous, incompressible fluid. Finally, the influence of the design of the flow channel in the curved plane oil skimmer on the hydrodynamic process of the oil flowing through the oil skimmer is investigated based on the established simulation platform.

Keywords: Curved plane oil skimmer, flow channel, CFD, VOF.

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2954 MIMO Broadcast Scheduling for Weighted Sum-rate Maximization

Authors: Swadhin Kumar Mishra, Sidhartha Panda, C. Ardil

Abstract:

Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) is one of the most important communication techniques that allow wireless systems to achieve higher data rate. To overcome the practical difficulties in implementing Dirty Paper Coding (DPC), various suboptimal MIMO Broadcast (MIMO-BC) scheduling algorithms are employed which choose the best set of users among all the users. In this paper we discuss such a sub-optimal MIMO-BC scheduling algorithm which employs antenna selection at the receiver side. The channels for the users considered here are not Identical and Independent Distributed (IID) so that users at the receiver side do not get equal opportunity for communication. So we introduce a method of applying weights to channels of the users which are not IID in such a way that each of the users gets equal opportunity for communication. The effect of weights on overall sum-rate achieved by the system has been investigated and presented.

Keywords: Antenna selection, Identical and Independent Distributed (IID), Sum-rate capacity, Weighted sum rate.

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2953 The Effect of Granule Size on the Digestibility of Wheat Starch Using an in vitro Model

Authors: Mee-Lin Lim Chai Teo, Darryl M. Small

Abstract:

Wheat has a bimodal starch granule population and the dependency of the rate of enzymatic hydrolysis on particle size has been investigated. Ungelatinised wheaten starch granules were separated into two populations by sedimentation and decantation. Particle size was analysed by laser diffraction and morphological characteristics were viewed using SEM. The sedimentation technique though lengthy, gave satisfactory separation of the granules. Samples (<10μm, >10μm and original) were digested with a-amylase using a dialysis model. Granules of <10μm showed significantly higher rate of reducing sugar release than those >10μm (p<0.05). In contrast, the rate was not significantly different between the original sample and granules >10μm. Moreover, the digestion rate was dependent on particle size whereby smaller granules produced higher rate of release. The methodology and results reported here can be used as a basis for further evaluations designed to delay the release of glucose during the digestion of native starches.

Keywords: in vitro Digestion, a-amylase, wheat starch, granule size.

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2952 The Principle Probabilities of Space-Distance Resolution for a Monostatic Radar and Realization in Cylindrical Array

Authors: Anatoly D. Pluzhnikov, Elena N. Pribludova, Alexander G. Ryndyk

Abstract:

In conjunction with the problem of the target selection on a clutter background, the analysis of the scanning rate influence on the spatial-temporal signal structure, the generalized multivariate correlation function and the quality of the resolution with the increase pulse repetition frequency is made. The possibility of the object space-distance resolution, which is conditioned by the range-to-angle conversion with an increased scanning rate, is substantiated. The calculations for the real cylindrical array at high scanning rate are presented. The high scanning rate let to get the signal to noise improvement of the order of 10 dB for the space-time signal processing.

Keywords: Antenna pattern, array, signal processing, spatial resolution.

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2951 The Effect of Deformation Activation Volume, Strain Rate Sensitivity and Processing Temperature of Grain Size Variants

Authors: P. B. Sob, A. A. Alugongo, T. B. Tengen

Abstract:

The activation volume of 6082T6 aluminum is investigated at different temperatures for grain size variants. The deformation activation volume was computed on the basis of the relationship between the Boltzmann’s constant k, the testing temperatures, the material strain rate sensitivity and the material yield stress grain size variants. The material strain rate sensitivity is computed as a function of yield stress and strain rate grain size variants. The effect of the material strain rate sensitivity and the deformation activation volume of 6082T6 aluminum at different temperatures of 3-D grain are discussed. It is shown that the strain rate sensitivities and activation volume are negative for the grain size variants during the deformation of nanostructured materials. It is also observed that the activation volume vary in different ways with the equivalent radius, semi minor axis radius, semi major axis radius and major axis radius. From the obtained results it is shown that the variation of activation volume increase and decrease with the testing temperature. It was revealed that, increase in strain rate sensitivity led to decrease in activation volume whereas increase in activation volume led to decrease in strain rate sensitivity.

Keywords: Nanostructured materials, grain size variants, temperature, yield stress, strain rate sensitivity, activation volume.

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2950 Identification of an Appropriate Alternative Waste Technology for Energy Recovery from Waste through Multi-Criteria Analysis

Authors: Sharmina Begum, M. G. Rasul, Delwar Akbar

Abstract:

Waste management is now a global concern due to its high environmental impact on climate change. Because of generating huge amount of waste through our daily activities, managing waste in an efficient way has become more important than ever. Alternative Waste Technology (AWT), a new category of waste treatment technology has been developed for energy recovery in recent years to address this issue. AWT describes a technology that redirects waste away from landfill, recovers more useable resources from the waste flow and reduces the impact on the surroundings. Australia is one of the largest producers of waste per-capita. A number of AWTs are using in Australia to produce energy from waste. Presently, it is vital to identify an appropriate AWT to establish a sustainable waste management system in Australia. Identification of an appropriate AWT through Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) of four AWTs by using five key decision making criteria is presented and discussed in this paper.

Keywords: Alternative waste technology (AWT), Energy fromwaste, Gasification, Multi-criteria Analysis (MCA)

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2949 Molecular Dynamics Simulation of the Effect of the Solid Gas Interface Nanolayer on Enhanced Thermal Conductivity of Copper-CO2 Nanofluid

Authors: Zeeshan Ahmed, Ajinkya Sarode, Pratik Basarkar, Atul Bhargav, Debjyoti Banerjee

Abstract:

The use of CO2 in oil recovery and in CO2 capture and storage is gaining traction in recent years. These applications involve heat transfer between CO2 and the base fluid, and hence, there arises a need to improve the thermal conductivity of CO2 to increase the process efficiency and reduce cost. One way to improve the thermal conductivity is through nanoparticle addition in the base fluid. The nanofluid model in this study consisted of copper (Cu) nanoparticles in varying concentrations with CO2 as a base fluid. No experimental data are available on thermal conductivity of CO2 based nanofluid. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are an increasingly adopted tool to perform preliminary assessments of nanoparticle (NP) fluid interactions. In this study, the effect of the formation of a nanolayer (or molecular layering) at the gas-solid interface on thermal conductivity is investigated using equilibrium MD simulations by varying NP diameter and keeping the volume fraction (1.413%) of nanofluid constant to check the diameter effect of NP on the nanolayer and thermal conductivity. A dense semi-solid fluid layer was seen to be formed at the NP-gas interface, and the thickness increases with increase in particle diameter, which also moves with the NP Brownian motion. Density distribution has been done to see the effect of nanolayer, and its thickness around the NP. These findings are extremely beneficial, especially to industries employed in oil recovery as increased thermal conductivity of CO2 will lead to enhanced oil recovery and thermal energy storage.

Keywords: Copper-CO2 nanofluid, molecular interfacial layer, thermal conductivity, molecular dynamic simulation.

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2948 Amine Solution Recovery Package and Controlling Corrosion in Regeneration Tower

Authors: A.Atash J ameh

Abstract:

Sarkhoon gas plant, located in south of Iran, has been installed to removal H2S contained in a high pressure natural gas stream. The solvent used for the H2S removal from gaseous stream is 34% by weight (wt%) Di-ethanol amine (DEA) solutions. Due to increasing concentration of heat stable salt (HSS) in solvent, corrosivity of amine solution had been increased. Reports indicated that there was corrosion on the shell of regeneration column. Because source formation of HSS was unknown, we decided to control the amount of HSS at the limit less than 3% wt amine solvent. Therefore, two small columns were filled by strong anionic base and carbon active, and then polluted amine was passed through beds. Finally a temporary amine recovery package on industrial scale was made based on laboratory’s results. From economical point of view we could save $700000 beside corrosion occurrence of the stripping column has been vigorously decreased.

Keywords: Amines, corrosion, heat stable salt, resin anionic.

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2947 Rate of Convergence for Generalized Baskakov-Durrmeyer Operators

Authors: Durvesh Kumar Verma, P. N. Agrawal

Abstract:

In the present paper, we consider the generalized form of Baskakov Durrmeyer operators to study the rate of convergence, in simultaneous approximation for functions having derivatives of bounded variation.

Keywords: Bounded variation, Baskakov-Durrmeyer operators, simultaneous approximation, rate of convergence.

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2946 Kinetics of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET)and Polystyrene (PS) Dynamic Pyrolysis

Authors: S.M. Al-Salem, P. Lettieri

Abstract:

Thermo-chemical treatment (TCT) such as pyrolysis is getting recognized as a valid route for (i) materials and valuable products and petrochemicals recovery; (ii) waste recycling; and (iii) elemental characterization. Pyrolysis is also receiving renewed attention for its operational, economical and environmental advantages. In this study, samples of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polystyrene (PS) were pyrolysed in a microthermobalance reactor (using a thermogravimetric-TGA setup). Both polymers were prepared and conditioned prior to experimentation. The main objective was to determine the kinetic parameters of the depolymerization reactions that occur within the thermal degradation process. Overall kinetic rate constants (ko) and activation energies (Eo) were determined using the general kinetics theory (GKT) method previously used by a number of authors. Fitted correlations were found and validated using the GKT, errors were within ± 5%. This study represents a fundamental step to pave the way towards the development of scaling relationship for the investigation of larger scale reactors relevant to industry.

Keywords: Kinetics, PET, PS, Pyrolysis, Recycling, Petrochemicals.

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2945 Interest Rate Fluctuation Effect on Commercial Bank’s Fixed Fund Deposit in Nigeria

Authors: Okolo Chimaobi Valentine

Abstract:

Commercial banks in Nigeria adopted many strategies to attract fresh deposits including the use of high deposit rate. However, pricing of banking services moved in favor of the banks at the expense of customers, resulting in their seeking other investment alternatives rather than saving their money in the bank. Both deposit and lending rates were greatly influenced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) decision on interest rate. Therefore, commercial bank effort to attract deposits via manipulation of her rates was greatly limited, otherwise the banks will be giving out more than it earned. The study aimed at examining the relationship between interest rate and fixed fund deposit of commercial banks, how policy-controlled interest rate affected commercial bank’s fixed fund deposit The researcher employed ordinary least square technique, using, multiple linear regression, unrestricted vector auto-regression, correlation matrix test, granger causality and impulse response graph in the analysis. Commercial bank’s interest rates affected commercial bank’s fixed fund deposit significantly while policy-controlled interest rate did not significantly transmit through the commercial bank’s interest rates to affect fixed fund deposit. While commercial banks seek creative ways to expand their fixed fund deposit, policy authorities in Nigeria should better coordinate interest rate fluctuation and induce competition in the entire financial sector.

Keywords: Commercial bank, fixed fund deposit, fluctuation effects, interest rate.

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2944 Forecasting the Fluctuation of Currency Exchange Rate Using Random Forest

Authors: L. Basha, E. Gjika

Abstract:

The exchange rate is one of the most important economic variables, especially for a small, open economy such as Albania. Its effect is noticeable on one country's competitiveness, trade and current account, inflation, wages, domestic economic activity and bank stability. This study investigates the fluctuation of Albania’s exchange rates using monthly average foreign currency, Euro (Eur) to Albanian Lek (ALL) exchange rate with a time span from January 2008 to June 2021 and the macroeconomic factors that have a significant effect on the exchange rate. Initially, the Random Forest Regression algorithm is constructed to understand the impact of economic variables in the behavior of monthly average foreign currencies exchange rates. Then the forecast of macro-economic indicators for 12 months was performed using time series models. The predicted values received are placed in the random forest model in order to obtain the average monthly forecast of Euro to Albanian Lek (ALL) exchange rate for the period July 2021 to June 2022.

Keywords: Exchange rate, Random Forest, time series, Machine Learning, forecasting.

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2943 Energy Efficiency of Adaptive-Rate Medium Access Control Protocols for Sensor Networks

Authors: Rooholah Hasanizadeh, Saadan Zokaei

Abstract:

Energy efficient protocol design is the aim of current researches in the area of sensor networks where limited power resources impose energy conservation considerations. In this paper we care for Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols and after an extensive literature review, two adaptive schemes are discussed. Of them, adaptive-rate MACs which were introduced for throughput enhancement show the potency to save energy, even more than adaptive-power schemes. Then we propose an allocation algorithm for getting accurate and reliable results. Through a simulation study we validated our claim and showed the power saving of adaptive-rate protocols.

Keywords: Adaptive-rate, adaptive-power, MAC protocol, energy efficiency, sensor networks.

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2942 Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Biosurfactants on Residual-Oil Recovery

Authors: S. V. Ukwungwu, A. J. Abbas, G. G. Nasr

Abstract:

The increasing high price of natural gas and oil with attendant increase in energy demand on world markets in recent years has stimulated interest in recovering residual oil saturation across the globe. In order to meet the energy security, efforts have been made in developing new technologies of enhancing the recovery of oil and gas, utilizing techniques like CO2 flooding, water injection, hydraulic fracturing, surfactant flooding etc. Surfactant flooding however optimizes production but poses risk to the environment due to their toxic nature. Amongst proven records that have utilized other type of bacterial in producing biosurfactants for enhancing oil recovery, this research uses a technique to combine biosurfactants that will achieve a scale of EOR through lowering interfacial tension/contact angle. In this study, three biosurfactants were produced from three Bacillus species from freeze dried cultures using sucrose 3 % (w/v) as their carbon source. Two of these produced biosurfactants were screened with the TEMCO Pendant Drop Image Analysis for reduction in IFT and contact angle. Interfacial tension was greatly reduced from 56.95 mN.m-1 to 1.41 mN.m-1 when biosurfactants in cell-free culture (Bacillus licheniformis) were used compared to 4. 83mN.m-1 cell-free culture of Bacillus subtilis. As a result, cell-free culture of (Bacillus licheniformis) changes the wettability of the biosurfactant treatment for contact angle measurement to more water-wet as the angle decreased from 130.75o to 65.17o. The influence of microbial treatment on crushed rock samples was also observed by qualitative wettability experiments. Treated samples with biosurfactants remained in the aqueous phase, indicating a water-wet system. These results could prove that biosurfactants can effectively change the chemistry of the wetting conditions against diverse surfaces, providing a desirable condition for efficient oil transport in this way serving as a mechanism for EOR. The environmental friendly effect of biosurfactants applications for industrial purposes play important advantages over chemically synthesized surfactants, with various possible structures, low toxicity, eco-friendly and biodegradability.

Keywords: Bacillus, biosurfactant, enhanced oil recovery, residual oil, wettability.

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2941 Enhancing the Error-Correcting Performance of LDPC Codes through an Efficient Use of Decoding Iterations

Authors: Insah Bhurtah, P. Clarel Catherine, K. M. Sunjiv Soyjaudah

Abstract:

The decoding of Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes is operated over a redundant structure known as the bipartite graph, meaning that the full set of bit nodes is not absolutely necessary for decoder convergence. In 2008, Soyjaudah and Catherine designed a recovery algorithm for LDPC codes based on this assumption and showed that the error-correcting performance of their codes outperformed conventional LDPC Codes. In this work, the use of the recovery algorithm is further explored to test the performance of LDPC codes while the number of iterations is progressively increased. For experiments conducted with small blocklengths of up to 800 bits and number of iterations of up to 2000, the results interestingly demonstrate that contrary to conventional wisdom, the error-correcting performance keeps increasing with increasing number of iterations.

Keywords: Error-correcting codes, information theory, low-density parity-check codes, sum-product algorithm.

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2940 Walking Hexapod Robot in Disaster Recovery: Developing Algorithm for Terrain Negotiation and Navigation

Authors: Md. Masum Billah, Mohiuddin Ahmed, Soheli Farhana

Abstract:

In modern day disaster recovery mission has become one of the top priorities in any natural disaster management regime. Smart autonomous robots may play a significant role in such missions, including search for life under earth quake hit rubbles, Tsunami hit islands, de-mining in war affected areas and many other such situations. In this paper current state of many walking robots are compared and advantages of hexapod systems against wheeled robots are described. In our research we have selected a hexapod spider robot; we are developing focusing mainly on efficient navigation method in different terrain using apposite gait of locomotion, which will make it faster and at the same time energy efficient to navigate and negotiate difficult terrain. This paper describes the method of terrain negotiation navigation in a hazardous field.

Keywords: Walking robots, locomotion, hexapod robot, gait, hazardous field.

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2939 Transform-Domain Rate-Distortion Optimization Accelerator for H.264/AVC Video Encoding

Authors: Mohammed Golam Sarwer, Lai Man Po, Kai Guo, Q.M. Jonathan Wu

Abstract:

In H.264/AVC video encoding, rate-distortion optimization for mode selection plays a significant role to achieve outstanding performance in compression efficiency and video quality. However, this mode selection process also makes the encoding process extremely complex, especially in the computation of the ratedistortion cost function, which includes the computations of the sum of squared difference (SSD) between the original and reconstructed image blocks and context-based entropy coding of the block. In this paper, a transform-domain rate-distortion optimization accelerator based on fast SSD (FSSD) and VLC-based rate estimation algorithm is proposed. This algorithm could significantly simplify the hardware architecture for the rate-distortion cost computation with only ignorable performance degradation. An efficient hardware structure for implementing the proposed transform-domain rate-distortion optimization accelerator is also proposed. Simulation results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm reduces about 47% of total encoding time with negligible degradation of coding performance. The proposed method can be easily applied to many mobile video application areas such as a digital camera and a DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) phone.

Keywords: Context-adaptive variable length coding (CAVLC), H.264/AVC, rate-distortion optimization (RDO), sum of squareddifference (SSD).

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2938 Hot Workability of High Strength Low Alloy Steels

Authors: Seok Hong Min, Jung Ho Moon, Woo Young Jung, Tae Kwon Ha

Abstract:

The hot deformation behavior of high strength low alloy (HSLA) steels with different chemical compositions under hot working conditions in the temperature range of 900 to 1100℃ and strain rate range from 0.1 to 10 s-1 has been studied by performing a series of hot compression tests. The dynamic materials model has been employed for developing the processing maps, which show variation of the efficiency of power dissipation with temperature and strain rate. Also the Kumar-s model has been used for developing the instability map, which shows variation of the instability for plastic deformation with temperature and strain rate. The efficiency of power dissipation increased with decreasing strain rate and increasing temperature in the steel with higher Cr and Ti content. High efficiency of power dissipation over 20 % was obtained at a finite strain level of 0.1 under the conditions of strain rate lower than 1 s-1 and temperature higher than 1050 ℃ . Plastic instability was expected in the regime of temperatures lower than 1000 ℃ and strain rate lower than 0.3 s-1. Steel with lower Cr and Ti contents showed high efficiency of power dissipation at higher strain rate and lower temperature conditions.

Keywords: High strength low alloys steels, hot workability, Dynamic materials model, Processing maps.

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2937 Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Three Power Generation and Refrigeration Energy Recovery Systems from Thermal Loss of a Diesel Engine in Different Driving Conditions

Authors: H. Golchoobian, M. H. Taheri, S. Saedodin, A. Sarafraz

Abstract:

This paper investigates the possibility of using three systems of organic Rankine auxiliary power generation, ejector refrigeration and absorption to recover energy from a diesel car. The analysis is done for both urban and suburban driving modes that vary from 60 to 120 km/h. Various refrigerants have also been used for organic Rankine and Ejector refrigeration cycles. The capacity was evaluated by Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system in both urban and suburban conditions for cyclopentane and ammonia as refrigerants. Also, for these two driving plans, produced cooling by absorption refrigeration system under variable ambient temperature conditions and in ejector refrigeration system for R123, R134a and R141b refrigerants were investigated.

Keywords: Absorption system, diesel engine, ejector refrigeration, energy recovery, organic Rankine cycle.

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2936 Phase Noise Impact on BER in Space Communication

Authors: Ondrej Baran, Miroslav Kasal, Petr Vagner, Tomas Urbanec

Abstract:

This paper deals with the modeling and the evaluation of a multiplicative phase noise influence on the bit error ratio in a general space communication system. Our research is focused on systems with multi-state phase shift keying modulation techniques and it turns out, that the phase noise significantly affects the bit error rate, especially for higher signal to noise ratios. These results come from a system model created in Matlab environment and are shown in a form of constellation diagrams and bit error rate dependencies. The change of a user data bit rate is also considered and included into simulation results. Obtained outcomes confirm theoretical presumptions.

Keywords: Additive thermal noise, AWGN, BER, bit error rate, multiplicative phase noise, phase shift keying.

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2935 Development of Soft-Core System for Heart Rate and Oxygen Saturation

Authors: Caje F. Pinto, Jivan S. Parab, Gourish M. Naik

Abstract:

This paper is about the development of non-invasive heart rate and oxygen saturation in human blood using Altera NIOS II soft-core processor system. In today's world, monitoring oxygen saturation and heart rate is very important in hospitals to keep track of low oxygen levels in blood. We have designed an Embedded System On Peripheral Chip (SOPC) reconfigurable system by interfacing two LED’s of different wavelengths (660 nm/940 nm) with a single photo-detector to measure the absorptions of hemoglobin species at different wavelengths. The implementation of the interface with Finger Probe and Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) was carried out using NIOS II soft-core system running on Altera NANO DE0 board having target as Cyclone IVE. This designed system is used to monitor oxygen saturation in blood and heart rate for different test subjects. The designed NIOS II processor based non-invasive heart rate and oxygen saturation was verified with another Operon Pulse oximeter for 50 measurements on 10 different subjects. It was found that the readings taken were very close to the Operon Pulse oximeter.

Keywords: Heart rate, NIOS II, Oxygen Saturation, photoplethysmography, soft-core, SOPC.

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2934 Development of Vibration Sensor with Wide Frequency Range Based on Condenser Microphone -Estimation System for Flow Rate in Water Pipes-

Authors: Hironori Kakuta, Kajiro Watanabe, Yosuke Kurihara

Abstract:

Water leakage is a serious problem in the maintenance of a waterworks facility. Monitoring the water flow rate is one way to locate leakage. However, conventional flowmeters such as the wet-type flowmeter and the clamp-on type ultrasonic flowmeter require additional construction for their installation and are therefore quite expensive. This paper proposes a novel estimation system for the flow rate in a water pipeline, which employs a vibration sensor. This assembly can be attached to any water pipeline without the need for additional high-cost construction. The vibration sensor is designed based on a condenser microphone. This sensor detects vibration caused by water flowing through a pipeline. It is possible to estimate the water flow rate by measuring the amplitude of the output signal from the vibration sensor. We confirmed the validity of the proposed sensing system experimentally.

Keywords: Condenser microphone, Flow rate estimation, Piping vibration, Water pipe.

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