Search results for: virtual work theorem.
2633 How Does Improving the Existing DSL Infrastructure Influence the Expansion of Fiber Technology?
Authors: P. Winzer, E. Massarczyk
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Experts, enterprises and operators expect that the bandwidth request will increase up to rates of 100 to 1,000 Mbps within several years. Therefore the most important question is which technology shall satisfy the future consumer broadband demands. Currently the consensus is, that the fiber technology has the best technical characteristics to achieve such the high bandwidth rates. But fiber technology is so far very cost-intensive and resource consuming. To avoid these investments, operators are concentrating to upgrade the existing copper and hybrid fiber coax infrastructures. This work presents a comparison of the copper and fiber technologies including an overview about the current German broadband market. Both technologies are reviewed in the terms of demand, willingness to pay and economic efficiency in connection with the technical characteristics.Keywords: Broadband customer demand, fiber development, G.fast, Vectoring, willingness to payfor broadband services
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14972632 A Message Passing Implementation of a New Parallel Arrangement Algorithm
Authors: Ezequiel Herruzo, Juan José Cruz, José Ignacio Benavides, Oscar Plata
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This paper describes a new algorithm of arrangement in parallel, based on Odd-Even Mergesort, called division and concurrent mixes. The main idea of the algorithm is to achieve that each processor uses a sequential algorithm for ordering a part of the vector, and after that, for making the processors work in pairs in order to mix two of these sections ordered in a greater one, also ordered; after several iterations, the vector will be completely ordered. The paper describes the implementation of the new algorithm on a Message Passing environment (such as MPI). Besides, it compares the obtained experimental results with the quicksort sequential algorithm and with the parallel implementations (also on MPI) of the algorithms quicksort and bitonic sort. The comparison has been realized in an 8 processors cluster under GNU/Linux which is running on a unique PC processor.Keywords: Parallel algorithm, arrangement, MPI, sorting, parallel program.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16922631 Theoretical and Experimental Bending Properties of Composite Pipes
Authors: M. Stefanovska, S. Risteska, B. Samakoski, G. Maneski, B. Kostadinoska
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Aim of this work is to determine the theoretical and experimental properties of filament wound glass fiber/epoxy resin composite pipes with different winding design subjected under bending. For determination of bending strength of composite samples three point bending tests were conducted. Good correlation between theoretical and experimental results has been obtained, where sample No4 has shown the highest value of bending strength. All samples have demonstrated matrix cracking and fiber failure followed by layers delamination during testing. Also, it was found that smaller winding angles lead to an increase in bending stress. From presented results good merger between glass fibers and epoxy resin was confirmed by SEM analysis.Keywords: Bending properties, composite pipe, winding design.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 42522630 Experimentation on Piercing with Abrasive Waterjet
Authors: Johan Fredin, Anders Jönsson
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Abrasive waterjet cutting (AWJ) is a highly efficient method for cutting almost any type of material. When holes shall be cut the waterjet first needs to pierce the material.This paper presents a vast experimental analysis of piercing parameters effect on piercing time. Results from experimentation on feed rates, work piece thicknesses, abrasive flow rates, standoff distances and water pressure are also presented as well as studies on three methods for dynamic piercing. It is shown that a large amount of time and resources can be saved by choosing the piercing parameters in a correct way. The large number of experiments puts demands on the experimental setup. An automated experimental setup including piercing detection is presented to enable large series of experiments to be carried out efficiently.Keywords: Waterjet cutting, Piercing, Experimentation
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 24472629 Poly(Lactic Acid) Based Flexible Films
Authors: Fathilah binti Ali, Jamarosliza Jamaluddin, Arun Kumar Upadhyay
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Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a biodegradable polymer which has good mechanical properties, however, its brittleness limits its usage especially in packaging materials. Therefore, in this work, PLA based polyurethane films were prepared by synthesizing with different types of isocyanates; methylene diisocyanate (MDI) and hexamethylene diisocyanates (HDI). For this purpose, PLA based polyurethane must have good strength and flexibility. Therefore, polycaprolactone which has better flexibility were prepared with PLA. An effective way to endow polylactic acid with toughness is through chain-extension reaction of the polylactic acid pre-polymer with polycaprolactone used as chain extender. Polyurethane prepared from MDI showed brittle behaviour, while, polyurethane prepared from HDI showed flexibility at same concentrations.
Keywords: Biodegradable polymer, flexible, poly(lactic acid), polyurethane.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 31332628 Stability Bound of Ruin Probability in a Reduced Two-Dimensional Risk Model
Authors: Zina Benouaret, Djamil Aissani
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In this work, we introduce the qualitative and quantitative concept of the strong stability method in the risk process modeling two lines of business of the same insurance company or an insurance and re-insurance companies that divide between them both claims and premiums with a certain proportion. The approach proposed is based on the identification of the ruin probability associate to the model considered, with a stationary distribution of a Markov random process called a reversed process. Our objective, after clarifying the condition and the perturbation domain of parameters, is to obtain the stability inequality of the ruin probability which is applied to estimate the approximation error of a model with disturbance parameters by the considered model. In the stability bound obtained, all constants are explicitly written.Keywords: Markov chain, risk models, ruin probabilities, strong stability analysis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8892627 Contribution for Rural Development through Training in Organic Farming
Authors: Raquel P. F. Guiné, Daniela V. T. A. Costa, Paula M. R. Correia, Moisés Castro, Luis T. Guerra, Cristina A. Costa
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The aim of this work was to characterize a potential target group of people interested in participating into a training program in organic farming in the context of mobile-learning. The information sought addressed in particular, but not exclusively, possible contents, formats and forms of evaluation that will contribute to define the course objectives and curriculum, as well as to ensure that the course meets the needs of the learners and their preferences. The sample was selected among different European countries. The questionnaires were delivered electronically for answering on-line and in the end 135 consented valid questionnaires were obtained. The results allowed characterizing the target group and identifying their training needs and preferences towards m-learning formats, giving valuable tools to design the training offer.Keywords: Mobile-learning, organic farming, rural development, survey.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20782626 Information Needs and Information Usage of the Older Person Club’s Members in Bangkok
Authors: Siriporn Poolsuwan
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This research aims to explore the information needs, information usages, and problems of information usage of the older people club’s members in Dusit district, Bangkok. There are 12 clubs and 746 club’s members in this district. The research results use for older person service in this district. Data is gathered from 252 club’s members by using questionnaires. The quantitative approach uses in research by percentage, means and standard deviation. The results are as follows (1) The older people need Information for entertainment, occupation and academic in the field of short story, computer work, and religion and morality. (2) The participants use Information from various sources. (3) The Problem of information usage is their language skills because of the older people’s literacy problem.
Keywords: Information Behavior, Older Person, Information Seeking.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17692625 Odor Discrimination Using Neural Decoding of Olfactory Bulbs in Rats
Authors: K.-J. You, H.J. Lee, Y. Lang, C. Im, C.S. Koh, H.-C. Shin
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This paper presents a novel method for inferring the odor based on neural activities observed from rats- main olfactory bulbs. Multi-channel extra-cellular single unit recordings were done by micro-wire electrodes (tungsten, 50μm, 32 channels) implanted in the mitral/tufted cell layers of the main olfactory bulb of anesthetized rats to obtain neural responses to various odors. Neural response as a key feature was measured by substraction of neural firing rate before stimulus from after. For odor inference, we have developed a decoding method based on the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation. The results have shown that the average decoding accuracy is about 100.0%, 96.0%, 84.0%, and 100.0% with four rats, respectively. This work has profound implications for a novel brain-machine interface system for odor inference.Keywords: biomedical signal processing, neural engineering, olfactory, neural decoding, BMI
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16142624 Cognition of Driving Context for Driving Assistance
Authors: Manolo Dulva Hina, Clement Thierry, Assia Soukane, Amar Ramdane-Cherif
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In this paper, we presented our innovative way of determining the driving context for a driving assistance system. We invoke the fusion of all parameters that describe the context of the environment, the vehicle and the driver to obtain the driving context. We created a training set that stores driving situation patterns and from which the system consults to determine the driving situation. A machine-learning algorithm predicts the driving situation. The driving situation is an input to the fission process that yields the action that must be implemented when the driver needs to be informed or assisted from the given the driving situation. The action may be directed towards the driver, the vehicle or both. This is an ongoing work whose goal is to offer an alternative driving assistance system for safe driving, green driving and comfortable driving. Here, ontologies are used for knowledge representation.Keywords: Cognitive driving, intelligent transportation system, multimodal system, ontology, machine learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14592623 Detection of Pathogenic Escherichia coli Strains Pollution in Red Deer Meat in Latvia and Determination the Compatibility of VT1, VT2, eae A Genes in their Isolate
Authors: S. Liepina, A. Jemeljanovs
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Tasks of the work were study the possible E.coli contamination in red deer meat, identify pathogenic strains from isolated E.coli, determine their incidence in red deer meat and determine the presence of VT1, VT2 and eaeA genes for the pathogenic E.coli. 8 (10%) samples were randomly selected from 80 analysed isolates of E.coli and PCR reaction was performed on them. PCR was done both on initial materials – samples of red deer meat - and for already isolated liqueurs. Two of analysed venison samples contain verotoxin-producing strains of E. coli. It means that this meat is not safe to consumer. It was proven by the sequestration reaction of E. coli and by comparison of the obtained results with the database of microorganism genome available on the internet that the isolated culture corresponds to region 16S rDNS of E. coli thus presenting correctness of the microbiological methods.Keywords: Deer meat, pathogenic Escherichia coli
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20062622 Quantitative Quality Assessment of Microscopic Image Mosaicing
Authors: Alessandro Bevilacqua, Alessandro Gherardi, Filippo Piccinini
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The mosaicing technique has been employed in more and more application fields, from entertainment to scientific ones. In the latter case, often the final evaluation is still left to human beings, that assess visually the quality of the mosaic. Many times, a lack of objective measurements in microscopic mosaicing may prevent the mosaic from being used as a starting image for further analysis. In this work we analyze three different metrics and indexes, in the domain of signal analysis, image analysis and visual quality, to measure the quality of different aspects of the mosaicing procedure, such as registration errors and visual quality. As the case study we consider the mosaicing algorithm we developed. The experiments have been carried out by considering mosaics with very different features: histological samples, that are made of detailed and contrasted images, and live stem cells, that show a very low contrast and low detail levels.
Keywords: Mosaicing, quality assessment, microscopy, stem cells.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22492621 New Graph Similarity Measurements based on Isomorphic and Nonisomorphic Data Fusion and their Use in the Prediction of the Pharmacological Behavior of Drugs
Authors: Irene Luque Ruiz, Manuel Urbano Cuadrado, Miguel Ángel Gómez-Nieto
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New graph similarity methods have been proposed in this work with the aim to refining the chemical information extracted from molecules matching. For this purpose, data fusion of the isomorphic and nonisomorphic subgraphs into a new similarity measure, the Approximate Similarity, was carried out by several approaches. The application of the proposed method to the development of quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR) has provided reliable tools for predicting several pharmacological parameters: binding of steroids to the globulin-corticosteroid receptor, the activity of benzodiazepine receptor compounds, and the blood brain barrier permeability. Acceptable results were obtained for the models presented here.
Keywords: Graph similarity, Nonisomorphic dissimilarity, Approximate similarity, Drug activity prediction.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16532620 Current Cosmetic Treatments in Pregnancy
Authors: Daniela F. Maluf, Fernanda Roters, Luma C. F. Silva
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The goal of this work is to report the main dermatological alterations occurring during pregnancy and actual cosmetic protocols available and recommended for safe use. Throughout pregnancy, woman's body undergoes many transformations such as hormonal changes and weight gain. These alterations can result in undesirable skin aspects that end up affecting the future mother's life. The main complaints of pregnant women involve melasma advent, varicose veins, edema, and natural skin aging. Even if most of the time is recommended to wait for the birth to use cosmetics, there are some alternatives to prevent and to treat these alterations during pregnancy. For all these cases, there is a need to update information about safety and efficacy of new actives and technologies in cosmetic products. The purpose of this study was to conduct a literature review about the main skin alterations during pregnancy and actual recommended treatments, according to the current legislation.
Keywords: Pregnancy, cosmetic, treatment, physiological changes.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20342619 Relating Interface Properties with Crack Propagation in Composite Laminates
Authors: Tao Qu, Chandra Prakash, Vikas Tomar
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The interfaces between organic and inorganic phases in natural materials have been shown to be a key factor contributing to their high performance. This work analyzes crack propagation in a 2-ply laminate subjected to uniaxial tensile mode-I crack propagation loading that has laminate properties derived based on biological material constituents (marine exoskeleton- chitin and calcite). Interfaces in such laminates are explicitly modeled based on earlier molecular simulations performed by authors. Extended finite element method and cohesive zone modeling based simulations coupled with theoretical analysis are used to analyze crack propagation. Analyses explicitly quantify the effect that interface mechanical property variation has on the delamination as well as the transverse crack propagation in examined 2-ply laminates.
Keywords: Chitin, composites, interfaces, fracture.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14062618 Strategies for Development of Information Society in Montenegro
Authors: Vujica Lazovic, Tamara Djurickovic
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Creation of information society, or in other words, a society based on knowledge, has wide consequences, both on individual and complete society, and in general – on a economy of one country. Development and implementation of ICT represents a stimulant for economic growth. On individual level, knowledge, skills and information gathered using ICT, are expanding individual possibilities of persons, enabling them to have access to timely sensitive information, such as market prices or investment conditions, possibilities to access Government-s or private development funds, etc. By doing so, productivity is increased both on individual and national level and therefore social wellbeing in general. In one word, creation of information society - a knowledge society is happening. This work will describe challenges and strategies that will follow the development as well as obstacles in creating information society – knowledge society in Montenegro.Keywords: eDevelopment, eTransformation, informationsociety, knowledge economy
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16092617 Investigation on Machine Tools Energy Consumptions
Authors: Shiva Abdoli, Daniel T. Semere
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Several researches have been conducted to study consumption of energy in cutting process. Most of these researches are focusing to measure the consumption and propose consumption reduction methods. In this work, the relation between the cutting parameters and the consumption is investigated in order to establish a generalized energy consumption model that can be used for process and production planning in real production lines. Using the generalized model, the process planning will be carried out by taking into account the energy as a function of the selected process parameters. Similarly, the generalized model can be used in production planning to select the right operational parameters like batch sizes, routing, buffer size, etc. in a production line. The description and derivation of the model as well as a case study are given in this paper to illustrate the applicability and validity of the model.
Keywords: Process parameters, cutting process, energy efficiency, Material Removal Rate (MRR).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 34082616 Theoretical Density Study of Winding Yarns on Spool
Authors: Bachir Chemani, Rachid Halfaoui
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The aim of work is to define the distribution density of winding yarn on cylindrical and conical bobbins. It is known that parallel winding gives greater density and more regular distribution, but the unwinding of yarn is much more difficult for following process. The conical spool has an enormous advantage during unwinding and may contain a large amount of yarns, but the density distribution is not regular because of difference in diameters. The variation of specific density over the reel height is explained generally by the sudden change of winding speed due to direction movement variation of yarn. We determined the conditions of uniform winding and developed a calculate model to the change of the specific density of winding wire over entire spool height.
Keywords: Textile, cylindrical bobbins, conical bobbins, parallel winding, cross winding.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 36012615 Determination of Required Ion Exchange Solution for Stabilizing Clayey Soils with Various PI
Authors: R. Ziaie Moayed, F. Allahyari
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Soil stabilization has been widely used to improve soil strength and durability or to prevent erosion and dust generation. Generally to reduce problems of clayey soils in engineering work and to stabilize these soils additional materials are used. The most common materials are lime, fly ash and cement. Using this materials, although improve soil property , but in some cases due to financial problems and the need to use special equipment are limited .One of the best methods for stabilization clayey soils is neutralization the clay particles. For this purpose we can use ion exchange materials. Ion exchange solution like CBR plus can be used for soil stabilization. One of the most important things in using CBR plus is determination the amount of this solution for various soils with different properties. In this study a laboratory experiment is conduct to evaluate the ion exchange capacity of three soils with various plasticity index (PI) to determine amount or required CBR plus solution for soil stabilization.Keywords: CBR plus, clayey soils, ion exchange, soil stabilization
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 24502614 Hexagonal Honeycomb Sandwich Plate Optimization Using Gravitational Search Algorithm
Authors: A. Boudjemai, A. Zafrane, R. Hocine
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Honeycomb sandwich panels are increasingly used in the construction of space vehicles because of their outstanding strength, stiffness and light weight properties. However, the use of honeycomb sandwich plates comes with difficulties in the design process as a result of the large number of design variables involved, including composite material design, shape and geometry. Hence, this work deals with the presentation of an optimal design of hexagonal honeycomb sandwich structures subjected to space environment. The optimization process is performed using a set of algorithms including the gravitational search algorithm (GSA). Numerical results are obtained and presented for a set of algorithms. The results obtained by the GSA algorithm are much better compared to other algorithms used in this study.
Keywords: Optimization, Gravitational search algorithm, Genetic algorithm, Honeycomb plate.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 32912613 The Grinding Influence on the Strength of Fan-Out Wafer-Level Packages
Authors: Z. W. Zhong, C. Xu, W. K. Choi
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To build a thin fan-out wafer-level package, the package had to be ground to a thin level. In this work, the influence of the grinding processes on the strength of the fan-out wafer-level packages was investigated. After different grinding processes, all specimens were placed on a three-point-bending fixture installed on a universal tester for three-point-bending testing, and the strength of the fan-out wafer-level packages was measured. The experiments revealed that the average flexure strength increased with the decreasing surface roughness height of the fan-out wafer-level package tested. The grinding processes had a significant influence on the strength of the fan-out wafer-level packages investigated.Keywords: FOWLP strength, surface roughness, three-point bending, grinding.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 10172612 Face Recognition Using Discrete Orthogonal Hahn Moments
Authors: Fatima Akhmedova, Simon Liao
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One of the most critical decision points in the design of a face recognition system is the choice of an appropriate face representation. Effective feature descriptors are expected to convey sufficient, invariant and non-redundant facial information. In this work we propose a set of Hahn moments as a new approach for feature description. Hahn moments have been widely used in image analysis due to their invariance, nonredundancy and the ability to extract features either globally and locally. To assess the applicability of Hahn moments to Face Recognition we conduct two experiments on the Olivetti Research Laboratory (ORL) database and University of Notre-Dame (UND) X1 biometric collection. Fusion of the global features along with the features from local facial regions are used as an input for the conventional k-NN classifier. The method reaches an accuracy of 93% of correctly recognized subjects for the ORL database and 94% for the UND database.Keywords: Face Recognition, Hahn moments, Recognition-by-parts, Time-lapse.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17772611 CFD Simulation of Surge Wave Generated by Flow-Like Landslides
Authors: Liu-Chao Qiu
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The damage caused by surge waves generated in water bodies by flow-like landslides can be very high in terms of human lives and economic losses. The complicated phenomena occurred in this highly unsteady process are difficult to model because three interacting phases: air, water and sediment are involved. The problem therefore is challenging since the effects of non-Newtonian fluid describing the rheology of the flow-like landslides, multi-phase flow and free surface have to be included in the simulation. In this work, the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package FLUENT is used to model the surge waves due to flow-like landslides. The comparison between the numerical results and experimental data reported in the literature confirms the accuracy of the method.Keywords: Flow-like landslide, surge wave, VOF, non-Newtonian fluids, multi-phase flows, free surface flow.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14222610 Catalytic Activity of Aluminum Impregnated Catalysts for the Degradation of Waste Polystyrene
Authors: J. Shah, M. Rasul Jan, Adnan
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The aluminum impregnated catalysts of Al-alumina (Al-Al2O3), Al-montmorillonite (Al-Mmn) and Al-activated charcoal (Al-AC) of various percent loadings were prepared by wet impregnation method and characterized by SEM, XRD and N2 adsorption/desorption (BET). The catalytic properties were investigated in the degradation of waste polystyrene (WPS). The results of catalytic degradation of Al metal, 20% Al-Al2O3, 5% Al-Mmn and 20% Al-AC were compared with each other for optimum conditions. Among the catalyst used 20% Al-Al2O3 was found the most effective catalyst. The BET surface area of 20% Al-Al2O3 determined was 70.2 m2/g. The SEM data revealed the catalyst with porous structure throughout the frame work with small nanosized crystallites. The yield of liquid products with 20% Al-Al2O3 (91.53 ± 2.27 wt%) was the same as compared to Al metal (91.20 ± 0.35 wt%) but the selectivity of hydrocarbons and yield of styrene monomer (56.32 wt%) was higher with 20% Al-Al2O3 catalyst.
Keywords: Impregnation, catalytic degradation, waste polystyrene, styrene.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20372609 Application of Ant Colony Optimization for Multi-objective Production Problems
Authors: Teerapun Saeheaw, Nivit Charoenchai, Wichai Chattinnawat
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This paper proposes a meta-heuristic called Ant Colony Optimization to solve multi-objective production problems. The multi-objective function is to minimize lead time and work in process. The problem is related to the decision variables, i.e.; distance and process time. According to decision criteria, the mathematical model is formulated. In order to solve the model an ant colony optimization approach has been developed. The proposed algorithm is parameterized by the number of ant colonies and the number of pheromone trails. One example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed model. The proposed formulations; Max-Min Ant system are then used to solve the problem and the results evaluate the performance and efficiency of the proposed algorithm using simulation.
Keywords: Ant colony optimization, multi-objective problems.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18982608 Romanian Single-parent Families: Quality of Life
Authors: Bertha Sânduleasa, Aniela Matei, Mihaela Ghenţa, Nicolina Racoceanu
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The increasing divorce and fertility rates outside of marriage, the changing values in the last decades have led to a high prevalence of single parent families. Currently, worldwide, singleparent families represent about a quarter of all families. Recent changes occurring in the structure of single-parent families and also the multitude of factors that influence the quality of life of these families require the development of new research tools in order to provide foundations for social policies addressed to this type of family. The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis concerning the quality of life for single parent families in Romania, based on data collected through a research methodology developed by the authors within a scientific research project funded by a national grant called Partnerships in priority areas.
Keywords: Family policies, quality of life, single-parent families, work-life balance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 25692607 Genetic Combined with a Simplex Algorithm as an Efficient Method for the Detection of a Depressed Ellipsoidal Flaw using the Boundary Element Method
Authors: Clio G. Vossou, Ioannis N. Koukoulis, Christopher G. Provatidis
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The present work encounters the solution of the defect identification problem with the use of an evolutionary algorithm combined with a simplex method. In more details, a Matlab implementation of Genetic Algorithms is combined with a Simplex method in order to lead to the successful identification of the defect. The influence of the location and the orientation of the depressed ellipsoidal flaw was investigated as well as the use of different amount of static data in the cost function. The results were evaluated according to the ability of the simplex method to locate the global optimum in each test case. In this way, a clear impression regarding the performance of the novel combination of the optimization algorithms, and the influence of the geometrical parameters of the flaw in defect identification problems was obtained.
Keywords: Defect identification, genetic algorithms, optimization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 12902606 Influence of Flash Temperature on Exergetical Performance of Organic Flash Cycle
Authors: Kyoung Hoon Kim, Chul Ho Han
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Organic Flash Cycle (OFC) has potential of improving efficiency for recovery of low temperature heat sources mainly due to reducing temperature mismatch in the heat exchanger. In this work exergetical performance analysis of ORC is conducted for recovery of low grade heat source. Effects of system parameters such as flash evaporation temperature or heating temperature are theoretically investigated on the exergy destructions (anergies) at various components of the system as well as exergy efficiency. Results show that exergy efficiency has a peak with respect to the flash temperature, and the optimum flash temperature increases with the heating temperature. The component where the largest exergy destruction occurs varies with the flash temperature or heating temperature.
Keywords: Organic flash cycle (OFC), low grade heat source, exergy, anergy, flash temperature.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19092605 The Relationship between Internal Corporate Social Responsibility and Organizational Commitment within the Banking Sector in Jordan
Authors: Al-bdour, A. Ali., Ellisha Nasruddin., Soh Keng Lin
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This study attempts to investigate the relationship between internal CSR practices and organizational commitment based on the social exchange theory (SET). Specifically, we examine the impact of five dimensions of internal CSR practices on organizational commitment: health and safety, human rights, training and education, work life balance and workplace diversity. The proposed model was tested on a sample of 336 frontline employees within the banking sector in Jordan. Results showed that all internal CSR dimensions are significantly and positively related to affective and normative commitment. In addition, the findings of this study indicate that all internal CSR dimensions did not have a significant relationship with continuance commitment. Limitations of the study, directions for future research, and implications of the findings are discussed.Keywords: Internal CSR, organizational commitment, Jordan, banking sector.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 95262604 A Pull-out Fiber/Matrix Interface Characterization of Vegetal Fibers Reinforced Thermoplastic Polymer Composites: The Influence of the Processing Temperature
Authors: Duy Cuong Nguyen, Ali Makke, Guillaume Montay
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This work presents an improved single fiber pull-out test for fiber/matrix interface characterization. This test has been used to study the Inter-Facial Shear Strength ‘IFSS’ of hemp fibers reinforced polypropylene (PP). For this aim, the fiber diameter has been carefully measured using a tomography inspired method. The fiber section contour can then be approximated by a circle or a polygon. The results show that the IFSS is overestimated if the circular approximation is used. The Influence of the molding temperature on the IFSS has also been studied. We find that a molding temperature of 183◦C leads to better interfacial properties. Above or below this temperature the interface strength is reduced.Keywords: Interface, pull-out, processing, temperature, hemp, polypropylene, composite.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2097