Search results for: Speed and Resistance estimation

Authors: M. A Anjum, M. Y. Javed, A. Basit

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In this paper a new approach to face recognition is presented that achieves double dimension reduction making the system computationally efficient with better recognition results. In pattern recognition techniques, discriminative information of image increases with increase in resolution to a certain extent, consequently face recognition results improve with increase in face image resolution and levels off when arriving at a certain resolution level. In the proposed model of face recognition, first image decimation algorithm is applied on face image for dimension reduction to a certain resolution level which provides best recognition results. Due to better computational speed and feature extraction potential of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) it is applied on face image. A subset of coefficients of DCT from low to mid frequencies that represent the face adequately and provides best recognition results is retained. A trade of between decimation factor, number of DCT coefficients retained and recognition rate with minimum computation is obtained. Preprocessing of the image is carried out to increase its robustness against variations in poses and illumination level. This new model has been tested on different databases which include ORL database, Yale database and a color database. The proposed technique has performed much better compared to other techniques. The significance of the model is two fold: (1) dimension reduction up to an effective and suitable face image resolution (2) appropriate DCT coefficients are retained to achieve best recognition results with varying image poses, intensity and illumination level.

Keywords: Biometrics, DCT, Face Recognition, Feature extraction.

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Authors: Fan Li, Chun-Hsien Chen, Li Pheng Khoo

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Operators of vessel traffic service (VTS) center provides three different types of services; namely information service, navigational assistance and traffic organization to vessels. To provide these services, operators monitor vessel traffic through computer interface and provide navigational advice based on the information integrated from multiple sources, including automatic identification system (AIS), radar system, and closed circuit television (CCTV) system. Therefore, this information is crucial in VTS operation. However, what information the VTS operator actually need to efficiently and properly offer services is unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate into information requirements for VTS operation. To achieve this aim, field observation was carried out to elicit the information requirements for VTS operation. The study revealed that the most frequent and important tasks were handling arrival vessel report, potential conflict control and abeam vessel report. Current location and vessel name were used in all tasks. Hazard cargo information was particularly required when operators handle arrival vessel report. The speed, the course, and the distance of two or several vessels were only used in potential conflict control. The information requirements identified in this study can be utilized in designing a human-computer interface that takes into consideration what and when information should be displayed, and might be further used to build the foundation of a decision support system for VTS.

Keywords: Vessel traffic service, information requirements, hierarchy task analysis, field observation.

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Authors: Ali Mohamadi Sani

Abstract:

The aim of this study was to determine the antimicrobial effect of Helichrysum arenarium L. essential oil in "in-vitro" condition on the growth of seven microbial species including Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Saccharomyces cereviciae, Candida albicans, Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus using micro-dilution method. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal or fungicidal concentration (MBC, MFC) were determined for the essential oil at ten concentrations. Finally, the sensitivity of tested microbes to essential oil of H. arenarium was investigated. Results showed that Bacillus subtilis (MIC=781.25 and MBC=6250 µg/ml) was more resistance than two other bacterial species. Among the tested yeasts, Saccharomyces cereviciae (MIC=97.65 and MFC=781.25 µg/ml) was more sensitive than Candida albicans while among the fungal species, growth of Aspergillus parasiticus inhibited at lower concentration of oil than the Aspergillus flavus. The extracted essential oil exhibited the same MIC value in the liquid medium against all fungal strains (48.82 µg/ml), while different activity against A. flavus and A. parasiticus was observed in this medium with MFC values of 6250 and 390.625µg/ml, respectively. The results of the present study indicated that Helichrysum arenarium L essential oil had significant (P<0.05) antimicrobial activity; therefore, it can be used as a natural preservation to increase the shelf life of food products.

 

Keywords: Helichrysum arenarium, Antimicrobial agent, Essential oil, MIC.

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Authors: Mukesh Kumar Shah, Tushar Gupta

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An Upgraded Cuckoo Search Algorithm is proposed here to solve optimization problems based on the improvements made in the earlier versions of Cuckoo Search Algorithm. Short comings of the earlier versions like slow convergence, trap in local optima improved in the proposed version by random initialization of solution by suggesting an Improved Lambda Iteration Relaxation method, Random Gaussian Distribution Walk to improve local search and further proposing Greedy Selection to accelerate to optimized solution quickly and by “Study Nearby Strategy” to improve global search performance by avoiding trapping to local optima. It is further proposed to generate better solution by Crossover Operation. The proposed strategy used in algorithm shows superiority in terms of high convergence speed over several classical algorithms. Three standard algorithms were tested on a 6-generator standard test system and the results are presented which clearly demonstrate its superiority over other established algorithms. The algorithm is also capable of handling higher unit systems.

Keywords: Economic dispatch, Gaussian selection operator, prohibited operating zones, ramp rate limits, upgraded cuckoo search.

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Authors: Chen-Fu Wang, Lin-Ya Kung

Abstract:

For traditional painting materials, the artisan used to combine the pigments with different binders to create colors. As time goes by, the materials used for painting evolved from natural to chemical materials. The vast variety of ingredients used in chemical materials has complicated restoration work; it makes conservation work more difficult. Conservation work also becomes harder when the materials cannot be easily identified; therefore, it is essential that we take a more scientific approach to assist in conservation work. Paintings materials are high molecular weight polymer, and their analysis is very complicated as well other contamination such as smoke and dirt can also interfere with the analysis of the material. The current methods of composition analysis of painting materials include Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), mass spectrometer, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), each of which has its own limitation. In this study, FT-IR was used to analyze the components of the paint coating. We have taken the most commonly seen materials as samples and deteriorated it. The aged information was then used for the database to exam the temple painting materials. By observing the FT-IR changes over time, we can tell all of the painting materials will be deteriorated by the UV light, but only the speed of its degradation had some difference. From the deterioration experiment, the acrylic resin resists better than the others. After collecting the painting materials aging information on FT-IR, we performed some test on the paintings on the temples. It was found that most of the artisan used tune-oil for painting materials, and some other paintings used chemical materials. This method is now working successfully on identifying the painting materials. However, the method is destructive and high cost. In the future, we will work on the how to know the painting materials more efficiently.

Keywords: Temple painting, painting material, conservation, FT-IR.

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Authors: O. Zarrin, M. Ramezanshirazi

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The Semi Interlocking Masonry (SIM) system has been developed in Masonry Research Group at the University of Newcastle, Australia. The main purpose of this system is to enhance the seismic resistance of framed structures with masonry panels. In this system, SIM panels dissipate energy through the sliding friction between rows of SIM units during earthquake excitation. This paper aimed to find the applicability of artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the displacement behaviour of the SIM panel under out-of-plane loading. The general concept of ANN needs to be trained by related force-displacement data of SIM panel. The overall data to train and test the network are 70 increments of force-displacement from three tests, which comprise of none input nodes. The input data contain height and length of panels, height, length and width of the brick and friction and geometry angle of brick along the compressive strength of the brick with the lateral load applied to the panel. The aim of designed network is prediction displacement of the SIM panel by Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP). The mean square error (MSE) of network was 0.00042 and the coefficient of determination (R2) values showed the 0.91. The result revealed that the ANN has significant agreement to predict the SIM panel behaviour.

Keywords: Semi interlocking masonry, artificial neural network, ANN, multi-layer perceptron, MLP, displacement, prediction.

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Authors: M. N. Islam, B. Boswell, Y. R. Ginting

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The influence of canned cycles and cutting parameters on hole quality in cryogenic drilling has been investigated experimentally and analytically. A three-level, three-parameter experiment was conducted by using the design-of-experiment methodology. The three levels of independent input parameters were the following: for canned cycles—a chip-breaking canned cycle (G73), a spot drilling canned cycle (G81), and a deep hole canned cycle (G83); for feed rates—0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 mm/rev; and for cutting speeds—60, 75, and 100 m/min. The selected work and tool materials were aluminum 6061-6T and high-speed steel (HSS), respectively. For cryogenic cooling, liquid nitrogen (LN2) was used and was applied externally. The measured output parameters were the three widely used quality characteristics of drilled holes—diameter error, circularity, and surface roughness. Pareto ANOVA was applied for analyzing the results. The findings revealed that the canned cycle has a significant effect on diameter error (contribution ratio 44.09%) and small effects on circularity and surface finish (contribution ratio 7.25% and 6.60%, respectively). The best results for the dimensional accuracy and surface roughness were achieved by G81. G73 produced the best circularity results; however, for dimensional accuracy, it was the worst level.

Keywords: Circularity, diameter error, drilling canned cycle, Pareto ANOVA, surface roughness.

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Authors: Valentina Di Maria, Anton Ianakiev

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The use OF adhesive anchors for wooden constructions is an efficient technology to connect and design timber members in new timber structures and to rehabilitate the damaged structural members of historical buildings. Due to the lack of standard regulation in this specific area of structural design, designers’ choices are still supported by test analysis that enables knowledge, and the prediction, of the structural behaviour of glued in rod joints. The paper outlines an experimental research activity aimed at identifying the tensile resistance capacity of several new adhesive joint prototypes made of epoxy resin, steel bar and timber, Oak and Douglas Fir species. The development of new adhesive connectors has been carried out by using epoxy to glue stainless steel bars into pre-drilled holes, characterised by smooth and rough internal surfaces, in timber samples. The realization of a threaded contact surface using a specific drill bit has led to an improved bond between wood and epoxy. The applied changes have also reduced the cost of the joints’ production. The paper presents the results of this parametric analysis and a Finite Element analysis that enables identification and study of the internal stress distribution in the proposed adhesive anchors.

Keywords: Glued in rod joints, adhesive anchors, timber, epoxy, rough contact surface, threaded hole shape.

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Authors: Mofid Gorjibandpy, Mehdi Kazemi Sangsereki

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In a bi-fuel diesel engine, the carburetor plays a vital role in switching from fuel gas to petrol mode operation and viceversa. The carburetor is the most important part of the fuel system of a diesel engine. All diesel engines carry variable venturi mixer carburetors. The basic operation of the carburetor mainly depends on the restriction barrel called the venturi. When air flows through the venturi, its speed increases and its pressure decreases. The main challenge focuses on designing a mixing device which mixes the supplied gas is the incoming air at an optimum ratio. In order to surmount the identified problems, the way fuel gas and air flow in the mixer have to be analyzed. In this case, the Computational Fluid Dynamics or CFD approach is applied in design of the prototype mixer. The present work is aimed at further understanding of the air and fuel flow structure by performing CFD studies using a software code. In this study for mixing air and gas in the condition that has been mentioned in continuance, some mixers have been designed. Then using of computational fluid dynamics, the optimum mixer has been selected. The results indicated that mixer with 12 holes can produce a homogenous mixture than those of 8-holes and 6-holes mixer. Also the result showed that if inlet convergency was smoother than outlet divergency, the mixture get more homogenous, the reason of that is in increasing turbulence in outlet divergency.

Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Venturi mixer, Air-fuel ratio, Turbulence.

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Authors: Abed Ahmed, Mehrdad Asadi, Jennifer Martay

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Stainless steel pipelines are crucial components to transportation and storage in the oil and gas industry. However, the rise of random attacks and vandalism on these pipes for their valuable transport has led to more security and protection for incoming surface impacts. These surface impacts can lead to large global deformations of the pipe and place the pipe under strain, causing the eventual failure of the pipeline. Therefore, understanding how these surface impact loads affect the pipes is vital to improving the pipes’ security and protection. In this study, experimental test and finite element analysis (FEA) have been carried out on EN3B stainless steel specimens to study the impact behaviour. Low velocity impact tests at 9 m/s with 16 kg dome impactor was used to simulate for high momentum impact for localised failure. FEA models of clamped and deformable boundaries were modelled to study the effect of the boundaries on the pipes impact behaviour on its impact resistance, using experimental and FEA approach. Comparison of experimental and FE simulation shows good correlation to the deformable boundaries in order to validate the robustness of the FE model to be implemented in pipe models with complex anisotropic structure.

Keywords: Dynamic impact, deformable boundary conditions, finite element modeling, FEM, finite element, FE, LS-DYNA, Stainless steel pipe.

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Authors: A. Schirru, A. Irimescu, S. Merola, A. d’Adamo, S. Fontanesi

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One of the aspects that are usually neglected during the design phase of an engine is the effect of the spark plug on the flow field inside the combustion chamber. Because of the difficulties in the experimental investigation of the mutual interaction between flow alteration and early flame kernel convection effect inside the engine combustion chamber, CFD-3D simulation is usually exploited in such cases. Experimentally speaking, a particular type of engine has to be used in order to directly observe the flame propagation process. In this study, a double electrode spark plug was fitted into an optically accessible engine and a high-speed camera was used to capture the initial stages of the combustion process. Both the arc and the kernel phases were observed. Then, a morphologic analysis was carried out and the position of the center of mass of the flame, relative to the spark plug position, was calculated. The crossflow orientation was chosen for the spark plug and the kernel growth process was observed for different air-fuel ratios. It was observed that during a normal cycle the flow field between the electrodes tends to transport the arc deforming it. Because of that, the kernel growth phase takes place away from the electrodes and the flame propagates with a preferential direction dictated by the flow field.

Keywords: Combustion, Kernel growth, optically accessible engine, spark-ignition engine, spark plug orientation.

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Authors: Ahmed Bensenouci

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This paper provides the design steps of a robust Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) based iterative multivariable PID controller whose duty is to drive a sample power system that comprises a synchronous generator connected to a large network via a step-up transformer and a transmission line. The generator is equipped with two control-loops, namely, the speed/power (governor) and voltage (exciter). Both loops are lumped in one where the error in the terminal voltage and output active power represent the controller inputs and the generator-exciter voltage and governor-valve position represent its outputs. Multivariable PID is considered here because of its wide use in the industry, simple structure and easy implementation. It is also preferred in plants of higher order that cannot be reduced to lower ones. To improve its robustness to variation in the controlled variables, H∞-norm of the system transfer function is used. To show the effectiveness of the controller, divers tests, namely, step/tracking in the controlled variables, and variation in plant parameters, are applied. A comparative study between the proposed controller and a robust H∞ LMI-based output feedback is given by its robustness to disturbance rejection. From the simulation results, the iterative multivariable PID shows superiority.

Keywords: Linear matrix inequality, power system, robust iterative PID, robust output feedback control

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Authors: Gautam Sarkar, Anjan Rakshit, Amitava Chatterjee, Kesab Bhattacharya

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The present paper describes the development of a low cost, highly accurate low capacitance measurement system that can be used over a range of 0 – 400 pF with a resolution of 1 pF. The range of capacitance may be easily altered by a simple resistance or capacitance variation of the measurement circuit. This capacitance measurement system uses quad two-input NAND Schmitt trigger circuit CD4093B with hysteresis for the measurement and this system is integrated with PIC 18F2550 microcontroller for data acquisition purpose. The microcontroller interacts with software developed in the PC end through USB architecture and an attractive graphical user interface (GUI) based system is developed in the PC end to provide the user with real time, online display of capacitance under measurement. The system uses a differential mode of capacitance measurement, with reference to a trimmer capacitance, that effectively compensates lead capacitances, a notorious error encountered in usual low capacitance measurements. The hysteresis provided in the Schmitt-trigger circuits enable reliable operation of the system by greatly minimizing the possibility of false triggering because of stray interferences, usually regarded as another source of significant error. The real life testing of the proposed system showed that our measurements could produce highly accurate capacitance measurements, when compared to cutting edge, high end digital capacitance meters.

Keywords: Capacitance measurement, NAND Schmitt trigger, microcontroller, GUI, lead compensation, hysteresis.

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Authors: R. Ruslee, H. Gollee

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Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a commonly used technique in rehabilitation and often associated with rapid muscle fatigue which becomes the limiting factor in its applications. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects on the onset of fatigue of conventional synchronous stimulation, as well as asynchronous stimulation that mimic voluntary muscle activation targeting different motor units which are activated sequentially or randomly via multiple pairs of stimulation electrodes. We investigate three different approaches with various electrode configurations, as well as different patterns of stimulation applied to the gastrocnemius muscle: Conventional Synchronous Stimulation (CSS), Asynchronous Sequential Stimulation (ASS) and Asynchronous Random Stimulation (ARS). Stimulation was applied repeatedly for 300 ms followed by 700 ms of no-stimulation with 40 Hz effective frequency for all protocols. Ten able-bodied volunteers (28±3 years old) participated in this study. As fatigue indicators, we focused on the analysis of Normalized Fatigue Index (NFI), Fatigue Time Interval (FTI) and pre-post Twitch-Tetanus Ratio (ΔTTR). The results demonstrated that ASS and ARS give higher NFI and longer FTI confirming less fatigue for asynchronous stimulation. In addition, ASS and ARS resulted in higher ΔTTR than conventional CSS. In this study, we proposed a randomly distributed stimulation method for the application of FES and investigated its suitability for reducing muscle fatigue compared to previously applied methods. The results validated that asynchronous stimulation reduces fatigue, and indicates that random stimulation may improve fatigue resistance in some conditions.

Keywords: Asynchronous stimulation, electrode configuration, functional electrical stimulation, muscle fatigue, pattern stimulation, random stimulation, sequential stimulation, synchronous stimulation.

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Authors: Sri Lakshmi Kanniah, Mohd Naz’ri Mahrin

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More and more businesses and services are depending on software to run their daily operations and business services. At the same time, cyber-attacks are becoming more covert and sophisticated, posing threats to software. Vulnerabilities exist in the software due to the lack of security practices during the phases of software development. Implementation of secure software development practices can improve the resistance to attacks. Many methods, models and standards for secure software development have been developed. However, despite the efforts, they still come up against difficulties in their deployment and the processes are not institutionalized. There is a set of factors that influence the successful deployment of secure software development processes. In this study, the methodology and results from a systematic literature review of factors influencing the implementation of secure software development practices is described. A total of 44 primary studies were analysed as a result of the systematic review. As a result of the study, a list of twenty factors has been identified. Some of factors that affect implementation of secure software development practices are: Involvement of the security expert, integration between security and development team, developer’s skill and expertise, development time and communication between stakeholders. The factors were further classified into four categories which are institutional context, people and action, project content and system development process. The results obtained show that it is important to take into account organizational, technical and people issues in order to implement secure software development initiatives.

Keywords: Secure software development, software development, software security, systematic literature review.

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Authors: Mohammed Mohsin Ali H., Mohamed Haneef

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The connecting rod transmits the piston load to the crank causing the latter to turn, thus converting the reciprocating motion of the piston into a rotary motion of the crankshaft. Connecting rods are subjected to forces generated by mass and fuel combustion. This study investigates and compares the fatigue behavior of forged steel, powder forged and ASTM a 514 steel cold quenched connecting rods. The objective is to suggest for a new material with reduced weight and cost with the increased fatigue life. This has entailed performing a detailed load analysis. Therefore, this study has dealt with two subjects: first, dynamic load and stress analysis of the connecting rod, and second, optimization for material, weight and cost. In the first part of the study, the loads acting on the connecting rod as a function of time were obtained. Based on the observations of the dynamic FEA, static FEA, and the load analysis results, the load for the optimization study was selected. It is the conclusion of this study that the connecting rod can be designed and optimized under a load range comprising tensile load and compressive load. Tensile load corresponds to 360^o crank angle at the maximum engine speed. The compressive load is corresponding to the peak gas pressure. Furthermore, the existing connecting rod can be replaced with a new connecting rod made of ASTM a 514 steel cold quenched that is 12% lighter and 28% cheaper.

Keywords: Connecting rod, ASTM a514 cold quenched steel, static analysis, fatigue analysis, stress life approach.

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Authors: Dyi-Cheng Chen, Wen-Hsuan Ku, Ming-Ren Chen

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The current of professional bicycle pedal-s manufacturing model mostly used casting, forging, die-casting processing methods, so the paper used 7075 aluminum alloy which is to produce the bicycle parts most commonly, and employs the rigid-plastic finite element (FE) DEFORMTM 3D software to simulate and to analyze the professional bicycle pedal design. First we use Solid works 2010 3D graphics software to design the professional bicycle pedal of the mold and appearance, then import finite element (FE) DEFORMTM 3D software for analysis. The paper used rigid-plastic model analytical methods, and assuming mode to be rigid body. A series of simulation analyses in which the variables depend on different temperature of forging billet, friction factors, forging speed, mold temperature are reveal to effective stress, effective strain, damage and die radial load distribution for forging bicycle pedal. The analysis results hope to provide professional bicycle pedal forming mold references to identified whether suit with the finite element results for high-strength design suitability of aluminum alloy.

Keywords: Bicycle pedal, finite element analysis, 7075 aluminum alloy, Taguchi method

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Authors: Joseph C. Chen, Joshua Cox

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This research focuses on the use of the Taguchi method to reduce the surface roughness and improve dimensional accuracy of parts machined by Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) with S7 heat treated steel material. Due to its high impact toughness, the material is a candidate for a wide variety of tooling applications which require high precision in dimension and desired surface roughness. This paper demonstrates that Taguchi Parameter Design methodology is able to optimize both dimensioning and surface roughness successfully by investigating seven wire-EDM controllable parameters: pulse on time (ON), pulse off time (OFF), servo voltage (SV), voltage (V), servo feed (SF), wire tension (WT), and wire speed (WS). The temperature of the water in the Wire EDM process is investigated as the noise factor in this research. Experimental design and analysis based on L₁₈ Taguchi orthogonal arrays are conducted. This paper demonstrates that the Taguchi-based system enables the wire EDM process to produce (1) high precision parts with an average of 0.6601 inches dimension, while the desired dimension is 0.6600 inches; and (2) surface roughness of 1.7322 microns which is significantly improved from 2.8160 microns.

Keywords: Taguchi parameter design, surface roughness, dimensional accuracy, Wire EDM.

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Authors: A. Elyousfi, A. Tamtaoui, E. Bouyakhf

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The H.264/AVC video coding standard contains a number of advanced features. Ones of the new features introduced in this standard is the multiple intramode prediction. Its function exploits directional spatial correlation with adjacent block for intra prediction. With this new features, intra coding of H.264/AVC offers a considerably higher improvement in coding efficiency compared to other compression standard, but computational complexity is increased significantly when brut force rate distortion optimization (RDO) algorithm is used. In this paper, we propose a new fast intra prediction mode decision method for the complexity reduction of H.264 video coding. for luma intra prediction, the proposed method consists of two step: in the first step, we make the RDO for four mode of intra 4x4 block, based the distribution of RDO cost of those modes and the idea that the fort correlation with adjacent mode, we select the best mode of intra 4x4 block. In the second step, we based the fact that the dominating direction of a smaller block is similar to that of bigger block, the candidate modes of 8x8 blocks and 16x16 macroblocks are determined. So, in case of chroma intra prediction, the variance of the chroma pixel values is much smaller than that of luma ones, since our proposed uses only the mode DC. Experimental results show that the new fast intra mode decision algorithm increases the speed of intra coding significantly with negligible loss of PSNR.

Keywords: Intra prediction, H264/AVC, video coding, encodercomplexity.

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Authors: Ujjwala Bhand, Mridula Goel

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Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) prepared by World Economic Forum has become a benchmark in studying the competitiveness of countries and for understanding the factors that enable competitiveness. Innovation is a key pillar in competitiveness and has the unique property of enabling exponential economic growth. This paper attempts to analyze how the pillars comprising the Global Competitiveness Index affect innovation and whether GDP growth can directly affect innovation outcomes for a country. The key objective of the study is to identify areas on which governments of developing countries can focus policies and programs to improve their country’s innovativeness. We have compiled a panel data set for top innovating countries and large emerging economies called BRICS from 2007-08 to 2014-15 in order to find the significant factors that affect innovation. The results of the regression analysis suggest that government should make policies to improve labor market efficiency, establish sophisticated business networks, provide basic health and primary education to its people and strengthen the quality of higher education and training services in the economy. The achievements of smaller economies on innovation suggest that concerted efforts by governments can counter any size related disadvantage, and in fact can provide greater flexibility and speed in encouraging innovation.

Keywords: Innovation, Global Competitiveness Index, BRICS, economic growth.

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Authors: Venkatesh Kumar, Kasun Hewage, Rehan Sadiq

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Residential buildings consume significant amounts of energy and produce large amount of emissions and waste. However, there is a substantial potential for energy savings in this sector which needs to be evaluated over the life cycle of residential buildings. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been employed to study the primary energy uses and associated environmental impacts of different phases (i.e., product, construction, use, end of life, and beyond building life) for residential buildings. Four different alternatives of residential buildings in Vancouver (BC, Canada) with a 50-year lifespan have been evaluated, including High Rise Apartment (HRA), Low Rise Apartment (LRA), Single family Attached House (SAH), and Single family Detached House (SDH). Life cycle performance of the buildings is evaluated for embodied energy, embodied environmental impacts, operational energy, operational environmental impacts, total life-cycle energy, and total life cycle environmental impacts. Estimation of operational energy and LCA are performed using DesignBuilder software and Athena Impact estimator software respectively. The study results revealed that over the life span of the buildings, the relationship between the energy use and the environmental impacts are identical. LRA is found to be the best alternative in terms of embodied energy use and embodied environmental impacts; while, HRA showed the best life-cycle performance in terms of minimum energy use and environmental impacts. Sensitivity analysis has also been carried out to study the influence of building service lifespan over 50, 75, and 100 years on the relative significance of embodied energy and total life cycle energy. The life-cycle energy requirements for SDH are found to be a significant component among the four types of residential buildings. The overall disclose that the primary operations of these buildings accounts for 90% of the total life cycle energy which far outweighs minor differences in embodied effects between the buildings.

Keywords: Building simulation, environmental impacts, life cycle assessment, life cycle energy analysis, residential buildings.

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Authors: Amira Kheriji Abbes, Faouzi Bouani, Mekki Ksouri

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Model Predictive Control (MPC) is an established control technique in a wide range of process industries. The reason for this success is its ability to handle multivariable systems and systems having input, output or state constraints. Neverthless comparing to PID controller, the implementation of the MPC in miniaturized devices like Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and microcontrollers has historically been very small scale due to its complexity in implementation and its computation time requirement. At the same time, such embedded technologies have become an enabler for future manufacturing enterprisers as well as a transformer of organizations and markets. In this work, we take advantage of these recent advances in this area in the deployment of one of the most studied and applied control technique in the industrial engineering. In this paper, we propose an efficient firmware for the implementation of constrained MPC in the performed STM32 microcontroller using interior point method. Indeed, performances study shows good execution speed and low computational burden. These results encourage to develop predictive control algorithms to be programmed in industrial standard processes. The PID anti windup controller was also implemented in the STM32 in order to make a performance comparison with the MPC. The main features of the proposed constrained MPC framework are illustrated through two examples.

Keywords: Embedded software, microcontroller, constrainedModel Predictive Control, interior point method, PID antiwindup, Keil tool, C/Cµ language.

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Authors: P. Garbagnoli, M. Musitelli, B. Del Curto, MP. Pedeferri

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The study and development of an innovative material for building insulation is really important for a sustainable society in order to improve comfort and reducing energy consumption. The aim of this work is the development of insulating panels for sustainable buildings based on an innovative material made by cardboard and Phase Change Materials (PCMs). The research has consisted in laboratory tests whose purpose has been the obtaining of the required properties for insulation panels: lightweight, porous structures and mechanical resistance. PCMs have been used for many years in the building industry as smart insulation technology because of their properties of storage and release high quantity of latent heat at useful specific temperatures [1]- [2]. The integration of PCMs into cellulose matrix during the waste paper recycling process has been developed in order to obtain a composite material. Experiments on the productive process for the realization of insulating panels were done in order to make the new material suitable for building application. The addition of rising agents demonstrated the possibility to obtain a lighter structure with better insulation properties. Several tests were conducted to verify the new panel properties. The results obtained have shown the possibility to realize an innovative and sustainable material suitable to replace insulating panels currently used.

Keywords: Sustainability, recycling, waste cardboard, PCM, cladding system, insulating materials.

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Authors: Z. Abdollahi Biron, P. Pisu

Abstract:

Connected vehicles are one of the promising technologies for future Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). A connected vehicle system is essentially a set of vehicles communicating through a network to exchange their information with each other and the infrastructure. Although this interconnection of the vehicles can be potentially beneficial in creating an efficient, sustainable, and green transportation system, a set of safety and reliability challenges come out with this technology. The first challenge arises from the information loss due to unreliable communication network which affects the control/management system of the individual vehicles and the overall system. Such scenario may lead to degraded or even unsafe operation which could be potentially catastrophic. Secondly, faulty sensors and actuators can affect the individual vehicle’s safe operation and in turn will create a potentially unsafe node in the vehicular network. Further, sending that faulty sensor information to other vehicles and failure in actuators may significantly affect the safe operation of the overall vehicular network. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to take these issues into consideration while designing the control/management algorithms of the individual vehicles as a part of connected vehicle system. In this paper, we consider a connected vehicle system under Co-operative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) and propose a fault diagnosis scheme that deals with these aforementioned challenges. Specifically, the conventional CACC algorithm is modified by adding a Kalman filter-based estimation algorithm to suppress the effect of lost information under unreliable network. Further, a sliding mode observer-based algorithm is used to improve the sensor reliability under faults. The effectiveness of the overall diagnostic scheme is verified via simulation studies.

Keywords: Fault diagnostics, communication network, connected vehicles, packet drop out, platoon.

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Authors: Muhammad Rehan Khalid, Ahmed Farhan Hanif, Adnan Ahmed Khan

Abstract:

This paper investigates the performance of Multiple- Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) feedback system combined with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). Two types of codebook based channel feedback techniques are used in this work. The first feedback technique uses a combination of both the long-term and short-term channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter, whereas the second technique uses only the short term CSI. The long-term and short-term CSI at the transmitter is used for efficient channel utilization. OFDM is a powerful technique employed in communication systems suffering from frequency selectivity. Combined with multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver, OFDM proves to be robust against delay spread. Moreover, it leads to significant data rates with improved bit error performance over links having only a single antenna at both the transmitter and receiver. The effectiveness of these techniques has been demonstrated through the simulation of a MIMO-OFDM feedback system. The results have been evaluated for 4x4 MIMO channels. Simulation results indicate the benefits of the MIMO-OFDM channel feedback system over the one without incorporating OFDM. Performance gain of about 3 dB is observed for MIMO-OFDM feedback system as compared to the one without employing OFDM. Hence MIMO-OFDM becomes an attractive approach for future high speed wireless communication systems.

Keywords: MIMO systems, OFDM, Codebooks, Channel Feedback

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Authors: V.S.Kale, S.R.Bhide, P.P.Bedekar, G.V.K.Mohan

Abstract:

The protection of parallel transmission lines has been a challenging task due to mutual coupling between the adjacent circuits of the line. This paper presents a novel scheme for detection and classification of faults on parallel transmission lines. The proposed approach uses combination of wavelet transform and neural network, to solve the problem. While wavelet transform is a powerful mathematical tool which can be employed as a fast and very effective means of analyzing power system transient signals, artificial neural network has a ability to classify non-linear relationship between measured signals by identifying different patterns of the associated signals. The proposed algorithm consists of time-frequency analysis of fault generated transients using wavelet transform, followed by pattern recognition using artificial neural network to identify the type of the fault. MATLAB/Simulink is used to generate fault signals and verify the correctness of the algorithm. The adaptive discrimination scheme is tested by simulating different types of fault and varying fault resistance, fault location and fault inception time, on a given power system model. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme for fault diagnosis is able to classify all the faults on the parallel transmission line rapidly and correctly.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, fault detection and classification, parallel transmission lines, wavelet transform.

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Authors: Yuan-Hsiang Chang, Pin-Chi Lin, Li-Der Jeng

Abstract:

Advance in techniques of image and video processing has enabled the development of intelligent video surveillance systems. This study was aimed to automatically detect moving human objects and to analyze events of dual human interaction in a surveillance scene. Our system was developed in four major steps: image preprocessing, human object detection, human object tracking, and motion trajectory analysis. The adaptive background subtraction and image processing techniques were used to detect and track moving human objects. To solve the occlusion problem during the interaction, the Kalman filter was used to retain a complete trajectory for each human object. Finally, the motion trajectory analysis was developed to distinguish between the interaction and non-interaction events based on derivatives of trajectories related to the speed of the moving objects. Using a database of 60 video sequences, our system could achieve the classification accuracy of 80% in interaction events and 95% in non-interaction events, respectively. In summary, we have explored the idea to investigate a system for the automatic classification of events for interaction and non-interaction events using surveillance cameras. Ultimately, this system could be incorporated in an intelligent surveillance system for the detection and/or classification of abnormal or criminal events (e.g., theft, snatch, fighting, etc.). 

Keywords: Motion detection, motion tracking, trajectory analysis, video surveillance.

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Authors: Miloš Matúš, Peter Križan, Ľubomír Šooš, Juraj Beniak

Abstract:

The moisture content of densified biomass is a limiting parameter influencing the quality of this solid biofuel. It influences its calorific value, density, mechanical strength and dimensional stability as well as affecting its production process. This paper deals with experimental research into the effect of moisture content of the densified material on the final quality of biofuel in the form of logs (briquettes or pellets). Experiments based on the singleaxis densification of the spruce sawdust were carried out with a hydraulic piston press (piston and die), where the densified logs were produced at room temperature. The effect of moisture content on the qualitative properties of the logs, including density, change of moisture, expansion and physical changes, and compressive and impact resistance were studied. The results show the moisture ranges required for producing good-quality logs. The experiments were evaluated and the moisture content of the tested material was optimized to achieve the optimum value for the best quality of the solid biofuel. The dense logs also have high-energy content per unit volume. The research results could be used to develop and optimize industrial technologies and machinery for biomass densification to achieve high quality solid biofuel.

Keywords: Biomass, briquettes, densification, fuel quality, moisture content, density.

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Authors: P. S. Thein, S. Pramumijoyo, K. S. Brotopuspito, J. Kiyono, W. Wilopo, A. Furukawa, A. Setianto

Abstract:

In this study, we estimated the seismic ground motion parameters based on microtremor measurements atPalu City. Several earthquakes have struck along the Palu-Koro Fault during recent years. The USGS epicenter, magnitude Mw 6.3 event that occurred on January 23, 2005 caused several casualties. We conducted a microtremor survey to estimate the strong ground motion distribution during the earthquake. From this surveywe produced a map of the peak ground acceleration, velocity, seismic vulnerability index and ground shear strain maps in Palu City. We performed single observations of microtremor at 151 sites in Palu City. We also conducted8-site microtremors array investigation to gain a representative determination of the soil condition of subsurface structures in Palu City.From the array observations, Palu City corresponds to relatively soil condition with Vs ≤ 300m/s, the predominant periods due to horizontal vertical ratios (HVSRs) are in the range of 0.4 to 1.8 s and the frequency are in the range of 0.7 to 3.3 Hz. Strong ground motions of the Palu area were predicted based on the empirical stochastic green’s function method. Peak ground acceleration and velocity becomes more than 400 gal and 30 kine in some areas, which causes severe damage for buildings in high probability. Microtremor survey results showed that in hilly areas had low seismic vulnerability index and ground shear strain, whereas in coastal alluvium was composed of material having a high seismic vulnerability and ground shear strain indication.

Keywords: Palu-Koro Fault, Microtremor, Peak Ground Acceleration, Peak Ground Velocity and Seismic Vulnerability Index.

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Authors: S. Z. Moussavi, A. Badri, F. Rastegar Kashkooli

Abstract:

Wind farms (WFs) with high level of penetration are being established in power systems worldwide more rapidly than other renewable resources. The Independent System Operator (ISO), as a policy maker, should propose appropriate places for WF installation in order to maximize the benefits for the investors. There is also a possibility of congestion relief using the new installation of WFs which should be taken into account by the ISO when proposing the locations for WF installation. In this context, efficient wind farm (WF) placement method is proposed in order to reduce burdens on congested lines. Since the wind speed is a random variable and load forecasts also contain uncertainties, probabilistic approaches are used for this type of study. AC probabilistic optimal power flow (P-OPF) is formulated and solved using Monte Carlo Simulations (MCS). In order to reduce computation time, point estimate methods (PEM) are introduced as efficient alternative for time-demanding MCS. Subsequently, WF optimal placement is determined using generation shift distribution factors (GSDF) considering a new parameter entitled, wind availability factor (WAF). In order to obtain more realistic results, N-1 contingency analysis is employed to find the optimal size of WF, by means of line outage distribution factors (LODF). The IEEE 30-bus test system is used to show and compare the accuracy of proposed methodology.

Keywords: Probabilistic optimal power flow, Wind power, Pointestimate methods, Congestion management

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