Search results for: Tip speed ratio
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 3227

Search results for: Tip speed ratio

317 Physico-Mechanical Properties of Jute-Coir Fiber Reinforced Hybrid Polypropylene Composites

Authors: Salma Siddika, Fayeka Mansura, Mahbub Hasan

Abstract:

The term hybrid composite refers to the composite containing more than one type of fiber material as reinforcing fillers. It has become attractive structural material due to the ability of providing better combination of properties with respect to single fiber containing composite. The eco-friendly nature as well as processing advantage, light weight and low cost have enhanced the attraction and interest of natural fiber reinforced composite. The objective of present research is to study the mechanical properties of jute-coir fiber reinforced hybrid polypropylene (PP) composite according to filler loading variation. In the present work composites were manufactured by using hot press machine at four levels of fiber loading (5, 10, 15 and 20 wt %). Jute and coir fibers were utilized at a ratio of (1:1) during composite manufacturing. Tensile, flexural, impact and hardness tests were conducted for mechanical characterization. Tensile test of composite showed a decreasing trend of tensile strength and increasing trend of the Young-s modulus with increasing fiber content. During flexural, impact and hardness tests, the flexural strength, flexural modulus, impact strength and hardness were found to be increased with increasing fiber loading. Based on the fiber loading used in this study, 20% fiber reinforced composite resulted the best set of mechanical properties.

Keywords: Mechanical Properties; Coir, Jute, Polypropylene, Hybrid Composite.

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316 Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach for Trading Automation in the Stock Market

Authors: Taylan Kabbani, Ekrem Duman

Abstract:

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms can scale to previously intractable problems. The automation of profit generation in the stock market is possible using DRL, by combining  the financial assets price ”prediction” step and the ”allocation” step of the portfolio in one unified process to produce fully autonomous systems capable of interacting with its environment to make optimal decisions through trial and error. This work represents a DRL model to generate profitable trades in the stock market, effectively overcoming the limitations of supervised learning approaches. We formulate the trading problem as a Partially observed Markov Decision Process (POMDP) model, considering the constraints imposed by the stock market, such as liquidity and transaction costs. We then solved the formulated POMDP problem using the Twin Delayed Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (TD3) algorithm and achieved a 2.68 Sharpe ratio on the test dataset. From the point of view of stock market forecasting and the intelligent decision-making mechanism, this paper demonstrates the superiority of DRL in financial markets over other types of machine learning and proves its credibility and advantages of strategic decision-making.

Keywords: Autonomous agent, deep reinforcement learning, MDP, sentiment analysis, stock market, technical indicators, twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient.

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315 Minimization of Non-Productive Time during 2.5D Milling

Authors: Satish Kumar, Arun Kumar Gupta, Pankaj Chandna

Abstract:

In the modern manufacturing systems, the use of thermal cutting techniques using oxyfuel, plasma and laser have become indispensable for the shape forming of high quality complex components; however, the conventional chip removal production techniques still have its widespread space in the manufacturing industry. Both these types of machining operations require the positioning of end effector tool at the edge where the cutting process commences. This repositioning of the cutting tool in every machining operation is repeated several times and is termed as non-productive time or airtime motion. Minimization of this non-productive machining time plays an important role in mass production with high speed machining. As, the tool moves from one region to the other by rapid movement and visits a meticulous region once in the whole operation, hence the non-productive time can be minimized by synchronizing the tool movements. In this work, this problem is being formulated as a general travelling salesman problem (TSP) and a genetic algorithm approach has been applied to solve the same. For improving the efficiency of the algorithm, the GA has been hybridized with a noble special heuristic and simulating annealing (SA). In the present work a novel heuristic in the combination of GA has been developed for synchronization of toolpath movements during repositioning of the tool. A comparative analysis of new Meta heuristic techniques with simple genetic algorithm has been performed. The proposed metaheuristic approach shows better performance than simple genetic algorithm for minimization of nonproductive toolpath length. Also, the results obtained with the help of hybrid simulated annealing genetic algorithm (HSAGA) are also found better than the results using simple genetic algorithm only.

Keywords: Non-productive time, Airtime, 2.5 D milling, Laser cutting, Metaheuristic, Genetic Algorithm, Simulated Annealing.

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314 Novel Hybrid Approaches For Real Coded Genetic Algorithm to Compute the Optimal Control of a Single Stage Hybrid Manufacturing Systems

Authors: M. Senthil Arumugam, M.V.C. Rao

Abstract:

This paper presents a novel two-phase hybrid optimization algorithm with hybrid genetic operators to solve the optimal control problem of a single stage hybrid manufacturing system. The proposed hybrid real coded genetic algorithm (HRCGA) is developed in such a way that a simple real coded GA acts as a base level search, which makes a quick decision to direct the search towards the optimal region, and a local search method is next employed to do fine tuning. The hybrid genetic operators involved in the proposed algorithm improve both the quality of the solution and convergence speed. The phase–1 uses conventional real coded genetic algorithm (RCGA), while optimisation by direct search and systematic reduction of the size of search region is employed in the phase – 2. A typical numerical example of an optimal control problem with the number of jobs varying from 10 to 50 is included to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm. Several statistical analyses are done to compare the validity of the proposed algorithm with the conventional RCGA and PSO techniques. Hypothesis t – test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) test are also carried out to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The results clearly demonstrate that the proposed algorithm not only improves the quality but also is more efficient in converging to the optimal value faster. They can outperform the conventional real coded GA (RCGA) and the efficient particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm in quality of the optimal solution and also in terms of convergence to the actual optimum value.

Keywords: Hybrid systems, optimal control, real coded genetic algorithm (RCGA), Particle swarm optimization (PSO), Hybrid real coded GA (HRCGA), and Hybrid genetic operators.

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313 Drop Impact Study on Flexible Superhydrophobic Surface Containing Micro-Nano Hierarchical Structures

Authors: Abinash Tripathy, Girish Muralidharan, Amitava Pramanik, Prosenjit Sen

Abstract:

Superhydrophobic surfaces are abundant in nature. Several surfaces such as wings of butterfly, legs of water strider, feet of gecko and the lotus leaf show extreme water repellence behaviour. Self-cleaning, stain-free fabrics, spill-resistant protective wears, drag reduction in micro-fluidic devices etc. are few applications of superhydrophobic surfaces. In order to design robust superhydrophobic surface, it is important to understand the interaction of water with superhydrophobic surface textures. In this work, we report a simple coating method for creating large-scale flexible superhydrophobic paper surface. The surface consists of multiple layers of silanized zirconia microparticles decorated with zirconia nanoparticles. Water contact angle as high as 159±10 and contact angle hysteresis less than 80 was observed. Drop impact studies on superhydrophobic paper surface were carried out by impinging water droplet and capturing its dynamics through high speed imaging. During the drop impact, the Weber number was varied from 20 to 80 by altering the impact velocity of the drop and the parameters such as contact time, normalized spread diameter were obtained. In contrast to earlier literature reports, we observed contact time to be dependent on impact velocity on superhydrophobic surface. Total contact time was split into two components as spread time and recoil time. The recoil time was found to be dependent on the impact velocity while the spread time on the surface did not show much variation with the impact velocity. Further, normalized spreading parameter was found to increase with increase in impact velocity.

Keywords: Contact angle, contact angle hysteresis, contact time, superhydrophobic.

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312 Effects of Different Dietary Crude Fiber Levels on the Growth Performance of Finishing Su-Shan Pigs

Authors: Li Bixia, Ren Shouwen, Fu Yanfeng, Tu Feng, Xiaoming Fang, Xueming Wang

Abstract:

The utilization of dietary crude fiber in different breed pigs is not the same. Su-shan pigs are a new breed formed by crossing Taihu pigs and Yorkshire pigs. In order to understand the resistance of Su-shan pigs to dietary crude fiber, 150 Su-shan pigs with 60 kg of average body weight and similar body conditions were allocated to three groups randomly, and there are 50 pigs in each group. The percentages of dietary crude fiber were 8.35%, 9.10%, and 11.39%, respectively. At the end of the experiment, 15 pigs randomly selected from each group were slaughtered. The results showed as follows: average daily gain of the 9.10% group was higher than that of the 8.35% group and the 11.39% group; there was a significant difference between the 9.10% group and the 8.35% group (p < 0.05. Levels of urea nitrogen, total cholesterol and high density lipoprotein in the 9.10% group were significantly higher than those in the 8.35% group and the 11.39% group (p < 0.05). Ratios of meat to fat in the 9.10% group and the 11.39% group were significantly higher than that in the 8.35% group (p < 0.05). Lean percentage of 9.10% group was higher than that of 8.35% group and 11.39% group, but there was no significant difference in three groups (p > 0.05). The weight of small intestine and large intestine in the 11.39% group was higher than that in the 8.35% group, and the 9.10% group and the difference reached a significant level (p < 0.05). In conclusion, increasing dietary crude fiber properly could reduce fat percentage, and improve the ratio of meat to fat of finishing Su-shan pigs. The digestion and metabolism of dietary crude fiber promoted the development of stomach and intestine of finishing Su-shan pig.

Keywords: Su-Shan pigs, dietary crude fiber, growth performance, serum biochemical indexes.

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311 Using Ferry Access Points to Improve the Performance of Message Ferrying in Delay-Tolerant Networks

Authors: Farzana Yasmeen, Md. Nurul Huda, Md. Enamul Haque, Michihiro Aoki, Shigeki Yamada

Abstract:

Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are sparse, wireless networks where disconnections are common due to host mobility and low node density. The Message Ferrying (MF) scheme is a mobilityassisted paradigm to improve connectivity in DTN-like networks. A ferry or message ferry is a special node in the network which has a per-determined route in the deployed area and relays messages between mobile hosts (MHs) which are intermittently connected. Increased contact opportunities among mobile hosts and the ferry improve the performance of the network, both in terms of message delivery ratio and average end-end delay. However, due to the inherent mobility of mobile hosts and pre-determined periodicity of the message ferry, mobile hosts may often -miss- contact opportunities with a ferry. In this paper, we propose the combination of stationary ferry access points (FAPs) with MF routing to increase contact opportunities between mobile hosts and the MF and consequently improve the performance of the DTN. We also propose several placement models for deploying FAPs on MF routes. We evaluate the performance of the FAP placement models through comprehensive simulation. Our findings show that FAPs do improve the performance of MF-assisted DTNs and symmetric placement of FAPs outperforms other placement strategies.

Keywords: Service infrastructure, delay-tolerant network, messageferry routing, placement models.

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310 A Modern Review of the Spintronic Technology: Fundamentals, Materials, Devices, Circuits, Challenges, and Current Research Trends

Authors: Muhibul Haque Bhuyan

Abstract:

Spintronic, also termed spin electronics or spin transport electronics, is a kind of new technology, which exploits the two fundamental degrees of freedom- spin-state and charge-state of electrons to enhance the operational speed for the data storage and transfer efficiency of the device. Thus, it seems an encouraging technology to combat most of the prevailing complications in orthodox electron-based devices. This novel technology possesses the capacity to mix the semiconductor microelectronics and magnetic devices’ functionalities into one integrated circuit. Traditional semiconductor microelectronic devices use only the electronic charge to process the information based on binary numbers, 0 and 1. Due to the incessant shrinking of the transistor size, we are reaching the final limit of 1 nm or so. At this stage, the fabrication and other device operational processes will become challenging as the quantum effect comes into play. In this situation, we should find an alternative future technology, and spintronic may be such technology to transfer and store information. This review article provides a detailed discussion of the spintronic technology: fundamentals, materials, devices, circuits, challenges, and current research trends. At first, the fundamentals of spintronics technology are discussed. Then types, properties, and other issues of the spintronic materials are presented. After that, fabrication and working principles, as well as application areas and advantages/disadvantages of spintronic devices and circuits, are explained. Finally, the current challenges, current research areas, and prospects of spintronic technology are highlighted. This is a new paradigm of electronic cum magnetic devices built on the charge and spin of the electrons. Modern engineering and technological advances in search of new materials for this technology give us hope that this would be a very optimistic technology in the upcoming days.

Keywords: Spintronic technology, spin, charge, magnetic devices, spintronic devices, spintronic materials.

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309 Influence of Concrete Cracking in the Tensile Strength of Cast-in Headed Anchors

Authors: W. Nataniel, B. Lima, J. Manoel, M. P. Filho, H. Marcos, Oliveira Mauricio, P. Ferreira

Abstract:

Headed reinforcement bars are increasingly used for anchorage in concrete structures. Applications include connections in composite steel-concrete structures, such as beam-column joints, in several strengthening situations as well as in more traditional uses in cast-in-place and precast structural systems. This paper investigates the reduction in the ultimate tensile capacity of embedded cast-in headed anchors due to concrete cracking. A series of nine laboratory tests are carried out to evaluate the influence of cracking on the concrete breakout strength in tension. The experimental results show that cracking affects both the resistance and load-slip response of the headed bar anchors. The strengths measured in these tests are compared to theoretical resistances calculated following the recommendations presented by fib Bulletin no. 58 (2011), ETAG 001 (2010) and ACI 318 (2014). The influences of parameters such as the effective embedment depth (hef), bar diameter (ds), and the concrete compressive strength (fc) are analysed and discussed. The theoretical recommendations are shown to be over-conservative for both embedment depths and were, in general, inaccurate in comparison to the experimental trends. The ACI 318 (2014) was the design code which presented the best performance regarding to the predictions of the ultimate load, with an average of 1.42 for the ratio between the experimental and estimated strengths, standard deviation of 0.36, and coefficient of variation equal to 0.25.

Keywords: Cast-in headed anchors, concrete cone failure, uncracked concrete, cracked concrete.

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308 A Detailed Experimental Study of the Springback Anisotropy of Three Metals using the Stretching-Bending Process

Authors: A. Soualem

Abstract:

Springback is a significant problem in the sheet metal forming process. When the tools are released after the stage of forming, the product springs out, because of the action of the internal stresses. In many cases the deviation of form is too large and the compensation of the springback is necessary. The precise prediction of the springback of product is increasingly significant for the design of the tools and for compensation because of the higher ratio of the yield stress to the elastic modulus. The main object in this paper was to study the effect of the anisotropy on the springback for three directions of rolling: 0°, 45° and 90°. At the same time, we highlighted the influence of three different metallic materials: Aluminum, Steel and Galvanized steel. The original of our purpose consist on tests which are ensured by adapting a U-type stretching-bending device on a tensile testing machine, where we studied and quantified the variation of the springback according to the direction of rolling. We also showed the role of lubrication in the reduction of the springback. Moreover, in this work, we have studied important characteristics in deep drawing process which is a springback. We have presented defaults that are showed in this process and many parameters influenced a springback. Finally, our results works lead us to understand the influence of grains orientation with different metallic materials on the springback and drawing some conclusions how to concept deep drawing tools. In addition, the conducted work represents a fundamental contribution in the discussion the industry application.

Keywords: Deep-Drawing, Grains orientation, Laminate Tool, Springback.

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307 Investigating the Effectiveness of Self-Shading Strategy on Overall Thermal Transfer Value and Window Size in High Rise Buildings

Authors: Mansour Nikpour, Mohd Zin kandar, Mohammad Ghomeshi, Nima Moeinzadeh, Mohsen Ghasemi

Abstract:

So much energy is used in high rise buildings to fulfill the basic needs of users such as lighting and thermal comfort. Malaysia has hot and humid climate, buildings especially high rise buildings receive unnecessary solar radiation that cause more solar heat gain. Energy use specially electricity consumption in high rise buildings has increased. There have been growing concerns about energy consumption and its effect on environment. Building, energy and the environment are important issues that the designers should consider to them. Self protected form is one of possible ways against the impact of solar radiation in high rise buildings. The Energy performance of building envelopes was investigated in term of the Overall Thermal Transfer Value (OTTV ).In this paper, the amount of OTTV reduction was calculated through OTTV Equations to clear the effectiveness of self shading strategy on minimizing energy consumption for cooling interior spaces in high rise buildings which has considerable envelope areas against solar radiation. Also increasing the optimum window area was investigated using self-shading strategy in designing high rise buildings. As result, the significant reduction in OTTV was shown based on WWR.In addition slight increase was demonstrated in WWR that can influence on visible comfort interior spaces.

Keywords: Self-shading strategy, high rise buildings, Overall thermal transfer value (OTTV ), Window to wall ratio (WWR).

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306 A Novel SVM-Based OOK Detector in Low SNR Infrared Channels

Authors: J. P. Dubois, O. M. Abdul-Latif

Abstract:

Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a recent class of statistical classification and regression techniques playing an increasing role in applications to detection problems in various engineering problems, notably in statistical signal processing, pattern recognition, image analysis, and communication systems. In this paper, SVM is applied to an infrared (IR) binary communication system with different types of channel models including Ricean multipath fading and partially developed scattering channel with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) at the receiver. The structure and performance of SVM in terms of the bit error rate (BER) metric is derived and simulated for these channel stochastic models and the computational complexity of the implementation, in terms of average computational time per bit, is also presented. The performance of SVM is then compared to classical binary signal maximum likelihood detection using a matched filter driven by On-Off keying (OOK) modulation. We found that the performance of SVM is superior to that of the traditional optimal detection schemes used in statistical communication, especially for very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ranges. For large SNR, the performance of the SVM is similar to that of the classical detectors. The implication of these results is that SVM can prove very beneficial to IR communication systems that notoriously suffer from low SNR at the cost of increased computational complexity.

Keywords: Least square-support vector machine, on-off keying, matched filter, maximum likelihood detector, wireless infrared communication.

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305 Fruit Growing in Romania and Its Role for Rural Communities’ Development

Authors: Maria Toader, Gheorghe Valentin Roman

Abstract:

The importance of fruit trees and bushes growing for Romania is due the concordance that exists between the different ecological conditions in natural basins, and the requirements of different species and varieties. There are, in Romania, natural areas dedicated to the main trees species: plum, apple, pear, cherry, sour cherry, finding optimal conditions for harnessing the potential of fruitfulness, making fruit quality both in terms of ratio commercial, and content in active principles. The share of fruits crops in the world economy of agricultural production is due primarily to the role of fruits in nourishment for human, and in the prevention and combating of diseases, in increasing the national income of cultivator countries and to improve comfort for human life. For Romania, the perspectives of the sector are positive, and are due to European funding opportunities, which provide farmers a specialized program that meets the needs of development and modernization of fruit growing industry, cultivation technology and equipment, organization and grouping of producers, creating storage facilities, conditioning, marketing and the joint use of fresh fruit. This paper shows the evolution of fruit growing, in Romania compared to other states. The document presents the current situation of the main tree species both in terms of surface but also of the productions and the role that this activity may have for the development of rural communities.

Keywords: Fruit growing, fruits trees, productivity, rural development.

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304 Water and Soil Environment Pollution Reduction by Filter Strips

Authors: Roy R. Gu, Mahesh Sahu, Xianggui Zhao

Abstract:

Contour filter strips planted with perennial vegetation can be used to improve surface and ground water quality by reducing pollutant, such as NO3-N, and sediment outflow from cropland to a river or lake. Meanwhile, the filter strips of perennial grass with biofuel potentials also have economic benefits of producing ethanol. In this study, The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was applied to the Walnut Creek Watershed to examine the effectiveness of contour strips in reducing NO3-N outflows from crop fields to the river or lake. Required input data include watershed topography, slope, soil type, land-use, management practices in the watershed and climate parameters (precipitation, maximum/minimum air temperature, solar radiation, wind speed and relative humidity). Numerical experiments were conducted to identify potential subbasins in the watershed that have high water quality impact, and to examine the effects of strip size and location on NO3-N reduction in the subbasins under various meteorological conditions (dry, average and wet). Variable sizes of contour strips (10%, 20%, 30% and 50%, respectively, of a subbasin area) planted with perennial switchgrass were selected for simulating the effects of strip size and location on stream water quality. Simulation results showed that a filter strip having 10%-50% of the subbasin area could lead to 55%- 90% NO3-N reduction in the subbasin during an average rainfall year. Strips occupying 10-20% of the subbasin area were found to be more efficient in reducing NO3-N when placed along the contour than that when placed along the river. The results of this study can assist in cost-benefit analysis and decision-making in best water resources management practices for environmental protection.

Keywords: modeling, SWAT, water quality, NO3-N, watershed.

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303 Acoustic Behavior of Polymer Foam Composite of Shorea leprosula after UV-Irradiation Exposure

Authors: Anika Zafiah M. Rus, S. Shafizah

Abstract:

This study was developed to compare the behavior and the ability of polymer foam composites towards sound absorption test of Shorea leprosula wood (SL) of acid hydrolysis treatment with particle size <355μm. Three different weight ratio of polyol to wood particle has been selected which are 10wt%, 15wt% and 20wt%. The acid hydrolysis treatment is to optimize the surface interaction of wood particle with polymer foam matrix. In addition, the acoustic characteristic of sound absorption coefficient (α) was determined. Further treatment is to expose the polymer composite in UV irradiation by using UV-Weatherometer. Polymer foam composite of untreated Shorea leprosula particle (SL-B) with respective percentage loading shows uniform pore structure as compared with treated wood particle (SL-A). As the filler percentage loading in polymer foam increases, the α value approaching 1 for both samples. Furthermore, SL-A shows better α value at 3500-4500 frequency absorption level (Hz), meanwhile α value for SL-B is maximum at 4000-5000 Hz. The frequencies absorption level for both SL-B and SL-A after UV exposure was increased with the increasing of exposure time from 0-1000 hours. It is therefore, concluded that the α for each sound absorbing material, with or without acid hydrolysis treatment of wood particles and it’s percentages loading in polymer matrix effect the sound absorption behavior.

Keywords: Polymer foam composite, sound absorption coefficient, UV-irradiation, wood.

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302 Comparison of Stationary and Two-Axis Tracking System of 50MW Photovoltaic Power Plant in Al-Kufra, Libya: Landscape Impact and Performance

Authors: Yasser Aldali

Abstract:

The scope of this paper is to evaluate and compare the potential of LS-PV(Large Scale Photovoltaic Power Plant) power generation systems in the southern region of Libya at Al-Kufra for both stationary and tracking systems. A Microsoft Excel-VBA program has been developed to compute slope radiation, dew-point, sky temperature, and then cell temperature, maximum power output and module efficiency of the system for stationary system and for tracking system. The results for energy production show that the total energy output is 114GWh/year for stationary system and 148GWh/year for tracking system. The average module efficiency for the stationary system is 16.6% and 16.2% for the tracking system.

The values of electricity generation capacity factor (CF) and solar capacity factor (SCF) for stationary system were found to be 26% and 62.5% respectively and 34% and 82% for tracking system. The GCR (Ground Cover Ratio) for a stationary system is 0.7, which corresponds to a tilt angle of 24°. The GCR for tracking system was found to be 0.12. The estimated ground area needed to build a 50MW PV plant amounts to approx. 0.55km2 for a stationary PV field constituted by HIT PV arrays and approx. 91MW/ km2. In case of a tracker PV field, the required ground area amounts approx.2.4km2 and approx. 20.5MW/ km2.

Keywords: Large PV power plant, solar energy, environmental impact, Dual-axis tracking system, stationary system.

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301 A Study of the Replacement of Natural Coarse Aggregate by Spherically-Shaped and Crushed Waste Cathode Ray Tube Glass in Concrete

Authors: N. N. M. Pauzi, M. R. Karim, M. Jamil, R. Hamid, M. F. M. Zain

Abstract:

The aim of this study is to conduct an experimental investigation on the influence of complete replacement of natural coarse aggregate with spherically-shape and crushed waste cathode ray tube (CRT) glass to the aspect of workability, density, and compressive strength of the concrete. After characterizing the glass, a group of concrete mixes was prepared to contain a 40% spherical CRT glass and 60% crushed CRT glass as a complete (100%) replacement of natural coarse aggregates. From a total of 16 types of concrete mixes, the optimum proportion was selected based on its best performance. The test results showed that the use of spherical and crushed glass that possesses a smooth surface, rounded, irregular and elongated shape, and low water absorption affects the workability of concrete. Due to a higher specific gravity of crushed glass, concrete mixes containing CRT glass had a higher density compared to ordinary concrete. Despite the spherical and crushed CRT glass being stronger than gravel, the results revealed a reduction in compressive strength of the concrete. However, using a lower water to binder (w/b) ratio and a higher superplasticizer (SP) dosage, it is found to enhance the compressive strength of 60.97 MPa at 28 days that is lower by 13% than the control specimen. These findings indicate that waste CRT glass in the form of spherical and crushed could be used as an alternative of coarse aggregate that may pave the way for the disposal of hazardous e-waste.

Keywords: Cathode ray tube, glass, coarse aggregate, compressive strength.

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300 Validity of Universe Structure Conception as Nested Vortexes

Authors: Khaled M. Nabil

Abstract:

This paper introduces the Nested Vortexes conception of the universe structure and interprets all the physical phenomena according this conception. The paper first reviews recent physics theories, either in microscopic scale or macroscopic scale, to collect evidence that the space is not empty. But, these theories describe the property of the space medium without determining its structure. Determining the structure of space medium is essential to understand the mechanism that leads to its properties. Without determining the space medium structure, many phenomena; such as electric and magnetic fields, gravity, or wave-particle duality remain uninterpreted. Thus, this paper introduces a conception about the structure of the universe. It assumes that the universe is a medium of ultra-tiny homogeneous particles which are still undiscovered. Like any medium with certain movements, possibly because of a great asymmetric explosion, vortexes have occurred. A vortex condenses the ultra-tiny particles in its center forming a bigger particle, the bigger particles, in turn, could be trapped in a bigger vortex and condense in its center forming a much bigger particle and so on. This conception describes galaxies, stars, protons as particles at different levels. Existing of the particle’s vortexes make the consistency of the speed of light postulate is not true. This conception shows that the vortex motion dynamic agrees with the motion of all the universe particles at any level. An experiment has been carried out to detect the orbiting effect of aggregated vortexes of aligned atoms of a permanent magnet. Based on the described particle’s structure, the gravity force of a particle and attraction between particles as well as charge, electric and magnetic fields and quantum mechanics characteristics are interpreted. All augmented physics phenomena are solved.

Keywords: Astrophysics, cosmology, particles’ structure model, particles’ forces, vortex dynamics.

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299 Analysis of the Elastic Energy Released and Characterization of the Eruptive Episodes Intensity’s during 2014-2015 at El Reventador Volcano, Ecuador

Authors: Paúl I. Cornejo

Abstract:

The elastic energy released through Strombolian explosions has been quite studied, detailing various processes, sources, and precursory events at several volcanoes. We realized an analysis based on the relative partitioning of the elastic energy radiated into the atmosphere and ground by Strombolian-type explosions recorded at El Reventador volcano, using infrasound and seismic signals at high and moderate seismicity episodes during intense eruptive stages of explosive and effusive activity. Our results show that considerable values of Volcano Acoustic-Seismic Ratio (VASR or η) are obtained at high seismicity stages. VASR is a physical diagnostic of explosive degassing that we used to compare eruption mechanisms at El Reventador volcano for two datasets of explosions recorded at a Broad-Band BB seismic and infrasonic station located at ~5 kilometers from the vent. We conclude that the acoustic energy EA released during explosive activity (VASR η = 0.47, standard deviation σ = 0.8) is higher than the EA released during effusive activity; therefore, producing the highest values of η. Furthermore, we realized the analysis and characterization of the eruptive intensity for two episodes at high seismicity, calculating a η three-time higher for an episode of effusive activity with an occasional explosive component (η = 0.32, and σ = 0.42), than a η for an episode of only effusive activity (η = 0.11, and σ = 0.18), but more energetic.

Keywords: Effusive, explosion quakes, explosive, strombolian, VASR.

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298 Bone Mineral Density and Quality, Body Composition of Women in the Postmenopausal Period

Authors: Vladyslav Povoroznyuk, Oksana Ivanyk, Nataliia Dzerovych

Abstract:

In the diagnostics of osteoporosis, the gold standard is considered to be bone mineral density; however, X-ray densitometry is not an accurate indicator of osteoporotic fracture risk under all circumstances. In this regard, the search for new methods that could determine the indicators not only of the mineral density, but of the bone tissue quality, is a logical step for diagnostic optimization. One of these methods is the evaluation of trabecular bone quality. The aim of this study was to examine the quality and mineral density of spine bone tissue, femoral neck, and body composition of women depending on the duration of the postmenopausal period, to determine the correlation of body fat with indicators of bone mineral density and quality. The study examined 179 women in premenopausal and postmenopausal periods. The patients were divided into the following groups: Women in the premenopausal period and women in the postmenopausal period at various stages (early, middle, late postmenopause). A general examination and study of the above parameters were conducted with General Electric X-ray densitometer. The results show that bone quality and mineral density probably deteriorate with advancing of postmenopausal period. Total fat and lean mass ratio is not likely to change with age. In the middle and late postmenopausal periods, the bone tissue mineral density of the spine and femoral neck increases along with total fat mass.

Keywords: Osteoporosis, bone tissue mineral density, bone quality, fat mass, lean mass, postmenopausal osteoporosis.

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297 Target Detection using Adaptive Progressive Thresholding Based Shifted Phase-Encoded Fringe-Adjusted Joint Transform Correlator

Authors: Inder K. Purohit, M. Nazrul Islam, K. Vijayan Asari, Mohammad A. Karim

Abstract:

A new target detection technique is presented in this paper for the identification of small boats in coastal surveillance. The proposed technique employs an adaptive progressive thresholding (APT) scheme to first process the given input scene to separate any objects present in the scene from the background. The preprocessing step results in an image having only the foreground objects, such as boats, trees and other cluttered regions, and hence reduces the search region for the correlation step significantly. The processed image is then fed to the shifted phase-encoded fringe-adjusted joint transform correlator (SPFJTC) technique which produces single and delta-like correlation peak for a potential target present in the input scene. A post-processing step involves using a peak-to-clutter ratio (PCR) to determine whether the boat in the input scene is authorized or unauthorized. Simulation results are presented to show that the proposed technique can successfully determine the presence of an authorized boat and identify any intruding boat present in the given input scene.

Keywords: Adaptive progressive thresholding, fringe adjusted filters, image segmentation, joint transform correlation, synthetic discriminant function

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296 Effect of Biomass Feedstocks on the Production of Hydrogenated Biodiesel

Authors: Panatcha Bovornseripatai, Siriporn Jongpatiwut, Somchai Osuwan, Suchada Butnark

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Hydrogenated biodiesel is one of the most promising renewable fuels. It has many advantages over conventional biodiesel, including higher cetane number, higher heating value, lower viscosity, and lower corrosiveness due to its absence of oxygen. From previous work, Pd/TiO2 gave high conversion and selectivity in hydrogenated biodiesel. In this work, the effect of biomass feedstocks (i.e. beef fat, chicken fat, pork fat, and jatropha oil) on the production of hydrogenated biodiesel over Pd/TiO2 has been studied. Biomass feedstocks were analyzed by ICP-OES (inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry) to identify the content of impurities (i.e. P, K, Ca, Na, and Mg). The deoxygenation catalyst, Pd/TiO2, was prepared by incipient wetness impregnation (IWI) and tested in a continuous flow packed-bed reactor at 500 psig, 325°C, H2/feed molar ratio of 30, and LHSV of 4 h-1 for its catalytic activity and selectivity in hydrodeoxygenation. All feedstocks gave high selectivity in diesel specification range hydrocarbons and the main hydrocarbons were n-pentadecane (n-C15) and n-heptadecane (n- C17), resulting from the decarbonylation/decarboxylation reaction. Intermediates such as oleic acid, stearic acid, palmitic acid, and esters were also detected in minor amount. The conversion of triglycerides in jatropha oil is higher than those of chicken fat, pork fat, and beef fat, respectively. The higher concentration of metal impurities in feedstock, the lower conversion of feedstock.

Keywords: Hydrogenated biodiesel, hydrodeoxygenation, Pd/TiO2, biomass feedstock

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295 Investigation of Compressive Strength of Slag-Based Geopolymer Concrete Incorporated with Rice Husk Ash Using 12M Alkaline Activator

Authors: Festus A. Olutoge, Ahmed A. Akintunde, Anuoluwapo S. Kolade, Aaron A. Chadee, Jovanca Smith

Abstract:

Geopolymer concrete's (GPC) compressive strength was investigated. The GPC was incorporated with rice husk ash (RHA) and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), which may have potential in the construction industry to replace Portland limestone cement (PLC) concrete. The sustainable construction binders used were GGBFS and RHA, and a solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and sodium silicate gel (Na2SiO3) was used as the 12-molar alkaline activator. Five GPC mixes comprising fine aggregates, coarse aggregates, GGBS, and RHA, and the alkaline solution in the ratio 2: 2.5: 1: 0.5, respectively, were prepared to achieve grade 40 concrete, and PLC was substituted with GGBFS and RHA in the ratios of 0:100, 25:75, 50:50, 75:25, and 100:0. A control mix was also prepared which comprised of 100% water and 100% PLC as the cementitious material. The GPC mixes were thermally cured at 60-80 ºC in an oven for approximately 24 h. After curing for 7 and 28 days, the compressive strength test results of the hardened GPC samples showed that GPC-Mix #3, comprising 50% GGBFS and 50% RHA, was the most efficient geopolymer mix. The mix had compressive strengths of 35.71 MPa and 47.26 MPa, 19.87% and 8.69% higher than the PLC concrete samples, which had 29.79 MPa and 43.48 MPa after 7 and 28 days, respectively. Therefore, GPC containing GGBFS incorporated with RHA is an efficient method of decreasing the use of PLC in conventional concrete production and reducing the high amounts of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere in the construction industry.

Keywords: Alkaline solution, cementitious material, geopolymer concrete, ground granulated blast furnace slag, rice husk ash.

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294 Quality Evaluation of Compressed MRI Medical Images for Telemedicine Applications

Authors: Seddeq E. Ghrare, Salahaddin M. Shreef

Abstract:

Medical image modalities such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound (US), X-ray are adapted to diagnose disease. These modalities provide flexible means of reviewing anatomical cross-sections and physiological state in different parts of the human body. The raw medical images have a huge file size and need large storage requirements. So it should be such a way to reduce the size of those image files to be valid for telemedicine applications. Thus the image compression is a key factor to reduce the bit rate for transmission or storage while maintaining an acceptable reproduction quality, but it is natural to rise the question of how much an image can be compressed and still preserve sufficient information for a given clinical application. Many techniques for achieving data compression have been introduced. In this study, three different MRI modalities which are Brain, Spine and Knee have been compressed and reconstructed using wavelet transform. Subjective and objective evaluation has been done to investigate the clinical information quality of the compressed images. For the objective evaluation, the results show that the PSNR which indicates the quality of the reconstructed image is ranging from (21.95 dB to 30.80 dB, 27.25 dB to 35.75 dB, and 26.93 dB to 34.93 dB) for Brain, Spine, and Knee respectively. For the subjective evaluation test, the results show that the compression ratio of 40:1 was acceptable for brain image, whereas for spine and knee images 50:1 was acceptable.

Keywords: Medical Image, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Image Compression, Discrete Wavelet Transform, Telemedicine.

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293 Spectral Amplitude Coding Optical CDMA: Performance Analysis of PIIN Reduction Using VC Code Family

Authors: Hassan Yousif Ahmed, Ibrahima Faye, N.M.Saad, S.A. Aljined

Abstract:

Multi-user interference (MUI) is the main reason of system deterioration in the Spectral Amplitude Coding Optical Code Division Multiple Access (SAC-OCDMA) system. MUI increases with the number of simultaneous users, resulting into higher probability bit rate and limits the maximum number of simultaneous users. On the other hand, Phase induced intensity noise (PIIN) problem which is originated from spontaneous emission of broad band source from MUI severely limits the system performance should be addressed as well. Since the MUI is caused by the interference of simultaneous users, reducing the MUI value as small as possible is desirable. In this paper, an extensive study for the system performance specified by MUI and PIIN reducing is examined. Vectors Combinatorial (VC) codes families are adopted as a signature sequence for the performance analysis and a comparison with reported codes is performed. The results show that, when the received power increases, the PIIN noise for all the codes increases linearly. The results also show that the effect of PIIN can be minimized by increasing the code weight leads to preserve adequate signal to noise ratio over bit error probability. A comparison study between the proposed code and the existing codes such as Modified frequency hopping (MFH), Modified Quadratic- Congruence (MQC) has been carried out.

Keywords: FBG, MUI, PIIN, SAC-OCDMA, VCC.

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292 Flow Discharge Determination in Straight Compound Channels Using ANNs

Authors: A. Zahiri, A. A. Dehghani

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Although many researchers have studied the flow hydraulics in compound channels, there are still many complicated problems in determination of their flow rating curves. Many different methods have been presented for these channels but extending them for all types of compound channels with different geometrical and hydraulic conditions is certainly difficult. In this study, by aid of nearly 400 laboratory and field data sets of geometry and flow rating curves from 30 different straight compound sections and using artificial neural networks (ANNs), flow discharge in compound channels was estimated. 13 dimensionless input variables including relative depth, relative roughness, relative width, aspect ratio, bed slope, main channel side slopes, flood plains side slopes and berm inclination and one output variable (flow discharge), have been used in ANNs. Comparison of ANNs model and traditional method (divided channel method-DCM) shows high accuracy of ANNs model results. The results of Sensitivity analysis showed that the relative depth with 47.6 percent contribution, is the most effective input parameter for flow discharge prediction. Relative width and relative roughness have 19.3 and 12.2 percent of importance, respectively. On the other hand, shape parameter, main channel and flood plains side slopes with 2.1, 3.8 and 3.8 percent of contribution, have the least importance.

Keywords: ANN model, compound channels, divided channel method (DCM), flow rating curve

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291 A Mobile Multihop Relay Dynamic TDD Scheme for Cellular Networks

Authors: Jong-Moon Chung, Hyung-Weon Cho, Ki-Yong Jin, Min-Hee Cho

Abstract:

In this paper, we present an analytical framework for the evaluation of the uplink performance of multihop cellular networks based on dynamic time division duplex (TDD). New wireless broadband protocols, such as WiMAX, WiBro, and 3G-LTE apply TDD, and mobile communication protocols under standardization (e.g., IEEE802.16j) are investigating mobile multihop relay (MMR) as a future technology. In this paper a novel MMR TDD scheme is presented, where the dynamic range of the frame is shared to traffic resources of asymmetric nature and multihop relaying. The mobile communication channel interference model comprises of inner and co-channel interference (CCI). The performance analysis focuses on the uplink due to the fact that the effects of dynamic resource allocation show significant performance degradation only in the uplink compared to time division multiple access (TDMA) schemes due to CCI [1-3], where the downlink results to be the same or better.The analysis was based on the signal to interference power ratio (SIR) outage probability of dynamic TDD (D-TDD) and TDMA systems,which are the most widespread mobile communication multi-user control techniques. This paper presents the uplink SIR outage probability with multihop results and shows that the dynamic TDD scheme applying MMR can provide a performance improvement compared to single hop applications if executed properly.

Keywords: Co-Channel Interference, Dynamic TDD, MobileMultihop Reply, Cellular Network, Time Division Multiple Access.

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290 ECG Based Reliable User Identification Using Deep Learning

Authors: R. N. Begum, Ambalika Sharma, G. K. Singh

Abstract:

Identity theft has serious ramifications beyond data and personal information loss. This necessitates the implementation of robust and efficient user identification systems. Therefore, automatic biometric recognition systems are the need of the hour, and electrocardiogram (ECG)-based systems are unquestionably the best choice due to their appealing inherent characteristics. The Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are the recent state-of-the-art techniques for ECG-based user identification systems. However, the results obtained are significantly below standards, and the situation worsens as the number of users and types of heartbeats in the dataset grows. As a result, this study proposes a highly accurate and resilient ECG-based person identification system using CNN's dense learning framework. The proposed research explores explicitly the caliber of dense CNNs in the field of ECG-based human recognition. The study tests four different configurations of dense CNN which are trained on a dataset of recordings collected from eight popular ECG databases. With the highest False Acceptance Rate (FAR)  of 0.04% and the highest False Rejection Rate (FRR)  of 5%, the best performing network achieved an identification accuracy of 99.94%. The best network is also tested with various train/test split ratios. The findings show that DenseNets are not only extremely reliable, but also highly efficient. Thus, they might also be implemented in real-time ECG-based human recognition systems.

Keywords: Biometrics, dense networks, identification rate, train/test split ratio.

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289 Investigating Polynomial Interpolation Functions for Zooming Low Resolution Digital Medical Images

Authors: Maninder Pal

Abstract:

Medical digital images usually have low resolution because of nature of their acquisition. Therefore, this paper focuses on zooming these images to obtain better level of information, required for the purpose of medical diagnosis. For this purpose, a strategy for selecting pixels in zooming operation is proposed. It is based on the principle of analog clock and utilizes a combination of point and neighborhood image processing. In this approach, the hour hand of clock covers the portion of image to be processed. For alignment, the center of clock points at middle pixel of the selected portion of image. The minute hand is longer in length, and is used to gain information about pixels of the surrounding area. This area is called neighborhood pixels region. This information is used to zoom the selected portion of the image. The proposed algorithm is implemented and its performance is evaluated for many medical images obtained from various sources such as X-ray, Computerized Tomography (CT) scan and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). However, for illustration and simplicity, the results obtained from a CT scanned image of head is presented. The performance of algorithm is evaluated in comparison to various traditional algorithms in terms of Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), maximum error, SSIM index, mutual information and processing time. From the results, the proposed algorithm is found to give better performance than traditional algorithms.

Keywords: Zooming, interpolation, medical images, resolution.

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288 Studies on the Characterization and Machinability of Duplex Stainless Steel 2205 during Dry Turning

Authors: Gaurav D. Sonawane, Vikas G. Sargade

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The present investigation is a study of the effect of advanced Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) coatings on cutting temperature residual stresses and surface roughness during Duplex Stainless Steel (DSS) 2205 turning. Austenite stabilizers like nickel, manganese, and molybdenum reduced the cost of DSS. Surface Integrity (SI) plays an important role in determining corrosion resistance and fatigue life. Resistance to various types of corrosion makes DSS suitable for applications with critical environments like Heat exchangers, Desalination plants, Seawater pipes and Marine components. However, lower thermal conductivity, poor chip control and non-uniform tool wear make DSS very difficult to machine. Cemented carbide tools (M grade) were used to turn DSS in a dry environment. AlTiN and AlTiCrN coatings were deposited using advanced PVD High Pulse Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS) technique. Experiments were conducted with cutting speed of 100 m/min, 140 m/min and 180 m/min. A constant feed and depth of cut of 0.18 mm/rev and 0.8 mm were used, respectively. AlTiCrN coated tools followed by AlTiN coated tools outperformed uncoated tools due to properties like lower thermal conductivity, higher adhesion strength and hardness. Residual stresses were found to be compressive for all the tools used for dry turning, increasing the fatigue life of the machined component. Higher cutting temperatures were observed for coated tools due to its lower thermal conductivity, which results in very less tool wear than uncoated tools. Surface roughness with uncoated tools was found to be three times higher than coated tools due to lower coefficient of friction of coating used.

Keywords: Cutting temperatures, DSS2205, dry turning, HiPIMS, surface integrity.

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