Search results for: Mixtures of Gaussian

Authors: Adnan Al-Smadi, Mahmoud Smadi

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This paper presents an algorithm for reconstructing phase and magnitude responses of the impulse response when only the output data are available. The system is driven by a zero-mean independent identically distributed (i.i.d) non-Gaussian sequence that is not observed. The additive noise is assumed to be Gaussian. This is an important and essential problem in many practical applications of various science and engineering areas such as biomedical, seismic, and speech processing signals. The method is based on evaluating the bicepstrum of the third-order statistics of the observed output data. Simulations results are presented that demonstrate the performance of this method.

Keywords: Cepstrum, bicepstrum, third order statistics

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Authors: Nilay Tanrıver, Birgül Benli, Nilgün Kızılcan

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Polysulfone (PSU) is a specialty engineering polymer having various industrial applications. PSU is especially used in waste water treatment membranes due to its good mechanical properties, structural and chemical stability. But it is a hydrophobic material and therefore its surface aim to pollute easily. In order to resolve this problem and extend the properties of membrane, PSU surface is rendered hydrophilic by addition of the sepiolite nanofibers. Sepiolite is one of the natural clays, which is a hydrate magnesium silicate fiber, also one of the well known layered clays of the montmorillonites where has several unique channels and pores within. It has also moisture durability, strength and low price. Sepiolite channels give great capacity of absorption and good surface properties. In this study, nanocomposites of commercial PSU and Sepiolite were prepared by solvent mixing method. Different organic solvents and their mixtures were used. Rheological characteristics of PSU-Sepiolite solvent mixtures were analyzed, the solubility of nanocomposite content in those mixtures were studied.

Keywords: Nanocomposite, polysulfone, rheology, sepiolite, solution mixing.

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Authors: M. Shahina, K. Fakruddin, C. M. Subhan, S. Rangappa

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In this work, two mixtures with equal concentrations of 1) 4ꞌ-(6-(4-(pentylamino) methyl)-3-hydroxyphenoxy) hexyloxy) biphenyl-4-carbonitrile+-4-((4-(hexyloxy) benzylidene) amino) phenyl 4-butoxy benzoate and 2) 4ꞌ - (6-(4-(hexylamino) methyl)-3-hydroxyphenoxy) hexyloxy) biphenyl-4-carbonitrile+-4-((4-(octyloxy) benzylidene) amino) phenyl 4-butoxy benzoate, have been prepared. The transition temperature and optical texture are observed by using thermal microscopy. Density and birefringence studies are carried out on the above liquid crystalline mixtures. Using density and refractive indices data, the molecular polarizabilities are evaluated by using well-known Vuks and Neugebauer models. The molecular polarizability is also evaluated theoretically by Lippincott δ function model. The results reveal that the polarizability values are same in both experimental and theoretical methods.

Keywords: Liquid crystals, optical textures, transition temperature, birefringence, polarizability.

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Authors: A. Dulaimi, H. Al Nageim, F. Ruddock, L. Seton

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This study aims at developing a novel cold asphalt concrete binder course mixture by using Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) as a replacement for conventional mineral filler (0%-100%) with new by-product material (LJMU-A2) used as a supplementary cementitious material. With this purpose, cold asphalt concrete binder course mixtures with cationic emulsions were studied by means of stiffness modulus whereas water sensitivity was assessed by measuring the stiffness modulus ratio before and after sample conditioning. The results indicate that a substantial enhancement in the stiffness modulus and a considerable improvement of water sensitivity resistance is achieved by adding LJMU-A2 to the cold asphalt mixtures as a supplementary cementitious material. Moreover, the addition of LJMU-A2 to those mixtures leads to a stiffness modulus after 2-day curing compared to that obtained with Portland cement, which occurs after 7-day curing.

Keywords: Binder course, cold mix asphalt, cement, stiffness modulus, water sensitivity.

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Authors: Kavita Burse, R.N. Yadav, S.C. Shrivastava, Vishnu Pratap Singh Kirar

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During signal transmission, the combined effect of the transmitter filter, the transmission medium, and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) are included in the channel which distort and add noise to the signal. This causes the well defined signal constellation to spread causing errors in bit detection. A compact pi neural network with minimum number of nodes is proposed. The replacement of summation at each node by multiplication results in more powerful mapping. The resultant pi network is tested on six different channels.

Keywords: Additive white Gaussian noise, digitalcommunication system, multiplicative neuron, Pi neural network.

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Authors: Abdollah Javanmard, Fariborz Shekari, Hasan Dehghanian

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Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), vetch (Vicia villosa), and grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) monocultures as well as mixtures of barley with each of the above legumes, in three seeding ratios (i.e., barley: legume 75:25, 50:50 and 25:75, based on seed numbers) were used to investigated forage yield and competition indices. The results showed that intercropping reduced the dry matter yield of the three component plants, compared with their respective monocrops. The greatest value of total dry matter yield was obtained from barley25- grasspea75 (5.44 t ha-1) mixture, followed by grass pea sole crop (4.99 t ha-1). The total actual yield loss (AYL) values were positive and greater than 0 in all mixtures, indicating an advantage from intercropping over sole crops. Intercropped barley had a higher relative crowding coefficient (K=1.64) than intercropped legumes (K=1.20), indicating that barley was more competitive than legumes in mixtures. Furthermore, grass pea was more competitive than vetch in mixtures with barley. The highest land equivalent ratio (LER), system productivity index (SPI) and monetary advantage index (MAI) were obtained when barley was mixed at a rate of 25% with 75% seed rate of grass pea. It is concluded that intercropping of barley with grass pea has a good potential to improve the performance of forage with high land-use efficiency.

Keywords: Forage, grass pea, intercropping, land equivalent ratio (LER), monetary advantage.

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Authors: Kaushalendra K. Khadanga, Lee Hee Hyol

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Passenger comfort has been paramount in the design of suspension systems of high speed cars. To analyze the effect of vibration on vehicle ride quality, a vertical model of a six degree of freedom railway passenger vehicle, with front and rear suspension, is built. It includes car body flexible effects and vertical rigid modes. A second order linear shaping filter is constructed to model Gaussian white noise into random rail excitation. The temporal correlation between the front and rear wheels is given by a second order Pade approximation. The complete track and the vehicle model are then designed. An active secondary suspension system based on a Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) optimal control method is designed. The results show that the LQG control method reduces the vertical acceleration, pitching acceleration and vertical bending vibration of the car body as compared to the passive system.

Keywords: Active suspension, bending vibration, railway vehicle, vibration control.

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Authors: Koushlendra Kumar Singh, Manish Kumar Bajpai, Rajesh K. Pandey

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The edges of low contrast images are not clearly distinguishable to human eye. It is difficult to find the edges and boundaries in it. The present work encompasses a new approach for low contrast images. The Chebyshev polynomial based fractional order filter has been used for filtering operation on an image. The preprocessing has been performed by this filter on the input image. Laplacian of Gaussian method has been applied on preprocessed image for edge detection. The algorithm has been tested on two test images.

Keywords: Chebyshev polynomials, Fractional order differentiator, Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) method, Low contrast image.

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Authors: Muhammad Imran Ahmad, Ruzelita Ngadiran, Mohd Nazrin Md Isa, Nor Ashidi Mat Isa, Mohd Zaizu Ilyas, Raja Abdullah Raja Ahmad, Said Amirul Anwar Ab Hamid, Muzammil Jusoh

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This paper presents two techniques, local feature extraction using image spectrum and low frequency spectrum modelling using GMM to capture the underlying statistical information to improve the performance of face recognition system. Local spectrum features are extracted using overlap sub block window that are mapped on the face image. For each of this block, spatial domain is transformed to frequency domain using DFT. A low frequency coefficient is preserved by discarding high frequency coefficients by applying rectangular mask on the spectrum of the facial image. Low frequency information is non- Gaussian in the feature space and by using combination of several Gaussian functions that has different statistical properties, the best feature representation can be modelled using probability density function. The recognition process is performed using maximum likelihood value computed using pre-calculated GMM components. The method is tested using FERET datasets and is able to achieved 92% recognition rates.

Keywords: Local features modelling, face recognition system, Gaussian mixture models.

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Authors: Florian Gschösser, Walter Purrer

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The paper shows examples for the (environmental) optimization of production processes for asphalt mixtures applied for typical road pavements in Austria and Switzerland. The conducted “from-cradle-to-gate” LCA firstly analyzes the production one cubic meter of asphalt and secondly all material production processes for exemplary highway pavements applied in Austria and Switzerland. It is shown that environmental impacts can be reduced by the application of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and by the optimization of specific production characteristics, e.g. the reduction of the initial moisture of the mineral aggregate and the reduction of the mixing temperature by the application of low-viscosity and foam bitumen. The results of the LCA study demonstrate reduction potentials per cubic meter asphalt of up to 57 % (Global Warming Potential–GWP) and 77 % (Ozone depletion–ODP). The analysis per square meter of asphalt pavement determined environmental potentials of up to 40 % (GWP) and 56 % (ODP).

Keywords: Asphalt mixtures, environmental potentials, life cycle assessment, material production.

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Authors: L.C. Ciobotaru

Abstract:

In electronegative-electropositive gas mixtures plasma, at a total pressure varying in the range of ten to hundred Torr, the appearance of a quasi-mochromatization effect of the emitted radiation was reported. This radiation could be the result of the generating mechanisms at molecular level, which is the case of the excimer radiation but also at atomic level. Thus, in the last case, in (Ne+1%Ar/Xe+H2) gas mixtures plasma in a dielectric barrier discharge, this effect, called M-effect, consists in the reduction of the discharge emission spectrum practice at one single, strong spectral line with λ = 585.3 nm. The present paper is concerned with the characteristics comparative investigation of the principal reaction mechanisms involved in the quasi-monochromatization effect existence in the case of the excimer radiation, respectively of the Meffect. Also, the paper points out the role of the metastable electronegative atoms in the appearance of the monochromatization – effect at atomic level.

Keywords: Colombian forces, Direct Harpoon reaction, Monochromatization – effect, Resonant polar three-body reaction.

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Authors: Hanaa M. M. El-Khayat, Hoda Abdel-Hamid, Kadria M. A. Mahmoud, Hanan S. Gaber, Hoda, M. A. Abu Taleb, Hassan E. Flefel

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Snails are considered as suitable diagnostic organisms for heavy metal–contaminated sites. Biomphalaria alexandrina snails are used in this work as pollution bioindicators after exposure to chemical mixtures consisted of heavy metals (HM); zinc (Zn), copper (Cu) and lead (Pb); and persistent organic pollutants; Decabromodiphenyl ether 98% (D) and Aroclor 1254 (A). The impacts of these tested chemicals, individual and mixtures, on liver and kidney functions, antioxidant enzymes, complete blood picture, and tissue histology were studied. Results showed that Cu was proved to be the highly toxic against snails than Zn and Pb where LC₅₀ values were 1.362, 213.198 and 277.396 ppm, respectively. Also, B. alexandrina snails exposed to the mixture of HM (¼ LC₅ Cu, Pb and Zn) showed the highest bioaccumulation of Cu and Zn in their whole tissue, the most significant increase in AST, ALT & ALP activities and the highest significant levels of total protein, albumin and globulin. Results showed significant alterations in CAT activity in snail tissue extracts while snail samples exposed to most experimental tests showed significant increase in GST activity. Snail samples that exposed to HM mixtures showed a significant decrease in total hemocytes count while snail samples that exposed to mixtures containing A & D showed a significant increase in total hemocytes and Hyalinocytes. Histopathological alterations in snail samples exposed to individual HM and their mixtures for 4 weeks showed degeneration, edema, hyper trophy and vaculation in head-foot muscle, degeneration and necrotic changes in the digestive gland and accumulation in most tested organs. Also, the hermaphrodite gland showed mature ova with irregular shape and reduction in sperm number. In conclusion, the resulted damage and alterations in B. alexandrina studied parameters can be used as bioindicators to the presence of pollutants in its habitats.

Keywords: Biomphalaria, Zn, Cu, Pb, AST, ALT, ALP, total protein albumin, globulin, CAT and Histopathology.

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Authors: Sandipan Chakroborty, Goutam Saha

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A state of the art Speaker Identification (SI) system requires a robust feature extraction unit followed by a speaker modeling scheme for generalized representation of these features. Over the years, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) modeled on the human auditory system has been used as a standard acoustic feature set for speech related applications. On a recent contribution by authors, it has been shown that the Inverted Mel- Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (IMFCC) is useful feature set for SI, which contains complementary information present in high frequency region. This paper introduces the Gaussian shaped filter (GF) while calculating MFCC and IMFCC in place of typical triangular shaped bins. The objective is to introduce a higher amount of correlation between subband outputs. The performances of both MFCC & IMFCC improve with GF over conventional triangular filter (TF) based implementation, individually as well as in combination. With GMM as speaker modeling paradigm, the performances of proposed GF based MFCC and IMFCC in individual and fused mode have been verified in two standard databases YOHO, (Microphone Speech) and POLYCOST (Telephone Speech) each of which has more than 130 speakers.

Keywords: Gaussian Filter, Triangular Filter, Subbands, Correlation, MFCC, IMFCC, GMM.

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Authors: Esma Gizem Daskiran, Mehmet Mustafa Daskiran, Mustafa Gencoglu

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Textile reinforced cementitious composite (TRCC) is a development of a composite material where textile and fine-grained concrete (matrix) materials are used in combination. These matrices offer high performance properties in many aspects. To achieve high performance, polymer modified fine-grained concretes were used as matrix material which have high flexural strength. In this study, ten latex polymers and ten powder polymers were added to fine-grained concrete mixtures. These latex and powder polymers were added to the mixtures at different rates related to binder weight. Mechanical properties such as compressive and flexural strength were studied. Results showed that latex polymer and redispersible polymer modified fine-grained concretes showed different mechanical performance. A wide range of both latex and redispersible powder polymers were studied. As the addition rate increased compressive strength decreased for all mixtures. Flexural strength increased as the addition rate increased but significant enhancement was not observed through all mixtures.

Keywords: Textile reinforced composite, cement, fine grained concrete, latex, redispersible powder.

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Authors: Ayad Salih Sabbar, Amin Chegenizadeh, Hamid Nikraz

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Utilizing waste materials in civil engineering applications has a positive influence on the environment by reducing carbon dioxide emissions and issues associated with waste disposal. Granulated blast furnace slag (GBFS) is a by-product of the iron and steel industry, with millions of tons of slag being annually produced worldwide. Slag has been widely used in structural engineering and for stabilizing clay soils; however, studies on the effect of slag on sandy soils are scarce. This article investigates the effect of slag content on shear strength parameters through direct shear tests and unconsolidated undrained triaxial tests on mixtures of Perth sand and slag. For this purpose, sand-slag mixtures, with slag contents of 2%, 4%, and 6% by weight of samples, were tested with direct shear tests under three normal stress values, namely 100 kPa, 150 kPa, and 200 kPa. Unconsolidated undrained triaxial tests were performed under a single confining pressure of 100 kPa and relative density of 80%. The internal friction angles and shear stresses of the mixtures were determined via the direct shear tests, demonstrating that shear stresses increased with increasing normal stress and the internal friction angles and cohesion increased with increasing slag. There were no significant differences in shear stresses parameters when slag content rose from 4% to 6%. The unconsolidated undrained triaxial tests demonstrated that shear strength increased with increasing slag content.

Keywords: Direct shear, shear strength, slag, UU test.

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Authors: K. Al-Heuseen, M. R. Hashim

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The current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of Pd/n-GaN Schottky barrier were studied at temperatures over room temperature (300-470K). The values of ideality factor (n), zero-bias barrier height (φB0), flat barrier height (φBF) and series resistance (Rs) obtained from I-V-T measurements were found to be strongly temperature dependent while (φBo) increase, (n), (φBF) and (Rs) decrease with increasing temperature. The apparent Richardson constant was found to be 2.1x10-9 Acm-2K-2 and mean barrier height of 0.19 eV. After barrier height inhomogeneities correction, by assuming a Gaussian distribution (GD) of the barrier heights, the Richardson constant and the mean barrier height were obtained as 23 Acm-2K-2 and 1.78eV, respectively. The corrected Richardson constant was very closer to theoretical value of 26 Acm-2K-2. 

Keywords: Electrical properties, Gaussian distribution, Pd-GaN Schottky diodes, thermionic emission.

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Authors: Sangjun Park, Jungpyo Hong, Byung-Ok Kang, Yun-keun Lee, Minsoo Hahn

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In this paper, an algorithm for detecting and attenuating puff noises frequently generated under the mobile environment is proposed. As a baseline system, puff detection system is designed based on Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), and 39th Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) is extracted as feature parameters. To improve the detection performance, effective acoustic features for puff detection are proposed. In addition, detected puff intervals are attenuated by high-pass filtering. The speech recognition rate was measured for evaluation and confusion matrix and ROC curve are used to confirm the validity of the proposed system.

Keywords: Gaussian mixture model, puff detection and cancellation, speech enhancement.

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Authors: Ayman M. Othman, Hassan Y. Ahmed

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This paper discusses the effect of using blast furnace iron slag as a part of fine aggregate on the mechanical performance of hot mix asphalt (HMA). The mechanical performance was evaluated based on various mechanical properties that include; Marshall/stiffness, indirect tensile strength and unconfined compressive strength. The effect of iron slag content on the mechanical properties of the mixtures was also investigated. Four HMA with various iron slag contents, namely; 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% by weight of total mixture were studied. Laboratory testing has revealed an enhancement in the compressive strength of HMA when iron slag was used. Within the tested range of iron slag content, a considerable increase in the compressive strength of the mixtures was observed with the increase of slag content. No significant improvement on Marshall/stiffness and indirect tensile strength of the mixtures was observed when slag was used. Even so, blast furnace iron slag can still be used in asphalt paving for environmental advantages.

Keywords: Blast furnace iron slag, HMA, Marshall/stiffness, indirect tensile strength, compressive strength.

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Authors: Sukrit Shankar, Pardha Saradhi K., Chetana Shanta Patsa, Jaydev Sharma

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Fractional Fourier Transform, which is a generalization of the classical Fourier Transform, is a powerful tool for the analysis of transient signals. The discrete Fractional Fourier Transform Hamiltonians have been proposed in the past with varying degrees of correlation between their eigenvectors and Hermite Gaussian functions. In this paper, we propose a new Hamiltonian for the discrete Fractional Fourier Transform and show that the eigenvectors of the proposed matrix has a higher degree of correlation with the Hermite Gaussian functions. Also, the proposed matrix is shown to give better Fractional Fourier responses with various transform orders for different signals.

Keywords: Fractional Fourier Transform, Hamiltonian, Eigen Vectors, Discrete Hermite Gaussians.

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Authors: Igor Astrov, Mikhail Pikkov, Rein Paluoja

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This paper focuses on a critical component of the situational awareness (SA), the control of autonomous vertical flight for vectored thrust aerial vehicle (VTAV). With the SA strategy, we proposed a linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) flight control procedure for an unmanned helicopter model with vectored thrust configuration. This LQG control for chosen model of VTAV has been verified by simulation of take-off and landing maneuvers using software package Simulink and demonstrated good performance for fast flight stabilization of model, consequently, fast SA with economy in energy can be asserted during search-and-rescue operations.

Keywords: Linear-Quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) controller, situational awareness, vectored thrust aerial vehicle.

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Authors: Henrik L. Funke, Lars Ulke-Winter, Sandra Gelbrich, Lothar Kroll

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This work reports about an approach for an automatic adaptation of concrete formulations based on genetic algorithms (GA) to optimize a wide range of different fit-functions. In order to achieve the goal, a method was developed which provides a numerical description of a fibre reinforced concrete (FRC) mixture regarding the production technology and the property spectrum of the concrete. In a first step, the FRC mixture with seven fixed components was characterized by varying amounts of the components. For that purpose, ten concrete mixtures were prepared and tested. The testing procedure comprised flow spread, compressive and bending tensile strength. The analysis and approximation of the determined data was carried out by GAs. The aim was to obtain a closed mathematical expression which best describes the given seven-point cloud of FRC by applying a Gene Expression Programming with Free Coefficients (GEP-FC) strategy. The seven-parametric FRC-mixtures model which is generated according to this method correlated well with the measured data. The developed procedure can be used for concrete mixtures finding closed mathematical expressions, which are based on the measured data.

Keywords: Concrete design, fibre reinforced concrete, genetic algorithms, GEP-FC.

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Authors: Ayad Salih Sabbar, Amin Chegenizadeh, Hamid Nikraz

Abstract:

Investigation of liquefaction susceptibility of materials that have been used in embankments, slopes, dams, and foundations is very essential. Many catastrophic geo-hazards such as flow slides, declination of foundations, and damage to earth structure are associated with static liquefaction that may occur during abrupt shearing of these materials. Many artificial backfill materials are mixtures of sand with fines and other composition. In order to provide some clarifications and evaluations on the role of fines in static liquefaction behaviour of sand sandy soils, the effect of fines on the liquefaction susceptibility of sand was experimentally examined in the present work over a range of fines content, relative density, and initial confining pressure. The results of an experimental study on various sand-fines mixtures are presented. Undrained static triaxial compression tests were conducted on saturated Perth sand containing 5% bentonite at three different relative densities (10, 50, and 90%), and saturated Perth sand containing both 5% bentonite and slag (2%, 4%, and 6%) at single relative density 10%. Undrained static triaxial tests were performed at three different initial confining pressures (100, 150, and 200 kPa). The brittleness index was used to quantify the liquefaction potential of sand-bentonite-slag mixtures. The results demonstrated that the liquefaction susceptibility of sand-5% bentonite mixture was more than liquefaction susceptibility of clean sandy soil. However, liquefaction potential decreased when both of two fines (bentonite and slag) were used. Liquefaction susceptibility of all mixtures decreased with increasing relative density and initial confining pressure.  

Keywords: Bentonite, brittleness index, liquefaction, slag.

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Authors: A. Sivakumar, K. Srinivasan

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The main objective of the study is focused in producing slag based geopolymer concrete obtained with the addition of alkali activator. Test results indicated that the reaction of silicates in slag is based on the reaction potential of sodium hydroxide and the formation of alumino-silicates. The study also comprises on the evaluation of the efficiency of polymer reaction in terms of the strength gain properties for different geopolymer mixtures. Geopolymer mixture proportions were designed for different binder to total aggregate ratio (0.3 & 0.45) and fine to coarse aggregate ratio (0.4 & 0.8). Geopolymer concrete specimens casted with normal curing conditions reported a maximum 28 days compressive strength of 54.75 MPa. The addition of glued steel fibres at 1.0% Vf in geopolymer concrete showed reasonable improvements on the compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural properties of different geopolymer mixtures. Further, comparative assessment was made for different geopolymer mixtures and the reinforcing effects of steel fibres were investigated in different concrete matrix.

Keywords: Accelerators, Alkali activators, Geopolymer, Hot air oven curing, Polypropylene fibres, Slag, Steam curing, Steel fibres.

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Authors: B. M. Mohan, Sanjeeb Kumar Kar

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In this paper a unified approach via block-pulse functions (BPFs) or shifted Legendre polynomials (SLPs) is presented to solve the linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) control problem. Also a recursive algorithm is proposed to solve the above problem via BPFs. By using the elegant operational properties of orthogonal functions (BPFs or SLPs) these computationally attractive algorithms are developed. To demonstrate the validity of the proposed approaches a numerical example is included.

Keywords: Linear quadratic Gaussian control, linear quadratic estimator, linear quadratic regulator, time-invariant systems, orthogonal functions, block-pulse functions, shifted legendre polynomials.

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Authors: M. Petchsangsai, N. Wonglertnirant, T. Rojanarata, P. Opanasopit, T. Ngawhirunpat

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The objective of the present study was to evaluate the potential of hollow microneedles for enhancing the transdermal delivery of Bovine Serum Albumin (MW~66,000 Da)-Fluorescein Isothiocyanate (BSA-FITC) conjugate, a hydrophilic large molecular compound. Moreover, the effect of different formulations was evaluated. The series of binary mixtures composed of propylene glycol (PG) and pH 7.4 phosphate buffer solution (PBS) was prepared and used as a medium for BSA-FITC. The results showed that there was no permeation of BSA-FITC solution across the neonatal porcine skin without using hollow microneedles, whereas the cumulative amount of BSA-FITC released at 8 h through the neonatal porcine skin was about 60-70% when using hollow microneedles. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the higher volume of PG in binary mixtures injected, the lower cumulative amount of BSA-FITC released and release rate of BSA-FITC from skin. These release profiles of BSA-FITC in binary mixtures were expressed by Fick-s law of diffusion. These results suggest the utilization of hollow microneedle to enhance transdermal delivery of protein and provide useful information for designing an effective hollow microneedle system.

Keywords: Hydrophilic macromolecules, Microneedles, Propylene glycol, Transdermal drug delivery

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Authors: Yan Su, L. C. Chan

Abstract:

A novel typical day prediction model have been built and validated by the measured data of a grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) system in Macau. Unlike conventional statistical method used by previous study on PV systems which get results by averaging nearby continuous points, the present typical day statistical method obtain the value at every minute in a typical day by averaging discontinuous points at the same minute in different days. This typical day statistical method based on discontinuous point averaging makes it possible for us to obtain the Gaussian shape dynamical distributions for solar irradiance and output power in a yearly or monthly typical day. Based on the yearly typical day statistical analysis results, the maximum possible accumulated output energy in a year with on site climate conditions and the corresponding optimal PV system running time are obtained. Periodic Gaussian shape prediction models for solar irradiance, output energy and system energy efficiency have been built and their coefficients have been determined based on the yearly, maximum and minimum monthly typical day Gaussian distribution parameters, which are obtained from iterations for minimum Root Mean Squared Deviation (RMSD). With the present model, the dynamical effects due to time difference in a day are kept and the day to day uncertainty due to weather changing are smoothed but still included. The periodic Gaussian shape correlations for solar irradiance, output power and system energy efficiency have been compared favorably with data of the PV system in Macau and proved to be an improvement than previous models.

Keywords: Grid Connected, RMSD, Solar PV System, Typical Day.

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Authors: M. D. Stelescu, E. Manaila, G. Pelin, M. Georgescu, M. Sonmez

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This paper presents studies on the development and characterization of nanocomposites based on ethylene-propylene terpolymer rubber (EPDM), chlorobutyl rubber (IIR-Cl) and organically modified montmorillonite (OMMT). Mixtures were made containing 0, 3 and 6 phr (parts per 100 parts rubber) OMMT, respectively. They were obtained by melt intercalation in an internal mixer - Plasti-Corder Brabender, in suitable blending parameters, at high temperature for 11 minutes. Curing agents were embedded on a laboratory roller at 70-100 ºC, friction 1:1.1, processing time 5 minutes. Rubber specimens were obtained by compression, using a hydraulic press at 165 ºC and a pressing force of 300 kN. Curing time, determined using the Monsanto rheometer, decreases with the increased amount of OMMT in the mixtures. At the same time, it was noticed that mixtures containing OMMT show improvement in physical-mechanical properties. These types of nanocomposites may be used to obtain rubber seals for the space application or for other areas of application.

Keywords: Chlorobutyl rubber, ethylene-propylene-diene terpolymers, montmorillonite, rubber seals, space application.

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Authors: M. Saeki

Abstract:

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on the performance of a triboelectric separator of plastic mixtures used for recycling. The separator consists of four cylindrical electrodes. The principle behind the separation technique is based on the difference in the Coulomb force acting on the plastic particles after triboelectric charging. The separation of mixtures of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polystyrene (PS) using this method was studied. The effects of the triboelectric charging time and applied voltage on the separation efficiency were investigated. The experimental results confirm that it is possible to obtain a high purity and recovery rate for the initial compositions considered in this study.

Keywords: Coulomb force, recycling, triboelectric separator, waste plastics.

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Authors: Mukesh Kumar Shah, Tushar Gupta

Abstract:

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: M. L. Dinis, M. C. Vila, A. Fiúza, A. Futuro, C. Nunes

Abstract:

The present paper describes the study of paste tailings prepared in laboratory using gold tailings, produced in a Finnish gold mine with the incorporation of coal ash. Natural leaching tests were conducted with the original materials (tailings, fly and bottom ashes) and also with paste mixtures that were prepared with different percentages of tailings and ashes. After leaching, the solid wastes were physically and chemically characterized and the results were compared to those selected as blank – the unleached samples. The tailings and the coal ash, as well as the prepared mixtures, were characterized, in addition to the textural parameters, by the following measurements: grain size distribution, chemical composition and pH. Mixtures were also tested in order to characterize their mechanical behavior by measuring the flexural strength, the compressive strength and the consistency. The original tailing samples presented an alkaline pH because during their processing they were previously submitted to pressure oxidation with destruction of the sulfides. Therefore, it was not possible to ascertain the effect of the coal ashes in the acid mine drainage. However, it was possible to verify that the paste reactivity was affected mostly by the bottom ash and that the tailings blended with bottom ash present lower mechanical strength than when blended with a combination of fly and bottom ash. Surface paste disposal offer an attractive alternative to traditional methods in addition to the environmental benefits of incorporating large-volume wastes (e.g. bottom ash). However, a comprehensive characterization of the paste mixtures is crucial to optimize paste design in order to enhance engineer and environmental properties.

Keywords: Coal ash, gold tailings, paste, surface disposal.

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