Abstract: Distillation column is one of the most common
operations in process industries and is while the most expensive unit
of the amount of energy consumption. Many ideas have been
presented in the related literature for optimizing energy consumption
in distillation columns. This paper studies the different heat
integration methods in a distillation column which separate Benzene,
Toluene, Xylene, and C9+. Three schemes of heat integration
including, indirect sequence (IQ), indirect sequence with forward
energy integration (IQF), and indirect sequence with backward
energy integration (IQB) has been studied in this paper. Using
shortcut method these heat integration schemes were simulated with
Aspen HYSYS software and compared with each other with
regarding economic considerations. The result shows that the energy
consumption has been reduced 33% in IQF and 28% in IQB in
comparison with IQ scheme. Also the economic result shows that the
total annual cost has been reduced 12% in IQF and 8% in IQB
regarding with IQ scheme. Therefore, the IQF scheme is most
economic than IQB and IQ scheme.
Abstract: Salinity is a measure of the amount of salts in the
water. Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) as salinity parameter are often
determined using laborious and time consuming laboratory tests, but
it may be more appropriate and economical to develop a method
which uses a more simple soil salinity index. Because dissolved ions
increase salinity as well as conductivity, the two measures are
related. The aim of this research was determine of constant
coefficients for predicting of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) based on
Electrical Conductivity (EC) with Statistics of Correlation
coefficient, Root mean square error, Maximum error, Mean Bias
error, Mean absolute error, Relative error and Coefficient of residual
mass. For this purpose, two experimental areas (S1, S2) of Khuzestan
province-IRAN were selected and four treatments with three
replications by series of double rings were applied. The treatments
were included 25cm, 50cm, 75cm and 100cm water application. The
results showed the values 16.3 & 12.4 were the best constant
coefficients for predicting of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) based on
EC in Pilot S1 and S2 with correlation coefficient 0.977 & 0.997 and
191.1 & 106.1 Root mean square errors (RMSE) respectively.
Abstract: We report the results of an lattice Boltzmann
simulation of magnetohydrodynamic damping of sidewall convection
in a rectangular enclosure filled with a porous medium. In particular
we investigate the suppression of convection when a steady magnetic
field is applied in the vertical direction. The left and right vertical
walls of the cavity are kept at constant but different temperatures
while both the top and bottom horizontal walls are insulated. The
effects of the controlling parameters involved in the heat transfer and
hydrodynamic characteristics are studied in detail. The heat and mass
transfer mechanisms and the flow characteristics inside the enclosure
depended strongly on the strength of the magnetic field and Darcy
number. The average Nusselt number decreases with rising values of
the Hartmann number while this increases with increasing values of
the Darcy number.
Abstract: This paper studies the duration or survival time of commercial banks active in the Moscovian three month Rouble deposits market, during the 1994-1997 period. The privatization process of the Russian commercial banking industry, after the 1988 banking reform, caused a massive entry of new banks followed by a period of high rates of exit. As a consequence, many firms went bankrupt without refunding their deposits. Therefore, both for the banks and for the banks- depositors, it is of interest to analyze which are the significant characteristics that motivate the exit or the closing of the bank. We propose a different methodology based on penalized weighted least squares which represents a very general, flexible and innovative approach for this type of analysis. The more relevant results are that smaller banks exit sooner, banks that enter the market in the last part of the study have shorter durations. As expected, the more experienced banks have a longer duration in the market. In addition, the mean survival time is lower for banks which offer extreme interest rates.
Abstract: Properties of cement pastes with fine-ground ceramics
used as an alternative binder replacing Portland cement up to 20% of
its mass are investigated. At first, the particle size distribution of
cement and fine-ground ceramics is measured using laser analyser.
Then, the material properties are studied in the early hardening
period up to 28 days. The hydration process of studied materials is
monitored by electrical conductivity measurement using TDR
sensors. The changes of materials- structures within the hardening are
observed using pore size distribution measurement. The compressive
strength measurements are done as well. Experimental results show
that the replacement of Portland cement by fine-ground ceramics in
the amount of up to 20% by mass is acceptable solution from the
mechanical point of view. One can also assume similar physical
properties of designed materials to the reference material with only
Portland cement as binder.
Abstract: Development, calibration and validation of a threedimensional
model of the Legform impactor for pedestrian crash with
bumper are presented. Lower limb injury is becoming an increasingly
important concern in vehicle safety for both occupants and
pedestrians. In order to prevent lower extremity injuries to a
pedestrian when struck by a car, it is important to elucidate the
loadings from car front structures on the lower extremities and the
injury mechanism caused by these loadings. An impact test
procedure with a legform addressing lower limb injuries in car
pedestrian accidents has been proposed by EEVC/WG17. In this
study a modified legform impactor is introduced and validated
against EEVC/WG17 criteria. The finite element model of this
legform is developed using LS-DYNA software. Total mass of
legform impactor is 13.4 kg.Technical specifications including the
mass and location of the center of gravity and moment of inertia
about a horizontal axis through the respective centre of gravity in
femur and tibia are determined. The obtained results of legform
impactor static and dynamic tests are as specified in the
EEVC/WG17.
Abstract: The main objective of this research was to investigate
the biosorption capacity for biofilms of sulphate reducing bacteria
(SRB) to remove heavy metals, such as Zn, Pb and Cd from
rainwater using laboratory-scale reactors containing mixed support
media. Evidence showed that biosorption had contributed to removal
of heavy metals including Zn, Pb and Cd in presence of SRB and
SRB were also found in the aqueous samples from reactors.
However, the SRB and specific families (Desulfobacteriaceae and
Desulfovibrionaceae) were found mainly in the biomass samples
taken from all reactors at the end of the experiment. EDX-analysis
of reactor solids at end of experiment showed that heavy metals Zn,
Pb and Cd had also accumulated in these precipitates.
Abstract: In this study, the possibility of using potato as a
substrate for glutamic acid production by Brevibacterium linens
was investigated. For preparation of fermentation medium, potato
was hydrolyzed by hydrochloridric acid. The medium contained
potato hydrolysate, tween 80, mineral solution, glucose, and
potassium hydrogen phosphate. The initial pH of the medium was
adjusted to 7-7.5. For achieving the optimum time with maximum
yield, the beakers containing the medium and the inoculums were
incubated in a rotary water bath flask shaker for one to five days.
Thin layer choromatography was used for quantitative and
qualitative assay of the glutamic acid produced. The results
revealed that as fermentation time increased, pH of the
fermentation medium significantly decreased (P
Abstract: We are concerned with a class of quadratic matrix
equations arising from the overdamped mass-spring system. By
exploring the structure of coefficient matrices, we propose a fast
cyclic reduction algorithm to calculate the extreme solutions of the
equation. Numerical experiments show that the proposed algorithm
outperforms the original cyclic reduction and the structure-preserving
doubling algorithm.
Abstract: This paper deals with under actuator dynamic systems such as spring-mass-damper system when the number of control variable is less than the number of state variable. In order to apply optimal control, the controllability must be checked. There are many objective functions to be selected as the goal of the optimal control such as minimum energy, maximum energy and minimum jerk. As the objective function is the first priority, if one like to have the second goal to be applied; however, it could not fit in the objective function format and also avoiding the vector cost for the objective, this paper will illustrate the problem of under actuator dynamic systems with the easiest to deal with comparing between minimum energy and minimum jerk.
Abstract: With the increasing number of on-chip components and the critical requirement for processing power, Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) has gained wide acceptance in both academia and industry during the last decade. However, the conventional bus-based onchip communication schemes suffer from very high communication delay and low scalability in large scale systems. Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been proposed to solve the bottleneck of parallel onchip communications by applying different network topologies which separate the communication phase from the computation phase. Observing that the memory bandwidth of the communication between on-chip components and off-chip memory has become a critical problem even in NoC based systems, in this paper, we propose a novel 3D NoC with on-chip Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) in which different layers are dedicated to different functionalities such as processors, cache or memory. Results show that, by using our proposed architecture, average link utilization has reduced by 10.25% for SPLASH-2 workloads. Our proposed design costs 1.12% less execution cycles than the traditional design on average.
Abstract: This paper proposes a scheduling scheme using feedback
control to reduce the response time of aperiodic tasks with soft
real-time constraints. We design an algorithm based on the proposed
scheduling scheme and Total Bandwidth Server (TBS) that is a
conventional server technique for scheduling aperiodic tasks. We then
describe the feedback controller of the algorithm and give the control
parameter tuning methods. The simulation study demonstrates that the
algorithm can reduce the mean response time up to 26% compared
to TBS in exchange for slight deadline misses.
Abstract: Magnesium alloys have gained increased attention in recent years in automotive, electronics, and medical industry. This because of magnesium alloys have better properties than aluminum alloys and steels in respects of their low density and high strength to weight ratio. However, the main problems of magnesium alloy welding are the crack formation and the appearance of porosity during the solidification. This paper proposes a unique technique to weld two thin sheets of AZ31B magnesium alloy using a paste containing Ag nanoparticles. The paste containing Ag nanoparticles of 5 nm in average diameter and an organic solvent was used to coat the surface of AZ31B thin sheet. The coated sheet was heated at 100 °C for 60 s to evaporate the solvent. The dried sheet was set as a lower AZ31B sheet on the jig, and then lap fillet welding was carried out by using a pulsed Nd:YAG laser in a closed box filled with argon gas. The characteristics of the microstructure and the corrosion behavior of the joints were analyzed by opticalmicroscopy (OM), energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS), electron probe micro-analyzer (EPMA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and immersion corrosion test. The experimental results show that the wrought AZ31B magnesium alloy can be joined successfully using Ag nanoparticles. Ag nanoparticles insert promote grain refinement, narrower the HAZ width and wider bond width compared to weld without and insert. Corrosion rate of welded AZ31B with Ag nanoparticles reduced up to 44 % compared to base metal. The improvement of corrosion resistance of welded AZ31B with Ag nanoparticles due to finer grains and large grain boundaries area which consist of high Al content. β-phase Mg17Al12 could serve as effective barrier and suppressed further propagation of corrosion. Furthermore, Ag distribution in fusion zone provide much more finer grains and may stabilize the magnesium solid solution making it less soluble or less anodic in aqueous
Abstract: In most of the popular implementation of Parallel GAs
the whole population is divided into a set of subpopulations, each
subpopulation executes GA independently and some individuals are
migrated at fixed intervals on a ring topology. In these studies,
the migrations usually occur 'synchronously' among subpopulations.
Therefore, CPUs are not used efficiently and the communication
do not occur efficiently either. A few studies tried asynchronous
migration but it is hard to implement and setting proper parameter
values is difficult.
The aim of our research is to develop a migration method which is
easy to implement, which is easy to set parameter values, and which
reduces communication traffic. In this paper, we propose a traffic
reduction method for the Asynchronous Parallel Distributed GA by
migration of elites only. This is a Server-Client model. Every client
executes GA on a subpopulation and sends an elite information to the
server. The server manages the elite information of each client and
the migrations occur according to the evolution of sub-population in
a client. This facilitates the reduction in communication traffic.
To evaluate our proposed model, we apply it to many function optimization
problems. We confirm that our proposed method performs
as well as current methods, the communication traffic is less, and
setting of the parameters are much easier.
Abstract: In the supply chain management customer is the most
significant component and mass customization is mostly related to
customers because it is the capability of any industry or organization
to deliver highly customized products and its services to the
respective customers with flexibility and integration, providing such
a variety of products that nearly everyone can find what they want.
Today all over the world many companies and markets are facing
varied situations that at one side customers are demanding that their
orders should be completed as quickly as possible while on other
hand it requires highly customized products and services. By
applying mass customization some companies face unwanted cost
and complexity. Now they are realizing that they should completely
examine what kind of customization would be best suited for their
companies. In this paper authors review some approaches and
principles which show effect in supply chain management that can be
adopted and used by companies for quickly meeting the customer
orders at reduced cost, with minimum amount of inventory and
maximum efficiency.
Abstract: A new and novel approach in medicine is the use of
cold plasma for various applications such as sterilization blood
coagulation and cancer cell treatment. In this paper a pin-to-hole
plasma jet suitable for biological applications is investigated and
characterized and the possibility and feasibility of cancer cell
treatment is evaluated. The characterization includes power
consumption via Lissajous method, thermal behavior of plasma using
Infra-red camera as a novel method, Optical Emission Spectroscopy
(OES) to determine the species that are generated. Treatment of
leukemia cancer cells is also implemented and MTT assay is used to
evaluate viability.
Abstract: This paper proposes a three-dimensional motion capture and feedback system of flying disc throwing action learners with use of Kinect device. Rather than conventional 3-D motion capture system, Kinect has advantages of cost merit, easy system development and operation. A novice learner of flying disc is trained to keep arm movement in steady height, to twist the waist, and to stretch the elbow according to the waist angle. The proposing system captures learners- body movement, checks their skeleton positions in pre-motion / motion / post-motion in several ways, and displays feedback messages to refine their actions.
Abstract: A systematic way to derive the conserved quantities for the axisymmetric liquid jet, free jet and wall jet using conservation laws is presented. The flow in axisymmetric jets is governed by Prandtl-s momentum boundary layer equation and the continuity equation. The multiplier approach is used to construct a basis of conserved vectors for the system of two partial differential equations for the two velocity components. The basis consists of two conserved vectors. By integrating the corresponding conservation laws across the jet and imposing the boundary conditions, conserved quantities are derived for the axisymmetric liquid and free jet. The multiplier approach applied to the third-order partial differential equation for the stream function yields two local conserved vectors one of which is a non-local conserved vector for the system. One of the conserved vectors gives the conserved quantity for the axisymmetric free jet but the conserved quantity for the wall jet is not obtained from the second conserved vector. The conserved quantity for the axisymmetric wall jet is derived from a non-local conserved vector of the third-order partial differential equation for the stream function. This non-local conserved vector for the third-order partial differential equation for the stream function is obtained by using the stream function as multiplier.
Abstract: This paper focuses on creating a component model of information system under uncertainty. The paper identifies problem in current approach of component modeling and proposes fuzzy tool, which will work with vague customer requirements and propose components of the resulting component model. The proposed tool is verified on specific information system and results are shown in paper. After finding suitable sub-components of the resulting component model, the component model is visualised by tool.
Abstract: Managing the emergency situations at the Emergency
Staff requires a high co-operation between its members and their fast
decision making. For these purpose it is necessary to prepare Emergency Staff members adequately. The aim of this paper is to
describe the development of information support that focuses to
emergency staff processes and effective decisions. The information
support is based on the principles of process management, and
Process Framework for Emergency Management was used during the
development. The output is the information system that allows users
to simulate an emergency situation, including effective decision making. The system also evaluates the progress of the emergency
processes solving by quantitative and qualitative indicators. By using
the simulator, a higher quality education of specialists can be achieved. Therefore, negative impacts resulting from arising emergency situations can be directly reduced.