The modeling of Brand Loyalty in the Brewing Market in Poland

Brand loyalty is a strategic asset of the company. In the era of competition to have loyal customers decides on the market superiority of enterprises. Creating the loyalty of buyers, however, is a lengthy process and requires the appropriate business strategy, preceded by the proper market research. The purpose of the paper is to present the concept of brand loyalty, the creation of loyalty of customers, the benefits and determinants of loyalty on the example of brewery market in Poland.

ANFIS Modeling of the Surface Roughness in Grinding Process

The objective of this study is to design an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for estimation of surface roughness in grinding process. The Used data have been generated from experimental observations when the wheel has been dressed using a rotary diamond disc dresser. The input parameters of model are dressing speed ratio, dressing depth and dresser cross-feed rate and output parameter is surface roughness. In the experimental procedure the grinding conditions are constant and only the dressing conditions are varied. The comparison of the predicted values and the experimental data indicates that the ANFIS model has a better performance with respect to back-propagation neural network (BPNN) model which has been presented by the authors in previous work for estimation of the surface roughness.

Large-Eddy Simulation of Hypersonic Configuration Aerodynamics

LES with mixed subgrid-scale model has been used to simulate aerodynamic performance of hypersonic configuration. The simulation was conducted to replicate conditions and geometry of a model which has been previously tested. LES Model has been successful in predict pressure coefficient with the max error 1.5% besides afterbody. But in the high Mach number condition, it is poor in predict ability and product 12.5% error. The calculation error are mainly conducted by the distribution swirling. The fact of poor ability in the high Mach number and afterbody region indicated that the mixed subgrid-scale model should be improved in large eddied especially in hypersonic separate region. In the condition of attach and sideslip flight, the calculation results have waves. LES are successful in the prediction the pressure wave in hypersonic flow.

Development of Thermal Model by Performance Verification of Heat Pipe Subsystem for Electronic Cooling under Space Environment

Heat pipes are used to control the thermal problem for electronic cooling. It is especially difficult to dissipate heat to a heat sink in an environment in space compared to earth. For solving this problem, in this study, the Poiseuille (Po) number, which is the main measure of the performance of a heat pipe, is studied by CFD; then, the heat pipe performance is verified with experimental results. A heat pipe is then fabricated for a spatial environment, and an in-house code is developed. Further, a heat pipe subsystem, which consists of a heat pipe, MLI (Multi Layer Insulator), SSM (Second Surface Mirror), and radiator, is tested and correlated with the TMM (Thermal Mathematical Model) through a commercial code. The correlation results satisfy the 3K requirement, and the generated thermal model is verified for application to a spatial environment.

Power Generation Potential of Dynamic Architecture

The main aim of this work is to establish the capabilities of new green buildings to ascertain off-grid electricity generation based on the integration of wind turbines in the conceptual model of a rotating tower [2] in Dubai. An in depth performance analysis of the WinWind 3.0MW [3] wind turbine is performed. Data based on the Dubai Meteorological Services is collected and analyzed in conjunction with the performance analysis of this wind turbine. The mathematical model is compared with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results based on a conceptual rotating tower design model. The comparison results are further validated and verified for accuracy by conducting experiments on a scaled prototype of the tower design. The study concluded that integrating wind turbines inside a rotating tower can generate enough electricity to meet the required power consumption of the building, which equates to a wind farm containing 9 horizontal axis wind turbines located at an approximate area of 3,237,485 m2 [14].

Fusion Classifier for Open-Set Face Recognition with Pose Variations

A fusion classifier composed of two modules, one made by a hidden Markov model (HMM) and the other by a support vector machine (SVM), is proposed to recognize faces with pose variations in open-set recognition settings. The HMM module captures the evolution of facial features across a subject-s face using the subject-s facial images only, without referencing to the faces of others. Because of the captured evolutionary process of facial features, the HMM module retains certain robustness against pose variations, yielding low false rejection rates (FRR) for recognizing faces across poses. This is, however, on the price of poor false acceptance rates (FAR) when recognizing other faces because it is built upon withinclass samples only. The SVM module in the proposed model is developed following a special design able to substantially diminish the FAR and further lower down the FRR. The proposed fusion classifier has been evaluated in performance using the CMU PIE database, and proven effective for open-set face recognition with pose variations. Experiments have also shown that it outperforms the face classifier made by HMM or SVM alone.

Bendability Analysis for Bending of C-Mn Steel Plates on Heavy Duty 3-Roller Bending Machine

Bendability is constrained by maximum top roller load imparting capacity of the machine. Maximum load is encountered during the edge pre-bending stage of roller bending. Capacity of 3-roller plate bending machine is specified by maximum thickness and minimum shell diameter combinations that can be pre-bend for given plate material of maximum width. Commercially available plate width or width of the plate that can be accommodated on machine decides the maximum rolling width. Original equipment manufacturers (OEM) provide the machine capacity chart based on reference material considering perfectly plastic material model. Reported work shows the bendability analysis of heavy duty 3-roller plate bending machine. The input variables for the industry are plate thickness, shell diameter and material property parameters, as it is fixed by the design. Analytical models of equivalent thickness, equivalent width and maximum width based on power law material model were derived to study the bendability. Equation of maximum width provides bendability for designed configuration i.e. material property, shell diameter and thickness combinations within the machine limitations. Equivalent thicknesses based on perfectly plastic and power law material model were compared for four different materials grades of C-Mn steel in order to predict the bend-ability. Effect of top roller offset on the bendability at maximum top roller load imparting capacity is reported.

Separation of CO2 Using MFI-Alumina Nanocomposite Hollow Fiber Ion-Exchanged with Alkali Metal Cation

Cs-type nanocomposite zeolite membrane was successfully synthesized on an alumina ceramic hollow fibre with a mean outer diameter of 1.7 mm; cesium cationic exchange test was carried out inside test module with mean wall thickness of 230 μm and an average crossing pore size smaller than 0.2 μm. Separation factor of n-butane/H2 obtained indicate that a relatively high quality closed to 20. Maxwell-Stefan modeling provides an equivalent thickness lower than 1 µm. To compare the difference an application to CO2/N2 separation has been achieved, reaching separation factors close to (4,18) before and after cation exchange on H-zeolite membrane formed within the pores of a ceramic alumina substrate.

Prediction of Bath Temperature Using Neural Networks

In this work, we consider an application of neural networks in LD converter. Application of this approach assumes a reliable prediction of steel temperature and reduces a reblow ratio in steel work. It has been applied a conventional model to charge calculation, the obtained results by this technique are not always good, this is due to the process complexity. Difficulties are mainly generated by the noisy measurement and the process non linearities. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have become a powerful tool for these complex applications. It is used a backpropagation algorithm to learn the neural nets. (ANNs) is used to predict the steel bath temperature in oxygen converter process for the end condition. This model has 11 inputs process variables and one output. The model was tested in steel work, the obtained results by neural approach are better than the conventional model.

Dynamic Model of a Buck Converter with a Sliding Mode Control

This paper presents the averaging model of a buck converter derived from the generalized state-space averaging method. The sliding mode control is used to regulate the output voltage of the converter and taken into account in the model. The proposed model requires the fast computational time compared with those of the full topology model. The intensive time-domain simulations via the exact topology model are used as the comparable model. The results show that a good agreement between the proposed model and the switching model is achieved in both transient and steady-state responses. The reported model is suitable for the optimal controller design by using the artificial intelligence techniques.

Yield Prediction Using Support Vectors Based Under-Sampling in Semiconductor Process

It is important to predict yield in semiconductor test process in order to increase yield. In this study, yield prediction means finding out defective die, wafer or lot effectively. Semiconductor test process consists of some test steps and each test includes various test items. In other world, test data has a big and complicated characteristic. It also is disproportionably distributed as the number of data belonging to FAIL class is extremely low. For yield prediction, general data mining techniques have a limitation without any data preprocessing due to eigen properties of test data. Therefore, this study proposes an under-sampling method using support vector machine (SVM) to eliminate an imbalanced characteristic. For evaluating a performance, randomly under-sampling method is compared with the proposed method using actual semiconductor test data. As a result, sampling method using SVM is effective in generating robust model for yield prediction.

Design Optimization of a Double Stator Cup- Rotor Machine

This paper presents the optimum design for a double stator, cup rotor machine; a novel type of BLDC PM Machine. The optimization approach is divided into two stages: the first stage is calculating the machine configuration using Matlab, and the second stage is the optimization of the machine using Finite Element Modeling (FEM). Under the design specifications, the machine model will be selected from three pole numbers, namely, 8, 10 and 12 with an appropriate slot number. A double stator brushless DC permanent magnet machine is designed to achieve low cogging torque; high electromagnetic torque and low ripple torque.

The Effect of Ownership Structure on Stock Prices after Crisis: A Study on Ise 100 Index

Using Turkish data, in this study it is investigated that whether a firm’s ownership structure has an impact on its stock prices after the crisis. A linear regression model is conducted on the data of non-financial firms that are trading in Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 Index (ISE 100) index. The findings show that, all explanatory variables such as inside ownership, largest ownership, concentrated ownership, foreign shareholders, family controlled and dispersed ownership are not very important to explain stock prices after the crisis. Family controlled firms and concentrated ownership is positively related to stock price, dispersed ownership, largest ownership, foreign shareholders, and inside ownership structures have negative interaction between stock prices, but because of the p value is not under the value of 0.05 this relation is not significant. In addition, the analysis shows that, the shares of firms that have inside, largest and dispersed ownership structure are outperform comparing with the other firms. Furthermore, ownership concentrated firms outperform to family controlled firms.

Automatic Distance Compensation for Robust Voice-based Human-Computer Interaction

Distant-talking voice-based HCI system suffers from performance degradation due to mismatch between the acoustic speech (runtime) and the acoustic model (training). Mismatch is caused by the change in the power of the speech signal as observed at the microphones. This change is greatly influenced by the change in distance, affecting speech dynamics inside the room before reaching the microphones. Moreover, as the speech signal is reflected, its acoustical characteristic is also altered by the room properties. In general, power mismatch due to distance is a complex problem. This paper presents a novel approach in dealing with distance-induced mismatch by intelligently sensing instantaneous voice power variation and compensating model parameters. First, the distant-talking speech signal is processed through microphone array processing, and the corresponding distance information is extracted. Distance-sensitive Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs), pre-trained to capture both speech power and room property are used to predict the optimal distance of the speech source. Consequently, pre-computed statistic priors corresponding to the optimal distance is selected to correct the statistics of the generic model which was frozen during training. Thus, model combinatorics are post-conditioned to match the power of instantaneous speech acoustics at runtime. This results to an improved likelihood in predicting the correct speech command at farther distances. We experiment using real data recorded inside two rooms. Experimental evaluation shows voice recognition performance using our method is more robust to the change in distance compared to the conventional approach. In our experiment, under the most acoustically challenging environment (i.e., Room 2: 2.5 meters), our method achieved 24.2% improvement in recognition performance against the best-performing conventional method.

Iran’s Gas Flare Recovery Options Using MCDM

In this paper, five options of Iran’s gas flare recovery have been compared via MCDM method. For developing the model, the weighing factor of each indicator an AHP method is used via the Expert-choice software. Several cases were considered in this analysis. They are defined where the priorities were defined always keeping one criterion in first position, while the priorities of the other criteria were defined by ordinal information defining the mutual relations of the criteria and the respective indicators. The results, show that amongst these cases, priority is obtained for CHP usage where availability indicator is highly weighted while the pipeline usage is obtained where environmental indicator highly weighted and the injection priority is obtained where economic indicator is highly weighted and also when the weighing factor of all the criteria are the same the Injection priority is obtained.

Simulation Modeling of Fire Station Locations under Traffic Obstacles

Facility location problem involves locating a facility to optimize some performance measures. Location of a public facility to serve the community, such as a fire station, significantly affects its service quality. Main objective in locating a fire station is to minimize the response time, which is the time duration between receiving a call and reaching the place of incident. In metropolitan areas, fire vehicles need to cross highways and other traffic obstacles through some obstacle-overcoming points which delay the response time. In this paper, fire station location problem is analyzed. Simulation models are developed for the location problems which involve obstacles. Particular case problems are analyzed and the results are presented.

A Tubular Electrode for Radiofrequency Ablation Therapy

In the last two decades radiofrequency ablation (RFA) has been considered a promising medical procedure for the treatment of primary and secondary malignancies. However, the needle-based electrodes so far developed for this kind of treatment are not suitable for the thermal ablation of tumors located in hollow organs like esophagus, colon or bile duct. In this work a tubular electrode solution is presented. Numerical and experimental analyses were performed to characterize the volume of the lesion induced. Results show that this kind of electrode is a feasible solution and numerical simulation might provide a tool for planning RFA procedure with some accuracy.

Constitutive Equations for Human Saphenous Vein Coronary Artery Bypass Graft

Coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG) are widely studied with respect to hemodynamic conditions which play important role in presence of a restenosis. However, papers which concern with constitutive modeling of CABG are lacking in the literature. The purpose of this study is to find a constitutive model for CABG tissue. A sample of the CABG obtained within an autopsy underwent an inflation–extension test. Displacements were recoredered by CCD cameras and subsequently evaluated by digital image correlation. Pressure – radius and axial force – elongation data were used to fit material model. The tissue was modeled as onelayered composite reinforced by two families of helical fibers. The material is assumed to be locally orthotropic, nonlinear, incompressible and hyperelastic. Material parameters are estimated for two strain energy functions (SEF). The first is classical exponential. The second SEF is logarithmic which allows interpretation by means of limiting (finite) strain extensibility. Presented material parameters are estimated by optimization based on radial and axial equilibrium equation in a thick-walled tube. Both material models fit experimental data successfully. The exponential model fits significantly better relationship between axial force and axial strain than logarithmic one.

Drag Analysis of an Aircraft Wing Model withand without Bird Feather like Winglet

This work describes the aerodynamic characteristic for aircraft wing model with and without bird feather like winglet. The aerofoil used to construct the whole structure is NACA 653-218 Rectangular wing and this aerofoil has been used to compare the result with previous research using winglet. The model of the rectangular wing with bird feather like winglet has been fabricated using polystyrene before design using CATIA P3 V5R13 software and finally fabricated in wood. The experimental analysis for the aerodynamic characteristic for rectangular wing without winglet, wing with horizontal winglet and wing with 60 degree inclination winglet for Reynolds number 1.66×105, 2.08×105 and 2.50×105 have been carried out in open loop low speed wind tunnel at the Aerodynamics laboratory in Universiti Putra Malaysia. The experimental result shows 25-30 % reduction in drag coefficient and 10-20 % increase in lift coefficient by using bird feather like winglet for angle of attack of 8 degree.

Two Dimensionnal Model for Extraction Packed Column Simulation using Finite Element Method

Modeling transfer phenomena in several chemical engineering operations leads to the resolution of partial differential equations systems. According to the complexity of the operations mechanisms, the equations present a nonlinear form and analytical solution became difficult, we have then to use numerical methods which are based on approximations in order to transform a differential system to an algebraic one.Finite element method is one of numerical methods which can be used to obtain an accurate solution in many complex cases of chemical engineering.The packed columns find a large application like contactor for liquid-liquid systems such solvent extraction. In the literature, the modeling of this type of equipment received less attention in comparison with the plate columns.A mathematical bidimensionnal model with radial and axial dispersion, simulating packed tower extraction behavior was developed and a partial differential equation was solved using the finite element method by adopting the Galerkine model. We developed a Mathcad program, which can be used for a similar equations and concentration profiles are obtained along the column. The influence of radial dispersion was prooved and it can-t be neglected, the results were compared with experimental concentration at the top of the column in the extraction system: acetone/toluene/water.