Abstract: The interaction of tunneling or mining with
groundwater has become a very relevant problem not only due to the
need to guarantee the safety of workers and to assure the efficiency of
the tunnel drainage systems, but also to safeguard water resources
from impoverishment and pollution risk. Therefore it is very
important to forecast the drainage processes (i.e., the evaluation of
drained discharge and drawdown caused by the excavation). The aim
of this study was to know better the system and to quantify the flow
drained from the Fontane mines, located in Val Germanasca (Turin,
Italy). This allowed to understand the hydrogeological local changes
in time. The work has therefore been structured as follows: the
reconstruction of the conceptual model with the geological,
hydrogeological and geological-structural study; the calculation of
the tunnel inflows (through the use of structural methods) and the
comparison with the measured flow rates; the water balance at the
basin scale. In this way it was possible to understand what are the
relationships between rainfall, groundwater level variations and the
effect of the presence of tunnels as a means of draining water.
Subsequently, it the effects produced by the excavation of the mining
tunnels was quantified, through numerical modeling. In particular,
the modeling made it possible to observe the drawdown variation as a
function of number, excavation depth and different mines linings.
Abstract: This research aimed to modify pineapple leaf paper
(PALP) for using as wet media in the evaporation cooling system by
improving wet mechanical property (tensile strength) without
compromising water absorption property. Polyamideamineepichorohydrin
resin (PAE) and carboxymethylcellulose (CMC)
were used to strengthen the paper, and the PAE and CMC ratio of
80:20 showed the optimum wet and dry tensile index values, which
were higher than those of the commercial cooling pad (CCP).
Compared with CCP, PALP itself and all the PAE/CMC modified
PALP possessed better water absorption. The PAE/CMC modified
PALP had potential to become a new type of wet media.
Abstract: This paper aims to study decomposition behavior in
pyrolytic environment of four lignocellulosic biomass (oil palm shell,
oil palm frond, rice husk and paddy straw), and two commercial
components of biomass (pure cellulose and lignin), performed in a
thermogravimetry analyzer (TGA). The unit which consists of a
microbalance and a furnace flowed with 100 cc (STP) min-1 Nitrogen,
N2 as inert. Heating rate was set at 20⁰C min-1 and temperature
started from 50 to 900⁰C. Hydrogen gas production during the
pyrolysis was observed using Agilent Gas Chromatography Analyzer
7890A. Oil palm shell, oil palm frond, paddy straw and rice husk
were found to be reactive enough in a pyrolytic environment of up to
900°C since pyrolysis of these biomass starts at temperature as low as
200°C and maximum value of weight loss is achieved at about
500°C. Since there was not much different in the cellulose,
hemicelluloses and lignin fractions between oil palm shell, oil palm
frond, paddy straw and rice husk, the T-50 and R-50 values obtained
are almost similar. H2 productions started rapidly at this temperature
as well due to the decompositions of biomass inside the TGA.
Biomass with more lignin content such as oil palm shell was found to
have longer duration of H2 production compared to materials of high
cellulose and hemicelluloses contents.
Abstract: In the upstream we place a piece of ring and rotate
it with 83Hz, 166Hz, 333Hz,and 666H to find the effect of the
periodic distortion.In the experiment this type of the perturbation
will not allow since the mechanical failure of any parts of the
equipment in the upstream will destroy the blade system. This type of
study will be only possible by CFD. We use two pumps NS32
(ENSAM) and three blades pump (Tamagawa Univ). The benchmark
computations were performed without perturbation parts, and confirm
the computational results well agreement in head-flow rate. We
obtained the pressure fluctuation growth rate that is representing the
global instability of the turbo-system. The fluctuating torque
components were 0.01Nm(5000rpm), 0.1Nm(10000rmp),
0.04Nm(20000rmp), 0.15Nm( 40000rmp) respectively. Only for
10000rpm(166Hz) the output toque was random, and it implies that it
creates unsteady flow by separations on the blades, and will reduce the
pressure loss significantly
Abstract: Leave of absence is important in maintaining a good
status of human resource quality. Allowing the employees temporarily
free from the routine assignments can vitalize the workers- morality
and productivity. This is particularly critical to secure a satisfactory
service quality for healthcare professionals of which were typically
featured with labor intensive and complicated works to perform. As
one of the veteran hospitals that were found and operated by the
Veteran Department of Taiwan, the nursing staff of the case hospital
was squeezed to an extreme minimum level under the pressure of a
tight budgeting. Leave of absence on schedule became extremely
difficult, especially for the intensive care units (ICU), in which
required close monitoring over the cared patients, and that had more
easily driven the ICU nurses nervous. Even worse, the deferred leaves
were more than 10 days at any time in the ICU because of a fluctuating
occupancy. As a result, these had brought a bad setback to this
particular nursing team, and consequently defeated the job
performance and service quality. To solve this problem and
accordingly to strengthen their morality, a project team was organized
across different departments specific for this. Sufficient information
regarding jobs and positions requirements, labor resources, and actual
working hours in detail were collected and analyzed in the team
meetings. Several alternatives were finalized. These included job
rotating, job combination, leave on impromptu and cross-departmental
redeployment. Consequently, the deferred leave days sharply reduced
70% to a level of 3 or less days. This improvement had not only
provided good shelter for the ICU nurses that improved their job
performance and patient safety but also encouraged the nurses active
participating of a project and learned the skills of solving problems
with colleagues.
Abstract: In wireless communication system, a Decision Feedback Equalizer (DFE) to cancel the intersymbol interference (ISI) is required. In this paper, an exact convergence analysis of the (DFE) adapted by the Least Mean Square (LMS) algorithm during the training phase is derived by taking into account the finite alphabet context of data transmission. This allows us to determine the shortest training sequence that allows to reach a given Mean Square Error (MSE). With the intention of avoiding the problem of ill-convergence, the paper proposes an initialization strategy for the blind decision directed (DD) algorithm. This then yields a semi-blind DFE with high speed and good convergence.
Abstract: Since the beginning of human history, human
activities have caused many changes in the environment. Today, a
particular attention should be paid to gaining knowledge about water
quality of wetlands which are pristine natural environments rich in
genetic reserves. If qualitative conditions of industrial areas (in terms
of both physicochemical and biological conditions) are not addressed
properly, they could cause disruption in natural ecosystems,
especially in rivers. With regards to the quality of water resources,
determination of pollutant sources plays a pivotal role in engineering
projects as well as designing water quality control systems. Thus,
using different methods such as flow duration curves, dischargepollution
load model and frequency analysis by HYFA software
package, risk of various industrial pollutants in international and
ecologically important Gavkhoni wetland is analyzed. In this study, a
station located at Varzaneh City is used as the last station on
Zayanderud River, from where the river water is discharged into the
wetland. Results showed that elements- concentrations often
exceeded the allowed level and river water can endanger regional
ecosystem. In addition, if the river discharge is managed on Q25
basis, this basis can lower concentrations of elements, keeping them
within the normal level.
Abstract: A robot simulator was developed to measure and
investigate the performance of a robot navigation system based on
the relative position of the robot with respect to random obstacles in
any two dimensional environment. The presented simulator focuses
on investigating the ability of a fuzzy-neural system for object
avoidance. A navigation algorithm is proposed and used to allow
random navigation of a robot among obstacles when the robot faces
an obstacle in the environment. The main features of this simulator
can be used for evaluating the performance of any system that can
provide the position of the robot with respect to obstacles in the
environment. This allows a robot developer to investigate and
analyze the performance of a robot without implementing the
physical robot.
Abstract: the data quality is a kind of complex and unstructured concept, which is concerned by information systems managers. The reason of this attention is the high amount of Expenses for maintenance and cleaning of the inefficient data. Such a data more than its expenses of lack of quality, cause wrong statistics, analysis and decisions in organizations. Therefor the managers intend to improve the quality of their information systems' data. One of the basic subjects of quality improvement is the evaluation of the amount of it. In this paper, we present a precautionary method, which with its application the data of information systems would have a better quality. Our method would cover different dimensions of data quality; therefor it has necessary integrity. The presented method has tested on three dimensions of accuracy, value-added and believability and the results confirm the improvement and integrity of this method.
Abstract: An electric power system includes a generating, a
transmission, a distribution, and consumers subsystems. An electrical
power network in Tanzania keeps growing larger by the day and
become more complex so that, most utilities have long wished for
real-time monitoring and remote control of electrical power system
elements such as substations, intelligent devices, power lines,
capacitor banks, feeder switches, fault analyzers and other physical
facilities. In this paper, the concept of automation of management of
power systems from generation level to end user levels was
determined by using Power System Simulator for Engineering
(PSS/E) version 30.3.2.
Abstract: Solution to unsteady Navier-Stokes equation by Splitting method in physical orthogonal algebraic curvilinear coordinate system, also termed 'Non-linear grid system' is presented. The linear terms in Navier-Stokes equation are solved by Crank- Nicholson method while the non-linear term is solved by the second order Adams-Bashforth method. This work is meant to bring together the advantage of Splitting method as pressure-velocity solver of higher efficiency with the advantage of consuming Non-linear grid system which produce more accurate results in relatively equal number of grid points as compared to Cartesian grid. The validation of Splitting method as a solution of Navier-Stokes equation in Nonlinear grid system is done by comparison with the benchmark results for lid driven cavity flow by Ghia and some case studies including Backward Facing Step Flow Problem.
Abstract: In this paper, we study the application of Extreme
Learning Machine (ELM) algorithm for single layered feedforward
neural networks to non-linear chaotic time series problems. In this
algorithm the input weights and the hidden layer bias are randomly
chosen. The ELM formulation leads to solving a system of linear
equations in terms of the unknown weights connecting the hidden
layer to the output layer. The solution of this general system of
linear equations will be obtained using Moore-Penrose generalized
pseudo inverse. For the study of the application of the method we
consider the time series generated by the Mackey Glass delay
differential equation with different time delays, Santa Fe A and
UCR heart beat rate ECG time series. For the choice of sigmoid,
sin and hardlim activation functions the optimal values for the
memory order and the number of hidden neurons which give the
best prediction performance in terms of root mean square error are
determined. It is observed that the results obtained are in close
agreement with the exact solution of the problems considered
which clearly shows that ELM is a very promising alternative
method for time series prediction.
Abstract: In this paper, we consider nested sliding mode control of SISO nonlinear systems, perturbed by bounded matched and unmatched uncertainties. The systems are assumed to be in strict-feedback form. A step wise procedure is introduced to obtain the controller. In each step, a continuous sliding mode controller is designed as virtual control law. Then the next step sliding surface is defined by using this virtual controller. These sliding surfaces are selected as nonlinear static functions of the system states. Finally in the last step, smooth static state feedback control law is determined such that the output reaches the desired set-point while the system is forced arbitrary close to the intersection of sliding surfaces and the states remain bounded.
Abstract: The present study attempted to improve the Mercury
(Hg) sorption capacity of kanuma volcanic ash soil (KVAS) by
impregnating the cupper (Cu). Impregnation was executed by 1 and
5% Cu powder and sorption characterization of optimum Hg
removing Cu impregnated KVAS was performed under different
operational conditions, contact time, solution pH, sorbent dosage and
Hg concentration using the batch operation studies. The 1% Cu
impregnated KVAS pronounced optimum improvement (79%) in
removing Hg from water compare to control. The present
investigation determined the equilibrium state of maximum Hg
adsorption at 6 h contact period. The adsorption revealed a pH
dependent response and pH 3.5 showed maximum sorption capacity
of Hg. Freundlich isotherm model is well fitted with the experimental
data than that of Langmuir isotherm. It can be concluded that the Cu
impregnation improves the Hg sorption capacity of KVAS and 1%
Cu impregnated KVAS could be employed as cost-effective
adsorbent media for treating Hg contaminated water.
Abstract: In this paper, we consider the control of time delay system
by Proportional-Integral (PI) controller. By Using the Hermite-
Biehler theorem, which is applicable to quasi-polynomials, we seek
a stability region of the controller for first order delay systems. The
essence of this work resides in the extension of this approach to
second order delay system, in the determination of its stability region
and the computation of the PI optimum parameters. We have used
the genetic algorithms to lead the complexity of the optimization
problem.
Abstract: Energy consumption is one of the indices in
determining the levels of development of a nation. Therefore,
availability of energy supply to all sectors of life in any country is
crucial for its development. These exists shortage of all kinds of
energy, particularly electricity which is badly needed for economic
development. Electricity from the sun which is quite abundant in
most of the developing countries is used in rural areas to meet basic
electricity needs of a rural community. Today-s electricity supply in
Myanmar is generated by fuel generators and hydroelectric power
plants. However, far-flung areas which are away from National Grids
cannot enjoy the electricity generated by these sources. Since
Myanmar is a land of plentiful sunshine, especially in central and
southern regions of the country, the first form of energy- solar energy
could hopefully become the final solution to its energy supply
problem. The direct conversion of solar energy into electricity using
photovoltaic system has been receiving intensive installation not only
in developed countries but also in developing countries. It is mainly
intended to present solar energy potential and application in
Myanmar. It is also wanted to get the benefits of using solar energy
for people in remote areas which are not yet connected to the national
grids because of the high price of fossil fuel.
Abstract: The problem of delay-range-dependent exponential synchronization is investigated for Lur-e master-slave systems with delay feedback control and Markovian switching. Using Lyapunov- Krasovskii functional and nonsingular M-matrix method, novel delayrange- dependent exponential synchronization in mean square criterions are established. The systems discussed in this paper is advanced system, and takes all the features of interval systems, Itˆo equations, Markovian switching, time-varying delay, as well as the environmental noise, into account. Finally, an example is given to show the validity of the main result.
Abstract: The fractal-shaped orifices are assumed to have a
significant effect on the pressure drop downstream pipe flow due to
their edge self-similarity shape which enhances the mixing
properties. Here, we investigate the pressure drop after these fractals
using a digital micro-manometer at different stations downstream a
turbulent flow pipe then a direct comparison has been made with the
pressure drop measured from regular orifices with the same flow
area. Our results showed that the fractal-shaped orifices have a
significant effect on the pressure drop downstream the flow. Also
the pressure drop measured across the fractal-shaped orifices is
noticed to be lower that that from ordinary orifices of the same flow
areas. This result could be important in designing piping systems
from point of view of losses consideration with the same flow
control area. This is promising to use the fractal-shaped orifices as
flowmeters as they can sense the pressure drop across them
accurately with minimum losses than the regular ones.
Abstract: Domain-specific languages describe specific solutions to problems in the application domain. Traditionally they form a solution composing black-box abstractions together. This, usually, involves non-deep transformations over the target model. In this paper we argue that it is potentially powerful to operate with grey-box abstractions to build a domain-specific software system. We present parametric code templates as grey-box abstractions and conceptual tools to encapsulate and manipulate these templates. Manipulations introduce template-s merging routines and can be defined in a generic way. This involves reasoning mechanisms at the code templates level. We introduce the concept of Neurath Modelling Language (NML) that operates with parametric code templates and specifies a visualisation mapping mechanism for target models. Finally we provide an example of calculating a domain-specific software system with predefined NML elements.
Abstract: Two-phase frictional pressure drop data were
obtained for condensation of carbon dioxide in single horizontal
micro tube of inner diameter ranged from 0.6 mm up to 1.6 mm over
mass flow rates from 2.5*10-5 to 17*10-5 kg/s and vapor qualities
from 0.0 to 1.0. The inlet condensing pressure is changed from 33.5
to 45 bars. The saturation temperature ranged from -1.5 oC up to 10
oC. These data have then been compared against three (two-phase)
frictional pressure drop prediction methods. The first method is by
Muller-Steinhagen and Heck (Muller-Steinhagen H, Heck K. A
simple friction pressure drop correlation for two-phase flow in pipes.
Chem. Eng. Process 1986;20:297–308) and that by Gronnerud R.
Investigation of liquid hold-up, flow-resistance and heat transfer in
circulation type evaporators, part IV: two-phase flow resistance in
boiling refrigerants, Annexe 1972. Then the method used by
FriedelL. Improved friction pressures drop in horizontal and vertical
two-phase pipe flow. European Two-Phase Flow Group Meeting,
Paper E2; 1979 June, Ispra, Italy. The methods are used by M.B Ould
Didi et al (2001) “Prediction of two-phase pressure gradients of
refrigerant in horizontal tubes". Int.J.of Refrigeration 25(2002) 935-
947. The best available method for annular flow was that of Muller-
Steinhagen and Heck. It was observed that the peak in the two-phase
frictional pressure gradient is at high vapor qualities.