Effects of Material Properties of Warhead Casing on Natural Fragmentation Performance of High Explosive (HE) Warhead

This research paper presents numerical studies of the characteristics of warhead fragmentation in terms of initial velocities, spray angles of fragments and fragment mass distribution of high explosive (HE) warhead. The behavior of warhead fragmentation depends on shape and size of warhead, thickness of casing, type of explosive, number and position of detonator, and etc. This paper focuses on the effects of material properties of warhead casing, i.e. failure strain, initial yield and ultimate strength on the characteristics of warhead fragmentation. It was found that initial yield and ultimate strength of casing has minimal effects on the initial velocities and spray angles of fragments. Moreover, a brittle warhead casing with low failure strain tends to produce higher number of fragments with less average fragment mass.

Seismic Behaviour of Romanian Ortodox Churches, Modeling of Failure Modes by Rigid Blocks

Historic religious buildings located in seismic areas have developed different failure mechanisms. Simulation of failure modes is done with computer programs through a nonlinear dynamic analysis or simplified using the method of failure blocks. Currently there are simulation methodologies of failure modes based on the failure rigid blocks method only for Roman Catholic churches type. Due to differences of shape in plan, elevation and construction systems between Orthodox churches and Catholic churches, for the first time there were initiated researches in the development of this simulation methodology for Orthodox churches. In this article are presented the first results from the researches. The theoretical results were compared with real failure modes recorded at an Orthodox church from Banat region, severely damaged by earthquakes in 1991. Simulated seismic response, using a computer program based on finite element method was confirmed by cracks after earthquakes. The consolidation of the church was made according to these theoretical results, realizing a rigid floor connecting all the failure blocks.

The Effect of Tmax in Energy Consumption in 0IEEE 802.16e with Traffic Load

Energy consumption is an important design issue for Mobile Subscriber Station (MSS) in the standard IEEE 802.16e. Because mobility of MSS implies that energy saving becomes an issue so that lifetime of MSS can be extended before re-charging. Also, the mechanism in efficiently managing the limited energy is becoming very significant since a MSS is generally energized by battery. For these, sleep mode operation is recently specified in the MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol. In order to reduce the energy consumption, we focus on the sleep-mode and wake-mode of the MAC layer, which are included in the IEEE 802.16 standards [1- 2].

Teaching Students the Black Magic of Electromagnetic Compatibility

Introducing Electromagnetic Interference and Electromagnetic Compatibility, or “The Art of Black Magic", for engineering students might be a terrifying experience both for students and tutors. Removing the obstacle of large, expensive facilities like a fully fitted EMC laboratory and hours of complex theory, this paper demonstrates a design of a laboratory setup for student exercises, giving students experience in the basics of EMC/EMI problems that may challenge the functionality and stability of embedded system designs. This is done using a simple laboratory installation and basic measurement equipment such as a medium cost digital storage oscilloscope, at the cost of not knowing the exact magnitude of the noise components, but rather if the noise is significant or not, as well as the source of the noise. A group of students have performed a trial exercise with good results and feedback.

Comparative Analysis of Various Multiuser Detection Techniques in SDMA-OFDM System Over the Correlated MIMO Channel Model for IEEE 802.16n

SDMA (Space-Division Multiple Access) is a MIMO (Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output) based wireless communication network architecture which has the potential to significantly increase the spectral efficiency and the system performance. The maximum likelihood (ML) detection provides the optimal performance, but its complexity increases exponentially with the constellation size of modulation and number of users. The QR decomposition (QRD) MUD can be a substitute to ML detection due its low complexity and near optimal performance. The minimum mean-squared-error (MMSE) multiuser detection (MUD) minimises the mean square error (MSE), which may not give guarantee that the BER of the system is also minimum. But the minimum bit error rate (MBER) MUD performs better than the classic MMSE MUD in term of minimum probability of error by directly minimising the BER cost function. Also the MBER MUD is able to support more users than the number of receiving antennas, whereas the rest of MUDs fail in this scenario. In this paper the performance of various MUD techniques is verified for the correlated MIMO channel models based on IEEE 802.16n standard.

Numerical Investigation of a Slender Delta Wing in Combined Force-Pitch and Free-Roll

Numerical investigation of the characteristics of an 80° delta wing in combined force-pitch and free-roll is presented. The implicit, upwind, flux-difference splitting, finite volume scheme and the second-order-accurate finite difference scheme are employed to solve the flow governing equations and Euler rigid-body dynamics equations, respectively. The characteristics of the delta wing in combined free-roll and large amplitude force-pitch is obtained numerically and shows a well agreement with experimental data qualitatively. The motion in combined force-pitch and free-roll significantly reduces the lift force and transverse stabilities of the delta wing, which is closely related to the flying safety. Investigations on sensitive factors indicate that the roll-axis moment of inertia and the structural damping have great influence on the frequency and amplitude, respectively. Moreover, the turbulence model is considered as an influencing factor in the investigation.

Hull Separation Optimization of Catamaran Unmanned Surface Vehicle Powered with Hydrogen Fuel Cell

This paper presents an optimization of the hull separation, i.e. transverse clearance. The main objective is to identify the feasible speed ranges and find the optimum transverse clearance considering the minimum wave-making resistance. The dimensions and the weight of hardware systems installed in the catamaran structured fuel cell powered USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicle) were considered as constraints. As the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) platform FRIENDSHIP-Framework was used. The hull surface modeling, DoE (Design of Experiment), Tangent search optimization, tool integration and the process automation were performed by FRIENDSHIP-Framework. The hydrodynamic result was evaluated by XPAN the potential solver of SHIPFLOW.

Sustainable Solutions for Municipal Solid Waste Management in Thailand

General as well as the MSW management in Thailand is reviewed in this paper. Topics include the MSW generation, sources, composition, and trends. The review, then, moves to sustainable solutions for MSW management, sustainable alternative approaches with an emphasis on an integrated MSW management. Information of waste in Thailand is also given at the beginning of this paper for better understanding of later contents. It is clear that no one single method of MSW disposal can deal with all materials in an environmentally sustainable way. As such, a suitable approach in MSW management should be an integrated approach that could deliver both environmental and economic sustainability. With increasing environmental concerns, the integrated MSW management system has a potential to maximize the useable waste materials as well as produce energy as a by-product. In Thailand, the compositions of waste (86%) are mainly organic waste, paper, plastic, glass, and metal. As a result, the waste in Thailand is suitable for an integrated MSW management. Currently, the Thai national waste management policy starts to encourage the local administrations to gather into clusters to establish central MSW disposal facilities with suitable technologies and reducing the disposal cost based on the amount of MSW generated.

Data-driven ASIC for Multichannel Sensors

An approach and its implementation in 0.18 m CMOS process of the multichannel ASIC for capacitive (up to 30 pF) sensors are described in the paper. The main design aim was to study an analog data-driven architecture. The design was done for an analog derandomizing function of the 128 to 16 structure. That means that the ASIC structure should provide a parallel front-end readout of 128 input analog sensor signals and after the corresponding fast commutation with appropriate arbitration logic their processing by means of 16 output chains, including analog-to-digital conversion. The principal feature of the ASIC is a low power consumption within 2 mW/channel (including a 9-bit 20Ms/s ADC) at a maximum average channel hit rate not less than 150 kHz.

On-line Testing of Software Components for Diagnosis of Embedded Systems

This paper studies the dependability of componentbased applications, especially embedded ones, from the diagnosis point of view. The principle of the diagnosis technique is to implement inter-component tests in order to detect and locate the faulty components without redundancy. The proposed approach for diagnosing faulty components consists of two main aspects. The first one concerns the execution of the inter-component tests which requires integrating test functionality within a component. This is the subject of this paper. The second one is the diagnosis process itself which consists of the analysis of inter-component test results to determine the fault-state of the whole system. Advantage of this diagnosis method when compared to classical redundancy faulttolerant techniques are application autonomy, cost-effectiveness and better usage of system resources. Such advantage is very important for many systems and especially for embedded ones.

New DES based on Elliptic Curves

It is known that symmetric encryption algorithms are fast and easy to implement in hardware. Also elliptic curves have proved to be a good choice for building encryption system. Although most of the symmetric systems have been broken, we can create a hybrid system that has the same properties of the symmetric encryption systems and in the same time, it has the strength of elliptic curves in encryption. As DES algorithm is considered the core of all successive symmetric encryption systems, we modified DES using elliptic curves and built a new DES algorithm that is hard to be broken and will be the core for all other symmetric systems.

Computational Study on Cardiac-Coronary Interaction in Terms of Coronary Flow-Pressure Waveforms in Presence of Drugs: Comparison Between Simulated and In Vivo Data

Cardiovascular human simulator can be a useful tool in understanding complex physiopathological process in cardiocirculatory system. It can also be a useful tool in order to investigate the effects of different drugs on hemodynamic parameters. The aim of this work is to test the potentiality of our cardiovascular numerical simulator CARDIOSIM© in reproducing flow/pressure coronary waveforms in presence of two different drugs: Amlodipine (AMLO) and Adenosine (ADO). In particular a time-varying intramyocardial compression, assumed to be proportional to the left ventricular pressure, was related to the venous coronary compliances in order to study its effects on the coronary blood flow and the flow/pressure loop. Considering that coronary circulation dynamics is strongly interrelated with the mechanics of the left ventricular contraction, relaxation, and filling, the numerical model allowed to analyze the effects induced by the left ventricular pressure on the coronary flow.

Automated Algorithm for Removing Continuous Flame Spectrum Based On Sampled Linear Bases

In this paper, an automated algorithm to estimate and remove the continuous baseline from measured spectra containing both continuous and discontinuous bands is proposed. The algorithm uses previous information contained in a Continuous Database Spectra (CDBS) to obtain a linear basis, with minimum number of sampled vectors, capable of representing a continuous baseline. The proposed algorithm was tested by using a CDBS of flame spectra where Principal Components Analysis and Non-negative Matrix Factorization were used to obtain linear bases. Thus, the radical emissions of natural gas, oil and bio-oil flames spectra at different combustion conditions were obtained. In order to validate the performance in the baseline estimation process, the Goodness-of-fit Coefficient and the Root Mean-squared Error quality metrics were evaluated between the estimated and the real spectra in absence of discontinuous emission. The achieved results make the proposed method a key element in the development of automatic monitoring processes strategies involving discontinuous spectral bands.

A Fast Sensor Relocation Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor relocation is to repair coverage holes caused by node failures. One way to repair coverage holes is to find redundant nodes to replace faulty nodes. Most researches took a long time to find redundant nodes since they randomly scattered redundant nodes around the sensing field. To record the precise position of sensor nodes, most researches assumed that GPS was installed in sensor nodes. However, high costs and power-consumptions of GPS are heavy burdens for sensor nodes. Thus, we propose a fast sensor relocation algorithm to arrange redundant nodes to form redundant walls without GPS. Redundant walls are constructed in the position where the average distance to each sensor node is the shortest. Redundant walls can guide sensor nodes to find redundant nodes in the minimum time. Simulation results show that our algorithm can find the proper redundant node in the minimum time and reduce the relocation time with low message complexity.

Surface Modification by EUV laser Beam based on Capillary Discharge

Many applications require surface modification and micro-structuring of polymers. For these purposes is mainly used ultraviolet (UV) radiation from excimer lamps or excimer lasers. However, these sources have a decided disadvantage - degrading the polymer deep inside due to relatively big radiation penetration depth which may exceed 100 μm. In contrast, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation is absorbed in a layer approximately 100 nm thick only. In this work, the radiation from a discharge-plasma EUV source (with wavelength 46.9 nm) based on a capillary discharge driver is focused with a spherical Si/Sc multilayer mirror for surface modification of PMMA sample or thin gold layer (thickness about 40 nm). It was found that the focused EUV laser beam is capable by one shot to ablate PMMA or layer of gold, even if the focus is significantly influenced by astigmatism.

Changes in Fine PM Pollution Levels with Tightening of Regulations on Vehicle Emissions

A long-term campaign for monitoring the concentration of atmospheric Particulate Matter (PM) was conducted at multiple sites located in the center and suburbs of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area in Japan. The concentration of fine PM has shown a declining trend over the last two decades. A positive matrix factorization model elucidated that the contribution of combustion sources was drastically reduced. In Japan, the regulations on vehicle exhaust emissions were phased in and gradually tightened over the last two decades, which has triggered a notable reduction in PM emissions from automobiles and has contributed to the mitigation of the problem of fine PM pollution.

Two Wheels Balancing Robot with Line Following Capability

This project focuses on the development of a line follower algorithm for a Two Wheels Balancing Robot. In this project, ATMEGA32 is chosen as the brain board controller to react towards the data received from Balance Processor Chip on the balance board to monitor the changes of the environment through two infra-red distance sensor to solve the inclination angle problem. Hence, the system will immediately restore to the set point (balance position) through the implementation of internal PID algorithms at the balance board. Application of infra-red light sensors with the PID control is vital, in order to develop a smooth line follower robot. As a result of combination between line follower program and internal self balancing algorithms, we are able to develop a dynamically stabilized balancing robot with line follower function.

Harmonic Reduction In Three-Phase Parallel Connected Inverter

This paper presents the design and analysis of a parallel connected inverter configuration of. The configuration consists of parallel connected three-phase dc/ac inverter. Series resistors added to the inverter output to maintain same current in each inverter of the two parallel inverters, and to reduce the circulating current in the parallel inverters to the minimum. High frequency third harmonic injection PWM (THIPWM) employed to reduce the total harmonic distortion and to make maximum use of the voltage source. DSP was used to generate the THIPWM and the control algorithm for the converter. Selected experimental results have been shown to validate the proposed system.

PSO-based Possibilistic Portfolio Model with Transaction Costs

This paper deals with a portfolio selection problem based on the possibility theory under the assumption that the returns of assets are LR-type fuzzy numbers. A possibilistic portfolio model with transaction costs is proposed, in which the possibilistic mean value of the return is termed measure of investment return, and the possibilistic variance of the return is termed measure of investment risk. Due to considering transaction costs, the existing traditional optimization algorithms usually fail to find the optimal solution efficiently and heuristic algorithms can be the best method. Therefore, a particle swarm optimization is designed to solve the corresponding optimization problem. At last, a numerical example is given to illustrate our proposed effective means and approaches.

Application of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans in Desulfurization of US Coal: 10 L Batch Stirred Reactor Study

The desulfurization of coal using biological methods is an emerging technology. The biodesulfurization process uses the catalytic activity of chemolithotrophic acidpohiles in removing sulfur and pyrite from the coal. The present study was undertaken to examine the potential of Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans in removing the pyritic sulfur and iron from high iron and sulfur containing US coal. The experiment was undertaken in 10 L batch stirred tank reactor having 10% pulp density of coal. The reactor was operated under mesophilic conditions and aerobic conditions were maintained by sparging the air into the reactor. After 35 days of experiment, about 64% of pyrite and 21% of pyritic sulfur was removed from the coal. The findings of the present study indicate that the biodesulfurization process does have potential in treating the high pyrite and sulfur containing coal. A good mass balance was also obtained with net loss of about 5% showing its feasibility for large scale application.