Productive Design and Calculation of Intermittent Mechanisms with Radial Parallel Cams

The paper deals with the kinematics and automated calculation of intermittent mechanisms with radial cams. Currently, electronic cams are increasingly applied in the drives of working link mechanisms. Despite a huge advantage of electronic cams in their reprogrammability or instantaneous change of displacement diagrams, conventional cam mechanisms have an irreplaceable role in production and handling machines. With high frequency of working cycle periods, the dynamic load of the proper servomotor rotor increases and efficiency of electronic cams strongly decreases. Though conventional intermittent mechanisms with radial cams are representatives of fixed automation, they have distinct advantages in their high speed (high dynamics), positional accuracy and relatively easy manufacture. We try to remove the disadvantage of firm displacement diagram by reducing costs for simple design and automated calculation that leads reliably to high-quality and inexpensive manufacture.

A Comprehensive and Integrated Framework for Formal Specification of Concurrent Systems

Due to important issues, such as deadlock, starvation, communication, non-deterministic behavior and synchronization, concurrent systems are very complex, sensitive, and error-prone. Thus ensuring reliability and accuracy of these systems is very essential. Therefore, there has been a big interest in the formal specification of concurrent programs in recent years. Nevertheless, some features of concurrent systems, such as dynamic process creation, scheduling and starvation have not been specified formally yet. Also, some other features have been specified partially and/or have been described using a combination of several different formalisms and methods whose integration needs too much effort. In other words, a comprehensive and integrated specification that could cover all aspects of concurrent systems has not been provided yet. Thus, this paper makes two major contributions: firstly, it provides a comprehensive formal framework to specify all well-known features of concurrent systems. Secondly, it provides an integrated specification of these features by using just a single formal notation, i.e., the Z language.

A Study on Mode of Collapse of Metallic Shells Having Combined Tube-Frusta Geometry Subjected to Axial Compression

The present paper deals with the experimental and computational study of axial collapse of the aluminum metallic shells having combined tube-frusta geometry between two parallel plates. Shells were having bottom two third lengths as frusta and remaining top one third lengths as tube. Shells were compressed to recognize their modes of collapse and associated energy absorption capability. An axisymmetric Finite Element computational model of collapse process is presented and analysed, using a non-linear FE code FORGE2. Six noded isoparametric triangular elements were used to discretize the deforming shell. The material of the shells was idealized as rigid visco-plastic. To validate the computational model experimental and computed results of the deformed shapes and their corresponding load-compression and energy-compression curves were compared. With the help of the obtained results progress of the axisymmetric mode of collapse has been presented, analysed and discussed.

Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting Technologies and Implementation Status

Digital broadcasting has been an area of active research, development, innovation and business models development in recent years. This paper presents a survey on the characteristics of the digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB) standards, and implementation status of DTTB worldwide showing the standards adopted. It is clear that only the developed countries and some in the developing ones shall be able to beat the ITU set analogue to digital broadcasting migration deadline because of the challenges that these countries faces in digitizing their terrestrial broadcasting. The challenges to keep on track the DTTB migration plan are also discussed in this paper. They include financial, technology gap, policies alignment with DTTB technology, etc. The reported performance comparisons for the different standards are also presented. The interesting part is that the results for many comparative studies depends to a large extent on the objective behind such studies, hence counter claims are common.

OSGi in Cloud Environments

This paper deals with the combination of OSGi and cloud computing. Both technologies are mainly placed in the field of distributed computing. Therefore, it is discussed how different approaches from different institutions work. In addition, the approaches are compared to each other.

Flow Visualization and Characterization of an Artery Model with Stenosis

Cardiovascular diseases, principally atherosclerosis, are responsible for 30% of world deaths. Atherosclerosis is due to the formation of plaque. The fatty plaque may be at risk of rupture, leading typically to stroke and heart attack. The plaque is usually associated with a high degree of lumen reduction, called a stenosis.It is increasingly recognized that the initiation and progression of disease and the occurrence of clinical events is a complex interplay between the local biomechanical environment and the local vascular biology. The aim of this study is to investigate the flow behavior through a stenosed artery. A physical experiment was performed using an artery model and blood analogue fluid. An axisymmetric model constructed consists of contraction and expansion region that follow a mathematical form of cosine function. A 30% diameter reduction was used in this study. The flow field was measured using particle image velocimetry (PIV). Spherical particles with 20μm diameter were seeded in a water-glycerol-NaCl mixture. Steady flow Reynolds numbers are 250. The area of interest is the region after the stenosis where the flow separation occurs. The velocity field was measured and the velocity gradient was investigated. There was high particle concentration in the recirculation zone. High velocity gradient formed immediately after the stenosis throat created a lift force that enhanced particle migration to the flow separation area.

Verification of a Locked CFD Approach to Cool Down Modeling

Increasing demand on the performance of Subsea Production Systems (SPS) suggests a need for more detailed investigation of fluid behavior taking place in subsea equipment. Complete CFD cool down analyses of subsea equipment are very time demanding. The objective of this paper is to investigate a Locked CFD approach, which enables significant reduction of the computational time and at the same time maintains sufficient accuracy during thermal cool down simulations. The result comparison of a dead leg simulation using the Full CFD and the three LCFD-methods confirms the validity of the locked flow field assumption for the selected case. For the tested case the LCFD simulation speed up by factor of 200 results in the absolute thermal error of 0.5 °C (3% relative error), speed up by factor of 10 keeps the LCFD results within 0.1 °C (0.5 % relative error) comparing to the Full CFD.

Tool Wear and Surface Roughness Prediction using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in Turning Steel under Minimum Quantity Lubrication (MQL)

Tool wear and surface roughness prediction plays a significant role in machining industry for proper planning and control of machining parameters and optimization of cutting conditions. This paper deals with developing an artificial neural network (ANN) model as a function of cutting parameters in turning steel under minimum quantity lubrication (MQL). A feed-forward backpropagation network with twenty five hidden neurons has been selected as the optimum network. The co-efficient of determination (R2) between model predictions and experimental values are 0.9915, 0.9906, 0.9761 and 0.9627 in terms of VB, VM, VS and Ra respectively. The results imply that the model can be used easily to forecast tool wear and surface roughness in response to cutting parameters.

A New Nonlinear PID Controller and its Parameter Design

A new nonlinear PID controller and its stability analysis are presented in this paper. A nonlinear function is deduced from the similarities between the control effort and the electric-field effect of a capacitor. The conventional linear PID controller can be modified into a nonlinear one by this function. To analyze the stability of the nonlinear PID controlled system, an idea of energy equivalence is adapted to avoid the conservativeness which is usually arisen from some traditional theorems and Criterions. The energy equivalence is naturally related with the conceptions of Passivity and T-Passivity. As a result, an engineering guideline for the parameter design of the nonlinear PID controller is obtained. An inverted pendulum system is tested to verify the nonlinear PID control scheme.

A General Framework for Modeling Replicated Real-Time Database

There are many issues that affect modeling and designing real-time databases. One of those issues is maintaining consistency between the actual state of the real-time object of the external environment and its images as reflected by all its replicas distributed over multiple nodes. The need to improve the scalability is another important issue. In this paper, we present a general framework to design a replicated real-time database for small to medium scale systems and maintain all timing constrains. In order to extend the idea for modeling a large scale database, we present a general outline that consider improving the scalability by using an existing static segmentation algorithm applied on the whole database, with the intent to lower the degree of replication, enables segments to have individual degrees of replication with the purpose of avoiding excessive resource usage, which all together contribute in solving the scalability problem for DRTDBS.

Trispectral Analysis of Voiced Sounds Defective Audition and Tracheotomisian Cases

This paper presents the cepstral and trispectral analysis of a speech signal produced by normal men, men with defective audition (deaf, deep deaf) and others affected by tracheotomy, the trispectral analysis based on parametric methods (Autoregressive AR) using the fourth order cumulant. These analyses are used to detect and compare the pitches and the formants of corresponding voiced sounds (vowel \a\, \i\ and \u\). The first results appear promising, since- it seems after several experimentsthere is no deformation of the spectrum as one could have supposed it at the beginning, however these pathologies influenced the two characteristics: The defective audition influences to the formants contrary to the tracheotomy, which influences the fundamental frequency (pitch).

Palmprint Recognition by Wavelet Transform with Competitive Index and PCA

This manuscript presents, palmprint recognition by combining different texture extraction approaches with high accuracy. The Region of Interest (ROI) is decomposed into different frequencytime sub-bands by wavelet transform up-to two levels and only the approximate image of two levels is selected, which is known as Approximate Image ROI (AIROI). This AIROI has information of principal lines of the palm. The Competitive Index is used as the features of the palmprint, in which six Gabor filters of different orientations convolve with the palmprint image to extract the orientation information from the image. The winner-take-all strategy is used to select dominant orientation for each pixel, which is known as Competitive Index. Further, PCA is applied to select highly uncorrelated Competitive Index features, to reduce the dimensions of the feature vector, and to project the features on Eigen space. The similarity of two palmprints is measured by the Euclidean distance metrics. The algorithm is tested on Hong Kong PolyU palmprint database. Different AIROI of different wavelet filter families are also tested with the Competitive Index and PCA. AIROI of db7 wavelet filter achievs Equal Error Rate (EER) of 0.0152% and Genuine Acceptance Rate (GAR) of 99.67% on the palm database of Hong Kong PolyU.

Speed Control of a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine (PMSM) Fed by an Inverter Voltage Fuzzy Control Approach

This paper deals with the synthesis of fuzzy controller applied to a permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) with a guaranteed H∞ performance. To design this fuzzy controller, nonlinear model of the PMSM is approximated by Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model (T-S fuzzy model), then the so-called parallel distributed compensation (PDC) is employed. Next, we derive the property of the H∞ norm. The latter is cast in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMI-s) while minimizing the H∞ norm of the transfer function between the disturbance and the error ( ) ev T . The experimental and simulations results were conducted on a permanent magnet synchronous machine to illustrate the effects of the fuzzy modelling and the controller design via the PDC.

High Order Cascade Multibit ΣΔ Modulator for Wide Bandwidth Applications

A wideband 2-1-1 cascaded ΣΔ modulator with a single-bit quantizer in the two first stages and a 4-bit quantizer in the final stage is developed. To reduce sensitivity of digital-to-analog converter (DAC) nonlinearities in the feedback of the last stage, dynamic element matching (DEM) is introduced. This paper presents two modelling approaches: The first is MATLAB description and the second is VHDL-AMS modelling of the proposed architecture and exposes some high-level-simulation results allowing a behavioural study. The detail of both ideal and non-ideal behaviour modelling are presented. Then, the study of the effect of building blocks nonidealities is presented; especially the influences of nonlinearity, finite operational amplifier gain, amplifier slew rate limitation and capacitor mismatch. A VHDL-AMS description presents a good solution to predict system-s performances and can provide sensitivity curves giving the impact of nonidealities on the system performance.

A Study on Dogme 95 in the Korean Films

Many new experimental films which were free from conventional movie forms have appeared since Nubellbak Movement in the late 1950s. Forty years after the movement started, on March 13th, 1995, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of film, the declaration called Dogme 95, was issued in Copenhagen, Denmark. It aimed to create a new style of avant-garde film, and showed a tendency toward being anti-Hollywood and anti-genre, which were against the highly popular Hollywood trend of movies based on large-scale investment. The main idea of Dogme 95 is the opposition to 'the writer's doctrine' that a film should be the artist's individual work and to 'the overuse of technology' in film. The key figures declared ten principles called 'Vow of Chastity', by which new movie forms were to be produced. Interview (2000), directed by Byunhyuk, was made in 2000, five years after Dogme 95 was declared. This movie was dedicated as the first Asian Dogme. This study will survey the relationship between Korean film and the Vow of Chastity through the Korean films released in theaters from a viewpoint of technology and content. It also will call attention to its effects on and significance to Korean film in modern society.

Application of Genetic Algorithms to Feature Subset Selection in a Farsi OCR

Dealing with hundreds of features in character recognition systems is not unusual. This large number of features leads to the increase of computational workload of recognition process. There have been many methods which try to remove unnecessary or redundant features and reduce feature dimensionality. Besides because of the characteristics of Farsi scripts, it-s not possible to apply other languages algorithms to Farsi directly. In this paper some methods for feature subset selection using genetic algorithms are applied on a Farsi optical character recognition (OCR) system. Experimental results show that application of genetic algorithms (GA) to feature subset selection in a Farsi OCR results in lower computational complexity and enhanced recognition rate.

A Combined Fuzzy Decision Making Approach to Supply Chain Risk Assessment

Many firms implemented various initiatives such as outsourced manufacturing which could make a supply chain (SC) more vulnerable to various types of disruptions. So managing risk has become a critical component of SC management. Different types of SC vulnerability management methodologies have been proposed for managing SC risk, most offer only point-based solutions that deal with a limited set of risks. This research aims to reinforce SC risk management by proposing an integrated approach. SC risks are identified and a risk index classification structure is created. Then we develop a SC risk assessment approach based on the analytic network process (ANP) and the VIKOR methods under the fuzzy environment where the vagueness and subjectivity are handled with linguistic terms parameterized by triangular fuzzy numbers. By using FANP, risks weights are calculated and then inserted to the FVIKOR to rank the SC members and find the most risky partner.

Towards a Systematic, Cost-Effective Approach for ERP Selection

Existing experiences indicate that one of the most prominent reasons that some ERP implementations fail is related to selecting an improper ERP package. Among those important factors resulting in inappropriate ERP selections, one is to ignore preliminary activities that should be done before the evaluation of ERP packages. Another factor yielding these unsuitable selections is that usually organizations employ prolonged and costly selection processes in such extent that sometimes the process would never be finalized or sometimes the evaluation team might perform many key final activities in an incomplete or inaccurate way due to exhaustion, lack of interest or out-of-date data. In this paper, a systematic approach that recommends some activities to be done before and after the main selection phase is introduced for choosing an ERP package. On the other hand, the proposed approach has utilized some ideas that accelerates the selection process at the same time that reduces the probability of an erroneous final selection.

Method for Concept Labeling Based on Mapping between Ontology and Thesaurus

When designing information systems that deal with large amount of domain knowledge, system designers need to consider ambiguities of labeling termsin domain vocabulary for navigating users in the information space. The goal of this study is to develop a methodology for system designers to label navigation items, taking account of ambiguities stems from synonyms or polysemes of labeling terms. In this paper, we propose a method for concept labeling based on mappings between domain ontology andthesaurus, and report results of an empirical evaluation.