Topology Optimization of Cable Truss Web for Prestressed Suspension Bridge

A suspension bridge is the most suitable type of structure for a long-span bridge due to rational use of structural materials. Increased deformability, which is conditioned by appearance of the elastic and kinematic displacements, is the major disadvantage of suspension bridges. The problem of increased kinematic displacements under the action of non-symmetrical load can be solved by prestressing. The prestressed suspension bridge with the span of 200 m was considered as an object of investigations. The cable truss with the cross web was considered as the main load carrying structure of the prestressed suspension bridge. The considered cable truss was optimized by 47 variable factors using Genetic algorithm and FEM program ANSYS. It was stated, that the maximum total displacements are reduced up to 29.9% by using of the cable truss with the rational characteristics instead of the single cable in the case of the worst situated load.

The Water Quantity and Quality for Conjunctive Use in Saline Soil Problem Area

The aim of research project is to evaluate quantity and quality for conjunctive use of groundwater and surface water in lower in the Lower Nam Kam area, Thailand, even though there have been hints of saline soil and water. The mathematical model named WUSMO and MIKE Basin were applied for the calculation of crop water utilization. Results of the study showed that, in irrigation command area, water consumption rely on various sources; rain water 21.56%, irrigation water 78.29%, groundwater and some small surface storage 0.15%. Meanwhile, for non-irrigation command area, water consumption depends on the Nam Kam and Nambang stream 42%, rain water 36.75% and groundwater and some small surface storage 19.18%. Samples of surface water and groundwater were collected for 2 seasons. The criterion was determined for the assessment of suitable water for irrigation. It was found that this area has very limited sources of suitable water for irrigation.

Effect of Temperature on the Performance of Multi-Stage Distillation

The tray/multi-tray distillation process is a topic that has been investigated to great detail over the last decade by many teams such as Jubran et al. [1], Adhikari et al. [2], Mowla et al. [3], Shatat et al. [4] and Fath [5] to name a few. A significant amount of work and effort was spent focusing on modeling and/simulation of specific distillation hardware designs. In this work, we have focused our efforts on investigating and gathering experimental data on several engineering and design variables to quantify their influence on the yield of the multi-tray distillation process. Our goals are to generate experimental performance data to bridge some existing gaps in the design, engineering, optimization and theoretical modeling aspects of the multi-tray distillation process.

A Novel Approach of Power Transformer Diagnostic Using 3D FEM Parametrical Model

This paper deals with a novel approach of power transformers diagnostics. This approach identifies the exact location and the range of a fault in the transformer and helps to reduce operation costs related to handling of the faulty transformer, its disassembly and repair. The advantage of the approach is a possibility to simulate healthy transformer and also all faults, which can occur in transformer during its operation without its disassembling, which is very expensive in practice. The approach is based on creating frequency dependent impedance of the transformer by sweep frequency response analysis measurements and by 3D FE parametrical modeling of the fault in the transformer. The parameters of the 3D FE model are the position and the range of the axial short circuit. Then, by comparing the frequency dependent impedances of the parametrical models with the measured ones, the location and the range of the fault is identified. The approach was tested on a real transformer and showed high coincidence between the real fault and the simulated one.

Gabriel-constrained Parametric Surface Triangulation

The Boundary Representation of a 3D manifold contains FACES (connected subsets of a parametric surface S : R2 -! R3). In many science and engineering applications it is cumbersome and algebraically difficult to deal with the polynomial set and constraints (LOOPs) representing the FACE. Because of this reason, a Piecewise Linear (PL) approximation of the FACE is needed, which is usually represented in terms of triangles (i.e. 2-simplices). Solving the problem of FACE triangulation requires producing quality triangles which are: (i) independent of the arguments of S, (ii) sensitive to the local curvatures, and (iii) compliant with the boundaries of the FACE and (iv) topologically compatible with the triangles of the neighboring FACEs. In the existing literature there are no guarantees for the point (iii). This article contributes to the topic of triangulations conforming to the boundaries of the FACE by applying the concept of parameterindependent Gabriel complex, which improves the correctness of the triangulation regarding aspects (iii) and (iv). In addition, the article applies the geometric concept of tangent ball to a surface at a point to address points (i) and (ii). Additional research is needed in algorithms that (i) take advantage of the concepts presented in the heuristic algorithm proposed and (ii) can be proved correct.

Study and Design of Patient Flow at the Medicine Department of a University Hospital

Most, if not all, public hospitals in Thailand have encountered a common problem regarding the increasing demand for medical services. The increasing number of patients causes so much strain on the hospital-s services, over-crowded, overloaded working hours, staff fatigue, medical error and long waiting time. This research studied the characteristics of operational processes of the medical care services at the medicine department in a large public university hospital. The research focuses on details regarding methods, procedures, processes, resources, and time management in overall processes. The simulation model is used as a tool to analyze the impact of various improvement strategies.

Numerical Modeling of Gas Turbine Engines

In contrast to existing methods which do not take into account multiconnectivity in a broad sense of this term, we develop mathematical models and highly effective combination (BIEM and FDM) numerical methods of calculation of stationary and quasi-stationary temperature field of a profile part of a blade with convective cooling (from the point of view of realization on PC). The theoretical substantiation of these methods is proved by appropriate theorems. For it, converging quadrature processes have been developed and the estimations of errors in the terms of A.Ziqmound continuity modules have been received. For visualization of profiles are used: the method of the least squares with automatic conjecture, device spline, smooth replenishment and neural nets. Boundary conditions of heat exchange are determined from the solution of the corresponding integral equations and empirical relationships. The reliability of designed methods is proved by calculation and experimental investigations heat and hydraulic characteristics of the gas turbine first stage nozzle blade.

Strategies and Compromises: Towards an Integrated Energy and Climate Policy for Egypt

Until recently, energy security and climate change were considered separate issues to be dealt with by policymakers. The two issues are now converging, challenging the security and climate communities to develop a better understanding of how to deal with both issues simultaneously. Although Egypt is not a major contributor to the world's total GHG emissions, it is particularly vulnerable to the potential effects of global climate change such as rising sea levels and changed patterns of rainfall in the Nile Basin. Climate change is a major threat to sustainable growth and development in Egypt, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Egypt-s capacity to respond to the challenges of climate instability will be expanded by improving overall resilience, integrating climate change goals into sustainable development strategies, increasing the use of modern energy systems with reduced carbon intensity, and strengthening international initiatives. This study seeks to establish a framework for considering the complex and evolving links between energy security and climate change, applicable to Egypt.

Minimizing Examinee Collusion with a Latin- Square Treatment Structure

Cheating on standardized tests has been a major concern as it potentially minimizes measurement precision. One major way to reduce cheating by collusion is to administer multiple forms of a test. Even with this approach, potential collusion is still quite large. A Latin-square treatment structure for distributing multiple forms is proposed to further reduce the colluding potential. An index to measure the extent of colluding potential is also proposed. Finally, with a simple algorithm, the various Latin-squares were explored to find the best structure to keep the colluding potential to a minimum.

The Effects of Asymmetric Bracing on Steel Structures under Seismic Loads

Because of architectural condition and structure application, sometimes mass source and stiffness source are not coincidence, and the structure is irregular. The structure is also might be asymmetric as an asymmetric bracing in plan which leads to unbalance distribution of stiffness or because of unbalance distribution of the mass. Both condition lead to eccentricity and torsion in the structure. The deficiency of ordinary code to evaluate the performance of steel structures against earthquake has been caused designing based on performance level or capacity spectrum be used. By using the mentioned methods it is possible to design a structure that its behavior against different earthquakes be predictive. In this article 5- story buildings with different percentage of asymmetric which is because of stiffness changes have been designed. The static and dynamic nonlinear analysis under three acceleration recording has been done. Finally performance level of the structure has been evaluated.

Trends in IT Consulting in Austria

IT consultants often take over an important role as an interface between technological, organizational and managerial structures. As a result, the services offered are in many cases assigned to different disciplines which can cause a lack of transparency on the market for consulting services. However, not all consulting products are suitable for every company because of different frameworks and business processes. In this context the questions arises as to what consulting products are currently offered and how they can be compared as well as how the market for IT consulting services is structured on the supply side. The presented study aims to shed light on the IT consulting market by giving an overview of the current structure of the supply-side for IT consulting services as well as proposing a categorization of the currently available consulting services (consulting fields) in order to provide a theoretical background for the empirical study. Apart from these theoretical considerations, the empirical results of field surveys on the Austrian IT consulting market are presented and analyzed.

Optimum Working Fluid Selection for Automotive Cogeneration System

A co-generation system in automobile can improve thermal efficiency of vehicle in some degree. The waste heat from the engine exhaust and coolant is still attractive energy source that reaches around 60% of the total energy converted from fuel. To maximize the effectiveness of heat exchangers for recovering the waste heat, it is vital to select the most suitable working fluid for the system, not to mention that it is important to find the optimum design for the heat exchangers. The design of heat exchanger is out of scoop of this study; rather, the main focus has been on the right selection of working fluid for the co-generation system. Simulation study was carried out to find the most suitable working fluid that can allow the system to achieve the optimum efficiency in terms of the heat recovery rate and thermal efficiency.

Benchmarking: Performance on ALPS and Formosa Clusters

This paper presents the benchmarking results and performance evaluation of differentclustersbuilt atthe National Center for High-Performance Computingin Taiwan. Performance of processor, memory subsystem andinterconnect is a critical factor in the overall performance of high performance computing platforms. The evaluation compares different system architecture and software platforms. Most supercomputer used HPL to benchmark their system performance, in accordance with the requirement of the TOP500 List. In this paper we consider system memory access factors that affect benchmark performance, such as processor and memory performance.We hope these works will provide useful information for future development and construct cluster system.

Curbing Cybercrime by Application of Internet Users’ Identification System (IUIS) in Nigeria

Cybercrime is now becoming a big challenge in Nigeria apart from the traditional crime. Inability to identify perpetrators is one of the reasons for the growing menace. This paper proposes a design for monitoring internet users’ activities in order to curbing cybercrime. It requires redefining the operations of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) which will now mandate users to be authenticated before accessing the internet. In implementing this work which can be adapted to a larger scale, a virtual router application is developed and configured to mimic a real router device. A sign-up portal is developed to allow users to register with the ISP. The portal asks for identification information which will include bio-data and government issued identification data like National Identity Card number, et cetera. A unique username and password are chosen by the user to enable access to the internet which will be used to reference him to an Internet Protocol Address (IP Address) of any system he uses on the internet and thereby associating him to any criminal act related to that IP address at that particular time. Questions such as “What happen when another user knows the password and uses it to commit crime?” and other pertinent issues are addressed.

Influence of IMV on Space Station

To study the impact of the inter-module ventilation (IMV) on the space station, the Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) model under the influence of IMV, the mathematical model, boundary conditions and calculation method are established and determined to analyze the influence of IMV on cabin air flow characteristics and velocity distribution firstly; and then an integrated overall thermal mathematical model of the space station is used to consider the impact of IMV on thermal management. The results show that: the IMV has a significant influence on the cabin air flow, the flowrate of IMV within a certain range can effectively improve the air velocity distribution in cabin, if too much may lead to its deterioration; IMV can affect the heat deployment of the different modules in space station, thus affecting its thermal management, the use of IMV can effectively maintain the temperature levels of the different modules and help the space station to dissipate the waste heat.

Refinement of Object-Z Specifications Using Morgan-s Refinement Calculus

Morgan-s refinement calculus (MRC) is one of the well-known methods allowing the formality presented in the program specification to be continued all the way to code. On the other hand, Object-Z (OZ) is an extension of Z adding support for classes and objects. There are a number of methods for obtaining code from OZ specifications that can be categorized into refinement and animation methods. As far as we know, only one refinement method exists which refines OZ specifications into code. However, this method does not have fine-grained refinement rules and thus cannot be automated. On the other hand, existing animation methods do not present mapping rules formally and do not support the mapping of several important constructs of OZ, such as all cases of operation expressions and most of constructs in global paragraph. In this paper, with the aim of providing an automatic path from OZ specifications to code, we propose an approach to map OZ specifications into their counterparts in MRC in order to use fine-grained refinement rules of MRC. In this way, having counterparts of our specifications in MRC, we can refine them into code automatically using MRC tools such as RED. Other advantages of our work pertain to proposing mapping rules formally, supporting the mapping of all important constructs of Object-Z, and considering dynamic instantiation of objects while OZ itself does not cover this facility.

Sequence Relationships Similarity of Swine Influenza a (H1N1) Virus

In April 2009, a new variant of Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 emerged in Mexico and spread all over the world. The influenza has three subtypes in human (H1N1, H1N2 and H3N2) Types B and C influenza tend to be associated with local or regional epidemics. Preliminary genetic characterization of the influenza viruses has identified them as swine influenza A (H1N1) viruses. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the Haemagglutinin (HA) and Neuraminidase (NA) are similar to each other and the majority of their genes of swine influenza viruses, two genes coding for the neuraminidase (NA) and matrix (M) proteins are similar to corresponding genes of swine influenza. Sequence similarity between the 2009 A (H1N1) virus and its nearest relatives indicates that its gene segments have been circulating undetected for an extended period. Nucleic acid sequence Maximum Likelihood (MCL) and DNA Empirical base frequencies, Phylogenetic relationship amongst the HA genes of H1N1 virus isolated in Genbank having high nucleotide sequence homology. In this paper we used 16 HA nucleotide sequences from NCBI for computing sequence relationships similarity of swine influenza A virus using the following method MCL the result is 28%, 36.64% for Optimal tree with the sum of branch length, 35.62% for Interior branch phylogeny Neighber – Join Tree, 1.85% for the overall transition/transversion, and 8.28% for Overall mean distance.

Induction Motor Design with Limited Harmonic Currents Using Particle Swarm Optimization

This paper presents an optimal design of poly-phase induction motor using Quadratic Interpolation based Particle Swarm Optimization (QI-PSO). The optimization algorithm considers the efficiency, starting torque and temperature rise as objective function (which are considered separately) and ten performance related items including harmonic current as constraints. The QI-PSO algorithm was implemented on a test motor and the results are compared with the Simulated Annealing (SA) technique, Standard Particle Swarm Optimization (SPSO), and normal design. Some benchmark problems are used for validating QI-PSO. From the test results QI-PSO gave better results and more suitable to motor-s design optimization. Cµ code is used for implementing entire algorithms.

Key Issues and Challenges of Intrusion Detection and Prevention System: Developing Proactive Protection in Wireless Network Environment

Nowadays wireless technology plays an important role in public and personal communication. However, the growth of wireless networking has confused the traditional boundaries between trusted and untrusted networks. Wireless networks are subject to a variety of threats and attacks at present. An attacker has the ability to listen to all network traffic which becoming a potential intrusion. Intrusion of any kind may lead to a chaotic condition. In addition, improperly configured access points also contribute the risk to wireless network. To overcome this issue, a security solution that includes an intrusion detection and prevention system need to be implemented. In this paper, first the security drawbacks of wireless network will be analyzed then investigate the characteristics and also the limitations on current wireless intrusion detection and prevention system. Finally, the requirement of next wireless intrusion prevention system will be identified including some key issues which should be focused on in the future to overcomes those limitations.