Abstract: Transportation of long turbine blades from one place
to another is a difficult process. Hence a feasibility study of
modularization of wind turbine blade was taken from structural
standpoint through finite element analysis. Initially, a non-segmented
blade is modeled and its structural behavior is evaluated to serve as
reference. The resonant, static bending and fatigue tests are simulated
in accordance with IEC61400-23 standard for comparison purpose.
The non-segmented test blade is separated at suitable location based
on trade off studies and the segments are joined with an innovative
double strap bonded joint configuration. The adhesive joint is
modeled by adopting cohesive zone modeling approach in ANSYS.
The developed blade model is analyzed for its structural response
through simulation. Performances of both the blades are found to be
similar, which indicates that, efficient segmentation of the long blade
is possible which facilitates easy transportation of the blades and on
site reassembling. The location selected for segmentation and
adopted joint configuration has resulted in an efficient segmented
blade model which proves the methodology adopted for segmentation
was quite effective. The developed segmented blade appears to be the
viable alternative considering its structural response specifically in
fatigue within considered assumptions.
Abstract: The area of liberty, security and justice within the
European Union is still a work in progress. No one can deny that the
EU struggles between a monistic and a dualist approach.
The aim of our essay is to first review how the European law is
perceived by the rest of the international scene. It will then discuss
two main mechanisms at play: the interpretation of larger
international treaties and the penal mechanisms of European law.
Finally, it will help us understand the role of a penal Europe on the
international scene with concrete examples.
Special attention will be paid to cases that deal with fundamental
rights as they represent an interesting case study in Europe and in the
rest of the World. It could illustrate the aforementioned duality
currently present in the Union’s interpretation of international public
law. On the other hand, it will explore some specific European penal
mechanism through mutual recognition and the European arrest
warrant in the transnational criminality frame.
Concerning the interpretation of the treaties, it will first, underline
the ambiguity and the general nature of some treaties that leave the
EU exposed to tension and misunderstanding then it will review the
validity of an EU act (whether or not it is compatible with the rules of
International law).
Finally, it will focus on the most complete manifestation of liberty,
security and justice through the principle of mutual recognition. Used
initially in commercial matters, it has become “the cornerstone” of
European construction. It will see how it is applied in judicial
decisions (its main event and achieving success is via the European
arrest warrant) and how European member states have managed to
develop this cooperation.
Abstract: The paper presents new results concerning selection of
optimal information fusion formula for ensembles of C-OTDR
channels. The goal of information fusion is to create an integral
classificator designed for effective classification of seismoacoustic
target events. The LPBoost (LP-β and LP-B variants), the Multiple
Kernel Learning, and Weighing of Inversely as Lipschitz Constants
(WILC) approaches were compared. The WILC is a brand new
approach to optimal fusion of Lipschitz Classifiers Ensembles.
Results of practical usage are presented.
Abstract: This paper introduces symbiotic organism search (SOS)
for solving capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP). SOS is a new
approach in metaheuristics fields and never been used to solve discrete
problems. A sophisticated decoding method to deal with a discrete
problem setting in CVRP is applied using the basic symbiotic
organism search (SOS) framework. The performance of the algorithm
was evaluated on a set of benchmark instances and compared results
with best known solution. The computational results show that the
proposed algorithm can produce good solution as a preliminary
testing. These results indicated that the proposed SOS can be applied
as an alternative to solve the capacitated vehicle routing problem.
Abstract: Experimental studies to investigate the depth of the
scour conducted at a side-weir intersection located at the 1800 curved
flume which located Hydraulic Laboratory of Yıldız Technical
University, Istanbul, Turkey. Side weirs were located at the middle of
the straight part of the main channel. Three different lengths (25, 40
and 50 cm) and three different weir crest height (7, 10 and 12 cm) of
the side weir placed on the side weir station. There is no scour when
the material is only kaolin. Therefore, the cohesive bed was prepared
by properly mixing clay material (kaolin) with 31% sand in all
experiments. Following 24h consolidation time, in order to observe
the effect of flow intensity on the scour depth, experiments were
carried out for five different upstream Froude numbers in the range of
0.33-0.81.
As a result of this study the relation between scour depth and
upstream flow intensity as a function of time have been established.
The longitudinal velocities decreased along the side weir; towards the
downstream due to overflow over the side-weirs. At the beginning,
the scour depth increases rapidly with time and then asymptotically
approached constant values in all experiments for all side weir
dimensions as in non-cohesive sediment. Thus, the scour depth
reached equilibrium conditions. Time to equilibrium depends on the
approach flow intensity and the dimensions of side weirs. For
different heights of the weir crest, dimensionless scour depths
increased with increasing upstream Froude number. Equilibrium
scour depths which formed 7 cm side-weir crest height were obtained
higher than that of the 12 cm side-weir crest height. This means when
side-weir crest height increased equilibrium scour depths decreased.
Although the upstream side of the scour hole is almost vertical, the
downstream side of the hole is inclined.
Abstract: Chitosan functionalized Fe3O4-Au core shell
nanoparticles have been prepared using a two-step wet chemical
approach using NaBH4 as reducing agent for formation of Au in
ethylene glycol. X-ray diffraction studies shows individual phases of
Fe3O4 and Au in the as prepared samples with crystallite size of 5.9
and 11.4 nm respectively. The functionalization of the core-shell
nanostructure with Chitosan has been confirmed using Fourier
transform infrared spectroscopy along with signatures of octahedral
and tetrahedral sites of Fe3O4 below 600cm-1. Mössbauer
spectroscopy shows decrease in particle-particle interaction in
presence of Au shell (72% sextet) than pure oleic coated Fe3O4
nanoparticles (88% sextet) at room temperature. At 80K, oleic acid
coated Fe3O4 shows only sextets whereas the Chitosan functionalized
Fe3O4 and Chitosan functionalized Fe3O4@Au core shell show
presence of 5 and 11% doublet, respectively.
Abstract: This paper investigates and compares the community
support for tourism development between two groups of minority
ethnic descendants in Malacca, Malaysia, namely the Baba-Nyonya
and Portuguese. A descriptive research design using a quantitative
method with self-reported and self-administered questionnaires
through across-sectional approach was applied. Through the
descriptive and inferential statistics, some significantly useful
insights pertaining to the issue investigated were obtained. The
research outcomes indicate that the sense of community is somewhat
more effective in small communities in terms of togetherness,
closeness and a sense of belonging compared to the slightly bigger
minority group. In addition, the sense of community attributes
through membership, influence, integration and shared emotional
connections contributes to community participation in tourism
development regardless of which ethnic group one belongs to.
Abstract: Quantitative analyses of whisker movements provide a
means to study functional recovery and regeneration of mouse facial
nerve after an injury. However, accurate tracking of the mouse whisker
movement is challenging. Most methods for whisker tracking require
manual intervention, e.g. fixing the head of the mouse during a study.
Here we describe a semi-automated image processing method, which
is applied to high-speed video recordings of free-moving mice to track
the whisker movements. We first track the head movement of a mouse
by delineating the lower head contour frame-by-frame that allows for
detection of the location and orientation of the head. Then, a region of
interest is identified for each frame; the subsequent application of a
mask and the Hough transform detects the selected whiskers on each
side of the head. Our approach is used to examine the functional
recovery of damaged facial nerves in mice over a course of 21 days.
Abstract: To understand the friction stir welding process, it is
very important to know the nature of the material flow in and around
the tool. The process is a combination of both thermal as well as
mechanical work i.e. it is a coupled thermo-mechanical process.
Numerical simulations are very much essential in order to obtain a
complete knowledge of the process as well as the physics underlying
it. In the present work a model based approach is adopted in order to
study material flow. A thermo-mechanical based CFD model is
developed using a Finite Element package, Comsol Multiphysics.
The fluid flow analysis is done. The model simultaneously predicts
shear strain fields, shear strain rates and shear stress over the entire
workpiece for the given conditions. The flow fields generated by the
streamline plot give an idea of the material flow. The variation of
dynamic viscosity, velocity field and shear strain fields with various
welding parameters is studied. Finally the result obtained from the
above mentioned conditions is discussed elaborately and concluded.
Abstract: Waste load allocation (WLA) policies may use multiobjective
optimization methods to find the most appropriate and
sustainable solutions. These usually intend to simultaneously
minimize two criteria, total abatement costs (TC) and environmental
violations (EV). If other criteria, such as inequity, need for
minimization as well, it requires introducing more binary
optimizations through different scenarios. In order to reduce the
calculation steps, this study presents value index as an innovative
decision making approach. Since the value index contains both the
environmental violation and treatment costs, it can be maximized
simultaneously with the equity index. It implies that the definition of
different scenarios for environmental violations is no longer required.
Furthermore, the solution is not necessarily the point with minimized
total costs or environmental violations. This idea is testified for Haraz
River, in north of Iran. Here, the dissolved oxygen (DO) level of river
is simulated by Streeter-Phelps equation in MATLAB software. The
WLA is determined for fish farms using multi-objective particle
swarm optimization (MOPSO) in two scenarios. At first, the trade-off
curves of TC-EV and TC-Inequity are plotted separately as the
conventional approach. In the second, the Value-Equity curve is
derived. The comparative results show that the solutions are in a
similar range of inequity with lower total costs. This is due to the
freedom of environmental violation attained in value index. As a
result, the conventional approach can well be replaced by the value
index particularly for problems optimizing these objectives. This
reduces the process to achieve the best solutions and may find better
classification for scenario definition. It is also concluded that decision
makers are better to focus on value index and weighting its contents
to find the most sustainable alternatives based on their requirements.
Abstract: In this contribution two approaches for calculating
optimal trajectories for highly automated vehicles are presented and
compared. The first one is based on a non-linear vehicle model, used
for evaluation. The second one is based on a simplified model and
can be implemented on a current ECU. In usual driving situations
both approaches show very similar results.
Abstract: The posterior reference for the ala tragal line is a
cause of confusion, with different authors suggesting different
locations as to the superior, middle or inferior part of the tragus. This
study was conducted on 200 subjects to evaluate if any correlation
exists between the variation of angulation of palatal throat form and
the relative parallelism of occlusal plane to ala-tragal line at different
tragal levels. A custom made Occlusal Plane Analyzer was used to
check the parallelism between the ala-tragal line and occlusal plane.
A lateral cephalogram was shot for each subject to measure the
angulation of the palatal throat form. Fisher’s exact test was used to
evaluate the correlation between the angulation of the palatal throat
form and the relative parallelism of occlusal plane to the ala tragal
line. Also, a classification was formulated for the palatal throat form,
based on confidence interval. From the results of the study, the
inferior part, middle part and superior part of the tragus were seen as
the reference points in 49.5%, 32% and 18.5% of the subjects
respectively. Class I palatal throat form (41degree-50 degree), Class
II palatal throat form (below 41 degree) and Class III palatal throat
form (above 50 degree) were seen in 42%, 43% and 15% of the
subjects respectively. It was also concluded that there is no
significant correlation between the variation in the angulations of the
palatal throat form and the relative parallelism of occlusal plane to
the ala-tragal line.
Abstract: One of the most famous techniques which affect the
efficiency of a production line is the assembly line balancing (ALB)
technique. This paper examines the balancing effect of a whole
production line of a real auto glass manufacturer in three steps. In the
first step, processing time of each activity in the workstations is
generated according to a practical approach. In the second step, the
whole production process is simulated and the bottleneck stations
have been identified, and finally in the third step, several
improvement scenarios are generated to optimize the system
throughput, and the best one is proposed. The main contribution of
the current research is the proposed framework which combines two
famous approaches including Assembly Line Balancing and
Optimization via Simulation technique (OvS). The results show that
the proposed framework could be applied in practical environments,
easily.
Abstract: This paper contains the description of argumentation
approach for the problem of inductive concept formation. It is
proposed to use argumentation, based on defeasible reasoning with
justification degrees, to improve the quality of classification models,
obtained by generalization algorithms. The experiment’s results on
both clear and noisy data are also presented.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present the concept of an
agile enterprise model and to initiate discussion on the research
assumptions of the model presented. The implementation of the
research project "The agility of enterprises in the process of adapting
to the environment and its changes" began in August 2014 and is
planned to last three years. The article has the form of a work-inprogress
paper which aims to verify and initiate a debate over the
proposed research model. In the literature there are very few
publications relating to research into agility; it can be concluded that
the most controversial issue in this regard is the method of measuring
agility. In previous studies the operationalization of agility was often
fragmentary, focusing only on selected areas of agility, for example
manufacturing, or analysing only selected sectors. As a result the
measures created to date can only be treated as contributory to the
development of precise measurement tools. This research project
aims to fill a cognitive gap in the literature with regard to the
conceptualization and operationalization of an agile company. Thus,
the original contribution of the author of this project is the
construction of a theoretical model that integrates manufacturing
agility (consisting mainly in adaptation to the environment) and
strategic agility (based on proactive measures). The author of this
research project is primarily interested in the attributes of an agile
enterprise which indicate that the company is able to rapidly adapt to
changing circumstances and behave pro-actively.
Abstract: Due to the increasing efforts on saving our natural
environment a change in the structure of energy resources can be
observed - an increasing fraction of a renewable energy sources.
In many countries traditional underground coal mining loses its
significance but there are still countries, like Poland or Germany, in
which the coal based technologies have the greatest fraction in a total
energy production. This necessitates to make an effort to limit the
costs and negative effects of underground coal mining. The longwall
complex is as essential part of the underground coal mining. The
safety and the effectiveness of the work is strongly dependent of the
diagnostic state of powered roof supports.
The building of a useful and reliable diagnostic system requires
a lot of data. As the acquisition of a data of any possible operating
conditions it is important to have a possibility to generate a demanded
artificial working characteristics. In this paper a new approach of
modelling a leg pressure in the single unit of powered roof support.
The model is a result of the analysis of a typical working cycles.
Abstract: The problems arising from unbalanced data sets
generally appear in real world applications. Due to unequal class
distribution, many researchers have found that the performance of
existing classifiers tends to be biased towards the majority class. The
k-nearest neighbors’ nonparametric discriminant analysis is a method
that was proposed for classifying unbalanced classes with good
performance. In this study, the methods of discriminant analysis are
of interest in investigating misclassification error rates for classimbalanced
data of three diabetes risk groups. The purpose of this
study was to compare the classification performance between
parametric discriminant analysis and nonparametric discriminant
analysis in a three-class classification of class-imbalanced data of
diabetes risk groups. Data from a project maintaining healthy
conditions for 599 employees of a government hospital in Bangkok
were obtained for the classification problem. The employees were
divided into three diabetes risk groups: non-risk (90%), risk (5%),
and diabetic (5%). The original data including the variables of
diabetes risk group, age, gender, blood glucose, and BMI were
analyzed and bootstrapped for 50 and 100 samples, 599 observations
per sample, for additional estimation of the misclassification error
rate. Each data set was explored for the departure of multivariate
normality and the equality of covariance matrices of the three risk
groups. Both the original data and the bootstrap samples showed nonnormality
and unequal covariance matrices. The parametric linear
discriminant function, quadratic discriminant function, and the
nonparametric k-nearest neighbors’ discriminant function were
performed over 50 and 100 bootstrap samples and applied to the
original data. Searching the optimal classification rule, the choices of
prior probabilities were set up for both equal proportions (0.33: 0.33:
0.33) and unequal proportions of (0.90:0.05:0.05), (0.80: 0.10: 0.10)
and (0.70, 0.15, 0.15). The results from 50 and 100 bootstrap samples
indicated that the k-nearest neighbors approach when k=3 or k=4 and
the defined prior probabilities of non-risk: risk: diabetic as 0.90:
0.05:0.05 or 0.80:0.10:0.10 gave the smallest error rate of
misclassification. The k-nearest neighbors approach would be
suggested for classifying a three-class-imbalanced data of diabetes
risk groups.
Abstract: Networking is important among students to achieve
better understanding. Social networking plays an important role in the
education. Realizing its huge potential, various organizations,
including institutions of higher learning have moved to the area of
social networks to interact with their students especially through
Facebook. Therefore, measuring the effectiveness of Facebook as a
learning tool has become an area of interest to academicians and
researchers. Therefore, this study tried to integrate and propose new
theoretical and empirical evidences by linking the western idea of
adopting Facebook as an alternative learning platform from a
Malaysian perspective. This study, thus, aimed to fill a gap by being
among the pioneering research that tries to study the effectiveness of
adopting Facebook as a learning platform across other cultural
settings, namely Malaysia. Structural equation modeling was
employed for data analysis and hypothesis testing. This study finding
has provided some insights that would likely affect students’
awareness towards using Facebook as an alternative learning
platform in the Malaysian higher learning institutions. At the end,
future direction is proposed.
Abstract: The growth in the volume of text data such as books
and articles in libraries for centuries has imposed to establish
effective mechanisms to locate them. Early techniques such as
abstraction, indexing and the use of classification categories have
marked the birth of a new field of research called "Information
Retrieval". Information Retrieval (IR) can be defined as the task of
defining models and systems whose purpose is to facilitate access to
a set of documents in electronic form (corpus) to allow a user to find
the relevant ones for him, that is to say, the contents which matches
with the information needs of the user. This paper presents a new
semantic indexing approach of a documentary corpus. The indexing
process starts first by a term weighting phase to determine the
importance of these terms in the documents. Then the use of a
thesaurus like Wordnet allows moving to the conceptual level.
Each candidate concept is evaluated by determining its level of
representation of the document, that is to say, the importance of the
concept in relation to other concepts of the document. Finally, the
semantic index is constructed by attaching to each concept of the
ontology, the documents of the corpus in which these concepts are
found.
Abstract: Microscopic simulation tool kits allow for
consideration of the two processes of railway operations and the
previous timetable production. Block occupation conflicts on both
process levels are often solved by using defined train priorities. These
conflict resolutions (dispatching decisions) generate reactionary
delays to the involved trains. The sum of reactionary delays is
commonly used to evaluate the quality of railway operations, which
describes the timetable robustness. It is either compared to an
acceptable train performance or the delays are appraised
economically by linear monetary functions. It is impossible to
adequately evaluate dispatching decisions without a well-founded
objective function. This paper presents a new approach for the
evaluation of dispatching decisions. The approach uses mode choice
models and considers the behaviour of the end-customers. These
models evaluate the reactionary delays in more detail and consider
other competing modes of transport. The new approach pursues the
coupling of a microscopic model of railway operations with the
macroscopic choice mode model. At first, it will be implemented for
railway operations process but it can also be used for timetable
production. The evaluation considers the possibility for the customer
to interchange to other transport modes. The new approach starts to
look at rail and road, but it can also be extended to air travel. The
result of mode choice models is the modal split. The reactions by the
end-customers have an impact on the revenue of the train operating
companies. Different purposes of travel have different payment
reserves and tolerances towards late running. Aside from changes to
revenues, longer journey times can also generate additional costs.
The costs are either time- or track-specific and arise from required
changes to rolling stock or train crew cycles. Only the variable values
are summarised in the contribution margin, which is the base for the
monetary evaluation of delays. The contribution margin is calculated
for different possible solutions to the same conflict. The conflict
resolution is optimised until the monetary loss becomes minimal. The
iterative process therefore determines an optimum conflict resolution
by monitoring the change to the contribution margin. Furthermore, a
monetary value of each dispatching decision can also be derived.