Abstract: This paper proposes a balance control scheme for a biped robot to trace an arbitrary path using image information. While moving, it estimates the zero moment point(ZMP) of the biped robot in the next step using a Kalman filter and renders an appropriate balanced pose of the robot. The ZMP can be calculated from the robot's pose, which is measured from the reference object image acquired by a CCD camera on the robot's head. For simplifying the kinematical model, the coordinates systems of individual joints of each leg are aligned and the robot motion is approximated as an inverted pendulum so that a simple linear dynamics, 3D-LIPM(3D-Linear Inverted Pendulum Mode) can be applied. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm has been proven by the experiments performed on unknown trajectory.
Abstract: This study investigates the in-situ regeneration of deactivated Pt-Pd catalyst in a laboratory-scale catalysis reactor. Different regeneration conditions are tested and the activity and characteristics of regenerated catalysts are analyzed. Experimental results show that the conversion efficiencies of C3H6 by different regenerated Pt-Pd catalysts were significantly improved from 77%, 55% and 41% to 86%, 98% and 99%, respectively. The best regeneration conditions was 52ppm ozone, 500oC, and 10min. Regeneration temperature has more influences than ozone concentration and regeneration time. With the comparisons of characteristics of deactivated catalyst and regenerated catalyst, the major poison species (carbon, metals, chloride, and sulfate) on the spent catalysts can be effectively removed by ozone regeneration.
Abstract: This work has been conducted to study on comfort level of drivers of suspended cabin tractor semitrailer. Some drivers suffer from low back pain caused by vibration. The practical significance of applying suspended cabin type of tractor semi trailer was tested at different road conditions, different speed as well as different load conditions for comfortable driver seat interface (x, y, z ) and the process parameters have been prioritized using Taguchi-s L27 orthogonal array. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to optimize the human comfort vibration of suspended cabin tractor semitrailer drivers. The practical significance of applying GA to human comfort to reaction of suspended cabin tractor semitrailer has been validated by means of computing the deviation between predicted and experimentally obtained human comfort to vibration. The optimized acceleration data indicate a little uncomfortable ride for suspended cabin tractor semitrailer.
Abstract: Ethanol has become more attractive in fuel industry
either as fuel itself or an additive that helps enhancing the octane
number and combustibility of gasoline. This research studied a
pressure swing adsorption using cassava-based adsorbent prepared
from mixture of cassava starch and cassava pulp for dehydration of
ethanol vapor. The apparatus used in the experiments consisted of
double adsorption columns, an evaporator, and a vacuum pump. The
feed solution contained 90-92 %wt of ethanol. Three process
variables: adsorption temperatures (110, 120 and 130°C), adsorption
pressures (1 and 2 bar gauge) and feed vapor flow rate (25, 50 and 75
% valve opening of the evaporator) were investigated. According to
the experimental results, the optimal operating condition for this
system was found to be at 2 bar gauge for adsorption pressure, 120°C
for adsorption temperature and 25% valve opening of the evaporator.
Production of 1.48 grams of ethanol with concentration higher than
99.5 wt% per gram of adsorbent was obtained. PSA with cassavabased
adsorbent reported in this study could be an alternative method
for production of nearly anhydrous ethanol. Dehydration of ethanol
vapor achieved in this study is due to an interaction between free
hydroxyl group on the glucose units of the starch and the water
molecules.
Abstract: In most cases, it is considerably difficult to directly measure structural vibration with a lot of sensors because of complex
geometry, time and equipment cost. For this reason, this paper deals
with the problem of locating sensors on a plate model by four advanced sensor placement optimization (S.P.O) techniques. It also
suggests the evaluation index representing the characteristic of orthogonal between each of natural modes. The index value provides the assistance to selecting of proper S.P.O technique and optimal
positions for monitoring of dynamic systems without the experiment.
Abstract: Assessment for image quality traditionally needs its
original image as a reference. The conventional method for assessment
like Mean Square Error (MSE) or Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR)
is invalid when there is no reference. In this paper, we present a new
No-Reference (NR) assessment of image quality using blur and noise.
The recent camera applications provide high quality images by help of
digital Image Signal Processor (ISP). Since the images taken by the
high performance of digital camera have few blocking and ringing
artifacts, we only focus on the blur and noise for predicting the
objective image quality. The experimental results show that the
proposed assessment method gives high correlation with subjective
Difference Mean Opinion Score (DMOS). Furthermore, the proposed
method provides very low computational load in spatial domain and
similar extraction of characteristics to human perceptional assessment.
Abstract: An application framework provides a reusable design
and implementation for a family of software systems. Application
developers extend the framework to build their particular
applications using hooks. Hooks are the places identified to show
how to use and customize the framework. Hooks define the
Framework Interface Classes (FICs) and their possible specifications,
which helps in building reusable test cases for the implementations of
these classes. This paper introduces a novel technique called all
paths-state to generate state-based test cases to test the FICs at class
level. The technique is experimentally evaluated. The empirical
evaluation shows that all paths-state technique produces test cases
with a high degree of coverage for the specifications of the
implemented FICs comparing to test cases generated using round-trip
path and all-transition techniques.
Abstract: The important issue considered in the widespread deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is an efficiency of the energy consumption. In this paper, we present a study of the optimal relay station planning problems using Binary Integer Linear Programming (BILP) model to minimize the energy consumption in WSNs. Our key contribution is that the proposed model not only ensures the required network lifetime but also guarantees the radio connectivity at high level of communication quality. Specially, we take into account effects of noise, signal quality limitation and bit error rate characteristics. Numerical experiments were conducted in various network scenarios. We analyzed the effects of different sensor node densities and distribution on the energy consumption.
Abstract: In this paper, a thermal model of cast- resin dry type
transformer is proposed. The proposed thermal model is solved by
finite element technique to get the temperature at any location of the
transformer. The basic modes of heat transfer such as conduction;
convection and radiation are used to get the steady state temperature
distribution of the transformer. The predicted temperatures are
compared with experimental results reported in this paper and it is
found a good agreement between them. The effects of various
parameters such as width of air duct, ambient temperature and
emissivity of the outer surface were also studied.
Abstract: Liquid-liquid extraction is a process using two immiscible
liquids to extract compounds from one phase without high
temperature requirement. Mostly, the technical implementation of
this process is carried out in mixer-settlers or extraction columns. In
real chemical processes, chemicals may have high viscosity and
contain impurities. These impurities may change the settling behavior
of the process without measurably changing the physical properties
of the phases. In the current study, the settling behavior and the affected
parameters in a high-viscosity system were observed. Batchsettling
experiments were performed to experimentally quantify the
settling behavior and the mixer-settler model of Henschke [1] was
used to evaluate the behavior of the toluene + water system. The
viscosity of the system was increased by adding polyethylene glycol
4000 to the aqueous phase. NaCl and Na2SO4 were used to study the
influence of electrolytes. The results from this study show that increasing
the viscosity of water has a higher influence on the settling
behavior in comparison to the effects of the electrolytes. It can be
seen from the experiments that at high salt concentrations, there was
no effect on the settling behavior.
Abstract: In the article the experience of principle new
technology development of ethnopsychological experiment on the
basis of using other virtual independent experimental variables is
presented. It is shown that ethnic prejudices are the result of forming
and development of specific semantic barriers, arising up in the
conditions of interethnic co-operation and people-s communication.
Their overcoming is more successful in the conditions of the special
organized process of teaching in a polyethnic environment,
characteristic for the modern institute
Abstract: This experiment was conducted to investigate the
effect of different levels of dietary chromium yeast (Cr-yeast) on
thigh meat quality of broiler chicks reared under heat stress
condition. Two hundred and forty Ross male chickens in heat stress
condition (33±3°C) were allocated to five treatments in a completely
randomized design. Treatments were supplemented with 0 (control),
200, 400, 800 and 1200 μg kg-1 Cr in the form of Cr yeast. Twelve
chicks from each treatment were slaughtered at 42 d, to evaluate
moisture, protein, lipid, pH and lipid oxidation of thigh meat.
Protein, moisture, lipid and pH of thigh meat were not affected by
supplemental Cr. Thigh meat lipid tended to decrease in broilers
received 1200 μg kg-1. Storage time increased lipid oxidation of
meat (P
Abstract: In order to supplement the brittle property of concrete,
fibers are added into concrete mixtures. Compared to general concrete,
various characteristics such as tensile strength, bending strength,
bending toughness, and resistance to crack are superior, and even
when cracks occur, improvements on toughness as well as resistance
to shock are excellent due to the growth of fracture energy. Increased
function of steel fiber reinforced concrete can be differentiated
depending on the fiber dispersion, and sand percentage can be an
important influence on the fiber dispersion. Therefore, in this research,
experiments were planned on sand percentage in order to apprehend
the influence of sand percentage on the bending properties and direct
tension of SFRC and basic experiments were conducted on bending
and direct tension in order to recognize the properties of bending
properties and direct tension following the size of the aggregates and
sand percentage.
Abstract: The RANS method with Saffman-s turbulence model
was employed to solve the time-dependent turbulent Navier-Stokes
and energy equations for oscillating pipe flows. The method of
partial sums of the Fourier series is used to analyze the harmonic
velocity and temperature results. The complete structures of the
oscillating pipe flows and the averaged Nusselt numbers on the tube
wall are provided by numerical simulation over wide ranges of ReA
and ReR. Present numerical code is validated by comparing the
laminar flow results to analytic solutions and turbulence flow results
to published experimental data at lower and higher Reynolds
numbers respectively. The effects of ReA and ReR on the velocity,
temperature and Nusselt number distributions have been di scussed.
The enhancement of the heat transfer due to oscillating flows has
also been presented. By the way of analyzing the overall Nusselt
number over wide ranges of the Reynolds number Re and Keulegan-
Carpenter number KC, the optimal ratio of the tube diameter over
the oscillation amplitude is obtained based on the existence of a
nearly constant optimal KC number. The potential application of the
present results in sea water cooling has also been discussed.
Abstract: New regulations and standards for noise emission increasingly compel the automotive firms to make some improvements about decreasing the engine noise. Nowadays, the perforated reactive mufflers which have an effective damping capability are specifically used for this purpose. New designs should be analyzed with respect to both acoustics and back pressure. In this study, a reactive perforated muffler is investigated numerically and experimentally. For an acoustical analysis, the transmission loss which is independent of sound source of the present cross flow, the perforated muffler was analyzed by COMSOL. To be able to validate the numerical results, transmission loss was measured experimentally. Back pressure was obtained based on the flow field analysis and was also compared with experimental results. Numerical results have an approximate error of 20% compared to experimental results.
Abstract: The flow field over a flat roof model building has been numerically investigated in order to determine threedimensional CFD guidelines for the calculation of the turbulent flow over a structure immersed in an atmospheric boundary layer. To this purpose, a complete validation campaign has been performed through a systematic comparison of numerical simulations with wind tunnel experimental data. Wind tunnel measurements and numerical predictions have been compared for five different vertical positions, respectively from the upstream leading edge to the downstream bottom edge of the analyzed model. Flow field characteristics in the neighborhood of the building model have been numerically investigated, allowing a quantification of the capabilities of the CFD code to predict the flow separation and the extension of the recirculation regions. The proposed calculations have allowed the development of a preliminary procedure to be used as guidance in selecting the appropriate grid configuration and corresponding turbulence model for the prediction of the flow field over a three-dimensional roof architecture dominated by flow separation.
Abstract: Enzymatic hydrolysis of starch from natural sources
finds potential application in commercial production of alcoholic
beverage and bioethanol. In this study the effect of starch
concentration, temperature, time and enzyme concentration were
studied and optimized for hydrolysis of Potato starch powder (of
mesh 80/120) into glucose syrup by immobilized (using Sodium
arginate) α-amylase using central composite design. The
experimental result on enzymatic hydrolysis of Potato starch was
subjected to multiple linear regression analysis using MINITAB 14
software. Positive linear effect of starch concentration, enzyme
concentration and time was observed on hydrolysis of Potato starch
by α-amylase. The statistical significance of the model was validated
by F-test for analysis of variance (p ≤ 0.01). The optimum value of
starch concentration, enzyme concentration, temperature, time and
were found to be 6% (w/v), 2% (w/v), 40°C and 80min respectively.
The maximum glucose yield at optimum condition was 2.34 mg/mL.
Abstract: Conceptualization strengthens intelligent systems in generalization skill, effective knowledge representation, real-time inference, and managing uncertain and indefinite situations in addition to facilitating knowledge communication for learning agents situated in real world. Concept learning introduces a way of abstraction by which the continuous state is formed as entities called concepts which are connected to the action space and thus, they illustrate somehow the complex action space. Of computational concept learning approaches, action-based conceptualization is favored because of its simplicity and mirror neuron foundations in neuroscience. In this paper, a new biologically inspired concept learning approach based on the probabilistic framework is proposed. This approach exploits and extends the mirror neuron-s role in conceptualization for a reinforcement learning agent in nondeterministic environments. In the proposed method, instead of building a huge numerical knowledge, the concepts are learnt gradually from rewards through interaction with the environment. Moreover the probabilistic formation of the concepts is employed to deal with uncertain and dynamic nature of real problems in addition to the ability of generalization. These characteristics as a whole distinguish the proposed learning algorithm from both a pure classification algorithm and typical reinforcement learning. Simulation results show advantages of the proposed framework in terms of convergence speed as well as generalization and asymptotic behavior because of utilizing both success and failures attempts through received rewards. Experimental results, on the other hand, show the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method in continuous and noisy environments for a real robotic task such as maze as well as the benefits of implementing an incremental learning scenario in artificial agents.
Abstract: In this paper, the innovative intelligent fuzzy weighted
input estimation method (FWIEM) can be applied to the inverse heat
transfer conduction problem (IHCP) to estimate the unknown
time-varying heat flux efficiently as presented. The feasibility of this
method can be verified by adopting the temperature measurement
experiment. We would like to focus attention on the heat flux
estimation to three kinds of samples (Copper, Iron and Steel/AISI 304)
with the same 3mm thickness. The temperature measurements are then
regarded as the inputs into the FWIEM to estimate the heat flux. The
experiment results show that the proposed algorithm can estimate the
unknown time-varying heat flux on-line.
Abstract: In this study four Holstein steers with rumen fistula
fed 7 kg of dry matter (DM) of diets differing in concentrate to
alfalfa hay ratios as 60:40, 70:30, 80:20, and 90:10 in a 4 × 4 latin
square design. The pH of the ruminal fluid was measured before
the morning feeding (0.0 h) to 8 h post feeding. In this study, a
two-layered feed-forward neural network trained by the
Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm was used for modelling of ruminal
pH. The input variables of the network were time, concentrate to
alfalfa hay ratios (C/F), non fiber carbohydrate (NFC) and neutral
detergent fiber (NDF). The output variable was the ruminal pH.
The modeling results showed that there was excellent agreement
between the experimental data and predicted values, with a high
determination coefficient (R2 >0.96). Therefore, we suggest using
these model-derived biological values to summarize continuously
recorded pH data.