Abstract: Swedish truck industry is investigating the possibility
for implementing the use of Compacted Graphite Iron (CGI) in their
heavy duty diesel engines. Compared to the alloyed gray iron used
today, CGI has superior mechanical properties but not as good
machinability. Another issue that needs to be addressed when
implementing CGI is the inhomogeneous microstructure when the
cast component has different section thicknesses, as in cylinder
blocks. Thinner sections results in finer pearlite, in the material, with
higher strength. Therefore an investigation on its influence on
machinability was needed. This paper focuses on the effect that
interlamellar distance in pearlite has on CGI machinability and
material physical properties. The effect of pearlite content and
nodularity is also examined. The results showed that interlamellar
distance in pearlite did not have as large effect on the material
physical properties or machinability as pearlite content. The paper
also shows the difficulties of obtaining a homogeneous
microstructure in inhomogeneous workpieces.
Abstract: Investigations of the unimolecular decomposition of
vinyl ethyl ether (VEE), vinyl propyl ether (VPE) and vinyl butyl
ether (VBE) have shown that activation of the molecule of a ether
results in formation of a cyclic construction - the transition state (TS),
which may lead to the displacement of the thermodynamic
equilibrium towards the reaction products. The TS is obtained by
applying energy minimization relative to the ground state of an ether
under the program MM2 when taking into account the hydrogen bond
formation between a hydrogen atom of alkyl residue and the extreme
atom of carbon of the vinyl group. The dissociation of TS up to the
products is studied by energy minimization procedure using the
mathematical program Gaussian. The obtained calculation data for
VEE testify that the decomposition of this ether may be conditioned
by hydrogen bond formation for two possible versions: when α- or β-
hydrogen atoms of the ethyl group are bound to carbon atom of the
vinyl group. Applying the same calculation methods to other ethers
(VPE and VBE) it is shown that only in the case of hydrogen bonding
between α-hydrogen atom of the alkyl residue and the extreme atom
of carbon of the vinyl group (αH---C) results in decay of theses
ethers.
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel spectrum sensing technique
for the digital video broadcasting-terrestrial (DVB-T) systems, which
utilizes the periodicity of pilot signals in the orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols. The proposed scheme can
overcome the effect of the timing synchronization error by recorrelating
the correlation values in the same sample distances. The
numerical results demonstrate that the detection probability performance
of the proposed scheme outperforms that of the conventional
scheme when there exists a timing synchronization error.
Abstract: The pulp and paper mill effluent is one of the high
polluting effluent amongst the effluents obtained from polluting
industries. All the available methods for treatment of pulp and paper
mill effluent have certain drawbacks. The coagulation is one of the
cheapest process for treatment of various organic effluents. Thus, the
removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and colour of paper mill
effluent is studied using coagulation process. The batch coagulation
process was performed using various coagulants like: aluminium
chloride, poly aluminium chloride and copper sulphate. The initial
pH of the effluent (Coagulation pH) has tremendous effect on COD
and colour removal. Poly aluminium chloride (PAC) as coagulant
reduced COD to 84 % and 92 % of colour was removed at an
optimum pH 5 and coagulant dose of 8 ml l-1. With aluminium
chloride at an optimum pH = 4 and coagulant dose of 5 g l-1, 74 %
COD and 86 % colour removal were observed. The results using
copper sulphate as coagulant (a less commercial coagulant) were
encouraging. At an optimum pH 6 and mass loading of 5 g l-1, 76 %
COD reduction and 78 % colour reduction were obtained. It was also
observed that after addition of coagulant, the pH of the effluent
decreases. The decrease in pH was highest for AlCl3, which was
followed by PAC and CuSO4. Significant amount of COD reductions
was obtained by coagulation process. Since the coagulation process
is the first stage for treatment of effluent and some of the coagulant
cations usually remain in the treated effluents. Thus, cation like
copper may be one of the good catalyst for second stage of treatment
process like wet oxidation. The copper has been found to be good
oxidation catalyst then iron and aluminum.
Abstract: In this paper, we present an innovative scheme of
blindly extracting message bits from an image distorted by an attack.
Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used to nonlinearly classify the
bits of the embedded message. Traditionally, a hard decoder is used
with the assumption that the underlying modeling of the Discrete
Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients does not appreciably change.
In case of an attack, the distribution of the image coefficients is
heavily altered. The distribution of the sufficient statistics at the
receiving end corresponding to the antipodal signals overlap and a
simple hard decoder fails to classify them properly. We are
considering message retrieval of antipodal signal as a binary
classification problem. Machine learning techniques like SVM is
used to retrieve the message, when certain specific class of attacks is
most probable. In order to validate SVM based decoding scheme, we
have taken Gaussian noise as a test case. We generate a data set using
125 images and 25 different keys. Polynomial kernel of SVM has
achieved 100 percent accuracy on test data.
Abstract: Studies revealing the positive relationship between
trade and income are often criticized with the argument that
“development should mean more than rising incomes". Taking this
argument as a base and utilizing panel data, Davies and Quinlivan [1]
have demonstrated that increases in trade are positively associated
with future increases in social welfare as measured by the Human
Development Index (HDI). The purpose of this study is twofold:
Firstly, utilizing an income based country classification; it is aimed
to investigate whether the positive association between foreign trade
and HDI is valid within all country groups. Secondly, keeping the
same categorization as a base; it is aimed to reveal whether the
positive link between trade and HDI still exists when the income
components of the index are excluded. Employing a panel data
framework of 106 countries, this study reveals that the positive link
between trade and human development is valid only for high and
medium income countries. Moreover, the positive link between trade
and human development diminishes in lower-medium income
countries when only non-income components of the index are taken
into consideration.
Abstract: This research proposed a new design of helmet-shaped
array transcranial magnetic stimulation coil system. It was constructed
using several sagittal directional wires and several coronal directional
wires. By varying the current direction and strength on each wire, this
array coil system could be constructed into the circular coil and
figure-eight coil of different size. Also, this proposed coil system can
flexibly not only change the stimulation location, range, type and
strength, but also change the shape and the channel number of coil
dynamically.
Abstract: In the article there have been revealed the properties
of designing the research teaching the military masters and in the context it has been offered the program of mastering by the masters
military men the methodology of research work, in the course of practical teaching activity there has been considered the developed
and approbated model of organization of the process of mastering by the masters the methodology of research work. As a whole, the research direction of master preparation leaves its
sign to the content of education, forms of organization of educational
process, scientific work of masters. In this connection the offered in
the article properties of organization of research teaching and a model
of organization of mastering by the masters military men the methodology of research work can be taken into account when
designing the content of master preparation.
Abstract: Image compression is one of the most important
applications Digital Image Processing. Advanced medical imaging
requires storage of large quantities of digitized clinical data. Due to
the constrained bandwidth and storage capacity, however, a medical
image must be compressed before transmission and storage. There
are two types of compression methods, lossless and lossy. In Lossless
compression method the original image is retrieved without any
distortion. In lossy compression method, the reconstructed images
contain some distortion. Direct Cosine Transform (DCT) and Fractal
Image Compression (FIC) are types of lossy compression methods.
This work shows that lossy compression methods can be chosen for
medical image compression without significant degradation of the
image quality. In this work DCT and Fractal Compression using
Partitioned Iterated Function Systems (PIFS) are applied on different
modalities of images like CT Scan, Ultrasound, Angiogram, X-ray
and mammogram. Approximately 20 images are considered in each
modality and the average values of compression ratio and Peak
Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) are computed and studied. The quality
of the reconstructed image is arrived by the PSNR values. Based on
the results it can be concluded that the DCT has higher PSNR values
and FIC has higher compression ratio. Hence in medical image
compression, DCT can be used wherever picture quality is preferred
and FIC is used wherever compression of images for storage and
transmission is the priority, without loosing picture quality
diagnostically.
Abstract: This paper presents a new heuristic algorithm for the classical symmetric traveling salesman problem (TSP). The idea of the algorithm is to cut a TSP tour into overlapped blocks and then each block is improved separately. It is conjectured that the chance of improving a good solution by moving a node to a position far away from its original one is small. By doing intensive search in each block, it is possible to further improve a TSP tour that cannot be improved by other local search methods. To test the performance of the proposed algorithm, computational experiments are carried out based on benchmark problem instances. The computational results show that algorithm proposed in this paper is efficient for solving the TSPs.
Abstract: In this article the homotopy continuation method (HCM) to solve the forward kinematic problem of the 3-PRS parallel manipulator is used. Since there are many difficulties in solving the system of nonlinear equations in kinematics of manipulators, the numerical solutions like Newton-Raphson are inevitably used. When dealing with any numerical solution, there are two troublesome problems. One is that good initial guesses are not easy to detect and another is related to whether the used method will converge to useful solutions. Results of this paper reveal that the homotopy continuation method can alleviate the drawbacks of traditional numerical techniques.
Abstract: Numerical studies have been carried out using a two
dimensional code to examine the influence of pressure / thrust
transient of solid propellant rockets at liftoff. This code solves
unsteady Reynolds-averaged thin-layer Navier–Stokes equations by
an implicit LU-factorization time-integration method. The results
from the parametric study indicate that when the port is narrow there
is a possibility of increase in pressure / thrust-rise rate due to
relatively high flame spread rate. Parametric studies further reveal
that flame spread rate can be altered by altering the propellant
properties, igniter jet characteristics and nozzle closure burst pressure
without altering the grain configuration and/or the mission
demanding thrust transient. We observed that when the igniter
turbulent intensity is relatively low the vehicle could liftoff early due
to the early flow choking of the rocket nozzle. We concluded that the
high pressurization-rate has structural implications at liftoff in
addition to transient burning effect. Therefore prudent selection of the
port geometry and the igniter, for meeting the mission requirements,
within the given envelop are meaningful objectives for any designer
for the smooth liftoff of solid propellant rockets.
Abstract: Now a days, a significant part of commercial and governmental organisations like museums, cultural organizations, libraries, commercial enterprises, etc. invest intensively in new technologies for image digitization, digital libraries, image archiving and retrieval. Hence image authorization, authentication and security has become prime need. In this paper, we present a semi-fragile watermarking scheme for color images. The method converts the host image into YIQ color space followed by application of orthogonal dual domains of DCT and DWT transforms. The DCT helps to separate relevant from irrelevant image content to generate silent image features. DWT has excellent spatial localisation to help aid in spatial tamper characterisation. Thus image adaptive watermark is generated based of image features which allows the sharp detection of microscopic changes to locate modifications in the image. Further, the scheme utilises the multipurpose watermark consisting of soft authenticator watermark and chrominance watermark. Which has been proved fragile to some predefined processing like intentinal fabrication of the image or forgery and robust to other incidental attacks caused in the communication channel.
Abstract: In this paper, an intelligent automatic parking control method is proposed. First, the dynamical equation of the rear parking control is derived. Then a fuzzy logic control is proposed to perform the parking planning process. Further, a rear neural network is proposed for the steering control. Through the simulations and experiments, the intelligent auto-parking mode controllers have been shown to achieve the demanded goals with satisfactory control performance and to guarantee the system robustness under parametric variations and external disturbances. To improve some shortcomings and limitations in conventional parking mode control and further to reduce consumption time and prime cost.
Abstract: Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) is an approach to ranking the solutions and finding the best one when two or more solutions are provided. In this study, MCDM approach is proposed to select the most suitable scheduling rule of robotic flexible assembly cells (RFACs). Two MCDM approaches, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) are proposed for solving the scheduling rule selection problem. The AHP method is employed to determine the weights of the evaluation criteria, while the TOPSIS method is employed to obtain final ranking order of scheduling rules. Four criteria are used to evaluate the scheduling rules. Also, four scheduling policies of RFAC are examined to choose the most appropriate one for this purpose. A numerical example illustrates applications of the suggested methodology. The results show that the methodology is practical and works in RFAC settings.
Abstract: This paper presents an application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to forecast actual cost of a project based on the earned value management system (EVMS). For this purpose, some projects randomly selected based on the standard data set , and it is produced necessary progress data such as actual cost ,actual percent complete , baseline cost and percent complete for five periods of project. Then an ANN with five inputs and five outputs and one hidden layer is trained to produce forecasted actual costs. The comparison between real and forecasted data show better performance based on the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) criterion. This approach could be applicable to better forecasting the project cost and result in decreasing the risk of project cost overrun, and therefore it is beneficial for planning preventive actions.
Abstract: Today, node-disjoint routing becomes inessential
technique in communication of packets among various nodes in
networks. Meanwhile AODV (Ad Hoc On-demand Multipath
Distance Vector) creates single-path route between a pair of source
and destination nodes. Some researches has done so far to make
multipath node-disjoint routing based on AODV protocol. But
however their overhead and end-to-end delay are relatively high,
while the detail of their code is not available too. This paper proposes
a new approach of multipath node-disjoint routing based on AODV
protocol. Then the algorithm of analytical model is presented. The
extensive results of this algorithm will be presented in the next paper.
Abstract: Through the course of this paper we outline how
mobile Business Intelligence (m-BI) can help businesses to work
smarter and to improve their agility. When we analyze the industry
from the usage perspective or how interaction with the enterprise BI
system happens via mobile devices, we may easily understand that
there are two major types of mobile BI: passive and active. Active
mobile BI gives provisions for users to interact with the BI systems
on-the-fly. Active mobile business intelligence often works as a
combination of both “push and pull" techniques. Some mistakes were
done in the up-to-day progress of mobile technologies and mobile BI,
as well as some problems that still have to be resolved. We discussed
in the paper rather broadly.
Abstract: The cumulative conformance count (CCC) charts are
widespread in process monitoring of high-yield manufacturing.
Recently, it is found the use of variable sampling interval (VSI)
scheme could further enhance the efficiency of the standard CCC
charts. The average time to signal (ATS) a shift in defect rate has
become traditional measure of efficiency of a chart with the VSI
scheme. Determining the ATS is frequently a difficult and tedious
task. A simple method based on a finite Markov Chain approach for
modeling the ATS is developed. In addition, numerical results are
given.
Abstract: Several numerical schemes utilizing central difference
approximations have been developed to solve the Goursat problem.
However, in a recent years compact discretization methods which
leads to high-order finite difference schemes have been used since it
is capable of achieving better accuracy as well as preserving certain
features of the equation e.g. linearity. The basic idea of the new
scheme is to find the compact approximations to the derivative terms
by differentiating centrally the governing equations. Our primary
interest is to study the performance of the new scheme when applied
to two Goursat partial differential equations against the traditional
finite difference scheme.