Abstract: The railway transport is considered as a one of the
most environmentally friendly mode of transport. With future
prediction of increasing of freight transport there are lines facing
problems with demanded capacity. Increase of the track capacity
could be achieved by infrastructure constructive adjustments. The
contribution shows how the travel time can be minimized and the
track capacity increased by changing some of the basic infrastructure
and operation parameters, for example, the minimal curve radius of
the track, the number of tracks, or the usable track length at stations.
Calculation of the necessary parameter changes is based on the
fundamental physical laws applied to the train movement, and
calculation of the occupation time is dependent on the changes of
controlling the traffic between the stations.
Abstract: Large scale Indian manufacturers started
implementing Six Sigma to their supply core to fulfill the endless
need of high quality products. As well, they initiated encouraging
their suppliers to apply the well-ascertain SS management practice
and kept no resource for supplier enterprises, generally small midsized
enterprises to think for the admittance of Six Sigma as a quality
promotion drive. There are many issues to study for requisite changes
before the introduction of Six Sigma in auto SMEs. This paper
converges on impeding factors while implementing SS drive and also
pinpoints the gains achieved through successful implementation. The
result of this study suggest some operational guidelines for effective
implementation of Six Sigma from evidences acquired through
research questionnaire and interviews with industrial professionals,
apportioned to assort auto sector mid-sized enterprises (MSEs) in
India.
Abstract: Interaction between mixing and crystallization is often
ignored despite the fact that it affects almost every aspect of the
operation including nucleation, growth, and maintenance of the
crystal slurry. This is especially pronounced in multiple impeller
systems where flow complexity is increased. By choosing proper
mixing parameters, what closely depends on the knowledge of the
hydrodynamics in a mixing vessel, the process of batch cooling
crystallization may considerably be improved. The values that render
useful information when making this choice are mixing time and
power consumption. The predominant motivation for this work was
to investigate the extent to which radial dual impeller configuration
influences mixing time, power consumption and consequently the
values of metastable zone width and nucleation rate. In this research,
crystallization of borax was conducted in a 15 dm3 baffled batch
cooling crystallizer with an aspect ratio (H/T) of 1.3. Mixing was
performed using two straight blade turbines (4-SBT) mounted on the
same shaft that generated radial fluid flow. Experiments were
conducted at different values of N/NJS ratio (impeller speed/
minimum impeller speed for complete suspension), D/T ratio
(impeller diameter/crystallizer diameter), c/D ratio (lower impeller
off-bottom clearance/impeller diameter), and s/D ratio (spacing
between impellers/impeller diameter). Mother liquor was saturated at
30°C and was cooled at the rate of 6°C/h. Its concentration was
monitored in line by Na-ion selective electrode. From the values of
supersaturation that was monitored continuously over process time, it
was possible to determine the metastable zone width and
subsequently the nucleation rate using the Mersmann’s nucleation
criterion. For all applied dual impeller configurations, the mixing
time was determined by potentiometric method using a pulse
technique, while the power consumption was determined using a
torque meter produced by Himmelstein & Co. Results obtained in
this investigation show that dual impeller configuration significantly
influences the values of mixing time, power consumption as well as
the metastable zone width and nucleation rate. A special attention
should be addressed to the impeller spacing considering the flow
interaction that could be more or less pronounced depending on the
spacing value.
Abstract: We present an approach to triangle mesh simplification
designed to be executed on the GPU. We use a quadric error metric
to calculate an error value for each vertex of the mesh and order all
vertices based on this value. This step is followed by the parallel
removal of a number of vertices with the lowest calculated error
values. To allow for the parallel removal of multiple vertices we use
a set of per-vertex boundaries that prevent mesh foldovers even when
simplification operations are performed on neighbouring vertices. We
execute multiple iterations of the calculation of the vertex errors,
ordering of the error values and removal of vertices until either a
desired number of vertices remains in the mesh or a minimum error
value is reached. This parallel approach is used to speed up the
simplification process while maintaining mesh topology and avoiding
foldovers at every step of the simplification.
Abstract: The maintenance of work rolls in hot strip processing
has been lengthy and difficult tasks for hot strip manufacturer
because heavy work rolls have to be taken out of the production line,
which could take hours. One way to increase the time between
maintenance is to improve the effectiveness of the work roll cooling
system such that the wear and tear more slowly occurs, while the
operation cost is kept low. Therefore, this study aims to improve the
work roll cooling system by providing the manufacturer the
relationship between the work-roll temperature reduced by cooling
and the water flow that can help manufacturer determining the more
effective water flow of the cooling system. The relationship is found
using simulation with a systematic process adjustment so that the
satisfying quality of product is achieved. Results suggest that the
manufacturer could reduce the water flow by 9% with roughly the
same performance. With the same process adjustment, the feasibility
of finishing-mill-stand reduction is also investigated. Results suggest
its possibility.
Abstract: The UK has had its fair share of the shale gas
revolutionary waves blowing across the global oil and gas industry at
present. Although, its exploitation is widely agreed to have been
delayed, shale gas was looked upon favorably by the UK Parliament
when they recognized it as genuine energy source and granted
licenses to industry to search and extract the resource. This, although
a significant progress by industry, there yet remains another test the
UK fracking resource must pass in order to render shale gas
extraction feasible – it must be economically extractible and
sustainably so. Developing unconventional resources is much more
expensive and risky, and for shale gas wells, producing in
commercial volumes is conditional upon drilling horizontal wells and
hydraulic fracturing, techniques which increase CAPEX. Meanwhile,
investment in shale gas development projects is sensitive to gas price
and technical and geological risks. Using a Two-Factor Model, the
economics of the Bowland shale wells were analyzed and the
operational conditions under which fracking is profitable in the UK
was characterized. We find that there is a great degree of flexibility
about Opex spending; hence Opex does not pose much threat to the
fracking industry in the UK. However, we discover Bowland shale
gas wells fail to add value at gas price of $8/ Mmbtu. A minimum gas
price of $12/Mmbtu at Opex of no more than $2/ Mcf and no more
than $14.95M Capex are required to create value within the present
petroleum tax regime, in the UK fracking industry.
Abstract: This paper investigates the thermo-electric effects
around the crack and notch tips under the electric current load. The
research methods include the finite element analysis and thermal
imaging experiment. The finite element solutions show that the electric
current density field concentrates at the crack tip. Due to the Joule
heating, this electric concentration causes the hot spot at the tip zone.
From numerical and experimental results, this hot spot is identified.
The temperature of the hot spot is affected by the electric load,
operation time and geometry of the sample.
Abstract: In this paper, a method has been developed to
construct the membership surfaces of row and column vectors and
arithmetic operations of imprecise matrix. A matrix with imprecise
elements would be called an imprecise matrix. The membership
surface of imprecise vector has been already shown based on
Randomness-Impreciseness Consistency Principle. The Randomness-
Impreciseness Consistency Principle leads to defining a normal law
of impreciseness using two different laws of randomness. In this
paper, the author has shown row and column membership surfaces
and arithmetic operations of imprecise matrix and demonstrated with
the help of numerical example.
Abstract: Mumbai, being traditionally the epicenter of India's
trade and commerce, the existing major ports such as Mumbai and
Jawaharlal Nehru Ports (JN) situated in Thane estuary are also
developing its waterfront facilities. Various developments over the
passage of decades in this region have changed the tidal flux
entering/leaving the estuary. The intake at Pir-Pau is facing the
problem of shortage of water in view of advancement of shoreline,
while jetty near Ulwe faces the problem of ship scheduling due to
existence of shallower depths between JN Port and Ulwe Bunder. In
order to solve these problems, it is inevitable to have information
about tide levels over a long duration by field measurements.
However, field measurement is a tedious and costly affair;
application of artificial intelligence was used to predict water levels
by training the network for the measured tide data for one lunar tidal
cycle. The application of two layered feed forward Artificial Neural
Network (ANN) with back-propagation training algorithms such as
Gradient Descent (GD) and Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) was used to
predict the yearly tide levels at waterfront structures namely at Ulwe
Bunder and Pir-Pau. The tide data collected at Apollo Bunder, Ulwe,
and Vashi for a period of lunar tidal cycle (2013) was used to train,
validate and test the neural networks. These trained networks having
high co-relation coefficients (R= 0.998) were used to predict the tide
at Ulwe, and Vashi for its verification with the measured tide for the
year 2000 & 2013. The results indicate that the predicted tide levels
by ANN give reasonably accurate estimation of tide. Hence, the
trained network is used to predict the yearly tide data (2015) for
Ulwe. Subsequently, the yearly tide data (2015) at Pir-Pau was
predicted by using the neural network which was trained with the
help of measured tide data (2000) of Apollo and Pir-Pau. The analysis of measured data and study reveals that: The
measured tidal data at Pir-Pau, Vashi and Ulwe indicate that there is
maximum amplification of tide by about 10-20 cm with a phase lag
of 10-20 minutes with reference to the tide at Apollo Bunder
(Mumbai). LM training algorithm is faster than GD and with increase
in number of neurons in hidden layer and the performance of the
network increases. The predicted tide levels by ANN at Pir-Pau and
Ulwe provides valuable information about the occurrence of high and
low water levels to plan the operation of pumping at Pir-Pau and
improve ship schedule at Ulwe.
Abstract: This paper describes a simple way to control the speed
of PMBLDC motor using Fuzzy logic control method. In the
conventional PI controller the performance of the motor system is
simulated and the speed is regulated by using PI controller. These
methods used to improve the performance of PMSM drives, but in
some cases at different operating conditions when the dynamics of
the system also vary over time and it can change the reference speed,
parameter variations and the load disturbance. The simulation is
powered with the MATLAB program to get a reliable and flexible
simulation. In order to highlight the effectiveness of the speed control
method the FLC method is used. The proposed method targeted in
achieving the improved dynamic performance and avoids the
variations of the motor drive. This drive has high accuracy, robust
operation from near zero to high speed. The effectiveness and
flexibility of the individual techniques of the speed control method
will be thoroughly discussed for merits and demerits and finally
verified through simulation and experimental results for comparative
analysis.
Abstract: In the aviation industry, many faults may occur frequently during the maintenance processes and assembly operations of complex structured aircrafts because of their high dependencies of components. These faults affect the quality of aircraft parts or developed modules adversely. Technical employee requires long time and high labor force while checking the correctness of each component. In addition, the person must be trained regularly because of the ever-growing and changing technology. Generally, the cost of this training is very high. Augmented Reality (AR) technology reduces the cost of training radically and improves the effectiveness of the training. In this study, the usage of AR technology in the aviation industry has been investigated and the effectiveness of AR with heads-up display glasses has been examined. An application has been developed for comparison of production process with AR and manual one.
Abstract: Although Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks (MWSNs),
which consist of mobile sensor nodes (MSNs), can cover a wide range
of observation region by using a small number of sensor nodes, they
need to construct a network to collect the sensing data on the base
station by moving the MSNs. As an effective method, the network
construction method based on Virtual Rails (VRs), which is referred
to as VR method, has been proposed. In this paper, we propose two
types of effective techniques for the VR method. They can prolong
the operation time of the network, which is limited by the battery
capabilities of MSNs and the energy consumption of MSNs. The
first technique, an effective arrangement of VRs, almost equalizes
the number of MSNs belonging to each VR. The second technique,
an adaptive movement method of MSNs, takes into account the
residual energy of battery. In the simulation, we demonstrate that each
technique can improve the network lifetime and the combination of
both techniques is the most effective.
Abstract: Energy consumption data, in particular those involving
public buildings, are impacted by many factors: the building structure,
climate/environmental parameters, construction, system operating
condition, and user behavior patterns. Traditional methods for data
analysis are insufficient. This paper delves into the data mining
technology to determine its application in the analysis of building
energy consumption data including energy consumption prediction,
fault diagnosis, and optimal operation. Recent literature are reviewed
and summarized, the problems faced by data mining technology in the
area of energy consumption data analysis are enumerated, and research
points for future studies are given.
Abstract: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) has been used in many advanced wireless communication
systems due to its high spectral efficiency and robustness to
frequency selective fading channels. However, the major concern
with OFDM system is the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR)
of the transmitted signal. Some of the popular techniques used for
PAPR reduction in OFDM system are conventional partial transmit
sequences (CPTS) and clipping. In this paper, a parallel
combination/hybrid scheme of PAPR reduction using clipping and
CPTS algorithms is proposed. The proposed method intelligently
applies both the algorithms in order to reduce both PAPR as well as
computational complexity. The proposed scheme slightly degrades
bit error rate (BER) performance due to clipping operation and it can
be reduced by selecting an appropriate value of the clipping ratio
(CR). The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm
achieves significant PAPR reduction with much reduced
computational complexity.
Abstract: Excessive vibration means increased wear, increased
repair efforts, bad product selection & quality and high energy
consumption. This may be sometimes experienced by cavitation or
suction/discharge recirculation which could occur only when net
positive suction head available NPSHA drops below the net positive
suction head required NPSHR. Cavitation can cause axial surging, if it
is excessive, will damage mechanical seals, bearings, possibly other
pump components frequently, and shorten the life of the impeller.
Efforts have been made to explain Suction Energy (SE), Specific
Speed (Ns), Suction Specific Speed (Nss), NPSHA, NPSHR & their
significance, possible reasons of cavitation /internal recirculation, its
diagnostics and remedial measures to arrest and prevent cavitation in
this paper. A case study is presented by the author highlighting that
the root cause of unwanted noise and vibration is due to cavitation,
caused by high specific speeds or inadequate net- positive suction
head available which results in damages to material surfaces of
impeller & suction bells and degradation of machine performance, its
capacity and efficiency too. Author strongly recommends revisiting
the technical specifications of CW pumps to provide sufficient NPSH
margin ratios >1.5, for future projects and Nss be limited to 8500 -
9000 for cavitation free operation.
Abstract: The out-of-band impedance environment is considered
to be of paramount importance in engineering the in-band impedance
environment. Presenting the frequency independent and constant outof-
band impedances across the wide modulation bandwidth is
extremely important for reliable device characterization for future
wireless systems. This paper presents an out-of-band impedance
optimization scheme based on simultaneous engineering of
significant baseband components IF1 (twice the modulation
frequency) and IF2 (four times the modulation frequency) and higher
baseband components such as IF3 (six times the modulation
frequency) and IF4 (eight times the modulation frequency) to
engineer the in-band impedance environment. The investigations
were carried out on a 10W GaN HEMT device driven to deliver a
peak envelope power of approximately 40.5dBm under modulated
excitation. The presentation of frequency independent baseband
impedances to all the significant baseband components whilst
maintaining the optimum termination for fundamental tones as well
as reactive termination for 2nd harmonic under class-J mode of
operation has outlined separate optimum impedances for best
intermodulation (IM) linearity.
Abstract: The study of the aerodynamics related to the
improvement in the acting of airplanes and automobiles with the
objective of being reduced the effect of the attrition of the air on
structures, providing larger speeds and smaller consumption of fuel.
The application of the knowledge of the aerodynamics not more
limits to the aeronautical and automobile industries. Therefore, this
research aims to design and construction of a wind tunnel to perform
aerodynamic analysis in bodies of cars, seeking greater efficiency.
Therefore, this research aims to design and construction of a wind
tunnel to perform aerodynamic analysis in bodies of cars, seeking
greater efficiency. For this, a methodology for wind tunnel type
selection is designed to be built, taking into account the various
existing configurations in which chose to build an open circuit tunnel,
due to the lower complexity of construction and installation;
operational simplicity and low cost. The guidelines for the project
were teaching: the layer that limits study and analyze specimens with
different geometries. For the variation of pressure in the test, section
of a switched gauge used a pitot tube. Thus, it was possible to obtain
quantitative and qualitative results, which proved to be satisfactory.
Abstract: The early-stage damage detection in offshore
structures requires continuous structural health monitoring and for the
large area the position of sensors will also plays an important role in
the efficient damage detection. Determining the dynamic behavior of
offshore structures requires dense deployment of sensors. The wired
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems are highly expensive
and always needs larger installation space to deploy. Wireless sensor
networks can enhance the SHM system by deployment of scalable
sensor network, which consumes lesser space. This paper presents the
results of wireless sensor network based Structural Health Monitoring
method applied to a scaled experimental model of offshore structure
that underwent wave loading. This method determines the
serviceability of the offshore structure which is subjected to various
environment loads. Wired and wireless sensors were installed in the
model and the response of the scaled BLSRP model under wave
loading was recorded. The wireless system discussed in this study is
the Raspberry pi board with Arm V6 processor which is programmed
to transmit the data acquired by the sensor to the server using Wi-Fi
adapter, the data is then hosted in the webpage. The data acquired
from the wireless and wired SHM systems were compared and the
design of the wireless system is verified.
Abstract: In this paper, an Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filter
has been designed and simulated on an Field Programmable Gate
Arrays (FPGA). The implementation is based on Multiply Add and
Accumulate (MAC) algorithm which uses multiply operations for
design implementation. Parallel Pipelined structure is used to
implement the proposed IIR Filter taking optimal advantage of the
look up table of target device. The designed filter has been
synthesized on Digital Signal Processor (DSP) slice based FPGA to
perform multiplier function of MAC unit. The DSP slices are useful
to enhance the speed performance. The proposed design is simulated
with Matlab, synthesized with Xilinx Synthesis Tool, and
implemented on FPGA devices. The Virtex 5 FPGA based design can
operate at an estimated frequency of 81.5 MHz as compared to 40.5
MHz in case of Spartan 3 ADSP based design. The Virtex 5 based
implementation also consumes less slices and slice flip flops of target
FPGA in comparison to Spartan 3 ADSP based implementation to
provide cost effective solution for signal processing applications.
Abstract: The number and adequacy of Performance-Indicators
(PIs) for organisational purposes are core to the success of
organisations and a major concern to the sponsor of this research.
This assignment developed a procedure to improve a firm’s
performance assessment system, by identifying two key-PIs out of 28
initial ones, and by setting criteria and their relative importance to
validate and rank the adequacy and the right number of operational
metrics. The Analytical-Hierarchy-Process was used with a synthesismethod
to treat data coming from the management inquiries.
Although organisational alignment has been achieved, business
processes should also be targeted and PIs continuously revised.