Abstract: The rising demand for format-flexible packaging
machines is caused by current market changes. Increasing the formatflexibility
is a new goal for the packaging machine manufacturers’
product development process. There are no methodical or designorientated
tools for a comprehensive consideration of this target. This
paper defines the term format-flexibility in the context of packaging
machines and shows the state-of-the-art for improving the
changeover of production machines. The requirements for a new
approach and the concept itself will be introduced, and the method
elements will be explained. Finally, the use of the concept and the
result of the development of a format-flexible packaging machine
will be shown.
Abstract: This paper presents the design and analysis of Liquid Crystal (LC) based tunable reflectarray antenna with slot embedded patch element configurations within X-band frequency range. The slots are shown to modify the surface current distribution on the patch element of reflectarray which causes the resonant patch element to provide different resonant frequencies depending on the slot dimensions. The simulated results are supported and verified by waveguide scattering parameter measurements of different reflectarray unit cells. Different rectangular slots on patch element have been fabricated and a change in resonant frequency from 10.46GHz to 8.78GHz has been demonstrated as the width of the rectangular slot is varied from 0.2W to 0.6W. The rectangular slot in the center of the patch element has also been utilized for the frequency tunable reflectarray antenna design based on K-15 Nematic LC. For the active reflectarray antenna design, a frequency tunability of 1.2% from 10GHz to 9.88GHz has been demonstrated with a dynamic phase range of 103° provided by the measured scattering parameter results. Time consumed by liquid crystals for reconfiguration, which is one of the drawback of LC based design, has also been disused in this paper.
Abstract: Growth and remodeling of biological structures have
gained lots of attention over the past decades. Determining the
response of living tissues to mechanical loads is necessary for a wide
range of developing fields such as prosthetics design or computerassisted
surgical interventions. It is a well-known fact that biological
structures are never stress-free, even when externally unloaded. The
exact origin of these residual stresses is not clear, but theoretically,
growth is one of the main sources. Extracting body organ’s shapes
from medical imaging does not produce any information regarding
the existing residual stresses in that organ. The simplest cause of such
stresses is gravity since an organ grows under its influence from
birth. Ignoring such residual stresses might cause erroneous results in
numerical simulations. Accounting for residual stresses due to tissue
growth can improve the accuracy of mechanical analysis results. This
paper presents an original computational framework based on gradual
growth to determine the residual stresses due to growth. To illustrate
the method, we apply it to a finite element model of a healthy human
face reconstructed from medical images. The distribution of residual
stress in facial tissues is computed, which can overcome the effect of
gravity and maintain tissues firmness. Our assumption is that tissue
wrinkles caused by aging could be a consequence of decreasing
residual stress and thus not counteracting gravity. Taking into
account these stresses seems therefore extremely important in
maxillofacial surgery. It would indeed help surgeons to estimate
tissues changes after surgery.
Abstract: Intellectual capital is one of the most valuable and
important parts of the intangible assets of enterprises especially in
knowledge-based enterprises. With respect to increasing gap between
the market value and the book value of the companies, intellectual
capital is one of the components that can be placed in this gap. This
paper uses the value added efficiency of the three components,
capital employed, human capital and structural capital, to measure the
intellectual capital efficiency of Iranian industries groups, listed in
the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), using a 8 years period data set
from 2005 to 2012. In order to analyze the effect of intellectual
capital on the market-to-book value ratio of the companies, the data
set was divided into 10 industries, Banking, Pharmaceutical, Metals
& Mineral Nonmetallic, Food, Computer, Building, Investments,
Chemical, Cement and Automotive, and the panel data method was
applied to estimating pooled OLS. The results exhibited that value
added of capital employed has a positive significant relation with
increasing market value in the industries, Banking, Metals & Mineral
Nonmetallic, Food, Computer, Chemical and Cement, and also,
showed that value added efficiency of structural capital has a positive
significant relation with increasing market value in the Banking,
Pharmaceutical and Computer industries groups. The results of the
value added showed a negative relation with the Banking and
Pharmaceutical industries groups and a positive relation with
computer and Automotive industries groups. Among the studied
industries, computer industry has placed the widest gap between the
market value and book value in its intellectual capital.
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: With 40% of total world energy consumption,
building systems are developing into technically complex large
energy consumers suitable for application of sophisticated power
management approaches to largely increase the energy efficiency
and even make them active energy market participants. Centralized
control system of building heating and cooling managed by
economically-optimal model predictive control shows promising
results with estimated 30% of energy efficiency increase. The research
is focused on implementation of such a method on a case study
performed on two floors of our faculty building with corresponding
sensors wireless data acquisition, remote heating/cooling units and
central climate controller. Building walls are mathematically modeled
with corresponding material types, surface shapes and sizes. Models
are then exploited to predict thermal characteristics and changes in
different building zones. Exterior influences such as environmental
conditions and weather forecast, people behavior and comfort
demands are all taken into account for deriving price-optimal climate
control. Finally, a DC microgrid with photovoltaics, wind turbine,
supercapacitor, batteries and fuel cell stacks is added to make the
building a unit capable of active participation in a price-varying
energy market. Computational burden of applying model predictive
control on such a complex system is relaxed through a hierarchical
decomposition of the microgrid and climate control, where the
former is designed as higher hierarchical level with pre-calculated
price-optimal power flows control, and latter is designed as lower
level control responsible to ensure thermal comfort and exploit
the optimal supply conditions enabled by microgrid energy flows
management. Such an approach is expected to enable the inclusion
of more complex building subsystems into consideration in order to
further increase the energy efficiency.
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: This paper presents the performance characteristics of
Darrieus-type vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) with NACA airfoil
blades. The performance of Darrieus-type VAWT can be
characterized by torque and power. There are various parameters
affecting the performance such as chord length, helical angle, pitch
angle and rotor diameter. To estimate the optimum shape of Darrieustype
wind turbine in accordance with various design parameters, we
examined aerodynamic characteristics and separated flow occurring
in the vicinity of blade, interaction between flow and blade, and
torque and power characteristics derived from it. For flow analysis,
flow variations were investigated based on the unsteady RANS
(Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes) equation. Sliding mesh algorithm
was employed in order to consider rotational effect of blade. To
obtain more realistic results we conducted experiment and numerical
analysis at the same time for three-dimensional shape. In addition,
several parameters (chord length, rotor diameter, pitch angle, and
helical angle) were considered to find out optimum shape design and
characteristics of interaction with ambient flow. Since the NACA
airfoil used in this study showed significant changes in magnitude of
lift and drag depending on an angle of attack, the rotor with low drag,
long cord length and short diameter shows high power coefficient in
low tip speed ratio (TSR) range. On the contrary, in high TSR range,
drag becomes high. Hence, the short-chord and long-diameter rotor
produces high power coefficient. When a pitch angle at which airfoil
directs toward inside equals to -2° and helical angle equals to 0°,
Darrieus-type VAWT generates maximum power.
Abstract: Thoracotomy is a great surgery that has serious pulmonary complications, so purpose of this study was to determine the response of diaphragmatic excursion to inspiratory muscle trainer post thoracotomy. Thirty patients of both sexes (16 men and 14 women) with age ranged from 20 to 40 years old had done thoracotomy participated in this study. The practical work was done in cardiothoracic department, Kasr-El-Aini hospital at faculty of medicine for individuals 3 days Post operatively. Patients were assigned into two groups: group A (study group) included 15 patients (8 men and 7 women) who received inspiratory muscle training by using inspiratory muscle trainer for 20 minutes and routine chest physiotherapy (deep breathing, cough and early ambulation) twice daily, 3 days per week for one month. Group B (control group) included 15 patients (8 men and 7 women) who received the routine chest physiotherapy only (deep breathing, cough and early ambulation) twice daily, 3 days per week for one month. Ultrasonography was used to evaluate the changes in diaphragmatic excursion before and after training program. Statistical analysis revealed a significant increase in diaphragmatic excursion in the study group (59.52%) more than control group (18.66%) after using inspiratory muscle trainer post operatively in patients post thoracotomy. It was concluded that the inspiratory muscle training device increases diaphragmatic excursion in patients post thoracotomy through improving inspiratory muscle strength and improving mechanics of breathing and using of inspiratory muscle trainer as a method of physical therapy rehabilitation to reduce post-operative pulmonary complications post thoracotomy.
Abstract: For several hundred years, the design of railway tracks
has practically remained unchanged. Traditionally, rail tracks are
placed on a ballast layer due to several reasons, including economy,
rapid drainage, and high load bearing capacity. The primary function
of ballast is to distributing dynamic track loads to sub-ballast and
subgrade layers, while also providing lateral resistance and allowing
for rapid drainage. Upon repeated trainloads, the ballast becomes
fouled due to ballast degradation and the intrusion of fines which
adversely affects the strength and deformation behaviour of ballast.
This paper presents the use of three-dimensional discrete element
method (DEM) in studying the shear behaviour of the fouled ballast
subjected to direct shear loading. Irregularly shaped particles of
ballast were modelled by grouping many spherical balls together in
appropriate sizes to simulate representative ballast aggregates. Fouled
ballast was modelled by injecting a specified number of miniature
spherical particles into the void spaces. The DEM simulation
highlights that the peak shear stress of the ballast assembly decreases
and the dilation of fouled ballast increases with an increase level of
fouling. Additionally, the distributions of contact force chain and
particle displacement vectors were captured during shearing progress,
explaining the formation of shear band and the evolutions of
volumetric change of fouled ballast.
Abstract: Aerobic dance has becoming a popular mode of
exercise especially among women due to its fun nature. With a catchy
music background and joyful dance steps, aerobic dancers would be
able to have fun while sweating out. Depending on its level of
aggressiveness, aerobic may also improve and maintain
cardiorespiratory fitness other than being a great tool for weight loss.
This study intends to prove that aerobic dance activity can bring the
same, if not better impacts on health than other types of
cardiovascular exercise such as jogging and cycling. The objective of
this study was to evaluate and identify the effect of six weeks aerobic
dance on cardiovascular fitness and weight loss among women. This
study, which was held in Seremban Fit Challenge, used a quasiexperimental
design. The subjects selected include a total of 14
women (n = 14) with age (32.4 years old ± 9.1), weight (65.93 kg ±
11.24) and height (165.36 ± 3.46) who joined the Seremban Fit
Challenge Season 13. The subjects were asked to join an aerobic
dance class with a duration of one hour for six weeks in a row. As for
the outcome, cardiovascular fitness was measured with a 1-mile run
test while any changes on weight were measured using the weighing
scale. The result showed that there was a significant difference
between pre and post-test for cardiovascular fitness when p = 0.02
Abstract: The rheological response of blends obtained from
quaternized polysulfone and polyvinyl alcohol in N-methyl-2-
pyrrolidone as against structural peculiarity of polymers from the
blend, composition of polymer mixtures, as well as the types of
interactions were investigated. Results show that the variation of
polyvinyl alcohol composition in the studied system determines
changes of the rheological properties, suggesting that the PVA acts as
a plasticizer. Consequently, rheological behavior of complex system,
described by the nonlinear flow curve, indicates the impact of
polyvinil alcohol content to polysulfone solution, in order to facilitate
the subsequently preparation of bioactive membranes.
Abstract: In the present study, a numerical approach to describe the pyrolysis of a single solid particle of wood is used to study the influence of various conditions such as particle size, heat transfer coefficient, reactor temperature and heating rate. The influence of these parameters in the change of the duration of the pyrolysis cycle was studied. Mathematical modeling was employed to simulate the heat, mass transfer, and kinetic processes inside the reactor. The evolutions of the mass loss as well as the evolution of temperature inside the thick piece are investigated numerically. The elaborated model was also employed to study the effect of the reactor temperature and the rate of heating on the change of the temperature and the local loss of the mass inside the piece of wood. The obtained results are in good agreement with the experimental data available in the literature.
Abstract: An Energetic and exergetic analysis is conducted on a
Steam Turbine Power Plant of an existing Phosphoric Acid Factory.
The heat recovery systems used in different parts of the plant are also
considered in the analysis. Mass, thermal and exergy balances are
established on the main compounds of the factory. A numerical code
is established using EES software to perform the calculations
required for the thermal and exergy plant analysis. The effects of the
key operating parameters such as steam pressure and temperature,
mass flow rate as well as seawater temperature, on the cycle
performances are investigated. A maximum Exergy Loss Rate of about 72% is obtained for the
melters, followed by the condensers, heat exchangers and the pumps.
The heat exchangers used in the phosphoric acid unit present
exergetic efficiencies around 33% while 60% to 72% are obtained for
steam turbines and blower. For the explored ranges of HP steam
temperature and pressure, the exergy efficiencies of steam turbine
generators STGI and STGII increase of about 2.5% and 5.4%
respectively. In the same way optimum HP steam flow rate values,
leading to the maximum exergy efficiencies are defined.
Abstract: The crossover probability and mutation probability are the two important factors in genetic algorithm. The adaptive genetic algorithm can improve the convergence performance of genetic algorithm, in which the crossover probability and mutation probability are adaptively designed with the changes of fitness value. We apply adaptive genetic algorithm into a function optimization problem. The numerical experiment represents that adaptive genetic algorithm improves the convergence speed and avoids local convergence.
Abstract: Geological structure formed by volcanic activities shows polymorphic characteristics due to repeated cooling and hardening of lava. The Jeju region is showing polymorphic characteristics in which clinker layers are irregularly distributed along with vesicular basalt due to volcanic activities. Accordingly, resident damages and environmental disputes occur frequently in the Jeju region due to blasting. The purpose of this study is to develop a blast vibration equation considering the polymorphic characteristics of basaltic ground in Jeju. The blast vibration equation consists of a functional formula of the blasting vibration constant K that changes according to ground characteristics, and attenuation index n. The case study results in Jeju showed that if there are clinker layers, attenuation index n showed a distribution of -1.32~-1.81, whereas if there are no clinker layers, n was -2.79. Moreover, if there are no clinker layers, the frequency of blast vibration showed a high frequency band from 30Hz to 100Hz, while in rocks with clinker layers it showed a low frequency band from 10Hz to 20Hz.
Abstract: Electro-osmosis in clayey soils and sediments, for
purposes of clay consolidation, dewatering, or cleanup, and electro
injection in porous media is widespread recent decades. It is
experimentally found that the chemical properties of porous media
especially PH change the characteristics of media. Electro-osmotic
conductivity is a function of soil and grout material chemistry,
altering with time. Many numerical approaches exist to simulate the
of electro kinetic flow rate considering chemical changes. This paper
presents a simplified analytical solution for constant flow rate based
on varying electro osmotic conductivity and time dependent viscosity
for injection of colloidal silica.
Abstract: E-government has been adopted and used by many governments/countries around the world including Ghana to provide citizens and businesses with more accurate, real-time, and high quality services and information. The objective of this paper is to present an overview of the Government of Ghana’s (GoG) adoption and implement of e-government and its usage by the Ministries, Departments and its agencies (MDAs) as well as other public sector institutions to deliver efficient public service to the general public i.e. citizens, business etc. Government implementation of e-government focused on facilitating effective delivery of government service to the public and ultimately to provide efficient government-wide electronic means of sharing information and knowledge through a network infrastructure developed to connect all major towns and cities, Ministries, Departments and Agencies and other public sector organizations in Ghana. One aim for the Government of Ghana use of ICT in public administration is to improve productivity in government administration and service by facilitating exchange of information to enable better interaction and coordination of work among MDAs, citizens and private businesses. The study was prepared using secondary sources of data from government policy documents, national and international published reports, journal articles, and web sources. This study indicates that through the e-government initiative, currently citizens and businesses can access and pay for services such as renewal of driving license, business registration, payment of taxes, acquisition of marriage and birth certificates as well as application for passport through the GoG electronic service (eservice) and electronic payment (epay) portal. Further, this study shows that there is enormous commitment from GoG to adopt and implement e-government as a tool not only to transform the business of government but also to bring efficiency in public services delivered by the MDAs. To ascertain this, a further study need to be carried out to determine if the use of e-government has brought about the anticipated improvements and efficiency in service delivery of MDAs and other state institutions in Ghana.
Abstract: Nanofibers are defined as fibers with diameters less
than 100 nanometers. In this study, behaviours of activated carbon
nanofiber (ACNF), carbon nanofiber (CNF), polyacrylonitrile/ carbon
nanotube (PAN/CNT), polyvinyl alcohol/nanosilver (PVA/Ag) in
proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are investigated
experimentally. This material was used as gas diffusion layer (GDL)
in PEM fuel cells. In this study, the electrical conductivities of
nanofiber and nanofiber/nanoparticles have been studied to
understand their effects on PEM fuel cell performance. According to
the experimental results, the maximum electrical conductivity
performance of the fuel cell with nanofiber was found to be at
PVA/Ag (at UConn condition). The electrical conductivities of CNF,
ACNF, PAN/CNT are lower for PEM. The resistance of cell with
PVA/Ag is lower than the resistance of cell with PAN/CNT, ACNF,
CNF.
Abstract: In this study, we investigated the thixotropic behavior
of two clays used in fabrication of ceramic. The structural kinetic
model (SKM) was used to characterize the thixotropic behavior of
two different kinds of clays used in fabrication of ceramic. The SKM
postulates that the change in the rheological behavior is associated
with shear-induced breakdown of the internal structure of the clays.
This model for the structure decay with time at constant shear rate
assumes nth order kinetics for the decay of the material structure with
a rate constant.