Abstract: The effect of notch depth on the elastic new strainconcentration
factor (SNCF) of rectangular bars with single edge Unotch
under combined loading is studied here. The finite element
method (FEM) and super position technique are used in the current
study. This new SNCF under combined loading of static tension and
pure bending has been defined under triaxial stress state. The
employed specimens have constant gross thickness of 16.7 mm and
net section thickness varied to give net-to-gross thickness ratio ho/Ho
from 0.2 to 0.95. The results indicated that the elastic SNCF for
combined loading increases with increasing notch depth up to ho/Ho =
0.7 and sharply decreases with increasing notch depth. It is also
indicated that the elastic SNCF of combined loading is greater than
that of pure bending and less than that of the static tension for 0.2 ≤
ho/Ho ≤ 0.7. However, the elastic SNCF of combined loading is the
elastic SNCF for static tension and less than that of pure bending for
shallow notches (i.e. 0.8 ≤ ho/Ho ≤ 0.95).
Abstract: The main aim of this paper is to develop and calibrate
an econometric model for modeling prices of long term electricity
futures contracts. The calibration of our model is performed on data
from EEX AG allowing us to capture the specific features of German
electricity market. The data sample contains several structural breaks
which have to be taken into account for modeling. We model the data
with an ARIMAX model which reveals high correlation between the
price of electricity futures contracts and prices of LT futures
contracts of fuels (namely coal, natural gas and crude oil). Besides
this, also a share price index of representative electricity companies
traded on Xetra, spread between 10Y and 1Y German bonds and
exchange rate between EUR and USD appeared to have significant
explanatory power over these futures contracts on EEX.
Abstract: Recognizing behavioral patterns of financial markets
is essential for traders. Japanese candlestick chart is a common tool to
visualize and analyze such patterns in an economic time series. Since
the world was introduced to Japanese candlestick charting, traders
saw how combining this tool with intelligent technical approaches
creates a powerful formula for the savvy investors.
This paper propose a generalization to box counting method of
Grassberger-Procaccia, which is based on computing the correlation
dimension of Japanese candlesticks instead commonly used 'close'
points. The results of this method applied on several foreign
exchange rates vs. IRR (Iranian Rial). Satisfactorily show lower
chaotic dimension of Japanese candlesticks series than regular
Grassberger-Procaccia method applied merely on close points of
these same candles. This means there is some valuable information
inside candlesticks.
Abstract: Food and fibre production in arid and semi-arid regions has emerged as one of the major challenges for various socio-economic and political reasons such as the food security and self-sufficiency. Productive use of the renewable water resources has risen on top ofthe decision-making agenda. For this reason, efficient operation and maintenance of modern irrigation and drainage schemes become part and parcel and indispensible reality in agricultural policy making arena. The aim of this paper is to investigate the complexity of operating and maintaining such schemes, mainly focussing on challenges which enhance and opportunities that impedsustainable food and fibre production. The methodology involved using secondary data complemented byroutine observations and stakeholders views on issues that influence the O&M in the Dez command area. The SPSS program was used as an analytical framework for data analysis and interpretation.Results indicate poor application efficiency in most croplands, much of which is attributed to deficient operation of conveyance and distribution canals. These in turn, are reportedly linked to inadequate maintenance of the pumping stations and hydraulic structures like turnouts,flumes and other control systems particularly in the secondary and tertiary canals. Results show that the aforementioned deficiencies have been the major impediment to establishing regular flow toward the farm gates which subsequently undermine application efficiency and tillage operationsat farm level. Results further show that accumulative impact of such deficiencies has been the major causes of poorcrop yield and quality that deem production system in these croplands uneconomic. Results further show that the present state might undermine the sustainability of agricultural system in the command area. The overall conclusion being that present water management is unlikely to be responsive to challenges that the sector faces. And in the absence of coherent measures to shift the status quo situation in favour of more productive resource use, it would be hard to fulfil the objectives of the National Economic and Socio-cultural Development Plans.
Abstract: Triglycerides and their derivatives are considered as viable alternatives for diesel fuels. Rice bran oil is used as diesel fuel. Highly viscous rice bran oil can be reduced by blending it with diesel fuel. The present research is aimed to investigate experimentally the performance, exhaust emission and combustion characteristics of a direct injection (DI) diesel engine, typically used in agricultural sector, over the entire load range when fuelled with rice bran oil and diesel fuel blends, RB10 (10% rice bran oil + 90% diesel fuel) to RB50. The performance, emission and combustion parameters of RB20 were found to be very close to neat diesel fuel (ND). The injector opening pressure (IOP) undoubtedly is of prime importance in diesel engine operation. Performance, emission and combustion characteristics with RB30 at enhanced IOPs are better than ND. Improved premixed heat release rate were noticed with RB30 when the IOP is enhanced.
Abstract: The development and application of wind power for
renewable energy has attracted growing interest in recent years. Renewable energy sources are attracting much alteration as they can
reduce both environmental damage and dependence on fossil fuels. With the growing need for sustainable energy supplies, a case is made
for decentralized, stand-alone power supplies (SAPS) as an alternative to power grids. In the era which traditional petroleum energy resource
decreasing and the green house affect significant increasing, the development and usage of regenerative resources is inevitable. Due to the contribution of the pioneers, the development of regenerative resources already has a remarkable achievement; however, in the view of economy and quantity, it is still a long road for regenerative energy
to replace traditional petroleum energy. In our prospective, in stead of
investigate larger regenerative energy equipment, it is much wiser to
think about the blind side and breakthrough of the current technique.
Abstract: Design of Converter transformer insulation is a major
challenge. The insulation of these transformers is stressed by both
AC and DC voltages. Particle contamination is one of the major
problems in insulation structures, as they generate partial discharges
leading it to major failure of insulation. Similarly corona discharges
occur in transformer insulation. This partial discharge due to particle
movement / corona formation in insulation structure under different
voltage wave shapes, are different. In the present study, UHF
technique is adopted to understand the discharge activity and could
be realized that the characteristics of UHF signal generated under
low and high fields are different. In the case of corona generated
signal, the frequency content of the UHF sensor output lies in the
range 0.3-1.2 GHz and is not much varied except for its increase in
magnitude of discharge with the increase in applied voltage. It is
realized that the current signal injected due to partial
discharges/corona is about 4ns duration measured for first one half
cycle. Wavelet technique is adopted in the present study. It allows
one to identify the frequency content present in the signal at different
instant of time. The STD-MRA analysis helps one to identify the
frequency band in which the energy content of the UHF signal is
maximum.
Abstract: This paper presents an effective method for detecting vehicles in front of the camera-assisted car during nighttime driving. The proposed method detects vehicles based on detecting vehicle headlights and taillights using techniques of image segmentation and clustering. First, to effectively extract spotlight of interest, a segmentation process based on automatic multi-level threshold method is applied on the road-scene images. Second, to spatial clustering vehicle of detecting lamps, a grouping process based on light tracking and locating vehicle lighting patterns. For simulation, we are implemented through Da-vinci 7437 DSP board with near infrared mono-camera and tested it in the urban and rural roads. Through the test, classification performances are above 97% of true positive rate evaluated on real-time environment. Our method also has good performance in the case of clear, fog and rain weather.
Abstract: Modern building automation needs to deal with very
different types of demands, depending on the use of a building and the
persons acting in it. To meet the requirements of situation awareness
in modern building automation, scenario recognition becomes more
and more important in order to detect sequences of events and to react
to them properly. We present two concepts of scenario recognition
and their implementation, one based on predefined templates and the
other applying an unsupervised learning algorithm using statistical
methods. Implemented applications will be described and their advantages
and disadvantages will be outlined.
Abstract: The performances of a thermoacoustic travelling-wave
refrigerator are presented. Developed in the frame of the European
project called THATEA, it is designed for providing 600 W at a
temperature of 233 K with an efficiency of 40 % relative to the
Carnot efficiency. This paper presents the device and the results of
the first measurements. For a cooling power of 210 W, a coefficient
of performance relative to Carnot of 30 % is achieved when the
refrigerator is coupled with an existing standing-wave engine.
Abstract: In competitive electricity markets all over the world, an adoption of suitable transmission pricing model is a problem as transmission segment still operates as a monopoly. Transmission pricing is an important tool to promote investment for various transmission services in order to provide economic, secure and reliable electricity to bulk and retail customers. The nodal pricing based on SRMC (Short Run Marginal Cost) is found extremely useful by researchers for sending correct economic signals. The marginal prices must be determined as a part of solution to optimization problem i.e. to maximize the social welfare. The need to maximize the social welfare subject to number of system operational constraints is a major challenge from computation and societal point of views. The purpose of this paper is to present a nodal transmission pricing model based on SRMC by developing new mathematical expressions of real and reactive power marginal prices using GA-Fuzzy based optimal power flow framework. The impacts of selecting different social welfare functions on power marginal prices are analyzed and verified with results reported in literature. Network revenues for two different power systems are determined using expressions derived for real and reactive power marginal prices in this paper.
Abstract: Collected data must be organized to be utilized efficiently, and hierarchical classification of data is efficient approach to organize data. When data is classified to multiple categories or annotated with a set of labels, users request multi-labeled data by giving a set of labels. There are several interpretations of the data expressed by a set of labels. This paper discusses which data is expressed by a set of labels by introducing orders for sets of labels and shows that there are four types of orders, which are characterized by whether the labels of expressed data includes every label of the given set of labels within the range of the set. Desirable properties of the orders, data is also expressed by the higher set of labels and different sets of labels express different data, are discussed for the orders.
Abstract: In this work, statistical experimental design was
applied for the optimization of medium constituents for Gentamicin
production by Micromsonospora echinospora subs pallida (MTCC
708) in a batch reactor and the results are compared with the ANN
predicted values. By central composite design, 50 experiments are
carried out for five test variables: Starch, Soya bean meal, K2HPO4,
CaCO3 and FeSO4. The optimum condition was found to be: Starch
(8.9,g/L), Soya bean meal (3.3 g/L), K2HPO4 (0.8 g/L), CaCO3 (4
g/L) and FeSO4 (0.03 g/L). At these optimized conditions, the yield
of gentamicin was found to be 1020 mg/L. The R2 values were found
to be 1 for ANN training set, 0.9953 for ANN test set, and 0.9286 for
RSM.
Abstract: Eight steel reinforced concrete beams (SRC), were
fabricated and tested under earthquake type cyclic loading. The
effectiveness of intermediate stiffeners, such as mid-span stiffener and
plastic hinge zone stiffeners, in enhancing composite action and
ductility of SRC beams was investigated. The effectiveness of
strengthened beam-to-column (SBC) and weakened beam-to-column
(WBC) connections in enhancing beam ductility was also studied. It
was found that: (1) All the specimens possessed fairly high flexural
ductility and were found adequate for structures in high seismic zones.
(2) WBC connections induced stress concentration which caused extra
damage to concrete near the flange tapering zone. This extra damage
inhibited the flexural strength development and the ductility of the
specimens with WBC connections to some extent. (3) Specimens with
SBC connections demonstrated higher flexural strength and ductility
compared to specimens with WBC connections. (4) The intermediate
stiffeners, especially combination of plastic hinge zone stiffener and
mid span stiffeners, have an obvious effect in enhancing the ductility
of the beams with SBC connection.
Abstract: Detection and recognition of the Human Body Composition and extraction their measures (width and length of human body) in images are a major issue in detecting objects and the important field in Image, Signal and Vision Computing in recent years. Finding people and extraction their features in Images are particularly important problem of object recognition, because people can have high variability in the appearance. This variability may be due to the configuration of a person (e.g., standing vs. sitting vs. jogging), the pose (e.g. frontal vs. lateral view), clothing, and variations in illumination. In this study, first, Human Body is being recognized in image then the measures of Human Body extract from the image.
Abstract: Use of the Internet and the World-Wide-Web
(WWW) has become widespread in recent years and mobile agent
technology has proliferated at an equally rapid rate. In this scenario
load balancing becomes important for P2P systems. Beside P2P
systems can be highly heterogeneous, i.e., they may consists of peers
that range from old desktops to powerful servers connected to
internet through high-bandwidth lines. There are various loads
balancing policies came into picture. Primitive one is Message
Passing Interface (MPI). Its wide availability and portability make it
an attractive choice; however the communication requirements are
sometimes inefficient when implementing the primitives provided by
MPI. In this scenario we use the concept of mobile agent because
Mobile agent (MA) based approach have the merits of high
flexibility, efficiency, low network traffic, less communication
latency as well as highly asynchronous. In this study we present
decentralized load balancing scheme using mobile agent technology
in which when a node is overloaded, task migrates to less utilized
nodes so as to share the workload. However, the decision of which
nodes receive migrating task is made in real-time by defining certain
load balancing policies. These policies are executed on PMADE (A
Platform for Mobile Agent Distribution and Execution) in
decentralized manner using JuxtaNet and various load balancing
metrics are discussed.
Abstract: According to investigating impact of complexity of
stereoscopic frame pairs on stereoscopic video coding and
transmission, a new rate control algorithm is presented. The proposed
rate control algorithm is performed on three levels: stereoscopic group
of pictures (SGOP) level, stereoscopic frame (SFrame) level and
frame level. A temporal-spatial frame complexity model is firstly
established, in the bits allocation stage, the frame complexity, position
significance and reference property between the left and right frames
are taken into account. Meanwhile, the target buffer is set according to
the frame complexity. Experimental results show that the proposed
method can efficiently control the bitrates, and it outperforms the fixed
quantization parameter method from the rate distortion perspective,
and average PSNR gain between rate-distortion curves (BDPSNR) is
0.21dB.
Abstract: The Taiwan government has invested approximately
21 billion NT dollars in the construction of bicycle paths since
bicycling has gained huge popularity as a healthy leisure and
recreational activity. This study focuses on the behavior of
recreational bicyclists in Danshuei and Bali, northern Taiwan. Data
were collected from a field investigation carried out along the
Danshuei bicycle path and Bali left-bank bicycle path. A total of 578
questionnaires were gathered for data analysis. Descriptive statistics
and Chi-Square tests were used to assess bicyclists- behaviors. The
frequency shows that, in these areas, Danshuei and Bali, most
bicyclists rented bicycles, rode the bicycle path in the afternoon for
about 2 hours. The used the bicycle path one time per week. For most,
it was the first time to ride these bicycle paths. There were significant
differences in distribution of bicycle ownership, time of day, duration
of ride, ride frequency, and whether riding occurred on weekdays or
weekends. Results indicated that most bicyclists in Danshuei and Bali
were infrequent users.
Abstract: This paper deals with the analysis of active constrained layer damping (ACLD) of doubly curved laminated composite shells using active fiber composite (AFC) materials. The constraining layer of the ACLD treatment has been considered to be made of the AFC materials. A three dimensional energy based finite element model of the smart doubly curved laminated composite shell integrated with a patch of such ACLD treatment has been developed to demonstrate the performance of the patch on enhancing the damping characteristics of the doubly curved laminated composite shells. Particular emphasis has been placed on studying the effect of variation of piezoelectric fiber orientation angle in the constraining AFC layer on the control authority of the ACLD patch.
Abstract: This paper presents an overview of current municipal
solid waste management in Khoram Abad city.
According to data collected by the local authorities, the waste
generation rate is estimated to be 800 g/cap.d with density of 243
kg/m3. Solid waste is stored in different types of containers at the
source of generation in different areas of the city.
Local Authority is responsible for waste collection, transportation.
Municipality is responsible for waste collection, using private sector
contracts.
At present, both mechanical and manual methods are used to
collect residential waste. Manual methods of collection are the most
commonly used for waste collection in most parts of the city.
Land filling is the main disposal method in this city. But it has
some obvious problem and deficiencies
The current state of solid waste management has been improved
slightly in the last decade. By more actions can reduce the human and
environmental risks.