Abstract: Primary barrier of membrane type LNG containment system consist of corrugated 304L stainless steel. This 304L stainless steel is austenitic stainless steel which shows different material behaviors owing to phase transformation during the plastic work. Even though corrugated primary barriers are subjected to significant amounts of pre-strain due to press working, quantitative mechanical behavior on the effect of pre-straining at cryogenic temperatures are not available. In this study, pre-strain level and pre-strain temperature dependent tensile tests are carried to investigate mechanical behaviors. Also, constitutive equations with material parameters are suggested for a verification study.
Abstract: This paper presents a reliability-based approach to select appropriate wind turbine types for a wind farm considering site-specific wind speed patterns. An actual wind farm in the northern region of Iran with the wind speed registration of one year is studied in this paper. An analytic approach based on total probability theorem is utilized in this paper to model the probabilistic behavior of both turbines- availability and wind speed. Well-known probabilistic reliability indices such as loss of load expectation (LOLE), expected energy not supplied (EENS) and incremental peak load carrying capability (IPLCC) for wind power integration in the Roy Billinton Test System (RBTS) are examined. The most appropriate turbine type achieving the highest reliability level is chosen for the studied wind farm.
Abstract: Utilities use operating reserve for frequency regulation.To ensure that the operating frequency and system security are well maintained, the operating grid codes always specify that the reserve quantity and response rate should meet some prescribed levels. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate system's contingency reserve for an isolated power network. With the presented algorithm to estimate system's frequency response characteristic, an online allocation of contingency reserve would be feasible to meet the grid codes for contingency operation. Test results from the simulated conditions, and from the actual operating data verify the merits of the proposed methodology to system's frequency control, and security.
Abstract: The world's population continues to grow at a quarter of a million people per day, increasing the consumption of energy. This has made the world to face the problem of energy crisis now days. In response to the energy crisis, the principles of renewable energy gained popularity. There are much advancement made in developing the wind and solar energy farms across the world. These energy farms are not enough to meet the energy requirement of world. This has attracted investors to procure new sources of energy to be substituted. Among these sources, extraction of energy from the waves is considered as best option. The world oceans contain enough energy to meet the requirement of world. Significant advancements in design and technology are being made to make waves as a continuous source of energy. One major hurdle in launching wave energy devices in a developing country like Pakistan is the initial cost. A simple, reliable and cost effective wave energy converter (WEC) is required to meet the nation-s energy need. This paper will present a novel design proposed by team SAS for harnessing wave energy. This paper has three major sections. The first section will give a brief and concise view of ocean wave creation, propagation and the energy carried by them. The second section will explain the designing of SAS-2. A gear chain mechanism is used for transferring the energy from the buoy to a rotary generator. The third section will explain the manufacturing of scaled down model for SAS-2 .Many modifications are made in the trouble shooting stage. The design of SAS-2 is simple and very less maintenance is required. SAS-2 is producing electricity at Clifton. The initial cost of SAS-2 is very low. This has proved SAS- 2 as one of the cost effective and reliable source of harnessing wave energy for developing countries.
Abstract: The users are now expecting higher level of
DSP(Digital Signal Processing) software quality than ever before.
Prevention and detection of defect are critical elements of software
quality assurance. In this paper, principles and rules for prevention and
detection of defect are suggested, which are not universal guidelines,
but are useful for both novice and experienced DSP software
developers.
Abstract: The goal of this project is to design a system to
recognition voice commands. Most of voice recognition systems
contain two main modules as follow “feature extraction" and “feature
matching". In this project, MFCC algorithm is used to simulate
feature extraction module. Using this algorithm, the cepstral
coefficients are calculated on mel frequency scale. VQ (vector
quantization) method will be used for reduction of amount of data to
decrease computation time. In the feature matching stage Euclidean
distance is applied as similarity criterion. Because of high accuracy
of used algorithms, the accuracy of this voice command system is
high. Using these algorithms, by at least 5 times repetition for each
command, in a single training session, and then twice in each testing
session zero error rate in recognition of commands is achieved.
Abstract: Multi-agent system approach has proven to be an effective and appropriate abstraction level to construct whole models of a diversity of biological problems, integrating aspects which can be found both in "micro" and "macro" approaches when modeling this type of phenomena. Taking into account these considerations, this paper presents the important computational characteristics to be gathered into a novel bioinformatics framework built upon a multiagent architecture. The version of the tool presented herein allows studying and exploring complex problems belonging principally to structural biology, such as protein folding. The bioinformatics framework is used as a virtual laboratory to explore a minimalist model of protein folding as a test case. In order to show the laboratory concept of the platform as well as its flexibility and adaptability, we studied the folding of two particular sequences, one of 45-mer and another of 64-mer, both described by an HP model (only hydrophobic and polar residues) and coarse grained 2D-square lattice. According to the discussion section of this piece of work, these two sequences were chosen as breaking points towards the platform, in order to determine the tools to be created or improved in such a way to overcome the needs of a particular computation and analysis of a given tough sequence. The backwards philosophy herein is that the continuous studying of sequences provides itself important points to be added into the platform, to any time improve its efficiency, as is demonstrated herein.
Abstract: Investment in a constructed facility represents a cost in
the short term that returns benefits only over the long term use of the
facility. Thus, the costs occur earlier than the benefits, and the owners
of facilities must obtain the capital resources to finance the costs of
construction. A project cannot proceed without an adequate
financing, and the cost of providing an adequate financing can be
quite large. For these reasons, the attention to the project finance is an
important aspect of project management. Finance is also a concern to
the other organizations involved in a project such as the general
contractor and material suppliers. Unless an owner immediately and
completely covers the costs incurred by each participant, these
organizations face financing problems of their own. At a more
general level, the project finance is the only one aspect of the general
problem of corporate finance. If numerous projects are considered
and financed together, then the net cash flow requirements constitute
the corporate financing problem for capital investment. Whether
project finance is performed at the project or at the corporate level
does not alter the basic financing problem .In this paper, we will first
consider facility financing from the owner's perspective, with due
consideration for its interaction with other organizations involved in a
project. Later, we discuss the problems of construction financing
which are crucial to the profitability and solvency of construction
contractors. The objective of this paper is to present the steps utilized
to determine the best combination of minimum project financing.
The proposed model considers financing; schedule and maximum net
area .The proposed model is called Project Financing and Schedule
Integration using Genetic Algorithms "PFSIGA". This model
intended to determine more steps (maximum net area) for any project
with a subproject. An illustrative example will demonstrate the
feature of this technique. The model verification and testing are put
into consideration.
Abstract: Today, the Internet based communication has widen
the opportunity of event monitoring system in the medical field.
There is always a need of analyzing and designing secure and reliable
mobile communication between the hospital and biomedical
engineers mobile units. This study has been carried out to find
possible solution using SIP-based event notification for alerting the
technical staff about the Biomedical Device (BMD) status and
Patients treatment session. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can
be used to create a medical event notification system. SIP can work
on a variety of devices. Its adoption as the protocol of choice for third
generation wireless networks allows for a robust and scalable
environment. One of the advantages of SIP is that it supports personal
mobility through the separation of user addressing and device
addressing. The solution for Telemed alert notification system is
based on SIP - Specific Event Notification. The aim of this project is
to extend mobility service to the hospital technicians who are using
Telemedicine system.
Abstract: To improve the classification rate of the face
recognition, features combination and a novel non-linear kernel are
proposed. The feature vector concatenates three different radius of
local binary patterns and Gabor wavelet features. Gabor features are
the mean, standard deviation and the skew of each scaling and
orientation parameter. The aim of the new kernel is to incorporate
the power of the kernel methods with the optimal balance between
the features. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method,
numerous methods are tested by using four datasets, which are
consisting of various emotions, orientations, configuration,
expressions and lighting conditions. Empirical results show the
superiority of the proposed technique when compared to other
methods.
Abstract: The group mutual exclusion (GME) problem is an
interesting generalization of the mutual exclusion problem. In the
group mutual exclusion, multiple processes can enter a critical
section simultaneously if they belong to the same group. In the
extended group mutual exclusion, each process is a member of
multiple groups at the same time. As a result, after the process by
selecting a group enter critical section, other processes can select the
same group with its belonging group and can enter critical section at
the moment, so that it avoids their unnecessary blocking. This paper
presents a quorum-based distributed algorithm for the extended
group mutual exclusion problem. The message complexity of our
algorithm is O(4Q ) in the best case and O(5Q) in the worst case,
where Q is a quorum size.
Abstract: Mathematical, graphical and intuitive models are often
constructed in the development process of computational systems.
The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is one of the most popular
modeling languages used by practicing software engineers. This
paper critically examines UML models and suggests an augmented
use case view with the addition of new constructs for modeling
software. It also shows how a use case diagram can be enhanced. The
improved modeling constructs are presented with examples for
clarifying important design and implementation issues.
Abstract: This study aims to demonstrate the quantification of
peptides based on isotope dilution surface enhanced Raman
scattering (IDSERS). SERS spectra of phenylalanine (Phe), leucine
(Leu) and two peptide sequences TGQIFK (T13) and
YSFLQNPQTSLCFSESIPTPSNR (T6) as part of the 22-kDa
human growth hormone (hGH) were obtained on Ag-nanoparticle
covered substrates. On the basis of the dominant Phe and Leu
vibrational modes, precise partial least squares (PLS) prediction
models were built enabling the determination of unknown T13 and
T6 concentrations. Detection of hGH in its physiological
concentration in order to investigate the possibility of protein
quantification has been achieved.
Abstract: Ren et al. presented an efficient carrier frequency offset
(CFO) estimation method for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM), which has an estimation range as large as the
bandwidth of the OFDM signal and achieves high accuracy without
any constraint on the structure of the training sequence. However,
its detection probability of the integer frequency offset (IFO) rapidly
varies according to the fractional frequency offset (FFO) change. In
this paper, we first analyze the Ren-s method and define two criteria
suitable for detection of IFO. Then, we propose a novel method for
the IFO estimation based on the maximum-likelihood (ML) principle
and the detection criteria defined in this paper. The simulation results
demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the Ren-s method
in terms of the IFO detection probability irrespective of a value of
the FFO.
Abstract: The main aim of this research is to investigate a novel technique for implementing a more natural and intelligent conversation system. Conversation systems are designed to converse like a human as much as their intelligent allows. Sometimes, we can think that they are the embodiment of Turing-s vision. It usually to return a predetermined answer in a predetermined order, but conversations abound with uncertainties of various kinds. This research will focus on an integrated natural language processing approach. This approach includes an integrated knowledge-base construction module, a conversation understanding and generator module, and a state manager module. We discuss effectiveness of this approach based on an experiment.
Abstract: An advanced composite flywheel rotor consisting of
intra and inter hybrid rims was designed to optimally increase the energy capacity, and was manufactured using filament winding with
in-situ curing. The flywheel has recently attracted considerable attention from many investigators since it possesses great potential in
many energy storage applications, including electric utilities, hybrid or
electric automobiles, and space vehicles. In this investigation, a comprehensive study was conducted with the intent to implement
composites in high performance flywheel applications.The inner two
intra-hybrid rims (rims 1 and 2) were manufactured as a whole part
through continuous filament winding under in-situ curing conditions,
and so were the outer two rims (rims 3 and 4). The outer surface of rim
2 and the inner surface of rim 3 were CNC-tapered for press-fitting. Machined rims were finally press-fitted using a hydraulic press with a
maximum compressive force of approximately 1000 ton.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present a methodology in
three steps to forecast supply chain demand. In first step, various data
mining techniques are applied in order to prepare data for entering
into forecasting models. In second step, the modeling step, an
artificial neural network and support vector machine is presented
after defining Mean Absolute Percentage Error index for measuring
error. The structure of artificial neural network is selected based on
previous researchers' results and in this article the accuracy of
network is increased by using sensitivity analysis. The best forecast
for classical forecasting methods (Moving Average, Exponential
Smoothing, and Exponential Smoothing with Trend) is resulted based
on prepared data and this forecast is compared with result of support
vector machine and proposed artificial neural network. The results
show that artificial neural network can forecast more precisely in
comparison with other methods. Finally, forecasting methods'
stability is analyzed by using raw data and even the effectiveness of
clustering analysis is measured.
Abstract: The turbulent mixing of coolant streams of different
temperature and density can cause severe temperature fluctuations in
piping systems in nuclear reactors. In certain periodic contraction
cycles these conditions lead to thermal fatigue. The resulting aging
effect prompts investigation in how the mixing of flows over a sharp
temperature/density interface evolves. To study the fundamental
turbulent mixing phenomena in the presence of density gradients,
isokinetic (shear-free) mixing experiments are performed in a square
channel with Reynolds numbers ranging from 2-500 to 60-000.
Sucrose is used to create the density difference. A Wire Mesh Sensor
(WMS) is used to determine the concentration map of the flow in the
cross section. The mean interface width as a function of velocity,
density difference and distance from the mixing point are analyzed
based on traditional methods chosen for the purposes of
atmospheric/oceanic stratification analyses. A definition of the
mixing layer thickness more appropriate to thermal fatigue and based
on mixedness is devised. This definition shows that the thermal
fatigue risk assessed using simple mixing layer growth can be
misleading and why an approach that separates the effects of large
scale (turbulent) and small scale (molecular) mixing is necessary.
Abstract: Mobile agent has motivated the creation of a new
methodology for parallel computing. We introduce a methodology
for the creation of parallel applications on the network. The proposed
Mobile-Agent parallel processing framework uses multiple Javamobile
Agents. Each mobile agent can travel to the specified
machine in the network to perform its tasks. We also introduce the
concept of master agent, which is Java object capable of
implementing a particular task of the target application. Master agent
is dynamically assigns the task to mobile agents. We have developed
and tested a prototype application: Mobile Agent Based Parallel
Computing. Boosted by the inherited benefits of using Java and
Mobile Agents, our proposed methodology breaks the barriers
between the environments, and could potentially exploit in a parallel
manner all the available computational resources on the network.
This paper elaborates performance issues of a mobile agent for
parallel computing.
Abstract: This paper presents the results of the preliminary investigation of microwave (MW) irradiation pretreatments on the anaerobic digestion of food residues using biochemical methane potential (BMP) assays. Low solids systems with a total solids (TS) content ranging from 5.0-10.0% were analyzed. The inoculum to bulk mass of substrates to water ratio was 1:2:2 (mass basis). The experimental conditions for pretreatments were as follows: a control (no MW irradiation), two runs with MW irradiation for 15 and 30 minutes at 320 W, and another two runs with MW irradiation at 528 W for 30 and 60 minutes. The cumulative biogas production were 6.3 L and 8.7 L for 15min/320 W and 30min/320 W MW irradiation conditions, respectively, and 10.5 L and 11.4 L biogas for 30min/528 W and 60min/528 W, respectively, as compared to the control giving 5.8 L biogas. Both an increase in exposure time of irradiation and power of MW had increased the rate and yield of biogas. Singlefactor ANOVA tests (p