Comparative Study of Three DGS Unit Shapes and Compact Microstrip Low-Pass and Band-Pass Filters Designs

In this paper, three types of defected ground structure (DGS) units which are triangular-head (TH), rectangular-head (RH) and U-shape (US) are investigated. They are further used to low-pass and band-pass filters designs (LPF and BPF) and the obtained performances are examined. The LPF employing RH-DGS geometry presents the advantages of compact size, low-insertion loss and wide stopband compared to the other filters. It provides cutoff frequency of 2.5 GHz, largest rejection band width of 20 dB from 2.98 to 8.76 GHz, smallest transition region and smallest sharpness of the cutoff frequency. The BPF based on RH-DGS has the highest bandwidth (BW) of about 0.74 GHz and the lowest center frequency of 3.24 GHz, whereas the other BPFs have BWs less than 0.7 GHz.

Free Vibration Analysis of Carbon Nanotube Reinforced Laminated Composite Panels

In this paper, free vibration analysis of carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced laminated composite panels is presented. Three types of panels such as flat, concave and convex are considered for study. Numerical simulation is carried out using commercially available finite element analysis software ANSYS. Numerical homogenization is employed to calculate the effective elastic properties of randomly distributed carbon nanotube reinforced composites. To verify the accuracy of the finite element method, comparisons are made with existing results available in the literature for conventional laminated composite panels and good agreements are obtained. The results of the CNT reinforced composite materials are compared with conventional composite materials under different boundary conditions.

Extraction of Fetal Heart Rate and Fetal Heart Rate Variability from Mother's ECG Signal

This paper describes a new method for extracting the fetal heart rate (fHR) and the fetal heart rate variability (fHRV) signal non-invasively using abdominal maternal electrocardiogram (mECG) recordings. The extraction is based on the fundamental frequency (Fourier-s) theorem. The fundamental frequency of the mother-s electrocardiogram signal (fo-m) is calculated directly from the abdominal signal. The heart rate of the fetus is usually higher than that of the mother; as a result, the fundamental frequency of the fetal-s electrocardiogram signal (fo-f) is higher than that of the mother-s (fo-f > fo-m). Notch filters to suppress mother-s higher harmonics were designed; then a bandpass filter to target fo-f and reject fo-m is implemented. Although the bandpass filter will pass some other frequencies (harmonics), we have shown in this study that those harmonics are actually carried on fo-f, and thus have no impact on the evaluation of the beat-to-beat changes (RR intervals). The oscillations of the time-domain extracted signal represent the RR intervals. We have also shown in this study that zero-to-zero evaluation of the periods is more accurate than the peak-to-peak evaluation. This method is evaluated both on simulated signals and on different abdominal recordings obtained at different gestational ages.

Computation of the Filtering Properties of Photonic Crystal Waveguide Discontinuities Using the Mode Matching Method

In this paper, the application of the Mode Matching (MM) method in the case of photonic crystal waveguide discontinuities is presented. The structure under consideration is divided into a number of cells, which supports a number of guided and evanescent modes. These modes can be calculated numerically by an alternative formulation of the plane wave expansion method for each frequency. A matrix equation is then formed relating the modal amplitudes at the beginning and at the end of the structure. The theory is highly efficient and accurate and can be applied to study the transmission sensitivity of photonic crystal devices due to fabrication tolerances. The accuracy of the MM method is compared to the Finite Difference Frequency Domain (FDFD) and the Adjoint Variable Method (AVM) and good agreement is observed.

Ultrasonic Intensification of the Chemical Degradation of Methyl Violet: An Experimental Study

The sonochemical decolorization and degradation of azo dye Methyl violet using Fenton-s reagent in the presence of a high-frequency acoustic field has been investigated. Dyeing and textile effluents are the major sources of azo dyes, and are most troublesome among industrial wastewaters, causing imbalance in the eco-system. The effect of various operating conditions (initial concentration of dye, liquid-phase temperature, ultrasonic power and frequency and process time) on sonochemical degradation was investigated. Conversion was found to increase with increase in initial concentration, temperature, power level and frequency. Both horntype and tank-type sonicators were used, at various power levels (250W, 400W and 500W) for frequencies ranging from 20 kHz - 1000 kHz. A 'Process Intensification' parameter PI, was defined to quantify the enhancement of the degradation reaction by ultrasound when compared to control (i.e., without ultrasound). The present work clearly demonstrates that a high-frequency ultrasonic bath can be used to achieve higher process throughput and energy efficiency at a larger scale of operation.

A Closed Form Solution for Hydrodynamic Pressure of Gravity Dams Reservoir with Effect of Viscosity under Dynamic Loading

Hydrodynamic pressures acting on upstream of concrete dams during an earthquake are an important factor in designing and assessing the safety of these structures in Earthquake regions. Due to inherent complexities, assessing exact hydrodynamic pressure is only feasible for problems with simple geometry. In this research, the governing equation of concrete gravity dam reservoirs with effect of fluid viscosity in frequency domain is solved and then compared with that in which viscosity is assumed zero. The results show that viscosity influences the reservoir-s natural frequency. In excitation frequencies near the reservoir's natural frequencies, hydrodynamic pressure has a considerable difference in compare to the results of non-viscose fluid.

Optimal Switching Strategies for Tracking of Currents of Voltage Source Converters

This paper proposes a new optimal feedback controller for voltage source converters VSC's, for current regulated voltage source converters, which allows compensate the harmonics of current produced by nonlinear loads and load reactive power. The aim of the present paper is to describe a novel switching signal generation technique called optimal controller which guarantees that the injected currents follow the reference currents determined by the compensation strategy, with the smallest possible tracking error and fixed switching frequency. It is compared with well-known hysteresis current controller HCC. The validity of presented method and its comparison with HCC is studied through simulation results.

Particle Swarm Optimization Approach on Flexible Structure at Wiper Blade System

Application of flexible structures has been significantly, increased in industry and aerospace missions due to their contributions and unique advantages over the rigid counterparts. In this paper, vibration analysis of a flexible structure i.e., automobile wiper blade is investigated and controlled. The wiper generates unwanted noise and vibration during the wiping the rain and other particles on windshield which may cause annoying noise in different ranges of frequency. A two dimensional analytical modeled wiper blade whose model accuracy is verified by numerical studies in literature is considered in this study. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is employed in alliance with input shaping (IS) technique in order to control or to attenuate the amplitude level of unwanted noise/vibration of the wiper blade.

Analysis of Meteorological Drought in the Ruhr Basin by Using the Standardized Precipitation Index

Drought is one of the most damaging climate-related hazards, it is generally considered as a prolonged absence of precipitation. This normal and recurring climate phenomenon had plagued civilization throughout history because of the negative impacts on economical, environmental and social sectors. Drought characteristics are thus recognized as important factors in water resources planning and management. The purpose of this study is to detect the changes in drought frequency, persistence and severity in the Ruhr river basin. The frequency of drought events was calculated using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). Used data are daily precipitation records from seven meteorological stations covering the period 1961-2007. The main benefit of the application of this index is its versatility, only rainfall data is required to deliver five major dimensions of a drought : duration, intensity, severity, magnitude, and frequency. Furthermore, drought can be calculated in different time steps. In this study SPI was calculated for 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months. Several drought events were detected in the covered period, these events contain mild, moderate and severe droughts. Also positive and negative trends in the SPI values were observed.

Use of Time-Depend Effects for Mixing and Separation of the Two-Phase Flows

The paper shows some ability to manage two-phase flows arising from the use of unsteady effects. In one case, we consider the condition of fragmentation of the interface between the two components leads to the intensification of mixing. The problem is solved when the temporal and linear scale are small for the appearance of the developed mixing layer. Showing that exist such conditions for unsteady flow velocity at the surface of the channel, which will lead to the creation and fragmentation of vortices at Re numbers of order unity. Also showing that the Re is not a criterion of similarity for this type of flows, but we can introduce a criterion that depends on both the Re, and the frequency splitting of the vortices. It turned out that feature of this situation is that streamlines behave stable, and if we analyze the behavior of the interface between the components it satisfies all the properties of unstable flows. The other problem we consider the behavior of solid impurities in the extensive system of channels. Simulated unsteady periodic flow modeled breaths. Consider the behavior of the particles along the trajectories. It is shown that, depending on the mass and diameter of the particles, they can be collected in a caustic on the channel walls, stop in a certain place or fly back. Of interest is the distribution of particle velocity in frequency. It turned out that by choosing a behavior of the velocity field of the carrier gas can affect the trajectory of individual particles including force them to fly back.

Generating Frequent Patterns through Intersection between Transactions

The problem of frequent itemset mining is considered in this paper. One new technique proposed to generate frequent patterns in large databases without time-consuming candidate generation. This technique is based on focusing on transaction instead of concentrating on itemset. This algorithm based on take intersection between one transaction and others transaction and the maximum shared items between transactions computed instead of creating itemset and computing their frequency. With applying real life transactions and some consumption is taken from real life data, the significant efficiency acquire from databases in generation association rules mining.

Turbine Speed Variation Study in Gas Power Plant for an Active Generator

This research deals with investigations on the “Active Generator" under rotor speed variations and output frequency control. It runs at turbine speed and it is connected to a three phase electrical power grid which has its own frequency different from turbine frequency. In this regard the set composed of a four phase synchronous generator and a natural commutated matrix converter (NCMC) made with thyristors, is called active generator. It replaces a classical mechanical gearbox which introduces many drawbacks. The main idea in this article is the presentation of frequency control at grid side when turbine runs at variable speed. Frequency control has been done by linear and step variations of the turbine speed. Relation between turbine speed (frequency) and main grid zero sequence voltage frequency is presented.

A High-Speed Multiplication Algorithm Using Modified Partial Product Reduction Tree

Multiplication algorithms have considerable effect on processors performance. A new high-speed, low-power multiplication algorithm has been presented using modified Dadda tree structure. Three important modifications have been implemented in inner product generation step, inner product reduction step and final addition step. Optimized algorithms have to be used into basic computation components, such as multiplication algorithms. In this paper, we proposed a new algorithm to reduce power, delay, and transistor count of a multiplication algorithm implemented using low power modified counter. This work presents a novel design for Dadda multiplication algorithms. The proposed multiplication algorithm includes structured parts, which have important effect on inner product reduction tree. In this paper, a 1.3V, 64-bit carry hybrid adder is presented for fast, low voltage applications. The new 64-bit adder uses a new circuit to implement the proposed carry hybrid adder. The new adder using 80 nm CMOS technology has been implemented on 700 MHz clock frequency. The proposed multiplication algorithm has achieved 14 percent improvement in transistor count, 13 percent reduction in delay and 12 percent modification in power consumption in compared with conventional designs.

Visualization of Sediment Thickness Variation for Sea Bed Logging using Spline Interpolation

This paper discusses on the use of Spline Interpolation and Mean Square Error (MSE) as tools to process data acquired from the developed simulator that shall replicate sea bed logging environment. Sea bed logging (SBL) is a new technique that uses marine controlled source electromagnetic (CSEM) sounding technique and is proven to be very successful in detecting and characterizing hydrocarbon reservoirs in deep water area by using resistivity contrasts. It uses very low frequency of 0.1Hz to 10 Hz to obtain greater wavelength. In this work the in house built simulator was used and was provided with predefined parameters and the transmitted frequency was varied for sediment thickness of 1000m to 4000m for environment with and without hydrocarbon. From series of simulations, synthetics data were generated. These data were interpolated using Spline interpolation technique (degree of three) and mean square error (MSE) were calculated between original data and interpolated data. Comparisons were made by studying the trends and relationship between frequency and sediment thickness based on the MSE calculated. It was found that the MSE was on increasing trends in the set up that has the presence of hydrocarbon in the setting than the one without. The MSE was also on decreasing trends as sediment thickness was increased and with higher transmitted frequency.

A Sequential Pattern Mining Method Based On Sequential Interestingness

Sequential mining methods efficiently discover all frequent sequential patterns included in sequential data. These methods use the support, which is the previous criterion that satisfies the Apriori property, to evaluate the frequency. However, the discovered patterns do not always correspond to the interests of analysts, because the patterns are common and the analysts cannot get new knowledge from the patterns. The paper proposes a new criterion, namely, the sequential interestingness, to discover sequential patterns that are more attractive for the analysts. The paper shows that the criterion satisfies the Apriori property and how the criterion is related to the support. Also, the paper proposes an efficient sequential mining method based on the proposed criterion. Lastly, the paper shows the effectiveness of the proposed method by applying the method to two kinds of sequential data.

DTC-SVM Scheme for Induction Motors Fedwith a Three-level Inverter

Direct Torque Control is a control technique in AC drive systems to obtain high performance torque control. The conventional DTC drive contains a pair of hysteresis comparators. DTC drives utilizing hysteresis comparators suffer from high torque ripple and variable switching frequency. The most common solution to those problems is to use the space vector depends on the reference torque and flux. In this Paper The space vector modulation technique (SVPWM) is applied to 2 level inverter control in the proposed DTC-based induction motor drive system, thereby dramatically reducing the torque ripple. Then the controller based on space vector modulation is designed to be applied in the control of Induction Motor (IM) with a three-level Inverter. This type of Inverter has several advantages over the standard two-level VSI, such as a greater number of levels in the output voltage waveforms, Lower dV/dt, less harmonic distortion in voltage and current waveforms and lower switching frequencies. This paper proposes a general SVPWM algorithm for three-level based on standard two-level SVPWM. The proposed scheme is described clearly and simulation results are reported to demonstrate its effectiveness. The entire control scheme is implemented with Matlab/Simulink.

Design, Analysis and Modeling of Dual Band Microstrip Loop Antenna Using Defective Ground Plane

Present wireless communication demands compact and intelligent devices with multitasking capabilities at affordable cost. The focus in the presented paper is on a dual band antenna for wireless communication with the capability of operating at two frequency bands with same structure. Two resonance frequencies are observed with the second operation band at 4.2GHz approximately three times the first resonance frequency at 1.5GHz. Structure is simple loop of microstrip line with characteristic impedance 50 ohms. The proposed antenna is designed using defective ground structure (DGS) and shows the nearly one third reductions in size as compared to without DGS. This antenna was simulated on electromagnetic (EM) simulation software and fabricated using microwave integrated circuit technique on RT-Duroid dielectric substrate (εr= 2.22) of thickness (H=15 mils). The designed antenna was tested on automatic network analyzer and shows the good agreement with simulated results. The proposed structure is modeled into an equivalent electrical circuit and simulated on circuit simulator. Subsequently, theoretical analysis was carried out and simulated. The simulated, measured, equivalent circuit response, and theoretical results shows good resemblance. The bands of operation draw many potential applications in today’s wireless communication.

A Model for Study of the Defects in Rolling Element Bearings at Higher Speed by Vibration Signature Analysis

The vibrations produced by a single point defect on various parts of the bearing under constant radial load are predicted by using a theoretical model. The model includes variation in the response due to the effect of bearing dimensions, rotating frequency distribution of load. The excitation forces are generated when the defects on the races strike to rolling elements. In case of the outer ring defect, the pulses generated are with periodicity of outer ring defect frequency where as for inner ring defect, the pulses are with periodicity of inner ring defect frequency. The effort has been carried out in preparing the physical model of the system. Different defect frequencies are obtained and are used to find out the amplitudes of the vibration due to excitation of the bearing parts. Increase in the radial load or severity of the defect produces a significant change in bearing signature characteristics.

X-ray Pulse Profiles of PSR J0538+2817

This paper reports our analysis of 163 ks observations of PSR J0538+2817 with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE).The pulse profiles, detected up to 60 keV, show a single peak asin the case for radio frequency. The profile is well described by one Gaussians function with full width at half maximum (FWHM) 0.04794. We compared the difference of arrival time between radio and X-ray pulse profiles for the first time. It turns out that the phase of radio emits precede the X-ray by 8.7 ± 4.5 ms. Furthermore we obtained the pulse profiles in the energy ranges of 2.29-6.18 keV, 6.18-12.63 keV and 12.63-17.36 keV. The intensity of pulses decreases with the increasing energy range. We discuss the emission geometry in our work.

Dielectric Studies on Nano Zirconium Dioxide Synthesized through Co-Precipitation Process

Nano sized zirconium dioxide in monoclinic phase (m-ZrO2) has been synthesized in pure form through co-precipitation processing at different calcination temperatures and has been characterized by several techniques such as XRD, FT-IR, UV-Vis Spectroscopy and SEM. The dielectric and capacitance values of the pelletized samples have been examined at room temperature as the functions of frequency. The higher dielectric constant value of the sample having larger grain size proves the strong influence of grain size on the dielectric constant.