This paper reports an experience on Pavement Maintenance plan of the Research Team of the Islamic Azad University- Bafq Branch. The City of Bafq streets are failing at a growing rate, despite all the efforts of Pavement Management, improved efficiencies in street maintenance operations, contracted work and sharing equipment with other agencies. Pavements in this range show some form of distress or wear that requires more than a life extending achievement. In this group, a well-designed pavement will have served at least 75% of its life and the authority of the pavement has dropped by about 40%.

A novel approach for detection of   High Impedance Faults (HIF) using wavelet transforms is presented in this work. Wavelet functions have been proposed in connection with the analysis of signals, primarily transients in a wide range of applications. The technique used here, is based on using the absolute sum value of coefficients in Multi resolution Signal Decomposition (MSD) based on the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). A fault indicator and a fault criterion are then used to detect the HIF in the transmission line. The technique developed is robust to fault type, fault inception angle, fault resistance, and fault location. A new concept and methodology for HIF in transmission lines is presented. The performance of the proposed technique is tested under a variety of fault conditions on a typical 400KV transmission-line system.

In this study, a linear analysis is developed to evaluate the critical speed for a rail vehicle when wheels with controlled creep forces are used. We show the effect of varying the primary and secondary suspension parameters and varying a few others such as the effective conicity, the masses and the torsional-damping coefficient between wheels. We show that critical speeds at which the instability occurs can be increased beyond the actual operating speed by proper selection of design parameters. We show in particular the interest of a yaw stiffness provided between the car body and each bogie frame in conjunction with a primary suspension system having springs with relatively lower longitudinal stiffness a feature that allows good curving performance. The behaviour of the vehicle is considered in comparison with that of a conventional one having, rigid wheel sets or free wheels turning on the same axle independently of each other. 

This paper proposes a residue factor method to obtain the optimal location of the Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitor (TCSC) device to damp out the inter-area mode of oscillations. The residue method is base on the facts that it is the product of the mode’s Observability and controllability index of TCSC controllers to the critical mode. The placements of TCSC controllers have been obtained for the base case and for the dynamic critical contingences.  Eigen value analyses are used to assess the most appropriate input signals (stabilizing signal) for supplementary damping control of TCSC. The Right-Half Plane zeros (RHP-zeros) and Hankel Singular Value (HSV) is used as tools to select the most receptive signal to a mode of the Interarea oscillation.The effectiveness of the proposed method of placement and selection of signals are demonstrated on practical network of 25 bus south Malaysian Power system.

Experimental investigations were carried out on a single cylinder variable compression ratio C.I engine using neat Mahua oil as the fuel. Both the performance and exhaust analysis were carried out to find the best suited compression ratio. Tests have been carried out at 7 different compression ratios viz.13.2, 13.9, 14.8, 15.7, 16.9, 18.1 and 20.2. All the experiments were carried out at standard test conditions like 700c cooling water temperature and at constant speed of 1500 rpm. The results shows hat 15.7 is the best compression ratio with Mahua oil. All the results were obtained without any modifications on either engine side or fuel side.

Abstract:

A statistical vibration-based damage identification algorithm to assess the stability of the measurement data, detect and locate damage in civil structures, where variability in response and modal parameters due to measurement noise and environmental influence is often inevitable, is presented in this paper. The method exploits the regression analysis of peak values of the magnitudes of frequency response function (FRF) of target sensors relative to the reference wherein the statistical features are employed for data reliability assessment and damage localization. Through experimental investigation of a flexural structure using conventional strain gauges and long gauge fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) sensors, the importance of the technique for civil SHM is established and presented in an easy-to-interpret graphical format for effective implementation of results. The statistical approach is very effective for damage localization using strain data.

The predetermination of the runoff in the non gauged basins constitutes the objective of numerous researches because of a lack of data covering them. Thus, the use of mathematical models became the suitable approach. Runoffs at the exit of basins, in addition to being influenced logically by rainfalls and their intensities, they are under the influence of other factors which condition the surface discharge such as the physiographical parameters of the basins, lithology, vegetation cover and evaporation. The aim of this work is to seek statistical relations which bind runoff observed at the exit of basins to rainfalls and some physiographical factors for basins of Algeria between September 1985 and September 1993. The simple and multiple correlations carried out on 23 basins made it possible to emphasize that some physiographical characteristics are explanatory of the variance of the runoff to significant thresholds.

Abstract:

Environmental awareness of the drawbacks of landfill sites is forcing nations to look for better ways to recycle and Increase usage of industrial wastes and by-products will both decrease the demand for available materials and help solve many disposal problems. The use of industrial wastes and by-products as Mineral fillers in asphalt mixtures is not a new technique. Mineral Fillers have been used in road construction for many years. They are incorporated in asphalt mixtures to enhance the properties and performance of asphalt concrete pavements. Mineral fillers vary in mineralogy, chemical properties, shape and texture, size, and gradation. The major objective of this initial investigation was to find out whether it is possible to use the local industrial and by-products wastes such as Steel slag, Ceramic waste, Coal fly ash, limestone, and Rejected ceramic raw material as mineral fillers in Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA) mixtures in Malaysia. Chemical analysis using Scanning Electro Microscope (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) and physical tests were performed on those local industrial and by-products wastes specimens to determine its chemical composition, size and shape of particles, as well as gradation and specific gravity, and were compared to limestone dust the common type of mineral filler used in Stone Mastic Asphalt in Malaysia. The test results indicate that the physical and chemical properties of the local industrial wastes are within specified limits of  quality requirements for mineral filler  for Bituminous Paving Mixtures AASHTO M17, and in accordance with AASHTO PP41 (Designing of Stone Matrix Asphalt) and these waste materials can potentially be used as mineral fillers in Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA) Mixtures.

Abstract:

The demand for water is increasing rapidly with the increased population, industries and irrigation which lead to the scarcity of water. In order to avoid such a scarcity, which will hamper the development of the country, water resources projects should be planned and managed effectively. The south part of the Chennai metropolitan in India consists of hills and lakes. Due to the rapid urbanization, all the lakes in this zone are being encroached thus hindering the contribution of lake for ground water resulting in the depletion of ground water. For this enhancing situation, a microlevel study has been carried out on the surface water estimation and analysis of sub-surface flow pattern. This paper mainly emphasize on ground water modeling using VISUAL MODFLOW. Groundwater flow models are used to calculate the rate and direction of movement of groundwater through aquifers. Estimation of surface runoff using Soil Conservation Service (SCS) shows that only in the year 2004, there is a high runoff which leads to over flow from the lakes and for the other years (2001-2003) average runoff contribution to the lakes is from 17% to 45%. The ground water analysis was done for six years (2001 to 2006) and the results indicate that for the monsoon period the velocity ranges from 0.02 to 0.05m/sec and for the non-monsoon period it ranges from 3.21*10-2m/sec to 8.75*10-2m/sec. which implies that there is a rapid increase in the radius of influence due to urbanization.

Abstract:

This paper investigates the effect of anisotropic substrate of printed circuit board (PCB) on the characteristics of adjacent signal lines (microstrip transmission lines). Specifically, simple and accurate design expressions for the characteristic impedance, phase velocity, and effective dielectric constant are obtained by conformal mapping. The results are compared with full wave solutions, where excellent agreement is observed.

Abstract:

Chittagong Water Supply and Sewerage Authority (CWASA) of Bangladesh is supplying water to the Chittagong city dwellers through its distribution network after proper treatment of water drawn from the Halda River and groundwater source. But the quality of water is at risk to deteriorate during its flow through the distribution system as regular monitoring of the distribution network is not usually done. In order to identify such water contamination problems, water samples from different locations of the four routes of the distribution network of CWASA were analyzed in this study. The study revealed that most of the important water quality parameters except BOD5 were in the permissible limit. More than 95% of the collected water samples had BOD5 greater than 0.20ppm with maximum of those found 5.2ppm at a house connection near Polytechnic College. Microbial water quality parameters examined at some selected locations showed the presence of pathogenic organisms in water exceeding the permissible limit. Few sources of contamination along the CWASA’s distribution network have been identified. In order to avoid water contamination problems, awareness raising and regular monitoring of water distribution network have been suggested in this study.

Abstract:

The main focus of this paper is to control the active power supplied by distributed generation (DG) system while compensating harmonics and reactive currents caused by the nonlinear loads using shunt active power filter (APF). The APF control is based on load currents sensing for reference current estimation in a-b-c reference frame. In order to get the grid currents sinusoidal and in-phase with the distorted grid voltages, the positive sequence components of the grid voltages are computed. The active power transfer is based on phase angle between DC-AC converter and grid voltages and reactive power management is based on magnitude of these voltages. The extensive simulation of the study is carried out under MATLAB /Simulink environment to show the usefulness of the control algorithm. Various simulation results are presented with integrated modes (forward and reverse power flow) of operation of distributed generation system interfaced with grid.

Abstract:

Dry machining is a machining process with out coolant, and it has become more popular as a finishing process. Thus, it is especially crucial to select the machining parameters to obtain the desired surface finish of machined component. In the present investigation, the influence of process parameters like speed, feed and depth of cut in dry-machining, are studied as surface roughness as the output response variable. The concept of Design of Experiments (DOE) was used for necessary experimentation. En31 bearing steel material was considered in the present study. The experimental results were analyzed statistically to study the influence of process parameters on surface roughness.

Abstract:

CMOS inverter circuits in silicon employing p-well technology have a low current consumption in both the on and off states. However, the inherent and undesirable parasitic bipolar transistors give rise to latch-up which results in a large current flow through the chip. Based on the equivalent circuit of the parasitic transistors, it can be shown that latch-up can be shown that latch up can be prevented using a suitable substrate and well dopings. In this paper an analytical study has been made and optimum  substrate and well dopings have been evaluated with (W/L) ratio ranging from 2 to 0.05 for both p-n-p and n-p-n transistors. It is expected that both substrate and well dopings of 1015/cc will help to solve the latch up problem for (W/L) ratio of 1.