Comparison of two different indentation techniques in studying the in-situ viscoelasticity behavior of liquid crystals

Chin Fhong Soon, Kian Sek Tee, Mansour Youseffi and Morgan Clive Thomas Denyer

Liquid crystal is a new emerging biomaterial. The physical property of liquid crystal plays a role in supporting the adhesion of cells. Nano and microball indentation techniques were applied to determine the elastic modulus or viscoelasticity of the cholesteryl ester liquid crystals in the culture media. Nano-indentation results (108 ± 19.78 kPa, N = 20) agreed well with the microball indentation (110 ± 19.95 kPa, N = 60) for the liquid crystal samples incubated for 24 hours at 37^oC, respectively. However, nanoindentation could not measure the modulus of the liquid crystal (LC) incubated more than 24 hours. This is due to the decreased viscosity of the liquid crystal after immersion in the cell culture media for more than 24 hours. Alternatively, microball indentation was used and the elastic modulus of the LC immersed for 48 hours was found to decrease to 55 ± 9.99 kPa (N = 60). The microball indentation indicated that the LC did not creep after 40 seconds of indentation. However, the elastic modulus of the LC was no longer measurable after 72 hours of incubation due to the lost of elasticity. Microball indentation seemed to be a reliable technique in determining the elastic moduli of the cholesteryl ester liquid crystals.

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Modified booth multiplier architecture using new (1, 1, 1) adder

In this paper an alternate implementation of the modified Booth algorithm is presented where groups of the partial product terms are summed using parallel prefix adders proposed by Harris et al. Comparative analysis of these adders in terms of power, delay and LUTs is performed. A modified 16 bit multiplication process using Radix 4 Booth Algorithm is proposed and results with respect to Kogge Stone and New (1, 1, 1) adder are computed. Simulation results are carried out on Xilinx Vivado Version14.2 on Artix 7 Board.

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Electrical and mechanical properties of fly ash filled silicone rubber for high voltage insulator

Electrical and mechanical properties of fly ash filled silicone rubber for high voltage insulator are investigated in this paper. The fly ash studied is taken from subbituminous coal combustion which contains high amount of Silica (SiO₂) and Alumina (Al₂O₃), majority in form of glass and quartz. In many literature, Silica and Alumina have been proven can enhance electrical and mechanical performance of silicone rubber insulator. Measurements are conducted on various amount of fly ash in RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanization) silicone rubber to find electrical and mechanical characteristics of fly ash and RTV silicone rubber composite such as dielectric strength, volume resistivity, surface resistivity, dielectric constant (relative permittivity), tensile strength, and hydrophobicity. Test performed according to ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) standard. Test results showed that, on average, the dielectric strength of materials are increase with increasing fly ash content. Maximum value of the dielectric strength achieved in 40% fly ash content in silicone rubber. Volume resistivity of the materials are increase with addition of fly ash. The maximum volume resistivity value is achieved in 30% fly ash content. Surface resistivity and dielectric constant also increase with increasing content of fly ash up to 80% in the silicone rubber. Tensile strength of the materials, on average, are increase with addition of fly ash content. The maximum increase in tensile strength, reached on the 30% fly ash content. Hydrophobicity test by contact angle measurement of the materials are increase with addition of fly ash  in the silicone rubber, with maximum contact angle is reached in 30 % of fly ash content.

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Analysis of static and dynamic motion accuracy for kinect-virtual sensei system

Ku Mohd Sabri Tuan Yusuf, Ahmad Faiz Ahmad Nazri, Ghazirah Mustapha and Jamaluddin Mahmud

Motion analysis has been widely adapted in research pertaining to biomechanics and used for many important applications such as injury reduction, sports performance enhancement and rehabilitation. Nevertheless, current available motion capture system such as the use of infrared cameras is very expensive. Microsoft Kinect has the potential to be used as an alternative low-cost motion analysis tool. Nevertheless, the standard procedure for measuring its accuracy and reliability has not been well established. Therefore, this study for the first time attempts to develop a standard procedure to assess and visualise the accuracy and repeatability of Microsoft Kinect. A single-camera system is used to capture static and dynamic motions of healthy volunteers. Adapting numerical and statistical tools, the data are analysed for the i) static motion capture (standing still with lateral hand lift) and ii) dynamic motion capture (simple lower arm movement), which are tracked by the sensor operated using open source Virtual Sensei Lite program. The variance and error value are then analysed to determine the accuracy of measurement.  The study able to demonstrate average errors of less than 2% (static) and 5% (dynamic) accuracy respectively. The good results prove that the current study is important and could contribute a significant knowledge for further research in improving Microsoft Kinect functions and applications for motion analysis.

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Deformation and failure analysis of symmetric and anti-symmetric graphite/epoxy laminate due to variations in fiber orientation

Azizul Hakim Samsudin, Ahmad Kamil Hussain and Jamaluddin Mahmud

This paper aims to simulate and analyze the failure behaviour, deformation behaviour and mode of failure of composite laminate using the built-in failure criteria function provided by ANSYS. Finite element modeling and analysis of symmetric and anti-symmetric Graphite/ Epoxy laminate with various angles of fiber orientation subjected to uniaxial tension are performed.  Maximum Stress Theory and Tsai-Wu Failure Criteria are employed to determine the failure load (failure index = 1). Prior to that, numerical validation and convergence analysis are carried out. The failure loads (First ply failure, FPF and last ply failure, LPF loads) and corresponding stresses (σ_x, σ_y and τ_xy) predicted from the finite element simulation using ANSYS are then transformed to determine the principal stresses (σ_1, σ₂ and τ₁₂) using a Matlab programme, specifically developed for stress transformation computation. Principal stresses are then used to determine the modes of failure (fiber failure), matrix failure or shear stress) of each layer corresponding to specific angle of fiber orientation. The failure curves (FPF and LPF) for both laminates (symmetric and anti-symmetric) and both theories (Maximum Stress Theory and Tsai-Wu) are plotted and found to be very close to each other. Therefore, it can be concluded that the current study is useful and significant in enhancing knowledge about the failure behaviour, deformation behaviour and mode of failure of composite laminate.

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Online mobile mapping application development for monitoring fruit tree plantation

Zahir Zainuddin, Ahyar Muawwal, Suryani and Merna Baharuddin

Data-collecting in packed fruit and beverages is one of the most important aspects in the progress of a region, let alone a country, so that they can monitor their harvest anytime through their fruit-producing-tree. Especially those in plantation resources, Indonesian fruit factories also providing the world’s exports commodities. Thus, a good data collection is needed to monitoring every tree in the field. There are times when the data-collecting and monitoring of the harvest done before they’re sent to the factory have errors due to the lack of suitable media interface in harvest monitoring. There exist a data-collecting and monitoring system by using satellite images but it has a flaw: satellites can’t give detailed information about the variety of the plants, they can only provide the images about whether the plant exists in the field or not. Based on this issue, the writer provide a solution in the form of GPS technology using GPS Tracking Method, Google Maps API, Mysql Database, Java and Code Igniter combined in an Online Mobile Mapping Application. This application can provide data of each trees coordinates in a field belonging to the factory where every data inputted by each of the farmers working for the factory, such as the result of the harvest, regularly updated status of every tree, all of that stored inside Mysql database that can be monitored in the form of Google Maps Interface. With this application development, the factory will be aided to ascertain the growth or history of harvest, number of trees in the field, and directly monitoring every tree in their field. This application may also providing the information of strategic location to the fruit processing industries chief so that he can build a factory that is efficient in transporting and so on.

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Lattice boltzmann and finite volume simulations of multiphase flow in bga encapsulation process

Aizat Abas, MZ Abdullah, MHH Ishak, Nurfatin AS, Soon Fuat Khor

The paper presents the results of the simulation of the flow visualization of multiphase flow for I-type flow on full array solder bump arrangement of ball grip array package simulated using both Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and Finite Volume Method. For the LBM model, the pseudo-potential model called the Shan-Chen method is employed to track the flow front of underfill material. The filling percentage and time is studied and compared between both LBM and FVM. From the findings, it was shown that the filling timeobtained using LBM are in good agreement with the established flow Finite Volume software ANSYS. High level of details can be observed in the LBM simulation with formation of bubbles can be observed towards the end of the filling percentage.

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Early stage cancer detection technique considering the reflected power from breast tissues

Elyas Palantei, Ashadi Amir, Dewiani, Intan Sari Areni and Andani Achmad

Ultra wideband (UWB) microwave imaging is the popular image reconstruction technique to be integrated in a medical equipment applied for early breast cancer detection system. The constructed breast cancer detector is low complexity, high accuracy rate, easy to perform tumor detection and low-cost production. To numerically design and to evaluate the electrical properties of the antenna system, a 3D homogeneous breast phantom and their interactions Ansoft HFSS v13 and CST Microwave Studio softwares were utilized. The operational bandwidth of the designed antenna ranges from 3.5 GHz to 7.2 GHz. In fact, the numerical evaluations were carried-out to determine the effect of various tumor sizes (10 mm, 20 mm and 30 mm) and the impact of the distance variations between the breast phantom surface and the tumor position. Towards the appropriate studies the reflected power analysis of the recorded return loss values was undertaken. The simulation results show that by increasing the tumor size, the received reflected power decreases. The effective distance of the early breast cancer monitoring system to work properly is less than 2 cm between tumor and breast phantom surface.

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Study on the use of industrialized building system in Malaysian private construction projects

Mohd Nasrun Mohd Nawi, Mohamed Nor Azhari Azman, Nazim Baluch, Kamarul Anuar Mohamad Kamar and dan Zuhairi Abd Hamid

The construction sector based on industry or Industrialised Building System (IBS) is a method of construction using the industrialized building materials at the manufacturing plant. This method can replace the conventional method and is able to; reduces the amount of foreign labor, improve the quality of construction, lower the cost, and reduce construction time. This study is intended to create a guideline that can be used to encourage all private construction projects in the Klang Valley to implement the IBS System in 2015. Therefore, this study was undertaken to assess the level of IBS usage in the building construction. There are about 400 private sector projects in the Klang Valley that have been identified (or taken) as a sample for this study out of which 184 private projects are using IBS technology; achieving ed a score of over 55% . The findings of this study was to identify the perceptions, barriers that exist and the measures to be taken in the implementation and the criteria for developing a business model that can be used  as a model concept of IBS in the private sector.

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Fundamental study on combustion characteristics of direct injection gaseous fuel

Mohd Radzi Abu Mansor, Tan Chun Hyiin, Nik Muhammad Hafiz, Wan Mohd Faizal Wan Mahmood, W Ghopa Wan Aizon and Shahrir Abdullah

The development of a more efficient engine is an important agenda in the automotive industry and the shrinking source of fossil fuel drives the search for alternative fuels as a replacement for gasoline in car engines. Some of the problems faced by a direct injection engine used today is heat loss to the walls of the combustion chamber. The objective of the study is to determine the combustion characteristics such as the combustion temperature, enthalpy, total energy and local heat flux which use direct injection for various alternative fuels like methane, propane, hydrogen and compressed natural gas. Variables such as the mass flow rate of air, air temperature, ambient pressure and type of fuel are studied to determine the heat loss which occurs so that this data can be used in future researches that involve more specific applications. This study is done using computer simulations with the aid of computational fluid dynamics software. The model used in this study includes non-premixed combustion, P1 radiation, energy equation and large eddy simulation. The results showed that increasing air temperature leads to an increase in heat flux due to more dominant pre-mixed combustion at higher temperatures. An increase in ambient pressure also causes an increase in the mixture density and this leads to a lower heat flux due to narrower combustion. Different fuels show different combustion characteristics. Hydrogen showed the highest heat flux while methane showed the lowest heat flux. This study is a form of fundamental research which allows the data obtained to be used in the development of high efficiency internal combustion engine.

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Green technology design of modified wedge microwave absorber using rice husk

H. Nornikman, F. Malek, L. Y. Seng, M. H. Ramli, N. A. M. Syafiq, M. H. Mazlan, M. Z. A. Abd Aziz, B. H. Ahmad and A. Salleh

Green technology wedge microwave absorber is design is done by using the rice husk as the main material. This material effect to reduce the size and effect the environment friendly. Beside that, the shape of microwave absorber is the important parameter that affects the performance of RF absorbers. In this work, different dimension of wedges are discussed to compare the reflection loss or S₁₁ result of wedge microwave absorber. The frequencies range that consider in this works starting at 0.01 GHz to 10 GHz. The design is started with the basic design (Design A) of wedge microwave absorber is contains two wedge with height = 15 cm. For Design B, a wedge microwave absorber with varies dimension of centre absorber height from 6 cm to 14 cm. This microwave absorber is design in CST Microwave Studio using agricultural waste of rice husk with dielectric constant of 2.9.

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A comparison of ensemble Kalman filter and extended Kalman filter as the estimation system in sensorless BLDC motor

M. Rif’an, F. Yusivar, W. Wahab and B. Kusumoputro

In this paper, a new filtering algorithm is proposed for system control of the sensorless BLDC motor based on the Ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). The proposed EnKF algorithm is used to estimate the speed and rotor position of the BLDC motor only using the measurements of terminal voltages and three-phase currents. The speed estimation performance of developed EnKF was compared with the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) under the same conditions. Results indicate that the proposed EnKF as an observer shows better performance than that of the EKF.

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A surveillance wireless camera sensor network system for intrusion detection using image processing techniques

Quist-Aphetsi Kester, Ozoemena Willis Chibueze and Mohammed Dolapo Asisat

Surveillance systems are becoming critical part of our society and they play major roles in monitory of critical infrastructure, streets, public buildings, private buildings, properties etc. Policing and visual evidence gathering has supported and changed the way our judicial systems use supporting evidence in passing verdicts. Warfare are being changed by such systems as well. Wireless sensor networks are playing key roles in how we pick information from our physical environments and analyze them and the dawn of internet of things has open up new opportunities in using sensors in making life better. Its advantage can be seen from monitory of air pollution, temperature conditions in freezer and homes, wearable health devices etc. Yet special devices are being developed to meet these ever increasing technologies. Cameras for surveillance activities are developed with surveillance capabilities and making old monitory cameras fade away from the system. Hence an integration approach is needed to integrate and make sensing properties present in those old systems. In other to contribute to the field of security and surveillance, we proposed a new approach of using disparate camera devices with or without image processing techniques and built an image sensor based application to give capabilities to these systems as well as reduce latency at the end nodes during surveillance activities. This means that any off the shelf camera can be bought and plugged in into our proposed system which will have sensing ability based on our proposed method. We design the system and implemented it as well as performed analysis on them.

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Machine learning based methodology for testing object oriented applications

N. Kannadhasan and B. Uma Maheswari

The objective of software testing is to find the maximum number of errors as early as possible in the software development phase. Software testing ensures the quality of the source code and testing authenticates the incorrectness of the program.  The detection of flaws in the C++ source code which leads to logical errors are identified. The code is improved by automatically detecting the defects which are not detected by the compiler. The users are relieved from the liability of detecting these defects. These frameworks of defects are automatically extracted from the C++ source code by analyzing the object oriented applications. The piece of code contains defect are found and feature values are assigned for training the system. The feature values of defects and non-defect programs are converted into attribute relation format file which constitutes the data set.  Machine learning algorithm was used to classify the fault and non-fault statements in the object oriented applications.

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Relationship between thermal comfort and driving performance among Malaysian bus driver

Ahmad Rasdan Ismail, Siti Nur Atikah Abdullah, Ahmad Adam Abdullah, Mohd Rashid Ab Hamid and Baba Md. Deros

The purpose for this paper is to investigate the correlation between thermal comfort and Malaysian bus driver’s performance and also to determine the response from bus drivers regarding the prevalence discomfort that they experience along their journey. In this study, descriptive or survey study was used. A questionnaire survey was conducted to examine the relationship between thermal comfort and environmental factors that influences the Malaysian bus drivers’ performance. In this study, focus are been given to Kuantan bus drivers with sample size approximately 260 drivers. The confidence level is 95% and degree of accuracy of 0.05. From this population, the sample was selected randomly. The descriptive analysis and correlation was used to analysis the raw data that get from feedback of survey. The ‘p’ value is less than the alpha value, and then there is evidence that the relationship is significant. Therefore, null hypothesis is rejected. Hence, it proved that there is statistically significant positive correlation between thermal comfort and Malaysian bus driver performance. Clearly that all of two parts of thermal comfort and environmental factors have significantly correlated on Malaysian bus driver performance.

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Effective prevention of reverse engineering attacks on software

Jeyalakshmi Jeyabalan, Priya Loganathan and Sree Subha Soundarajan

With increasing availability of knowledge over Internet, it has become so common that any novice can go way beyond his technical ability to crack any licensed software and use it like any legitimate user. Reverse Engineering has been one of the prominent techniques to crack the software with hash code if not the high level language. The paper discusses a novel architecture where the effect of any such hacking effort in nullified. The paper narrates various static and dynamic techniques for anti reverse engineering and the need for integrating such techniques into the packers or installers. Whatsoever the software and the purpose be, the anti reverse engineering installers or packaging pieces of code can be equipped with minimal prevention against reversing attacks, which may be mandatory in future . The virtualization techniques are the key to the proposed system. The installer or unpacking software is equipped with the proposed techniques, so that the reverse engineering efforts may be thwarted successfully.

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Design and testing of inertia dynamometer for prototype fuel cell electric vehicle

Mohd Hadi Anuar Mohd Fakharuzi, Syed Mohd Harussani Syed Omar, Thomas Arthur Ward, OwChee Sheng, Suhadiyana Hanapi and Khairul Imran Sainan

This paper describes and demonstrates the construction and the validation of a customized inertia dynamometer particularly designed for the UiTM urban fuel cell electric vehicle. The inertia dynamometer is designed to simulate real values of vehicle kinetic energy, acceleration resistance, rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag. Parameters used for calibration are taken from the actual road testing and calculated results. This dynamometer is equipped with two data loggers that are able to log voltage, current, speed and time which complement with graphic user interface software for calculating torque and power. As final results, efficiency and energy consumption of the power train system can be calculated and analyzed.

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Crowd control in city buses using advanced embedded technology

With the budding embedded technologies that bring about drastic changes in the world in terms of technical development, a concept of solving various social issues related to security to resolve overcrowding in the city buses is applied in this paper. Imagination can bring up new innovative ideas that can be put into reality. Nowadays the city buses become overcrowded and people travel in footsteps risking their valuable lives. In order to put a full stop to this problem accommodation of passengers is restricted to predetermined value (i.e., to fixed seats or number) This is implemented by using a piezoelectric effect so that particular count of person entering and leaving the bus is monitored. Thus the number of available seats is always displayed outside the bus in the LCD and the opening and closing of the entry door is controlled based on the vacant place available. Another technology of card swiping is also implemented to issue tickets thus avoiding the messiness, and people cannot enter the bus without tickets.

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Effect of per-user threshold scheduling over different fading channels

R. Malathy and M. Jansi Rani

In this paper, we investigate scheduling algorithm for the downlink of a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) multiuser wireless system. A scheduling scheme is proposed that exploits multiuser diversities available in the channel. A scheduling scheme with per-user threshold in MIMO systems is proposed and then analyzed for various fading channels. The conventional scheduling scheme uses a common feedback threshold for all the users and analyzed for Single-Input and Single-Output systems. The proposed scheme constructs a sequence of feedback threshold, such that, each user compares its instantaneous Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) with their corresponding threshold in the sequence. The threshold is a function of long-term average SNR of the users as well as the number of users involved in the process. Numerical and simulation results show that, due to the flexibility of the per-user feedback threshold, fairness is obtained. Also, the system capacity of the proposed scheme is better than the conventional scheme. Finally, the performances of different fading channels are evaluated and compared.

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Directional oriented forwarding protocol for UAANETs

R. Suganthi and S. Sankara Gomathi

In this paper, we proposed a new routing protocol for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) we named this protocol Directional Oriented Forwarding Protocol (DOFP). The protocol assumes the structure of the UAANET is 3 dimensional structures. UAVs are flying at different heights. All the UAVs are equipped with directional antenna and GPS system. The UAV communicates with other UAVs, Ground level devices and also with ships. The node uses the position information from GPS system. From the position the node identifies the direction of the receiver. Then the node forwards the data signal through the directional antenna of that direction.

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Leakage Power is a major problem in SRAM cell based FPGA’s. The leakage power in FPGA is due to sub threshold leakage between source to drain and Gate to source oxide leakages. Due to drastic reduction of transistor size threshold voltage is also reduced exponentially, this in turn increases sub threshold leakages. Scaling trends of the transistor results in very thin gate oxide which in turn leads electrons tunneling through Gate oxide that result in Gate Oxide Leakage. By using Predictive technology Model parameters 16nm node SRAM cells are analyzed.

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Channel estimation and bit error rate analysis of demodulate and forward wireless relay networks

M. P. Chitra, M. PremKumar and S. Ganesh

This paper presents channel estimation techniques for demodulate and forward (DeF) wireless relay networks (WRN) using least squares (LS) algorithm and its variants. Channel estimation is a significant issue in wireless relay networks as it plays a major role in data detection of coherent communication systems. Channel coefficients (or) channel state information (CSI) need to be estimated by algorithms as CSI is not available practically in wireless network environment. Although, LS is an existing algorithm and provides mean square error performance to a lesser extent in comparison to the more powerful minimum mean square error (MMSE) algorithm and maximum likelihood (ML) algorithms, this paper proposes LS algorithm for CSI estimation of DeFWRN with the sole aim of performing data detection with low computational complexity and simplicity which is provided by LS algorithm. Derivation of CSI is done in this paper using least squares algorithm and its performance on mean square error (MSE) is simulated. To address data detection, bit error rate analysis is also carried out to analyze the estimated wireless channel coefficients of demodulate and forward wireless relay networks.

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Fuzzy controller based multi-level UPQC using dq0 transformation to improve power quality in distribution system

S. Satthiyaraj and S. Sankar

The power quality becomes a very important issue due to rapid growth in use of loads. The recent developments in power electronic equipments ensure the safety and reliability. The power quality is nothing a sinusoidal voltage and currents waveforms exactly in phase. If there are any mismatches in voltage or current then there exists a problem on power quality. The problem of power qualities are voltage swell, sag, interruptions, harmonics and transients etc. This paper proposes to improve power quality in source side of distribution system using unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) by analyzing the cascaded multilevel inverter (MLI). UPQC is nothing a combination of series and shunt active power filters to compensate power quality problems. The Sine PWM switching scheme is used for better performance of MLI. The control methods of UPQC are derived   from DQ0 transformation. To stabilize DC link voltage and balance the active power between series and shunt inverters the fuzzy logic controller is used. The regulation of source voltage in the distribution system using multilevel UPQC under non-linear load condition is analyzed. The operation of FUZZY controller for UPQC is done through MATLAB SIMULATION software.

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Smart irrigation system through wireless sensor networks

Irrigation is one of the most powerful sources in India but it is hard for an individual person to monitor continuously and regularly. This is due to laziness of mankind. In order to make this irrigation easier our system comprises some changes in the usual irrigation system. The newly developed project controls water supply automatically in water crisis areas through moisture sensor. This paper covers the application of Sensor based Irrigation system through wireless sensor networks, which uses a renewable energy as a source. In this system Wireless Sensor Networks Plays a major role in Environment monitoring system and provides unmanned irrigation. WSN consists of moisture sensors, Energy harvesting systems, embedded controllers and uses Super capacitors as storage device.

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Solving optimal power flow with facts device using de algorithm

A. Chandra Sekar and P. Rajasekar

In a power system, load flow is analyzed to know the real and reactive power flow in the lines connecting buses, bus voltage magnitude, and phase angle. Load flow analysis is required for a power system planning and operation. Economic operation of power system requires adjustment in real power generation of generators. Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) problem is solved to know this optimal real power generation. Optimal Power Flow (OPF) problem is a combination of economic load dispatch and power flow problem. OPF finds economic real power generation schedule for each generator and satisfies real and reactive power balance which is the objective of power flow problem. Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices are used to control transmission power to improve power system performance. STATCOM is a shunt connected latest FACTS device used to control reactive power and voltage in the power system. In this proposed work OPF is solved by including a STATCOM to improve the system performance and to reduce the generating cost. To minimize the generating cost for the power system with STATCOM, intelligent algorithm Differential Evolution (DE) is used. DE has three main operation, they are Mutation, Crossover and Selection. To validate the work with other published work, IEEE 30 bus system is considered for the simulation.

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An investigation analysis of grid connected PV system using reconfigurable solar converter

T. Sundar and S. Sankar

This paper is used to a new converter called reconfigurable solar converter (RSC) for photovoltaic (PV) system. The new converter is to use a three phase single-stage grid connected solar PV converter to perform dc/ac and dc/dc operations. This converter is likable for PV system, because it minimizes the number of conversion stages, so improving efficiency and reducing cost. The Simulation results are conformed to the theoretical results of the proposed RSC.

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Vibration control of a passenger car engine compartment model using passive mounts systems

M. Z. Sariman, H. Harun, F. Ahmad, R. Yunosand A. K. Mat Yamin

Engine mounting is one of the devices that provide vibration isolation for unwanted vibration from engine to the driver. There are 3 types of engine mounting system which are passive, semi-active and active engine system. This study emphasizes on the validation of mathematical equation derived from Newton 2nd Law of Motion with real time experiment. The study of the characteristic of mounts using simulation the 3-Degree Of Freedom (DOF) mathematical modeling in Matlab Simulink software. Then, the mathematical model is verified by using experimental approach. By comparing the results from the experimental and simulation it shows that the model enables to give same response as in the experimental result.

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A study on the causes for failures in mathematics by engineering students of chennai using triangular extended fuzzy clustering model (Trefclm)

A. Praveen Prakash, J. Esther Jerlin and M.P.Kannan

The aim of this paper is to introduce a new Fuzzy Model called Triangular Extended Fuzzy Clustering Model. In this paper the algorithm for this model is derived for the first time. Engineering students mostly keep arrear in engineering mathematics compared to other subjects. Hence Triangular Extended Fuzzy Clustering model is used to analyze the dominant causes for such failure to occur. In our survey, 100 engineering students were interviewed and their reasons for their failure in mathematics were taken as attributes and the above said model was applied to categorize the causes into three clusters namely Low, Medium and High. This paper consists of four sections. Section one gives the introduction of the problem and also the justification for having chosen to use the “Triangular Extended Fuzzy Clustering Model” approach to obtain the dominant causes for the failure. Section two gives the preliminaries and the basics of Triangular Extended Fuzzy Clustering model. Section three deals with the application of  the model in determining the cluster of problems, that fall under the three categories viz, ‘low’, ‘moderate’ and ‘high’. And, the final fourth section gives the conclusion and suggestions based on the result.

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Voltage induced effect for vibration suppression using eddy current on power steering system

M. Z. Baharom, G. Priyandoko, M. F. M. Romlay, M. S. M. Sani, M. S. Salleh and M. H. M. Yusof

This paper describes the study of vibration suppression by using eddy current as a suppression agent on a power steering system. Vibration occurs due to some factors such as engine vibration, road surfaces, vibration direction, tire characteristics, suspension design and steering devices. The objective of this study is to investigate the voltage induced effect on vibration suppression occurred at power steering system using eddy current braking. Equipments involve are accelerometer, data acquisition (DAQ), electric motor, transformer, aluminium disc and Voltage regulator. Position of the accelerometer was placed at the steering wheel and aluminium disc. Based on the result for frequency domain, in a normal condition, the level of vibration amplitude produce is 0.2348mvolt. while, after voltage was apply to power steering system lowest vibration suppression at steering column (aluminium disc) is 0.166mvolt with 2mm air gap opening using 48 volt power supply. For steering wheel, in a normal condition is the level of vibration is 0.2251mVolt. After voltage was applied to power steering system, the lowest vibration suppression at steering wheel is 0.1836mVolt using 96 Volt of voltage induced. Based on the experimental result, increasing voltage induced managed to reduce vibration on power steering system since the electromagnetic braking force using eddy current increase which act as the vibration suppression agent.

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Automated image processing using magnetic defectoscopy

Anatoly Grigorevich Korobeynikov, Aleksanin Sergey Andreevich and Oleg Arcad’evich Perezyabov

To identify defects, for example, cracks in the surface layers of steel parts methods are applied that base on the analysis of magnetic field dissipation nearby the defects after magnetization of these parts. Magnetic flux will vary in the areas with discontinuity. Magnetic particle inspection is one of the best known magnetic defectoscopy methods. In this case magnetic particle powder (dry method) or suspension (wet method) is applied on the magnetized part surface. Usage of fluorescent powders or suspensions makes defects more easily seen in the images of the inspected parts. Therefore, it becomes possible to carry out automated processing of such images. The paper presents automated procedure for selection of the image processing methods. It exemplifies image processing for a steel part with a view to defect detection with the help of luminous lines appearing after the wet method application.

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Evaluation of chromaticity coordinate shifts for visually perceived image in terms of exposure to external illuminance

Sergey A. Aleksanin, Igor O. Zharinov, Anatoly G. Korobeynikov, Oleg A. Perezyabov and Oleg O. Zharinov

The problem of the software-based correction method dealing with digital codes of color palette components used in on-board indication equipment has been considered and the appropriate research has been performed. It is shown that color palette, obtained with the use of any given source of external illuminance that is mounted in automated workstation, cannot be successfully used for all possible operating conditions when color temperature of external illuminance source is varying widely from 2,000 to 20,000 Kelvins). In order to display an image in varying conditions of external illuminance falling on the screen the method and formulas were proposed, which allowed correcting digital codes of any given color palette. It is shown, that relations between brightness value of an image on the LCD-panel and brightness of the color, caused by diffuse reflection of the light of external illuminance source, not only determine the technique for calculation of the contrast value for any given image element, but also restrict color gamut visually perceived by the person.

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Technologies for fast economical construction of residential buildings

Sergei Sychev

A new approach to the development of innovative technologies in the construction process for the rapid construction of individual houses in a simplified way using "dry" assembly industrial sand HIV-panels was researched. Using modeling methods and subsequent multi-criteria provides the optimization of technological solutions. The information-technological model of the industrial construction system is presented in a mathematical form, which makes it possible to carry out an accurate analysis of defects in pre-fabricated module buildings and to implement accelerated assembly technology. Key importance belongs to the following: adaptability of project solutions to streamline production, accuracy of assembly and a regulated pace of assembly operations on the construction site by means of transportable small-size equipment.

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K. R. Joy, E. Gopalakrishna Sarma

Image Quality Assessment (IQA) tools are becoming more and more indispensable in today’s digital image processing applications. Researchers are coming up with new approaches and methodologies as well as modifications to the existing methodologies for the overall improvement of the performance of IQA algorithms. Many currently available IQA algorithms deploy automatic down-sampling the input images while estimating the image quality. In this paper we analyze the effect of image down-sampling on the estimated values of quality and on the performance indicators of Full Reference IQA algorithms. Results show that the estimated quality and the performance indicators have a strong dependency on the down-sampling factor.

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Karthika Menon and Ismayil Siyad

Surveillance systems in real world limited bandwidth network face troubles due to obstruction in network. This created the necessity of a sophisticated algorithm that may be utilized in real time applications. This paper implicates principal component analysis based radial basis function for motion detection. Implementation in real world applications is the major goodness of this technique. This algorithm is preferable with variable bit rate video streams which makes wireless video communication at ease. Once the moving object detected human presence is known that widens the relevance of this method. This methodology is favorable for its effectiveness.

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In recent years due to the security concerns in the service oriented environments like cloud computing, compression of encrypted data has drawn much attention. A highly secure algorithm is used to encrypt the full image after which lossless compression is done on the encrypted image. To provide reasonably high level of security we couple image encryption scheme operated in prediction error domain with binary permutation. Huffman coding based approach is established for efficiently compressing the encrypted image. Hence a highly efficient image encryption then compression (ETC) scheme considering the lossless compression is designed. Experimental results shows that this encryption then compression scheme provides better performance than existing schemes.

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Networked control systems are control systems in which sensors, controllers, actuators, and other system components communicate over a network. In a networked control system the control loops are closed through a communication network. Implementing closed-loop control over a communication network introduces communication delays that degrade the control performance. Depending on network protocols and scheduling methods, network induced delays have different characteristics which can be constant and time varying. In a design process, the interaction of the control system with the network must be considered in order to use the communication resources effectively. This paper is an effort to analyze a multi-client multi-server architecture by observing the effects of packet delays, packet loss, and network congestion on the performance of the networked control system (NCS).This work proposes a multiple client server architecture that can be used as a real-time communication setup for possible applications in factory automation. In multi-client multi-server architectures, numbers of packet drops are reduced. Comparing with normal multi-client single-server systems, the additional servers in a multi-client multi-server architecture will ensure better handling of the traffic and considerable reduction in delay.

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Recommender Systems provide suggestions for users to guide in various decision-making processes. The recommender systems can be defined by the purpose of recommendation, mechanism and data gathering. Recommendation system for social networks are different since the item recommended are rational human beings. The paper focuses on designing a friend matching system by analyzing user lifestyles as common criteria. Large amount of data collected from various users create high dimensional data. In order to resolve this, probabilistic topic modeling is used. Content based machine learning approaches are used to find out suspicious users in the recommendation system. The results are evaluated based on the datasets created from the real world users.

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Electrooculography (EOG) is a technology for recognition of eye movements. This technology is based on the principle of recording the polarization potential or corneal-retinal potential (CRP), which is the resting potential between cornea and retina. This potential difference between cornea and retina creates an electric field, and the electrical signal that can be measured is called Electrooculogram. EOG is a very small electrical potential that can be detected by placing electrodes on the forehead around the eyes. The EOG signals can be used for various activities, which include controlling rehabilitation aids. This paper presents about the automatic wheel chair which is controlled by EOG signals and voice. This paper aims to develop a personalized real time technology based on EOG and voice to control a wheel chair.The personalization is achieved with the help of neural network. This paper discuss about various types of techniques used to control a wheelchair, electrooculography, block diagrams and working of a prototype wheel chair , shows the result of voice recognition etc.

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Performance optimization has been an important engineering activity for decades. Many designs are proposed that trade off accuracy in return of increased performance. This paper talks about a technique, loop perforation, which helps in performance enhancement with a quality tradeoff. Loop perforation transforms loops to execute a subset of their iterations and thus reduces the amount of computational work that produces the result. Here loop perforation is performed on Motion Estimation (ME) block of video encoders. Motion Estimation block is the heart of video encoders, which occurs in Inter frame prediction, corresponds to the most computational intensive task of the whole video compression process. In this paper, loop perforation is performed on 3 meta- functions of algorithm. The evaluation metrics used are Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), execution time and sum of the pixels of frame (residue) as a proxy for the bitrate. The proposed approach could give 27-91% improvement in execution time without causing much degradation in quality, but with an acceptable rise in bit rate.

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A novel approach using visual attention technique is proposed for classification that categorises objects in challenging conditions. Image classification is one of the most challenging problems in computer vision, especially in the presence of intra-class variation, clutter, occlusion and pose changes. Image classification refers to the labelling of images into one of the predefined categories. In image classification it is very difficult to deal with background information. The background image regions, whether considered as contexts of the foreground or noise to the foreground, can be globally handled by fusing information from different scales. Saliency driven image multi-scale nonlinear diffusion filtering can be used for this classification process. The resulting scale space in general preserves important structures such as edges, lines in the foreground, and inhibits and smoothes clutter in the background.

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Diversity techniques can be used in multiband cognitive radio networks to improve the achievable data rate of the receiver. Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) technique is used in relay assisted network to provide better receiver performance. Power bidding and allocation algorithm together with diversity technique is used to improve the performance of a hybrid multiband cognitive radio network. The power is allocated to the secondary users (SUs) through an auction game conducted by the secondary relay (SR). The SUs compete for the transmit power of the relay. If the SU works in overlay mode, the relay allocates the power in proportion to its payment; for the SU works in spectrum underlay, the power is allocated in such a way that the quality of service (QoS) of the Primary User (PU) is maintained. After allocating optimum power to SUs diversity technique is implemented in receiver to enhance the achievable date rate.

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Pulse oximetry is the non-invasive measurement of the oxygen saturation (SpO₂). It is used for a rapid assessment of a patient’s respiratory function to determine onset of hypoxemia (oxygen starvation) or COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). The sensing device is worn in the finger-tip which makes it the one with least discomfort among the devices for measuring vital parameters. In many critical situations, it is the ideal candidate for continuous monitoring using a wearable system for alert generation. We have developed the prototype of such a device which can be connected to any Android based mobile phone. It consists of a hardware subsystem with a very small footprint for continuous acquisition of SpO₂ signal for transfer to the mobile phone of the user. A part of the mobile application runs in the background to continuously acquire this signal, convert it into calibrated values of SpO₂ and pulse rate and store them in the local DBMS. In case the connection to a Hospital DBMS is enabled, it is updated there as well. The foreground part of the application provides the instantaneous values of pulse rate and SpO₂, along with their trends and minimum values. By continuous monitoring of pulse rate and SpO2 in the background, the application can detect the onset of hypoxemia and COPD and can give suitable alarms. The Hospital DBMS can be accessed by the consulting clinicians, thereby allowing remote monitoring of patient health condition. The device is being integrated into a wearable Body Area Network having ECG, Pressure and Temperature sensors for the complete monitoring of all vital parameters. Once clinically accepted, it can become a low cost alternative to the current bedside monitoring system used in hospitals. This paper presents the hardware and software aspects of the SpO₂ sensor segment developed.

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Independent travel is a well known challenge for blind or visually impaired persons. The text reading algorithm has proved to be robust in many kinds of real-world scenarios, including indoor and outdoor places with a wide variety of text appearance due to different writing styles, fonts, colors, sizes, textures and layouts, as well as the presence of geometrical distortions, partial occlusions, and different shooting angles that may cause deformed text. In this paper, we propose a method to detect panels and to recognize the information inside them. The proposal extracts local descriptors at some interest key points after applying color segmentation. Then, images are represented as a bag of visual words (BOVW) and classified using support vector machines. Finally, text detection and recognition method is applied on those images where a panel has been detected, in order to automatically read and save the information depicted in the panels. A language model partly based on a dynamic dictionary is also used.

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Hyperspectral images are the images that are taken using satellites. For the classification of this images, feature extraction is found to be an effective method. This paper mainly focuses on image fusion and recursive filtering. Firstly the image is divided into subsets of adjacent bands and then image fusion is adopted. For the better classification of features, recursive filtering is performed. The above methods along with the ELM classifier will increase the accuracy of classification. By using ELM, the overall accuracy and performance could be increased since ELM offers the advantages of smallest training error, good generalization ability, and ease of implementation as compared with other classifiers. Great superiority in computational speed especially for large-scale sample is also found in ELMs.

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An image is nothing more than a two dimensional signal. Digital image processing has very wide applications in almost all the technical fields. The images contain massive data sets and it has to be reduced using dimensionality reduction techniques. But the traditional dimensionality reduction techniques are more expensive. So a new technique has been recently developed known to be random projection method. When compared to the conventional random projection, double random projection gives more accurate results with reduced computational complexity. Recently the images are reconstructed from the double random projected images using both Singular Value Decomposition and Randomized SVD. We experimentally show that more accurate recovery of the image is obtained through rSVD compared to SVD. Often the projected images contain noise during transmission. We also show experimentally that the image can be recovered from the randomly noisy projected images using dictionary learning analysis.

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Recently, there has been an increase in the usage of personal mobile technologies such as smart phones or tablets, which users carry with them practically all the time. Via a special calibration technique, using the built-in camera of such mobile devices the user can record photos of the objects. By using these images, the weight of the object can be calculated. This method can be used in different applications such as finding calorie and nutritions in food items, estimating the amount of each raw materials required to make a concrete mix etc. The proposed system uses the 2D images to estimate the weight of the object in the image. This system is build based on image processing and object recognition. The proposed system extracts important features such as shape, color, size and texture. Using various combinations of these features and adopting computational techniques, such as Mahalanobis Distance classifier (MMDC), the objects are classified. One time calibration technique is used to estimate the real size of the object. Then the volume of each object is calculated and using density table the weight is estimated.

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Images are displayed in devices with different resolutions with the help of image resizing. Traditional image resizing methods don’t pay attention to the content of an image while resizing, thus make the image be seen unnaturally. Content-aware image resizing techniques consider the visual content of images during the resizing process. The basic idea in these algorithms is the removal of vertical and/or horizontal paths of pixels (i.e., seams) having low energy. These low energy pixels contain the low salient information. The proposed method uses gradient vector flow (GVF) of the image to find the pixel paths to be considered for resizing. The relevance of these paths can be directly obtained from an energy map, related to the magnitude of the GVF of the image to be resized. These seams may contain visually important regions. So the proposed method uses a significance map for the final selection of the pixel path. The significance map includes the saliency and depth features of the associated image. Visually important image regions can be better preserved in the final resized image with the help of the significance map.

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This paper proposes two different architecture to reduce power in wireless sensor nodes. Along with these two architecture, carry look ahead adder logic and SAD Algorithm using folded tree architecture are also explained. The energy needed for the wireless communication is very high. Radio communication has highest energy consumption. Power parallel prefix technique is used in this paper to reduce the energy and power. Parallel prefix adders have the best performance in VLSI Design. The main aim of this paper is to design and implementation of newly proposed folded tree architecture. Trunk and twig phase are the two different phases of the folded tree architecture. The energy consumption can be significantly reduced by employing a more appropriate processing element. There are different types of computations in microcontrollers. Folded tree architecture is based on the on the node data processing. Measurements of the silicon implementation show an improvement of 10-20 × in terms of energy as compared to traditional modern micro controllers found in sensor nodes.

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Growth of VLSI technology has inspired many designers to port algorithms into architectures. Coordinate Rotation Digital Computer (CORDIC) was one such algorithm which gained widespread attention, and many methods have come up for the implementation of CORDIC. Rotation of vectors through fixed and known angles has wide range of applications in digital signal processing, robotics, games, graphics, and animation. But, not much work has been done in the area of hardware optimization of CORDIC architecture. A few architectures which can be used for optimization of CORDIC for fixed angles of rotation are studied here. These designs were simulated and synthesized for Xilinx Field programmable gate array platforms and shown that device utilization can be improved using optimized designs. The most efficient design was identified and the same was selected for application in JPEG compression.

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Minimally invasive robotic surgery is a technique, in which small incisions are used for surgical access with the aid of robotic systems controlled by a surgeon. In medical surgery, robotic surgery is the belongs to many studies because of its advantages, such as better enhancing results, reduced recovery time, and more accurate surgical movements. In the conventional Minimally Invasive Robotic systems the surgeon gets only the video feedback from the patient’s body, to increase the precision and the accuracy of the surgery a force feedback system is incorporated into the existing system. A master-slave configuration is used for this visual and force feedback system. This helps the surgeon to identify the exact position of the surgical instrument inside the patient’s body whether it is bone or soft tissue. If it is a soft tissues then the surgeon will also get the thickness of the tissue. By identifying the exact position of the surgical instrument the surgeon can apply efficient amount of force that is suitable for the tissue. So the presence of the force feedback system will help the surgeon to do the surgery in a more precise manner.

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Digital video sequences are very vulnerable to manipulations and alterations using widely available editing tools. So some authentication techniques are needed in order to maintain authenticity, integrity, and security of digital video content. As a result, digital watermarking (WM), a data hiding technique has been considered as one of the key authentication methods. This paper presents a hardware implementation of a digital watermarking system that can insert invisible, semi-fragile watermark information into compressed video streams in real time. The watermark embedding is treated in the discrete cosine transform domain. It’s a hardware-based video authentication system using this watermarking technique structures minimum video quality degradation and can survive certain potential attacks, i.e., cover-up attacks, cropping, and segment removal on video sequences. Furthermore, the proposed hardware based watermarking system features low power consumption, low cost implementation, high processing speed, and reliability.

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Ternary content addressable memories (TCAMs) perform high-speed search and network routing operations in a deterministic time. When compared with static random access memories (SRAMs), TCAMs suffer from certain limitations such as low storage density, relatively slow access time, low scalability, complex circuitry, and higher cost. This paper proposes an efficient memory architecture, which emulates the TCAM functionality with SRAM. This logically divides the classical TCAM table along columns and rows into hybrid TCAMsubtables and then maps them to their corresponding memory blocks. During search operation, the memory blocks are accessed by their corresponding subwords of the input word and a match address is produced.

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Epilepsy is a group of neurological disorders that can have a psychological and emotional impact on people characterized by epileptic seizures. The cause of most cases of epilepsy is unknown. Epilepsy can often be confirmed with an electroencephalogram (EEG). Very fast EEG oscillations having frequencies greater than 70Hz have been observed, immediately before spontaneous seizures. Such oscillations occur in close proximity to the seizure onset sites, and might be a functional indicator of the location of the epileptic focus. Therefore, we could use EEG source localization algorithm to locate the epileptic focus. This paper analysis different source localization algorithm against localization capacity. In addition, looks into a cost efficient multi channel EEG signal acquisition system design.

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An advanced, robust binarization and character recognition in document images based on raspberry Pi

Anitta Vincent and Gincy Varghese

Digitization is a major scenario through which transactions and information sharing occur very fast. The notion of ‘paperless office’ is gradually coming into existence. Besides, there are a plethora of treasured documents which need to be safeguarded. In such a plot, an adequate system for reclamation and digital conservation of documents becomes indispensable. Here, a robust system for binarization and character recognition of deteriorated document images is proposed. Segmentation of text from deteriorated document images is a very tough task due to the high variation within and between the document background and the foreground text in different document images. The binarization technique employed here is a novel technique which utilizes a modified adaptive image contrast based method. This method can tolerate non-uniform background and various artifacts that creep in. Next step is the image segmentation, followed by character recognition using Artificial Neural Network. The entire system is implemented on a low cost minicomputer board named Raspberry Pi.

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Spectrally efficient FDM (SEFDM) systems can provide relative bandwidth savings and employ non-orthogonal overlapped carriers to improve spectral efficiency for communication systems in future. An approach is done for the implementation of SEFDM transmitter on FPGA .Non-orthogonal signals can be represented using Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT) blocks that can be efficiently realized with the Inverse Fast Fourier transform (IFFT) algorithm. This is done for digital baseband transmitter architecture for SEFDM. For good throughput, multiple IFFTs are needed, which can be configured as parallel architecture is explained.

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Jesmy John and Silpa P. A.

The paper explains high-speed video encoding based on 3-D discrete wavelet transform using bitplane entropy encoder. Novel low-complexity bit-plane entropy coding of wavelet sub bands is explained here. Subsequently entropy encoding based on parent-child sub band tree was realized. The proposed entropy encoding can be as well adopted for spatial-domain motion-compensated temporal filtering based video coding and, pooled with complexity scalable motion compensation, be able to attain better rate-distortion-complexity performance for highly complex encoding modes. The aim of the project is that the effective memory utilization, low complex computations, reduced power consumption and the reduced amount of data transferring.

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Aparna M. S. and Santhosh Kumar M.

Self-repairing digital systems have recently appeared as the most hopeful substitute for fault-tolerant systems. This idea get up from the biological functioning of endocrine cells. The motivation we obtained from the biological endocrine system lies in the effectual and flexible communication mechanism between endocrine cells. In the endocrine system, the data between endocrine cells is exchanged via the hormones, and this forms a complex communication grid. The proposed system architecture is consists of a structural layer and a gene-control layer. In the structural layer, the circuit is alienated into modules. Encoded data in each module are composed of both functional and connection data. Therefore, the function and networks of the whole system are retained by simply communicating the same encoded data to the spare (stem) module, while the wiring architecture connects correctly after the encoded data are properly allocated to the spare module. The main role of the gene-control layer is to allot the right spare (stem) module to switch the faulty one. The system propose new architecture for developing working cell and fault detection. The modified architecture offers more fault coverage compared to the existing system. The proposed system has been implemented in Spartan 6 and simulated using Isim simulator in Xilinx software.

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Fincy Francis and Vishnu Rajan

There are many Speaker Identification algorithms are available today where different auditory feature and extraction techniques are used, but we don’t have a method can perform in all acoustic conditions. Here our aim is to develop a high performance and noise robust speaker identification system. The MFCC and GFCC feature components combined are suggested to improve the reliability of a speaker recognition system. The MFCC based speaker recognition provides high accuracy and it is a low complex systems; however they are not very robust at the presence of additive noise and in various different acoustic condition . The GFCC features in recent studies have shown very good robustness against noise and acoustic change. Here we proposing an idea that to integrate both MFCC and GFCC features to improve the overall ASR system performance in low signal to noise ratio (SNR) conditions. The another aim of this thesis is a detailed evaluation of the parameters used in Automatic speech recognition system such asframe size, number of Gaussian mixtures and GMM technique. In this paper we propose more advanced technique for speaker model creation by using GMM-UBM in order to reduce the error during processing time. The experiment are conducted on the English Language Speech Database for Speaker Recognition (ELSDR) databases. In order to find out the performance of the system, the test utterances are mixed with noises at various SNR levels to simulate the channel change. The results provide an analytical comparison between MFCC,GFCC and MFCC­GFCC combined features.

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Sherin C. George and Anoop Suraj A.

The Advanced Encryption Standard can be programmed in software or built with pure hardware. But Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAS) offer a faster and more customizable solution, since the entire algorithm can be executed in a single tick of clock cycle. This research deals with the implementation of AES algorithm in FPGA using Verilog Language. Software is used for simulation and optimization of the synthesizable Verilog code. All the transformations of both Encryption and Decryption are simulated using an iterative design approach for minimizing the hardware consumption. The design uses an iterative looping approach with block and key size of 128 bits and lookup table implementation of S-box. The FCSR used for key generation make the algorithm more secure, and the usage of Vedic multipliers instead of normal multipliers increases the throughput. This gives low complexity architecture and easily achieves low latency.

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The vein structure in the sclera, the white and opaque outer protective covering of the eye, is anecdotally stable over time and unique to each person. As a result, it is well suited for use as a biometric for human identification. Sclera recognition poses several challenges: the vein structure moves and deforms with the movement of the eye and its surrounding tissues; images of sclera patterns are often defocused and/or saturated; and, most importantly, the vein structure in the sclera is multi-layered and has complex non-linear deformation. Here proposed a new method for sclera recognition, a line descriptor along with WPL descriptor based feature extraction, registration, and matching method that is scale, orientation, and deformation invariant, and can mitigate the multi-layered deformation effects and tolerate segmentation error. The use of Y shape descriptor along with WPL descriptor will unanimously increase matching speed.

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Low power and high performance hybrid-content addressable memory (CAM) in SOI-technology

Low power consumption and high speed are the two major concerns related to the design of CAM (Content Addressable Memory). In this paper, we combined the performance advantage of NOR-type CAM with power efficiency of NAND-type CAM which is termed as Hybrid-CAM. It is implemented using 30 nm SOI technology utilizing the BSIM model for SOI. Each CAM word is divided into two segments in which one segment is implemented using NAND-type and the other using NOR-type. The realized hybrid-CAM, based on 30 nm 0.9V SOI, achieves a 93% power reduction and 47% performance improvement As compared to the traditional NAND-type and NOR-type CAM cells implemented on SOI technology.

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Migration of users into the cloud environment is increased with the high popularity of services provided by the cloud providers. When large number users are outsourcing their files into the cloud environment privacy becomes the most important issue. As a result the clients outsource their data/information after encryption. The searching and retrieval of data becomes most complex when the files are stored in the encrypted format. In the previous works Multi-keyword ranked search over encrypted data supporting synonym queries is proposed is implemented to assure the privacy enhanced searching method. The ranking technique is used to retrieve the most similar values over the encrypted data files. However clients cannot assure that whether the all retrieved results are correctly ranked or not. The rank test method can be implemented to find out the files are having similar fields or not. The proposed system in this work is used to retrieve the files with the most similarity values. To achieve fried man rank testing mechanism is used which tends to check the integrity of ranked files. The experimental tests conducted were proves that the proposed methodology provides better result than the existing approaches in terms of improved privacy and retrieval rate.

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Computer vision is the method of acquiring, processing, analyzing and understanding high-dimensional data images in order to produce numerical or symbolic information. These concepts are being pervasively applied in all fields of life, but due to the requirements of high processing power and high degree of parallelism, real-time computer vision applications are restricted to FPGA’s and high end processing GPU’s. The Raspberry Pi is a low cost medium processing power embedded development board. Raspberry’s capability in performing computer vision functions has been demonstrated with OpenCV support. But optimization of OpenCV functions in Raspberry Pi still considered a challenge. There is no direct OpenCV function for performing Connected component Labelling. The Connected Component Labeling is commonly used for identifying objects and marking fields for majority of computer vision application. This work discuses about the implementation and optimization of connected component labeling algorithms on Raspberry Pi. Apart from algorithm level adaptations for better hardware utilization, code level optimization is also explored. CCL is implemented with fastest algorithm known as LSL. In addition to LSL, Rosenfeld and contour based labeling are discussed for reference. The final implementation consists of real time connected component labeling with component numbering and estimation of area bounded by each component.
 

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Face detection and tracking algorithm in real time camera input surroundings is discussed in this paper. Human Face Recognition systems are an identification process in which a person is verified based on human characters. The method described in this paper is very fast with accurate result. The entire face tracking algorithm is allocated into two section. The first section is face detection and second is face tracking. Haar based algorithm is used to detect the face in the image. On the face image to extract feature points, Shi and Thomasi algorithm is used and Pyramidal Lucas-Kanade algorithm is used to track those sensed features. Results on the real time indicate that the proposed algorithm can precisely extract facial features points.

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Image compression is minimizing the size of a graphics file keeping the quality of the image to an acceptable level. Wavelets are mathematical tools for hierarchically decomposing functions. It allows to describe a function in terms of a coarse overall shape, plus details that range from broad to narrow. Haar Transform lends itself easily to simple manual calculations. Modified Fast Haar Wavelet Transform (MFHWT, is one of the algorithms which can reduce the calculation work in Haar Transform (HT) and Fast Haar Transform (FHT). The project is an attempt on implementation of an efficient algorithm for compression and reconstruction of images, using MFHWT.

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Using the basic concept of a hovercraft we planned of making a surveillance robotic vehicle for military which can be used in cases of extreme crisis like a natural calamity where there is a huge loss of life and property. In such areas there is an immediate need of rescue operations and supplies. But the rescue operations have no specific direction as they have no idea of the extent of damage and the kinds of barriers. This puts their life and as well as the affected people’s life at stake. In such situation we need a vehicle which can be controlled remotely and also which can help the military do their channelize their resources and help them execute the rescue missions successfully and efficiently both on land and water by providing crucial information and data to control station (PC) which may further be used to plan and strategize further rescue operations. The basic prototype is designed to be ZIGBEE controlled and consists of different types of sensors like ultrasonic sensors which is used to check the distance of any object from it and accordingly drive the robotic vehicle in the suitable direction, GPS module which is used to track the vehicle and receive the coordinates of desired place, and send relevant data to the PC through 'ZIGBEE' modules, which is one of the most powerful and cheap mode of long distance transmission of data. The robotic vehicle sends the live video feed to the PC using the roborealm software. The wireless camera which is installed on it can monitor the affected area remotely and send us vital information. This Robo can be used in star hotels, shopping malls etc where there can be threat from intruders or terrorists. Since human life is always precious, these hovercrafts are the replacement of army personnel against terrorists in war areas. This hovercraft has many applications. It can save a lot of lives by its valuable information as lack of vital information acts as a major barrier in case of such emergencies. It can carry small payload even (for e.g. Syringes, medicines etc.). A hovercraft of this type can be useful when other communication system will not operate during time of disasters which was recently observed during the cyclone Hudhud and Kashmir flood. During these critical periods, administrators, NDRF or army can use them to monitor the situation.

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A method for the rectification of figures and photos in printed documents using a single camera-captured image. The algorithm requires a bounding box for the objects in a single-view image. On receiving the bounding box, the desired image can be cropped for further processing. The main feature of segmentation method is that, it exploits the properties of printed figures to detect the boundaries using an optimization scheme. The boundary is extracted to obtain the boundary points and rectifying the distorted image is carried out using a dewarping method. The method improves the quality of output by largely removing perspective distortions. The rectified image having low resolution is converted to a higher resolution image using an edge directed interpolation method. Thus, an enhanced rectified output image is obtained as a result.

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Peanut shells derived solid acid catalyst for biodiesel production

PuaFei-ling, Tan Chuan-Yeong, Dang Wee-Hongand Kumaran Palanisamy

Waste peanut shells are contributed to a large quantity of lignocellulosic waste. This project was aimed to utilize the waste materials for a better benefit. Waste peanut shells, were used as raw material to prepare a new solid catalyst for biodiesel production. Solid acid catalyst derived from waste peanut shells was used to catalyze the esterification process in biodiesel production from waste cooking oil. Solid acid catalyst was prepared by in-situ impregnation with sulfuric acid. This new catalyst was used to catalyze the esterification of high free fatty acid (FFA) value waste cooking oils as pre-treatment step prior biodiesel production. The effects of catalyst loading, oil-to-methanol molar ratio and catalyst reusability on the catalytic activity were investigated. The highest catalytic activity with 71.58% esterification rate was achieved and it can be reused for three times under optimized condition. The catalyst can be easily separated for reuse compared with homogenous catalyst which used in biodiesel production. Waste peanut shells are potential to be converted into useful feedstock and the derived catalyst can replace traditional liquid acid catalyst in biodiesel production especially for high acid value content feedstock.

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Evaluation of the storage effect on the fuel properties for variety biodiesel blends

Humairak Yusof, Noreffendy Tamaldin, Abdollah M. F. B. and Amir Khalid

This paper presents the effect of high blending ratio (HBR) biodiesel storage on the acid value and flash point temperature. The samples used, standard diesel (STD), B80, B90 and B100 were stored at temperature24 ˚C for nine weeks in a box. The acid value and flash point temperature were measured according to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) procedure. The results show that, the acid value and flash point temperature of the samples were increased almost 10% with the rise of10% biodiesel blending ratio. Under long storage duration, the acid value and flash point temperature for all the samples are nearest to constant. Consequently, there are no significant effect to the acid value and flash point temperature when all the samples were stored in the dark place at room temperature (24˚C) for long period.

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Effect of varying engine parameters and syngas composition on the combustion characteristics, performance and emission of syngas-diesel dual fuel engine- A review

Bahaaddein Kamal M. Mahgoub, Suhaimi Hassan and Shaharin A. Sulaiman

In this study, a literature survey of research papers on the effect of engine load, injection timing and syngas composition on the combustion characteristics performance and emission of dual fuel compression ignition (CI) engine using syngas was carried out. In general, operation of CI diesel engine with syngas leads to reduced engine power because syngas has lower heating value compared to diesel. However, dual fuel operation is considered as a hopeful way to control the emissions of nitrogen oxides on CI diesel engines and it affects positively on emissions of carbon dioxide, whereas it leads to a substantial increase in emissions of carbon monoxide and total hydrocarbons compared to the observed in the process of normal diesel. Advanced injection timing of diesel fuel and supercharging of the intake air-syngas mixture are techniques suggested to improve the engine performance. In addition varying of the syngas composition; especially combustible constituents (H₂, CO, and CH₄) combined with exclusion of CO₂ from syngas composition are proposed as a way to improve engine performance and reduce emissions.

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Modification of motorcycle with hydrogen mixture and effect on emission

Razali H., Sopian K., Mat S. and Ibrahim S.

Carbon monoxide is one of the emission gases produced by vehicle exhaust fumes that can have negative effects on human health and the environment. Reducing the production of carbon monoxide in exhaust fumes of vehicles is part of this study by using hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Hydrogen in this research is generated by a chemical reaction (AL + HCl). Hydrogen by means of a mixture of gasoline and hydrogen (G+H2) is used to operate an old motorcycle with performance benchmarks and monitoring. The methodology in this study uses the chassis dynamometer and gas analyzer as the main apparatus. The procedure of testing is at specified operating motorcycle conditions (L0, L1, L2) at the maximum speed of the motorcycle. The overall average results of this study showed a reduction of carbon monoxide by 33 %. It proves the use of hydrogen (AL + HCl) in the stoichiometric ratio helps combustion when the oxygen content in the air and fuel mixture is not adequate especially for vehicles using gasoline as a fuel. This study has shown that using hydrogen as a supplement fuel for gasoline engine is a better alternative in controlling air pollution which has become an increasingly critical aspect for the local and international motoring industry.

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Potential of a variable speed compressor in achieving efficient and green train air-conditioning system

Henry Nasution, Sumeru, Azhar Abdul Aziz, Afiq Aiman Dahlan and Amirah Haziqah Zulkifli

The potential of a variable speed compressor running with a controller to provide enhanced load-matching capability, energy saving and thermal comfort for application in the train air conditioning system is demonstrated. This paper presents an algorithm developed based on fuzzy logic control (FLC) and programmable logic control (PLC), which allows selected compressors to run at the appropriate operating speed. The main objective of the experimental work is to evaluate the energy saving obtained when the FLC and PLC algorithm, through an inverter, continuously regulates the compressor speed. It demonstrates better control of the compressor operation in terms of energy consumption as compared to the control by using a thermostat imposing on/off cycles on the compressor at the nominal frequency of 50 Hz. The experiments were conducted with temperature set-points of the conditioned space of 22oC. Measurements were taken at a time interval of one minute. The experimental results indicate that the proposed technique can save energy and improve indoor comfort significantly for train air conditioning systems compared to the conventional (on/off) control technique. The experimental results also showed that more energy saving can be obtained through the use of FLC when compared to the PLC and on/off control.

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Design of customized modular cylinder head for Si-engine

Athirah Abdul Aziz, Adlansyah Abd Rahman and Abdul Aziz Hassan

This paper proposed the design of modular cylinder head for a 150 cc racing motorcycle engine which provides the flexibility to change the internal architecture and use different components in the cylinder head to achieve the desired engine performance. Unconventional production method using CNC machining is the preferred approach because of lower per unit cost. The objective was to design a light weight cylinder head suitable for low-medium volume production using CNC machining and also prevent localized overheating of hotspots on the cylinder head. This was achieved by varying the local thickness of the cylinder head and directing more coolant by providing channels to the hotspots. In addition the heat transfer from the exhaust gas is minimized by shortening the exhaust manifold. By managing cylinder head cooling, it is possible to minimize the weight of the cylinder head and the size of the cooling system to reduce the overall engine weight. The cylinder head is divided into three parts consisting of the cylinder head cover, the valve train housing and the combustion chamber housing. The detailed design was then done and finalized. The computational work of stress and thermal analysis was done on ANSYS.

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Secondary pulley clamping force controller for electro-mechanical dual acting pulley continuously variable transmission system

Bambang Supriyo, Kamarul Baharin Tawi, Mohd Sabri CheKob and IzhariIzmi Mazali

This paper introduces an electro-mechanical dual acting pulley continuously variable transmission (EMDAP CVT) system and presents a method of measuring belt-pulley clamping force indirectly using a DC motor current sensor. The EMDAP CVT mainly consists of two movable primary (input) and secondary (output) pulley sheaves connected by metal pushing V-belt. Two DC motor’s actuation systems adjust the CVT ratio. Additionally, the secondary actuation system controls belt-pulley clamping force by adjusting the flatness of the spring discs placed at the back of each secondary pulley sheave to keep the belt tight and prevent belt slip. Ideally, a force sensor is used to measure the belt-pulley clamping force however the use of force sensor inside transmission gearbox is not feasible due to high temperature and oily environment. A viable solution for indirectly measuring the clamping force using current sensor for DC motor is proposed. Since the DC motor actuates the movable pulleys to clamp the belt, the relationship between the DC motor current and belt-pulley clamping force can then be investigated experimentally. The results will give positive impact on precisely controlling belt-pulley clamping force of EMDAP CVT using current sensor which is relatively simpler and less expensive than force sensor.

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Design, development, and fabrication of a 6 DOF humanoid welding robot manipulator

Sami Salama Hussen Hajjaj and Meisam Khonbreh

This work reports on the design, development, and fabrication of humanoid welding robot manipulator with 6 D.O.Fs. By mimicking the movement and motion of the human hand, this robotic welder manipulator could mimic or even surpass the performance of the human welder. This work is a component of a bigger project on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). The objective of this work mainly is to focus on mechanical design of the manipulator. That includes analyzing the human hand, arm and developing a robotic manipulator to mimic some or most of the motions of the human arm, from the shoulder to the wrist. Kinematics analysis of the human arm, joints, and linkage structure were conducted in Creo, AutoCAD. These were used in the fabrication and development of a working prototype. This project was developed in collaboration with another project; namely the humanoid gripper. As such, upon construction of this manipulator, it was attached to the humanoid gripper and allowed to manipulate it and allow it perform its function of gripping objects, pick and place, and perform a human gesture. Results obtained from this work illustrated the good functionality of the design.

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Design and performance analysis of magnetorheological valve module with annular-radial concept

B. Ichwan, S. A. Mazlan, F. Imaduddin, H. Zamzuri and M. A. A. Rahman

In this study, a new design of magnetorheological (MR) valve module using annular-radial gaps concept are developed to improve the design flexibility and manufacturability towards commercialization process. In commercial perspective, a product with flexible performance capacity is sometimes more preferable than a high performance product but with fixed specifications since frequent design resizing can be inefficient in terms of manufacturing process. This paper proposes a new design of a compact MR valve using annular-radial concept as an effort to enhance the performance of an MR valve while at the same time improving the easiness of performance range and the simplicity of manufacturing process using a fully modular valve structure. In order to evaluate the valve performance, the conceptual design module MR valve, the proposed design is evaluated in terms of pressure drop characteristics with respect to the magnetic field strength and current input in the perspective of module performance. The simulation results have shown that the proposed design has successfully improved the achievable pressure drop with additional advantage in performance flexibility through modular valve concept.

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Effect of magnetic flux on rotor-stator arrangement of neodymium permanent magnet

N. I. Kasim, M. A. Musa, H. Ngah, A. R. Razali and M. Ishak

The use of crude oil to produce energy become limited and gives threat to the earth. There are various alternatives sources that have been developed today such as solar, wind, hydro, etc., but are not sustainable or constant with time due to its nature. Recent development in ‘free energy’ shows some technology that allegedly approaching commercial and magnet motor is one of the most promising technologies. Magnet motor is a free energy device that can generate energy with the repellent force of permanent magnet in cylindrical arrangement. The arrangement of permanent magnet in rotational array configuration produces a cyclic motion indefinitely; which is so called perpetual motion device. The torque produced by perpetual motion device may be used to drive electric generator to produce free electricity. In this paper, neodymium permanent magnet was arranged in rotor-stator configuration by using block shape (12.7 mm x 12.7 mm x 25.4 mm thickness) N42 grade magnet. A preliminary design was conducted and the effect of magnetic flux was investigated on the rotational movement of the rotor. Based on the experimental result, it had confirmed that cogging effect could be eliminated. This was achieved by cancellation of magnetic flux in different arrangement of permanent magnet in the stator.

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Wheel slip control based on composite nonlinear feedback

Ahmad Mudzakkir Ahmad Mustafa, Hairi Zamzuri, Mohd Hatta Mohammed Ariff, Muhammad Afandi Mohmad Nordin and Saiful Amri Mazlan

To produce faster vehicle acceleration and avoid wheel spin on slippery roads, the wheel slip must be controlled to achieve maximum traction. Recent researches in slip control always had to compromise between speed of time response and overshooting. This research studies the application of Composite Nonlinear Feedback (CNF) controller for vehicle wheel slip control, particularly for in-wheel electric vehicle. A strategy for applying the CNF controller which involves feedback linearization is proposed. The CNF is a combination of a linear feedback law and a nonlinear feedback law without any switching element. The CNF control focuses on improving the transient performance. The proposed control strategy is validated by simulation.

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Dynamics performances of Malaysian passenger vehicle

Abdullah Mohd Azman, Salim Mohd Azli, Mohammad Nasir Mohd Zakaria, Sudin Mohd Nizam and Ramli Faiz Redza

In this work, a Malaysian passenger vehicle is tested and driven on a predetermined route. The dynamic performances of the vehicles are studied based on roll moment and 3-axis vibrations. A simple data acquisition system with gyro and 3-axes accelerometer is used. The dynamic performances of the vehicles are analyzed based on road conditions such as corners, bumpers and vehicle speeds and vehicle drivability. The driving behavior of the drivers is also studied. The data from the experiment can be used for improvement in safety driving, optimum fuel consumption and vehicle maintenance prediction.

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Computational cost analysis of extended kalman filter in simultaneous localization and mapping (EKF-SLAM) problem for autonomous vehicle

Saiful Bahri Samsuri, Hairi Zamzuri, Mohd Azizi Abdul Rahman, Saiful Amri Mazlanand Abdul Hadi Abd. Rahman

Extended Kalman filter (EKF) based solution is one of the most popular techniques for solving simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem. However, previous research showed the implementation of EKF for SLAM suffered with high computational costs, which affect the performance in real time application. This paper investigates the computational cost performance of an EKF-SLAM algorithm. The analysis was done by time measurement on sub-step motion update and measurement update on EKF by considering the total numbers of landmarks and numerous setting on range observation distance. The analytical results show that as the number of landmarks or range observation distances increased, the computational cost in measurement update step required more computation time compare to motion update step. Furthermore, improvements are needed to optimize the computational cost for the update step.

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Arduino based electro-mechanical throttle controller for automotive applications

Bambang Supriyo, Kamarul Baharin Tawi, Mohd Salman CheKob and Izhari Izmi Mazali

This paper introduces an electro-mechanical throttle actuator and implements its real time Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) based position controllers using an Arduino Uno microcontroller and Matlab/Simulink® software. The Arduino Uno acts as an inexpensive USB based Data Acquisition System. It is controlled by a Matlab/Simulink program in a host computer to perform PID based throttle controller tasks. The throttle actuator is based on a linear actuation DC motor which is directly connected to the engine throttle lever using a metal cable. Initial PID parameters are obtained experimentally using combinations of relay feedback method and Ziegler Nicholl formula. The performance of throttle actuator controller is assessed in terms of percent overshoot, settling time and steady state error. The results show that the Proportional-Derivative (PD) and Proportional-Derivative-Plus-Conditional-Integral (PDPCI) controllers have adequately improved Proportional (P) controller performance, especially in terms of overshoots in which the smallest overshoot of 1 percent is achieved by PDPCI controller.

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Aeroacoustics characterization methodology applicable to turbocharger compressor

Kishokanna Paramasivam, Danial Mohamed, Alesssandro Romagnoli, Srithar Rajoo and Alias Mohd Noor

Turbochargers have become an important part of modern high efficient engines, and soon will be a standard component. Almost all automotive and industrial diesel engines and most of the high performance SI engines are equipped with turbocharger. Even though past few decades have seen continuous performance improvement, there is still lack of wide range research on acoustical behavior of turbochargers. A turbocharger consists of compressor which is driven by an exhaust turbine. Turbocharger produces high frequency aerodynamic sound due to the high speed rotating blade. The main aerodynamic noise generating mechanisms in turbo-compressors is tonal noise at blade passing frequencies, buzz-saw noise and blade tip clearance noise. The focus will be on tonal noise which occurs due to pressure fluctuation that is related to the rotating speed. The tonal noise is periodic in time where it consists of the blade passing frequency (BPF) and its harmonics. Higher rotating speed will result in a more prominent blade passing noise and its harmonics. The aim of this paper is to offer a methodology on characterizing the tonal noise of turbocharger based on investigation of a high speed turbomachinery, which also has similar acoustical behavior. This study will include results from commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code and experimental with the sound pressure level distribution.

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Green fuel: 34% reduction of hydrocarbons via hydrogen (AL+HCL) blended with gasoline at maximum torque for motorcycle operation

H. Razali, K. Sopian and S. Mat

The concept of alternative fuel is more towards green technology which is now a necessity in the transport sector. The requirements not only refer to the reduction of hydrocarbon but an increase in engine performance is also an importance part in the research. In this study, the use of aluminum and hydrochloric acid is the basis of the chemical reaction to produce hydrogen. The application of hydrogen as a fuel in the conventional engine is through a mixture of hydrogen and gasoline (G + H2). The hydrogen supports the combustion in the combustion chamber to reduce hydrocarbon contents in the exhaust gases. The evaluation of hydrocarbon production levels in this study were set at maximum torque when the motorcycle engine is in full throttle. Chassis dynamometer test and load test contamination at L0 , L1 and L2 of the engine (G + H2) produced a 34% reduction in hydrocarbons. This is better than using the engine (G). During the tests L0 , L1 and L2, the average hydrocarbon gas readings decreased by 58.2%, 27.4% and 16.7% to 46 ppm, 85 ppm and 95 ppm respectively versus 110 ppm, 117 ppm and 114 ppm. This study has shown that generated hydrogen (AL + HCl) is a better alternative in controlling air pollution which has become an increasingly critical aspect for the local and international motoring industry.

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Potential of mixed zingiberofficinale and garciniaatroviridis as a treating medium for used cooking oil

M. H. M. Hafidzal, M. Z. M. Razi, A. Hamzah, N. H. Razak, N. I. Zulkafli, M. F. B. Abdollah, S. A. Shamsudin and A. Roslizar

This study was undertaken to explore the potential of mixed zingiberofficinale and garciniaatroviridis as a treating medium for used cooking oil. The used cooking oil was treated in two stages. First, it was heated together with zinngiberofficinale until the temperature at the in the range of 170 °C to 220 °C for 10 minutes. In the next stage, the garciniaatrovirdis was then put into the treated cooking oil for 24 hours. The purity and the clarity index of the sample were observed using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and Ultraviolet (UV) spectrometers. The results show that the FTIR curve of used cooking oil after treated with mixed zinngiberofficinale and garciniaatrovirdis has a similar characteristic with new cooking oil. Besides, the higher absorbency indicates that the clearity index of treated oil is better than that of used oil. The results presented here may facilitate demonstration of zingiberofficinale and grarciniaatroviridis as a new treating medium for used cooking oil.

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Accuracies of J48 Weka classifier with different supervised Weka filters for predicting heart diseases

Jothikumar R., Sivabalan R. V. and Sivarajan E.

Heart disease is one of the life threatening disease overall the globe. As per the survey of world health organization 17 million deaths are due to heart attacks and strokes which cause maximum casualties. So Heart disease diagnosis and prediction is the essential and monotonous task in healthcare industry. The healthcare industry is information rich and knowledge poor. Useful knowledge can be exposed from health care systems using data mining techniques and can be used to predict the likelihood of patients getting heart disease. Number of researchers used many data mining techniques to diagnose and predict the heart disease and many of them were in practice. But most of the techniques outputs approximately and not accurately, because the datasets used by the researcher is impure and subjected to errors, missing values, irrelevant data and outdated data. The process of cleaning the data that is removing the impure data like errors, missing values, irrelevant data and outdated data is called data preprocessing. By applying data preprocessing prior to the actual technique the accuracies of the prediction classifier can be improved. Here, I am applying supervised Weka filters Add classification, attribute Selection, Class Order, Discretize and Nominal to Binary filters for preprocessing the data on the Switzerland heart disease dataset. The cleaned datasets obtained as output from those filters is fed as input to the J48 Classifier and the prediction accuracy of each is measured and Tabulated for comparative analysis. It is found that the J48 Pruned tree with Add classification Filter with J48 classifier gives the improved accuracy of 80.9524 % than others. The performance analysis and different measures considered were tabulated and discussed below.

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Ride comfort performance evaluations on electric vehicle conversion via simulations

Saiful Anuar Abu Bakar, Mohd Farid Muhamad Said and Azhar Abdul Aziz

The paper presents a simulation study on the ride comfort performance of a passenger vehicle which is expected to be converted into an electric vehicle. The studies involved evaluations of vehicle’s ride comfort, performance before and after the conversion being made using a validated simulation model. The studies used a validated 7 degrees of freedom of vehicle ride comfort model of the passenger vehicle that is expected to be converted into an electric vehicle. The model was used to evaluate the vehicle ride comfort performance when it's being converted into an electric vehicle. It is done by varying the weight distribution load at the front and rear axles. The vehicle’s vertical acceleration, displacement, pitch rate and pitch angle are the responses observed in this study. It was found that the EV conversion’s ride comfort was not significantly affected from the modifications.

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Intake analysis on four-stroke engine using CFD

A. M. Mohd Shafie, Musthafah M. T., M. S. Ali, Rosli A. Bakar, Mohamed Arifin Y.

Flow patterns are vital to ensure that the engine can produce high performance with the presence of swirl and tumble inside the cylinder. In this paper, the simulation of air is simulated in the software to predict the flow pattern using the steady state pressure based solver at two different planes in the engine domain. The domain used for the simulation is based on the actual engine parameters. Using the commercial CFD solver ANSYS FLUENT, the CFD simulation is run under five different piston positions and seven different engine speeds. Note that in this simulation, only intake strokes are simulated. The results show the velocity of the flow is high during the sweeps the intake stroke takes place. This situation is believed to produce more swirls and tumble during the compression, hence enhancing the burning rate in an entire region of the clearance volume. The result shows that both for plane A-A and plane B-B, the highest velocity vector occurs when the engine speed at 4500 rpm with piston position at 45 degree. This will initiate to the production of tumble and swirl in the engine cylinder.

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Structural analysis of brake disc using dynamic simulation

A. Shahril, R. Samin, J. M. Juraidi and Jufriadi Daut

This paper deals with the natural frequency simulation test of disc brake functionality using computer aided engineering software. The finite element analysis technique is applied to predict the failure region on the brake disc and to identify the critical locations of disc brake. The disc brake rotor implemented on the front axle of Perodua Myvi 1.3 L model with grey cast iron materials which commonly used in industry was studied. The disc brake rotor surface thicknesses on both sides were reduced into 3 steps, 0.5 mm, 1.0 mm and 1.5 mm by using CATIA V5 software. Modal analysis was applied for each type of disc brake rotor model including normal brake disc surface to investigate the natural frequency for each type of brake disc rotor model. The results of natural frequency from each type of the disc brake rotor surface thickness were recorded. 24 types of mode shapes were obtained from the simulation and compared with 4 types of surface thickness. The same mode shape shows that the highest reduction mass becomes the lowest value of frequency and the highest mass becomes the higher value of the frequency. It is due to the effect of Inertia Force. However, at the last mode shape on highest reduction of mass shows, the frequency was maximum. It is predicted that the instabilities are due to the repetitions of force applied to the rotor area.

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First order analysis of truck panels using structural surface method

Piong Yee Hwong, Abdul Aziz Hassan and Thiagu Maniam

Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) has been widely used to evaluate the structural behaviour of an automobile. As CAE can only be operated by well-trained and experienced engineers to yield sensible results, a less complicated and inexpensive tool called First Order Analysis (FOA) is introduced. First Order Analysis has been proposed to verify automobile designs in the initial design stage. Simple Structural Surface (SSS) method and Microsoft Excel are employed as the FOA tools to handle the shortcomings of CAE and to obtain optimal design quickly. The main idea of this paper is to present the graphical interfaces using Microsoft Excel to achieve a product oriented analysis based on the knowledge of mechanics of materials. SSS method is utilized to rationalize the truck panels load path. Force equilibrium equations are established based on the simplifying assumptions to uncover whether the model idealization is statically determinate. Outline of the application of these complementing tools are presented.

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Effect of titanium oxide nano-fluid concentration on pressure drop

K. Abdul Hamid, W. H. Azmi, Rizalman Mamat, N. A. Usri and Gholamhassan Najafi

The new technology of nanoparticle has introduced the advance heat transfer fluid called nanofluid. In an automobile engine cooling system, the pumping power has to be considered in order to optimize the overall system. Reflecting to the statement, this paper concentrate on the study of pressure drop for Ethylene Glycol (EG) based nanofluid. The nanofluid is prepared by dilution technique of Titanium Oxide (TiO2) in based fluid of mixture water and ethylene glycol (EG) in volume ratio of 60:40, at three volume concentrations of 0.5 %, 1.0 % and 1.5 %. The experiment was conducted under a flow loop with a horizontal tube test section at various values of flow rate for the range of Reynolds number less than 30,000. The experimental result of TiO2 nanofluid pressure drop is compared with the Blasius equation for based fluid. It was observed that pressure drop increase with increasing of nanofluid volume concentration and decrease with increasing of nanofluid temperature insignificantly.

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Effect of boronizing medium on dispersion layer of austenitic stainless steel

Syarifah Yunus, Siti Khadijah Alias, Freddawati Rashiddy Wong, Amirul Abd. Rashid, Nik Rosli Abdullah

This paper presents the phase transformation of boronized 304 grade stainless steel under different heat treatment temperature. The coatings were produced by thermo-chemical treatment with powder and paste mixtures at high temperature. The microstructure of obtained coatings was investigated and the micro hardness was measured. Micro hardness of the obtained boron coatings was measured. Optical microscopy was used to investigate the microstructure and measure the thickness of the diffusion boron coatings. The heat treatment was conducted at 850 °C, 950 °C and 1050 °C for 4 hours for paste and 8 hours for powder specimens. Samples were characterized for spectrometer test, microstructure analysis, density test and hardness properties. The results revealed that paste boronized sample provide deeper boron layer than powder boronized.

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Physical studies on electroless NI-YSZ composite coating

N. Bahiyah Babaa and S. Noorazuani Abd Lahli

The paper discussed on the physical properties of the electroless Ni-YSZ composite coating. The main properties of concern are the ceramic YSZ to metallic Ni ratio as well as the porosity content within the coating. The composition of YSZ in the composite coating is the reinforcement for the composite coating. The composition was measured via SEM/EDXA and matrix digestion method (ASTM D3171). The amount of porosity in the composite coating was measured using Archimedes density (ASTM D792). Three batches of sample were compared with various types of pore former namely activated carbon, graphite and starch. Nanoindentation was carried out to determine the hardness of the composite coating between the three batches of samples. The SEM micrographs of Ni-YSZ composite coating for the three batches at 5k magnifications coupled with EDX analysis was discussed together with the XRD analysis.

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Forecasting of global automotive industry- Key trends in passenger vehicles

Muneer Sultana and Khairul Amilin Ibrahim

Transportation is one of the furthermost indispensable commercial properties in the modern world. An effective method of transportation safeguards the movement of individuals and product distribution could be directed in a safe and well-timed method. To meet this obligation, numerous categories and representations of vehicles were shaped by automotive companies to accomplish the requirements of customers especially in the background of passenger vehicles. Today’s the modern global automotive industry encompasses the principal manufacturers, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, and Daimler Chrylser, all of which operate in a global competitive marketplace. All automotive industries especially car manufacturers are required to increase their market segment with corporate profit to ensure cost related objectives and success over competitors. It is therefore essential for auto firms to reconsider their product development methodology in order to fulfill the objectives. In future, it is forecasted that the passenger’s mobility is going to be increase further, in such a case a study has been conducted to know the production of passenger’s vehicle for their mobility. The study is prepared grounded on primary facts and secondary statistics. The primary data has collected through oral interview from stalwarts of automotive industry. The secondary facts is composed from the information of OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) Transport Out Look Report of automotive industry and all existing literature has collected also from internet automotive websites, auto business magazines, e-auto journals etc. findings out the study reveals that there is growing demand for car in future at global level . Finally suggestions have been framed and conclusions have been drawn for the study.

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Effects of knob selections on work posture selections in manufacturing companies

Yue Hang Tan, Poh Kiat Ng, Adi Saptari and Kian Siong Jee

Hand tools that fail to accommodate various hand and body postures can lead to serious injuries and potential development of hand-related musculoskeletal disorders. While some studies have shown that there are theoretical relations between different work postures and object shapes, it appears that there are no statistical analyses that investigate how the different selections of knobs affect the selections of different work postures. This paper aims to determine the effects of knob selections on the work posture selections of manual workers from several manufacturing firms. The analysis used for this study is regression analysis. The survey responses are entered into Minitab 16 for the analysis. The findings confirmed that majority of the workers normally and preferably use the knurled spherical knob for their manual work. The selection of this knob also significantly affects the selection of the work postures that they assume. The findings are useful preliminary guidelines for the development of ergonomic knob prototypes that accommodate different work postures to potentially reduce hand-related injuries at the workplace.

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Horizontal displacement of laminated rubber-metal spring for engine isolator

M. A. Salim, A. Putra and M. A. Abdullah

This paper presents the study on horizontal displacement of laminated rubber-metal spring on engine isolator. Initially, lumped model is adopted in the analytical system of isolator for one degree of freedom system. Later, the power series technique is used to develop more complex analysis. In this model, natural rubber is used for isolator rod and the metal plate is reinforced inside the rod. This plate used to divide the natural rubber rod into more degree of freedom. Two types of results are recorded which are surface and standalone displacements. In these two displacements, the results show the displacement in axial axis is increased by increasing the number of metal plate. It happens because natural rubber properties have been influenced by metal plate and finally unique compressibility behavior occurred.

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Experimental study on two way shape memory effect training procedure for NiTiNOL shape memory alloy

O. M. A. Taha, M. B. Bahrom, O. Y. Taha, and M. S. Aris

This research describes training procedures for shape memory alloys (SMAs). SMAs are considered as a unique class of metal alloys that can recover apparent permanent strains when they are heated above a certain temperature. Shape Memory Effect (SME) is defined as the temperature driven response in SMA materials. The SME can be classified as either a One-way shape memory effect (OWSME) or a Two-way shape memory effect (TWSME). The TWSME response unfortunately requires repeated thermo-mechanical treatments known as “training” or “training cycles” before such a response is obtained. In this research work, the martensite deformation technique is used to train the SMA sample. Both the training procedure and the training jig was designed based on the bending mechanism procedure. The results obtained from the training process of SMA shows a great respond in SMA attack angle to their activation and de-activation temperatures. TWSME for SMA sample was successfully obtained in term of SMA sample attack angle value of 8˚ for SMA de-activation position and 39˚ for SMA activation position. Observations of spontaneous shape change as a result of the change in the sample temperatures were indications of the presence of TWSME in the SMA samples.

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Study on the phase angle effect for alpha type stirling engine thermodynamics behavior

Teo Sir Hiang, Mohd Farid Zainudin, Tanti Zanariah Shamshir Ali, Rosli Abu Bakar and Yusoff Ali

The depletion and high level of pollution caused by fuel are the main reason for today’s search and pursuit for an alternative energy source and an efficient engine cycle. Stirling engine (SE) cycle is deemed to meet the demand required. SE. SE has design and mechanical simplicity yet complex thermodynamics operation. This paper studies on the thermodynamics behavior of the Alpha type Stirling engine (ASE). A Computational Aided Engineering (CAE) analysis was performed to predict the thermodynamics behavior of the ASE. The CAE analysis was conducted with the phase angle,  of 90° between the two pistons of ASE. The results of the analysis in terms pressure, volume, temperature and trapped mass over the crank angle were presented. It was concluded that the thermodynamics performance and behaviour of an ASE are highly dependent on its geometrical design.

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Nitrate found in ground waters over the past decades has aroused serious concerns to associated administrators. Among different methods of removing nitrate, using adsorption technique has drawn attention due to its high efficiency as well as economic considerations. In this study, the effectiveness of activated carbon absorbents obtained from pyrolysis of rice husk on nitrate adsorption is explored, and the results of the adsorption by carbon prepared from primary sludge of wastewater treatment of paper industry have been compared. The results of experiments for both absorbers indicated that the maximum adsorption occurred in pH equal 4, as the system has reached equilibrium during 4 hour contact time. The maximum removal of nitrate for activated carbon obtained from rice husk was 93.5 (mg/gr), and for the sludge obtained from paper industry was 79.5 (mg/gr). The result of tests for both adsorbents suggests a direct relationship between the level of adsorption run by Zncl2 used to activate adsorbents and the level of adsorbent. Moreover, the results of adsorption tests for adsorbents were adapted with Langmuir isotherm, and also the kinetics of adsorption was well fitted into pseudo-second-order model.

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Effects of current density on size and surface morphology of high speed direct nano-crystalline nickel plating on titanium surface

Electroplating known as “electrodeposition” is a method of producing a coating, usually metallic, on a surface by applying electric current. In this research work, electrolyte Ni was deposited on Ti by high speed electroplating directly without any pre-cleaning/pre-treatment with varied applied current density. This study reports the effects of deposition of Ni on Ti and it was found that the plating thickness increased with higher current densities, also fine grained structures obtained as the current density increased. Hardness of the deposits decreased as the current density is increased. These showed that the current density affects the coating thickness of Ni-Ti alloy coatings. High speed electroplating is electroplating on metal without any pretreatment process and eliminating oxide layer at high current density which result in high deposition rate of cation on cathode surface.

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