The photovoltaic (PV) solar electricity is no longer doubtful in its effectiveness in the process of rural communities’ livelihood transformation with solar water pumping system being regarded as the most important PV application. To overcome the intermittent and uncertain nature of solar power output, the highly fluctuating load demands and to supply loads at night time, a battery storage system is optimally sized, designed and implemented. The bi-directional Buck-Boost converter use and control are essential for energy management between the batteries and the pumping system. Domestic loads power calculation is also demonstrated and varied. Additionally, various inverter control schemes are examined and employed depending on the nature of the load connected. Finally, simulation results using Matlab/Simulink are presented for two cases: when the battery system is connected with the PV array to feed the pump motor to achieve the required varying hydraulic performance (flow rate and pumping head) under different weather conditions, and when the battery system feeds the loads while the PV array is disconnected at night.

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This paper reports result of performance evaluation on self-compacting coconut shell concrete (SCCSC) developed using discarded coconut shells as coarse aggregate and partial replacement of ordinary Portland cement with fly ash (FA) at 15% and 20% replacement levels. Tests carried-out on the fresh concrete such as slump flow, T500, V-funnel, L-box and wet sieve segregation resistance confirmed the flowability, consistency and cohesiveness of the developed mixes. On the hardened concrete, mechanical properties tests such as density, elastic modulus, compressive, splitting tensile and flexural strengths were conducted. Furthermore, durability properties of the concrete were evaluated using water absorption, sorptivity, volume of permeable voids and rapid chloride penetration tests. Tests result showed that SCCSC1 mix with 15% FA gave an optimum compressive strength of 21.2 N/mm2at 28 days and 25.1 N/mm2at 90 days, while SCCSC2 with 20% FA developed compressive strength of 20.1 N/mm2 at 28 days and 25.5 N/mm2 at 90 days. Flexural strength, splitting tensile strength and elastic modulus for are 4.50 N/mm2, 2.56 N/mm2, 8490 N/mm2 and 4.00 N/mm2, 2.52 N/mm2, 7480 N/mm2 for SCCSC1 and SCCSC2 respectively. Furthermore, tests on durability properties of the developed mixes gave satisfactory results comparable to that of other lightweight concretes.

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A human ankle supplies a great amount of net positive energy during the walking stance period, mostly for intermediate to fast walking speeds. Instead of that, the commercially available ankle-foot- prosthesis are totally passive during stance, consequently can’t provide the net positive work then the clinical examinations to patients who suffered from transtibial amputation using the conventional prosthesis presented high rate of metabolic energy as compared to normal people. Researchers approved that the main cause of high metabolism is due to inability of the conventional prosthesis providing net positive work at the terminal stance in walking. Therefore, a design of exoskeleton used for the patients who suffer from below knee amputations is proposed. The main aim of this study is evaluating the hypothesis of powered device in the ankle-foot prosthesis that can provide a positive energy at the terminal stance and can improve the patient metabolic walking economy, compared with patient using the conventional prosthesis. The proposed quasi-passive exoskeleton is consisted from controllable actuator and linearspring to simulate the human ankle-foot behavior. The exoskeleton device is constructed. The activity of exoskeleton is tested by patient has ankle foot prosthesis. The metabolism of the patients is also tested by measuring the electromyography (EMG) for patient muscles as well before and after wearing the device. The initial device tests showed an enhancement in electromyography (EMG) over 27% as compared to passive prosthesis, although the device weighed 1.18 KG, these results support the hypothesis and suggest a further work promise to improve the prosthesis. Also Conservation of the natural movement kinematics was described as an important requirement for a device to be beneficial in term of metabolic energy.

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Treatment and reuse the huge amounts of oilfield produced water (PW) represent a current and future challenge for oil companies and needs more research for improving efficiency and reducing treatment cost. This study proposed electrocoagulation (EC) as a simple, reliable and economic method for treating PW. Treatment was carried out in a batch EC reactor with aluminum electrodes. Response surface methodology (RSM) with central composite design (CCD) was employed to achieve energy efficient removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD). The effect of crucial process variables, namely, current density (5-15 mA/cm2), initial pH (5-11), and reaction time (5-30 minutes) on the responses, namely, removal efficiency of COD and electrical energy consumption were studied using three dimensional response surface plots. The experimental results were analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA). Multiple response optimization revealed that optimum current density, pH, and reaction time were 7.83 mA/cm2, 7.24, and 20.40 minutes, respectively. Under these conditions, the COD removal percentage was 73.98%, and electrical energy consumption was 0.1549 kWh/kg COD. It is concluded that electrocoagulation method is an effective preliminary process for treating produced water and additional treatment by advanced method, such as electo-oxidation, is needed to reduce COD to below regulation limits.

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Usage of classical Local Binary Pattern (LBP) for texture classification depending on the intensity changes of surrounding pixels around the each pixel in the image. Even though basic LBP is powerful, there are so many variations and applications by giving extensions and refinements to the basic LBP according to the requirement and nature of applications. But, in the proposed Geometric Local Binary Pattern (GLBP) technique instead of using closed neighborhoods intensity oriented neighborhoods intensity is considered. Actually, this is the one of the method which is variation of LBP and belongs to the family of Geometric Local Textural Patterns (GLTP). Here, the texture of the image classified by the help of GLBP histogram which is prepared from the occurrences of GLBP-codes obtained from the entire images. These type of identifications generally done by manually but it is time consuming and error prone. The major application of this process is to classify the images of leaves by considering the standard databases for identification of deceased leaves and observed better results.

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The paper will present the most known techniques for feature selection and size reduction of vectors. Some linear and nonlinear techniques are designed and implemented such as Kernel Principal Component Analysis, Locally Linear Embedding, MPPCA, Generalized Discriminant Analysis, Laplacian Eigen-maps, Isomap, Landmark Isomap, and LTSA approaches. These approaches are applied and tested on different common biometric database, such as DRIONS, VARIA, IIT Delhi Ear and STORE datasets. The experimental results of the suggested techniques are presented and compared.

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AC electrical properties were studied using the AC impedance technique. The electrical properties of thin films made of poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO) dispersed with dopants fixed amount of carbon black (0.1wt. %) were used in this study. The prepared films by casting method have been electrically. The present study has studying the change in the real part (M ') and imaginary (M ``) part of the electric modulus versus frequency of PEO thin films doped with carbon black at different temperatures, frequency in the range (200 kHz - 1000 kHz) and temperature in the range (30 0C-55 0C), and the study the real part (M ') part of the electric modulus for (PEO) with doped 0.1wt. % carbon black (CB) as compared to that case of the un doped (PEO) film. It was found that the real part (M ') of the electric modulus increases with frequency and decreases with temperatures with doped 0.1wt. % carbon black content. And it was found that the real part (M ') of the electric modulus decreases with doped 0.1wt. % carbon black content.

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According to the report published by United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in 2017, it is estimated that India presently produces 341.2 million metric tonnes of sugarcane, proving the fact that India is the second largest sugarcane producer on the globe. Sugarcane bagasse is a fibrous waste product recovered from the Sugar milling industry. There is an increasing threat of disposing the bagasse ash, as it causes serious environmental hazards. Hence, there is an immediate need to find an alternative solution to use the waste product in the form of bagasse ash, in an effective manner. Thus, this paper dealt with the replacement of cement using the bagasse ash in concrete. Furthermore, there has been numerous research made, into using steel fibre in concrete. Similar to steel fibre is steel scrap, which is a waste material from Lathe machines. Thereby, this paper will also deal with addition of steel scrap to the concrete, as the latter is much cheaper than steel fibres, which are normally used. Hence, a comprehensive study is made in the research, where concrete is prepared by partially replacing cement by bagasse ash and adding steel scrap to the volume of concrete, as a whole. Here, cement is partially replaced by bagasse ash by 0%, 5%, 10% and 15% by weight of cement in concrete. Similarly, steel scrap is added at dosage of 0%, 1% and 2% to the volume of concrete. The studies were conducted on 12 different combinations of bagasse ash and steel scrap being used in M20 grade of concrete. The parameters studied includes compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural strength of concrete. The results are compared with conventional concrete and, the optimum combination of using both bagasse ash as a partial replacement material for cement and addition of steel scrap to the concrete, is determined.

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This paper proposed the establishing procedure and introduced an OpenSessPL for investigating dynamic p-y curves in liquefying ground based on the simulated shaking table tests for pile-soil-bridge structure were conducted successfully corresponding to liquefying ground covered with clay layer simulated as a middle circumference of three layers adopting reinforced concrete single pile-pier exposed by a series of sinusoidal and EI centro earthquake events wave of different amplitudes and frequencies. A series of numerical simulations based on the established 3D finite element analysis method was carried out by including earthquake events to investigate the deveplod of p-y curves due to the effect of design parameters such as; pile stiffness, the internal angle of sand and the depth of pile insertion. The mentioned parameters beside seismic motion shape, peak acceleration (g) and degree of ground inclination have a certain theoretical and practical significance for seismic design related to lateral resistance and pile displacement.

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The use of quality standards in digital image enhancement applications is very important in understanding the effects of improvement achieved, and one of the most important processes on the image is the removal of noise from them. In the current research, 30% and 70% noise was added to the medical images by developing a noise removal filter based on the candidate for the idea of improving the sites, analyzing the main components and assembling the elements of the medical images. Because the noise in the image is generally high frequencies, so when it is removed. Vehicles will affect the edges and this causes gouache in the details of the image. In this research, a technique was used to reduce noise in the image, local heterogeneity, and edge analysis. In the wake of the concentration of each conventional strategy in order to identify the edges and then divide them and another ideal calculation is required. Another method of calculation was proposed to improve medical images: the use of an effective candidate. The performance of the method compares to other methods and to different levels. It is noted that the algorithm proposed using the fractional redundant function showed superior noise flexibility and reduced calculation time. The method was implemented using MATLAB.

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In this paper, Aluminum Metal Matrix Nano Composites (Al6061/CNT) are prepared using ultrasonic stir casting furnace by reinforcing different percentages of CNT 0.3%, 0.6% and 0.9% with the base material Aluminum Alloy 6061. The effects of different reinforcements on mechanical properties and internal structure of Aluminum Metal Matrix Nano Composites (AMMNCs) are studied. SEM Analysis of AMMNCs revealed the uniform distribution of Carbon Nano Tubes (CNT) in the Al6061 alloy. The considerable increase of Hardness and compressive strength at 0.3 wt.% and tensile strength at 0.6 wt.% are observed.

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Abstract:

Load capacity of the spindle connection with a tool holder is one of the indicators limiting productivity of the machine tools. Common shortcomings of works devoted to the connection of the spindle tool holder by standard HSK consist in the absence of a systematic description of processes in these connections when the load changes and considerable variation in estimates of the load limit beyond which the connection fails. Experimental observation these effects is difficult, therefore, the study of load capacity and rigidity was carried out by FEM simulation for sizes HSK-A40, HSK-A63 and HSK-A100. The causes and the scheme of the failure are studied in detail. For each testing standard size tool holder was defined value of critical load. A relationship was established between the force and displacement.

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In this paper, a modified adaptive modulation is proposed to avoid wireless channel fluctuations that affect particular kind of modulations. The proposed approach is used to fit channel fluctuations in regard to several parameters including modulation order, bit error rate, signal to noise ratio and code rate. In addition, a new parameter is proposed to improve modulation performance which is called modulation error ratio. The communication channel fit is achieved by implementing a fuzzy inference system with optimum characteristics for data transmission in aim to obtain higher received data rate with minimal error. The experimental results prove that our approach considerably improves efficiency, performance over noisy channels.

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Flowchart is a visual representation of a flow of data. It can be used to outline a process or a solution to a problem, whether it is simple or complex. For beginners in programming, it is vital to learn flowcharting to understand the basic logic behind a program. This paper presents the development of an electronic quiz board for testing primary school students’ knowledge related to basic flowchart in C programming called e-FLOWCHART. The device works by displaying question to user, then user has to insert relevant flowchart blocks on the slots boards. Once done, the user press button and e-FLOWCHART will give feedback whether the answer given by the user is correct or otherwise. The interactive element of e-FLOWCHART yet keeping the tactile or “hands-on” feeling highlights the novelty of this educational compared to other available flowchart teaching aids which are software-based. Future study includes the evaluation of the effectiveness of e-FLOWCHART.

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An optical-wireless communication (OWC) model with the generation 60 GHz millimeter wave (mm-wave) is discussed and investigated. This system is proposed to transfer a digital signal with a 320 Mbps data rate by using an optical signal over a wireless channel as a part of visible light communication (VLC) in the fifth generation (5G) for small cell networks. The electrical generation domain has a challenging with the mm-wave; therefore, our model is introduced and examined. The mm-wave and phase modulation are proposed in the optical wireless communication for the first time. OWC system with 320 Mbps signal transmission is successfully achieved. In our simulation, the directly modulated laser (DML) is driven by the digital signal; then, the generated optical signal is mixed by the phase modulator with 60 GHz mm-wave carrier to result in a phase modulated optical signal to be transmitted over the wireless channel. Based on the simulation results, the proposed OWC system is successfully working to transfer a 320 Mbps data rate over 10m wireless channel distance with low BER (10-5) and good Q-Factor (4). The simulation results show that a cost-effective operation with mm-wave for faster transmission. This research ensures a possible optical link with low cost and RF interference.

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In the proposed paper, a wireless sensor platform was developed to addresses the problem of air pollution monitoring at a large scale. It is a Microcontroller PIC 16F877 based core with off the shelf sensors to detect gases like Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Ammonia (NH3), and Particulate matter (PM10) in the air. It consists of Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) wireless link and also a low-cost ZigBee module. Wireless sensor network formed with ZigBee links can be scaled up using the GSM connectivity to interface with the external world. Air Pollution monitoring is performed using a system of sensor nodes with the help of wireless communication via ZigBee protocol. A prototype version of the platform is realized and tested. The major problem of power consumption by the sensor nodes in the designed wireless sensor network is addressed. The results showed that the proposed system can provide fine quality of air pollutants information through the WSN technology.

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The possibility of moisture condensation in the building envelopes with the base layer of sand-lime brick and the insulation layer of various types of polystyrene foam is defined through calculation and analysis. The values of temperature, maximum elasticity of water vapour and actual elasticity of water vapour in the building envelope are determined. The potential condensation areas at various ambient temperatures are identified.

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In this paper, a comparative analysis study is proposed to select the best Ethernet switching mode for a particular computer network requirement. The selected switching mode is reliant on variable factors and parameters in the computer networks. The three Ethernet switching modes which are used in this study are store and forward, Cut-through, and free fragment modes. One of three used switching modes in this study is selected using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique as per requirement of a user. AHP is multi criteria decision making instrument created by Thomas Saaty in the 1970s. The criteria or parameters which are used to select best Ethernet switching mode are: latency, function, performance, port density, and cost. The experimental results prove that fragment free switching mode is the best among three switching modes with (0.422) score.

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In India, agriculture is considered to be a prime activity for the most of populations. Therefore, an economic growth a nation mainly depends on the development of agricultural activities like improving crop production, utilizing developed technologies to monitor crop yield, etc. As a result, different crop yield monitoring systems have been developed to enhance the agricultural productivity. Among different systems, multi-objective firefly Optimized Fuzzy Cognitive Map (OFCM) was proposed for predicting the Arachis Hypogaea (groundnut) yield by using both soil and weather factors. Here, multi-objective firefly was applied for learning FCM by optimizing the weight parameters utilized in FCM. However, the Pareto-front issue has occurred in the firefly algorithm due to consider the multiple objective functions. Hence in this article, crowding distance between fireflies is computed for choosing appropriate fireflies. Moreover, an Improved Optimized OFCM (IOFCM) is proposed in which a modified multi-objective firefly optimization is used to minimize the randomness and achieve the global optima by improving the movement of fireflies. Though it achieves better optimization, FCM has high sensitive while input data are missing resulting in prediction decision is made with incomplete information. As a result, a modification in FCM is proposed to improve the prediction performance more effectively. In this modification, the value of each node in the FCM is computed by considering the hesitancy function that increases the prediction accuracy even some input data are missed. This newly proposed algorithm is called an Improved Optimized Intuitionistic FCM (IOIFCM). Finally, the experimental results show that the effectiveness of the proposed IOIFCM based crop yield prediction compared to the other optimization algorithms.

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Adaptive control is one of the widely used control strategies to design advanced control systems for better performance and accuracy. Model reference adaptive control (MRAC) is a direct adaptive strategy with some adjustable controller parameters and an adjusting mechanism to adjust them. In this work Model Reference Adaptive Control for BLDC motors has been designed with a PID controller tuned by GA-ANFIS. GA-Trained ANFIS framework for tuning the PID controller has been proposed. This is used along with the MRAC to deliver enhanced performance in the control of BLDC motor. The performance of the proposed approach is validated for motor control under conditions of change in speed, change in load, change in inertia and change in phase resistance.. The performance is validated against convention PID and self tuning PID controllers. The result demonstrates a superior performance of the proposed approach.

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The effect of surface roughness on squeeze film elliptical plates with micro-polar fluid is theoretically presented in the present analysis. Based upon the Christensen’s stochastic model, stochastic Reynolds-type equation is derived. The closed form solutions are derived for squeeze film pressure, load carrying capacity and squeeze film time. The present analysis describes how the roughness influences the characteristics of the film squeezed between rough elliptical plates lubricated with micro polar fluid. The results yields increasing values of roughness parameter, coupling number and couple stress parameter leads to increase in pressure, load carrying capacity and squeeze film time.

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The work is devoted to the development of the technique for choosing the optimal shape of the curved working part of the tooth of the harrow of the "Striegel" type. As a criterion of technical and economic efficiency of the application of the curved tooth of the harrow, the area of the projection of the tooth shape is considered taking into account the angle of possible deviation. The task was to find out from the experimental studies obtained how a significant amount of weed plants are destroyed when the force reaches a certain value and at what values of the force the tearing off of the stems and pulling out of the winter wheat occurs. According to the model of the process of removing weeds of weeds, the spring tooth must overcome resistance without longitudinal bending. On the basis of the data obtained, the authors developed a mathematical model characterizing the dependence of the projection area of the tooth shape on the radius of its curvature and the angle of rotation in the soil, a model characterizing the force exerted on the soil from the radius of curvature of the bend of the harrow tooth and the possible tooth deflection in the soil and the model characterizing limiting efforts on the roots of winter wheat, depending on the degree of development of the root system and soil moisture. On the basis of the models obtained, an algorithm is proposed for selecting the optimal geometric shape of the curved part of the tooth of the barrel harrow, depending on the development of the crops and soil moisture.

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In this paper we study the main performance characteristics of TMAC, a control protocol access to the medium for sensor networks (WSN) based on containment. TMAC was designed keeping in mind that the applications for this type of networks have some characteristics such as low transmission speed and delay sensitivity, which can be exploited to reduce energy consumption by introducing an active/inactive useful cycle. To handle any type of variation in traffic, TMAC uses an adaptive useful cycle, a novel strategy which allows that useful cycle to vary dynamically. Our contributions through this work are as follows: first, a physical layer model corresponding to the radio transmitter/receiver CC2420 was implemented in Qualnet®, including an energy consumption model and a model of the TMAC protocol based on the specifications of the authors; second, a detailed performance analysis of the protocol was made based on different metrics. Through our study we give useful information to the designers of sensor networks for the adjustment of their operation and performance parameters.

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The article is devoted to solving issues related to the problem of the "bottlenecks" in multiprocessor computing systems, namely, conflicts for access of processors to the shared system bus. It is described the possibility of placing between the processor and the memory of the hardware-implemented module of the buffer device, which is necessary for quick access to memory (in the structure of the buffer module uses associative memory) of a multiprocessor computer system with a widely used "common bus" interface. The buffer is implemented in register memory and consists of two parts, one of which is responsible for writing data, the other for reading data. In the course of the operation, the functional organization of the hardware buffer unit was defined, the algorithms for its operation were developed and implemented, a VHDL file describing the operation of the device was created and debugged, simulation of the correctness of work in the ISE Web Pack program. Using modern element base, namely, field-programmable gate array (FPGAs), the described buffer device is reconfigurable (you can adjust the VHDL file to change the parameters of the work, and the structure and functionality at any time) and cross-platform, because of universality of VHDL-code the device can be implemented on FPGAs of different manufacturers. Thanks to the application of the described block, it is partially possible to solve the problem of the "bottleneck" of the multiprocessor system with the "common bus" interface. As the result of the practical use of the described device, the throughput of the subsystem "processor-memory" and, accordingly, the performance of the entire multiprocessor system as a whole, will increase.

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Rehabilitation is the act of restoring one’s health back to normal using medicine and engineered devices with the aim of recovery. Rehabilitation engineering can be described as the design, development, and application of engineering methods and devices to reduce the problems faced by persons who have disabilities. The main objective is to use our engineering principles to develop a rehabilitation bicycle in which the resistance will be altered automatically based on the feedback from your own muscles. The feedback signals used to serve our purpose is electrical impulses from our muscles or EMG signals. The EMG signals are extracted and processed as fatigue is to be detected from these signals which will then be used for setting the resistance of the bicycle according to the level of fatigue detected. In this study there are mainly two objectives, one is the acquisition of the signal and processing it for detecting fatigue, and the second objective is integrating the fatigue detection values to the brakes to vary it automatically. Using the signals, to detect muscle fatigue, the parameters normally used are the amplitude and the frequency of the signal. Since the fatigue level varies according to individuals the detection is done real time at the start of the procedure. The studies in the literature show that the amplitude of EMG signals increases progressively as a function of time when the fatigue increases. Accordingly the muscle fatigue can be monitored by changes in the EMG frequency properties such as mean and median frequency. For the purpose the research however we are going to use the amplitude component of the signal to detect fatigue. After fatigue is detected on the signals, a threshold is set at a suitable voltage where amplitude spikes of fatigue have already begun. Therefore after sometime if the amplitude continues to rise above that threshold it triggers a motor or plates to vary the resistance. The results of this research, we believe will lead to faster, accurate and progressive healing of patients and athletes.

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The paper presents the results of numerical experiments on the simulation of compensatory injection for the protection of the buildings while tunneling performed in the Plaxis software. A comparison is made of the change in the maximum surface subsidence and up heaving during compensation measures during and after tunneling. The regularities of the change in the maximum subsidence and up heaving of the earth's surface are obtained depending on the change in the injection volume for different widths of the injection zone, different locations of the injection zones relative to the tunnel arch, different depths of tunnels.

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A novel technique for reversible digital image watermarking which is robust against image manipulations and transformations is proposed in this paper. An extended variant of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is utilized for the decomposition of images. In Extended Discrete Wavelet Transform (EDWT), sampling processes are avoided form DWT during analysis step and synthesis step respectively. EDWT is applied to watermark image as well as cover image results in shift invariance and accurate extraction of watermark. Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) is then applied to sub-bands that have low frequency of occurrence in the image. Watermarking pixels are embedded inside the wavelet coefficients of unmodified host image and this will overcome security issues. This method is robust against various types of noises and attacks occur while transferring the image though a channel. Performance of the proposed method is compared with the performance of DWT-SVD watermarking scheme. The performance is compared in terms of correlation and PSNR.

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This document aims to show the development of a prototype for a domotic application for a temperature control for an air conditioner. The application was developed through a Smart phone, using a wireless network for an air conditioner that allows modifying the temperature of the place, the turn on and turning off of the same, besides establishing the current temperature of the system with respect to the desired temperature of the same. For the Bluetooth transmission and web service for the connection with the Smart phone, a mobile application was developed using the eclipse software, using the C# programming language and the N-layer architecture, providing an optimal and efficient design method. The web service was performed through a local server using the Arduino free hardware platform that allows to store the temperature data every 10 minutes, in order to keep a record in a local database of the same, providing this way a page on which the desired temperature can also be controlled. Finally, as results an ON/OFF control system was obtained through a mobile application that provides the user with different ways of doing this control, as well as an alternative method of "IR" transmission that is independent of the mobile application.

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This paper challenges the problem of finding valid rectangles over the plane area containing a lot of obstacles or anchor points. A valid rectangle, formed by two anchors points in one of its two diagonal lines, does not embrace any obstacle inside it, while allowing boundary-located ones. Each anchor point is investigated from left to right to check whether it can make a valid rectangle with other remaining points one by one. To overcome the problem that all given points must be sorted in conflict directions in regard to the y-coordinate of the inspection point, our scheme suggests a two-pass scanning procedure. The first pass sorts the points on the same vertical line in descending order and checks the validity only those above the inspection point, and vice versa on the second pass. The proposed scheme reduces the constant of the dominating term, even though the overall time complexity still remains at O(n2), for n obstacles. The efficiency will be very helpful when the number of obstacles increases in counting the number of rectangles, filtering coordinates, assigning to a robot, and the like.

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Intelligent Transport System (ITS) is an information and communication technologies (ICT) that can be used to support smart mobility on a smart city. ITS is expected to be able to optimize the current public transport condition that has not been integrated through an ICT networks. In this paper is proposed a traffic management center (TMC) development used to monitor the fleet’s movement and soon will be developed to control the fleet’s movement. In this paper discusses from design to its performance of data communication protocol algorithm for communication between OBU cloud server as OBUs data collector and the TMC.

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The effects of niobium underlayer on magnetic properties of Co80Sm20 thin films deposited on silicon substrates have been studied based on electron diffraction. The films were fabricated using dc magnetron sputtering technique. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) was used to study the structural properties of the films based on selected area diffraction (SAD). The TEM study shows that the diffraction rings of film becomes less well defined for the films deposited on the thicker niobium underlayers. The coercivity of the films increases with increasing niobium thickness up to 100 nm. Further increase of the niobium thickness leads to a decrease of coercivity. The decrease of coercivity value for films deposited on thicker underlayers i.e., 120 nm indicated that the grain size of the niobium underlayer is past the optimum value. Thus the increase and decreases of the coercivity of the films with increasing niobium thickness is discussed.

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This paper proposes a Wavelength Division Multiplexed, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexed Passive Optical Network (WDM-OFDM-PON) utilizing 4-ary Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). This paper investigates the system by evaluating the effect on Optical Signal Noise Ratio (OSNR), Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) and Power Loss in both Optical Line terminal (OLT) and Optical Network Unit (ONU). The Direct Detection Technique approach achieves data rate of 55 Gb/s while maintaining sufficiently low Bit Error Rate (BER) securing IEEE standard. Through this Endeavour a single feeder PON consisting of 64 channels is designed with unprecedented capacity of 3.52 Tb/s over a transmission distance of 120km. considering the results achieved, the capacity obtained is the most supreme compared to other WDM-OFDM-PON systems so far.

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In this research paper SOM and Genetic algorithm have been used to cluster the MANETS (Mobile Ad Hoc Networks) to enhance overall QoS of the network. The Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computational Intelligence (CI)) optimize and speed up the calculation in every sphere of computation, thus they are being used in this research. In this research a system has been proposed which not only fasten clustering process of a MANET in to desirable groups but also used these clusters to optimize the path selection, Mobility prediction and congestion identification. Self Organizing Maps (SOM) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) are used here to first cluster the network, selection of suitable Cluster Head and then to optimize the results to empower the MANET, to select the best and optimum path on the criterion of Mobility, Congestion and Hop count in every type of algorithms. This research also includes the study of main reasons responsible for degrading QoS (or Quality of Service). In this proposed CI based approach the QoS is enhanced it could be verified as improved throughput and decreased Delay.

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Dual fuel engines are being utilized more due to stricter emission standards, increasing diesel fuel cost, and decreasing natural gas cost. These engines are originally sold as diesel engines. They are converted to dual fuel operation with an aftermarket dual fuel kit. Natural gas is blended with the intake air. As this occurs the amount of diesel used is reduced. The maximum natural gas substitution is limited by knock or emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and total hydrocarbons (THC). In this work a John Deere 6068H diesel engine is converted to operate as a dual fuel engine. The engine is a tier II 6 cylinder, 6.8 liter, 4-stroke compression ignition engine with a compression ratio of 17:1 and a power rating of 168 kW at 2200 rpm. This work aims to evaluate emissions and efficiency of a diesel derivative dual fuel engine. A natural gas fuel system was installed to deliver fuel upstream of the turbocharger compressor. The engine was operated at 1800 rpm through five different load points in diesel and dual fuel operating modes. Fuel consumption and pollutant emissions were measured. Elevated carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions were observed at low loads for dual fuel operation. Overall CO and THC emissions increased for dual fuel operation. However, particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) on average were significantly decreased.

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By using CFD analysis and design services in HVAC industry, it’s also reshaping the HVAC performance monitoring. The simulations account for all kinds of factors that influence fluid (refrigerant or air) flows, pressure and temperatures. They help create finely tuned designs even for installations in very confined spaces. CFD considers everything of HVACR from the direction of sunlight throughout the day, to structural materials, to the placement of air vents around furnishings. The goal is to figure out the best circulation solutions for the specific product or project space. Good agreement was found between the simulated results and standard manufacturer data for all three types of compressors studied in this research. To the best of the author’s knowledge these novel approach for CFD analysis of all air-cooled HVAC chiller compressors are absent in HVAC or fluid mechanics literature due to its assessment complexity.

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This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation carried out to evaluate the mechanical properties of ecofriendly concrete with foundry sand and polypropylene fibres in which fine aggregate was partially replaced with foundry sand by weight. M30 grade of concrete was designed using Portland pozzolana cement (PPC) for control concrete. The experimental investigation was carried out with the optimum dosage of 1.00 Kg/m³ of Polypropylene fibres in concrete. The percentage of replacement was 0%, 10%, 20% and 30 % by weight of fine aggregate. The mechanical properties such as compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural strength were studied. The compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural strength were determined at 7 days and 28 days. The laboratory results showed that the addition of Polypropylene fibres and foundry sand in concrete increased the compressive strength with partial replacement of waste foundry sand and polypropylene fibres. The split tensile strength increased with increase in percentage of waste foundry sand up to 20%. The combination of waste foundry sand with polypropylene fibres showed a rise in the strength parameters and the highest strength was obtained at 10% replacement in the case of compressive and flexural strengths and it is comparable with conventional concrete.

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The juice processing waste of citrus fruit has high potential because it contains valuable hydrocarbons such as essential oils and triglyceride derived from peel and seed, respectively. In this work, the separation of limonene and triglycerides from the oil mixture as a model waste of citrus fruit by using supercritical carbon dioxide (SC–CO2) was performed at temperatures of 30 – 65 oC and pressures of 7 – 30 MPa. Two modes of separation apparatus were applied. At first, the mixed flow separation apparatus was used to investigate the tendency of separation behavior. The result showed that the yield of extract increased with increasing operating pressure. However, the triglyceride and limonene components could not be properly separated at each operating temperature. Next, the continuous experiment was carried out using a countercurrent separation method. It was observed that the extract and raffinate have been fractionated in a stable amount at 180 min. The result showed that the limonene content and its recovery rate were 95.04 % and 90 % at 30 oC and 10 MPa, respectively. Furthermore by applying the temperature gradient in the fractionation column, the limonene component was concentrated more effectively.

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The objectives of this study are to evaluate the optimum design of tendon profile layout, to study the effect of tendon profile layout on the structural performance of post-tensioned concrete bridge model, and to investigate the locations effect of anchorages points of tendons on the vertical deflection. There were four factors were selected such as bending moment, shear force, stress, and vertical deflection. According to supports of tendons, there are two cases of bridges models. The first case is used simply-supported tendons profile layout. The second case is adopted continuous tendons profile layout. According to profile layout of tendons, the first case consists of seven bridge models (7-Models) and the second case includes ten bridge models (10-Models). The results of FEM analysis showed that the tendon profile layout had important effect on the structural performance of post-tensioned concrete bridges according to types and number of anchorages points of tendons. For pre-stressed load stage, simply-supported tendon profile model appeared maximum value of upward vertical deflection (3mm) was more than continuous tendon model (2mm). The maximum downward vertical deflection is 12mm within continuous tendon model which is less than value of simply-supported tendon model (13mm). According to service load stage analysis, continuous tendon model had the minimum value of downward vertical deflection (14mm) was more than simply-supported tendon model (15mm), but maximum value of downward vertical deflection was appeared in simply-supported tendon model (27mm) was more than the maximum value of downward vertical deflection (26mm) within continuous tendon model. It can be concluded that continuous tendon profile model was convenient for design of post-tensioned concrete bridge because it can be resisted service loads and had the lower value of vertical deflection.

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In this study, we implement a matrix calculation system in Maxima (GNU) based on the numerical integration of flexibility terms to obtain fixed-end rotation, fixed-end moments and the entries of the T-beams stiffness matrix with linear haunches. We took into account the shear and axial deformations that are not included in formulations of packages for broadly used structural calculation on a global scale as SAP2000. All of this, to demonstrate that a systematic and reasonable standard-setting calculation methodology based on numerical integration can match the results obtained from robust finite element tools, being this methodology a more economical option because of its low computational cost. For this matter, the numerical integrals of the flexibility and rotation factors of Tena-Colunga were calculated approximatively, implementing three-point Gauss quadrature’s, Taylor polynomial and Romberg, with the help of the Computational Algebra System Maxima (GNU) for tapered forms of T-beams". We established a comparison with the formulations used by the finite element packages Ansys® and SAP2000® and we validated the results with identical models made in these two packages. Efficacy and precision of the developed model were verified by using this approach, and we concluded that this methodology represents significant advantages in the structural calculation of tapered beams with linear haunches.

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In this paper, the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) problem for photovoltaic (PV) system is investigated. The considered PV system includes a PV Generator (PVG) connected to DC bus using a DC/DC Converter. Unlike standard PV systems, the used static converter is of the series resonant type (SRC). Indeed, this latter optimizes the power losses during the switching phases. Furthermore, to provide easy maintenance and increase reliability and cost effectiveness of photovoltaic systems, the developed MPPT control is implemented without needing any solar sensor. The proposed nonlinear controller (NLC) is of adaptive type in order to provide a reliable online-estimate of uncertain parameters namely those depending on solar irradiance. Indeed, two main difficulties arise when designing this adaptive controller (NLC): (i) several nonlinearities and discontinuities appear in the resonant converter model; (ii) The convergence of the estimated parameters to their real values is required for achieving the MPPT objective. A formal analysis exhibits that the designed controller is able to extract the PVG optimal power. Numerical simulations are performed to highlight the tracking performances.

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Multimedia steganography is one of the most important technologies to secure different kinds of data in today networked environment. It can embed large amounts of data safely inside multimedia files in objective to deviate the attention of attackers of existing data. In addition, the data encryption techniques can be added with steganography technologies to strength data protection. In this paper, we proposed a method to hide image and text files inside a video using LSB technique and chaotic systems. Two keys are used to secure data such that first key employed to select specific frames form video and the second key to select columns inside selected frame images to embed data. Three image quality measures are used to compute the quality of Stego images in our experiments including MSE, PSNR and SSIM. Experimental results show that the proposed method is secure enough to prevent attackers from stealing encrypted images and text files.

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In the present paper 87Sr/86Sr ratio values have been presented for the Upper Kazanian regional stratotype section - Pechishchi. The section Pechishchi is unique section formed within the Kazanian palaeosea. The position of received local data on global Phanerozoic evolution 87Sr/86Sr curve, in common, is satisfactory. Chemostratigraphic points of the Upper Kazanian substage were determined as 87Sr/86Sr values in decreasing trend up the section to the value 0,70727 in top bed 30 dated ~268,5 Ma by the Phanerozoic evolution 87Sr/86Sr curve.

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Aloe vera variety Aloe Chinensis Baker is a species of the family Liliaceae that is widely known as a plant with many benefits as the raw material for cosmetics. The purpose of this research was to identify the effect of adding aloe vera gel extract on the formulation of lotion and its physical evaluation. For its application, aloe vera gel extract-based lotion was used as a moisturizer to prevent dry and dull skin. The variation of aloe vera gel extract consisted of 0% (0 ml); 33.33% (50 ml); 50% (75 ml); 66.67% (100 ml); and 100% (150 ml) of concentration, along with a variation of Aqua DM addition as one ingredient of the formulation of aloe vera gel extract-based lotion. The formulation method started with heating all the raw materials of lotion until completely melted, followed by mixing and stirring the mixture using the Flocculator/Jar Tester until combined evenly and homogenous. Next, the mixture was cooled to room temperature. Then, the physical properties of the lotion were tested for pH, density, viscosity, dispersive power, adhesion, weight shrinkage, homogeneity, as well as lotion emulsion stability. After that, a regression analysis was performed between percentage of addition of aloe vera gel extract and pH value of lotion with the regression equation in y = 2.7x + 3.85; R² = 0.9419; on density of lotion in y = 0.2181x + 1.4272; R² = 0.9096; as well as on viscosity of lotion in y = -265223x3 + 357053x2 - 92976x + 5050.4; R² = 0.6723. The result of this research showed that the best composition for lotion formulation as a cosmetic product was found in the addition of 66.67% aloe vera gel extract with pH value of 6.0; density of 1.600 gram/ml; and viscosity of 28430 cP.

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In this paper, data was collected from 21 pipe-pile projects constructed in Ohio (Khan, 2011). Data included the number of piles, restrike time, pile length, pile diameter, initial total capacity, restrike total capacity, and average clay and silt content along the pile length. The effect of including pile setup on the cost was investigated in terms of the reduction in the pile length. The percentage increase in pile capacity due to setup ranged from 6% to 167%; while the average for all investigated piles was 36%. As for the expected pile length reduction, from incorporating setup in the capacity calculations, it varied from 5% up to 67%. Another important factor that was investigated is the restrike time. It was found that there is no need to wait beyond 96 hours for restrike testing to achieve significant setup. It was concluded that the pile capacity increase due to setup was significant and worth including during the design stage of the project.

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This paper investigates the performance measures for non-preemptive priority fuzzy queues. We analyse the characteristics of a single server in fuzzy environment with non-preemptive priority queueing model by LR method. We take both the arrival time and service time as fuzzy numbers. LR method has the advantage of being short and convenient compared to other methods such as alpha-cuts method. A numerical example is given to derive the performance measures of 2-priority queues.

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