Information analysis and geographic information system (GIS) exploitation in a grain silo
October 2010
This paper presents on the one hand, the cereal activities in Tunisia and on the other hand, a systemic approach of analysis based on the objective oriented project planning (OOPP) method. The exploitation of the systemic approach enables us not only to analyze and to identify the information of the stock management in a grain silo but also to lead an efficient management of cereal transaction. In...
New distributed platform for intrusion detection based on multi-agents system
October 2010
The development and evolution of computer networks, in terms of number of users and services, are making them ever more complex and therefore vulnerable to new types of attacks. Given this complexity of attacks, intrusion detection systems, to monitor the activities of a network or a sensitive computer and to detect abnormal usage of computer resources, are expected to evolve and adapt to changes in user...
Auxetic behavior of a thermoelastic layered plate
September 2010
The aim of this paper is to study the auxetic and non-auxetic behavior of a layered plate in context of coupled thermoelasticity. For this problem, temperature variation and thermal stresses are analyzed in a state of plane stress. Results are obtained for a layered plate subjected to a sudden uniform normal pressure and for obtained results graphs are depicted. Key words: Auxetic...
Simulation analysis on high step-up DC-DC converter for fuel cell system
September 2010
This paper presents a high step-up DC-DC converter for fuel cell system. The proposed converter comprises of an input-current doubler, an output-voltage doubler, and an active-clamp circuit. The input-current doubler and the output-voltage doubler both provide much higher voltage conversion ratio by using a low turn ratio transformer. The low turns ratio increases the overall efficiency. A series resonant...
Digital camera images processing of hard-to-cook beans
September 2010
Haricot bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the most widely produced and consumed legume in the world and occupies an important place in human nutrition in many regions of Africa by improving the nutritional status of many low income populations. It is well known that a significant problem with haricot bean is that it does not soften easily and remains hard even after two or more hours of cooking in boiling...
Scaling-up renewable energy technologies in Africa
August 2010
Energy is very vital for socio-economic, human and technological development, yet there is not MDG on increasing access to energy. Africa’s electricity consumption remains low, about 8% of global electricity consumption. There is significant variation in energy consumption among the different regions and countries in Africa. The over-reliance and unsustainable use of traditional biomass fuel in Africa...
Face recognition using multiple eigenface subspaces
August 2010
Face recognition is grabbing more attention in the area of network information access. Areas such as network security and content retrieval benefit from face recognition technology. In the proposed method, multiple face eigensubspaces are created, with each one corresponding to one known subject privately, rather than all individuals sharing one universal subspace as in the traditional eigenface method....
A combined high and low cycle fatigue model to estimate life of steel bridges
August 2010
This paper proposes a new model to estimate life of structures for combined damage of high and low cycle fatigue. The model mainly consists of a new damage indicator and strain-life fatigue curve. The model predictions are verified by comparing with fatigue test results of some materials. The proposed model is applied to estimate the fatigue life of a bridge member for combined damage of high cycle and low...
Strain energy distribution in an auxetic plate with a crack
July 2010
Compared with non-auxetic materials, auxetic materials have special and desirable mechanical properties. For example, if the material has a crack, when it is being pulled apart, it expands and closes up the crack. In other words, this type of material has more crack resistance to fracture. Also, it has high material resistance to shear strain. Shear resistance is particularly important in structural...
Neural network based CAD model for the design of rectangular patch antennas
July 2010
A new method of calculation of patch dimensions of a rectangular microstrip patch antennas using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been adopted in this paper. An ANN model has been developed and tested for rectangular patch antenna design. It transforms the data containing the dielectric constant (εr), thickness of the substrate (h), and antenna’s dominant-mode resonant frequency...
Theoretical investigation on the cyclic operation of radial flow desiccant bed dehumidifier
June 2010
In the present work a theoretical investigation of the cyclic operation of the radial flow solid desiccant dehumidifier has been reported. A mathematical model has been developed to predict the effect of air inlet conditions (humidity, temperature and flow rate) as well as bed design parameters on the desiccant bed dynamic performance during cyclic operation. The results show that, lower values of the...
A simple mechanical device for the measurement of discharge in a tubewell
June 2010
About 85% of the total water resources are utilized in agriculture. Agriculture is more dependent upon groundwater resources. It is important to know the accurate discharge of the tubewell so that required amount of water may be applied to the field. Presently, Co-ordinate method is the most common method used to measure tubewell discharge, but this is not very accurate. Therefore, to overcome the...
Solving fuzzy linear programming problem as multi objective linear programming problem
May 2010
This paper proposes the method to the solution of fuzzy linear programming problem with the help of multi objective constrained linear programming problem when constraint matrix and the cost coefficients of an objective function are fuzzy in nature. Also proved is that the solutions are independent of weights. Key words: Fuzzy linear programming problems, multi...
Programmable time delays in Hopfield Neural Networks
May 2010
The present work aims to use time delays generated in an artificial neural network (ANN) by developing techniques; with simple software design. This network has been modified, by adding the new Alshaban model and the hybrid model called Hopfield - Alshaban network. The feedback has been proposed as such in a recurrent network (Hopfield model). Time delay can be evaluated by proper pattern appearing, when...
Study of load distribution in fully connected client server network using feedback neural network architecture
April 2010
A fully connected client server network reminiscent of a flat group (analogous to a Hopfield type artificial neural network), consisting of a few clients is considered herein. Distinct client nodes are inter-connected in fully connected architecture as in Hopfield’s associative memory model. Weights of connections are symmetric and the states of the clients are bipolar. Stability of such a network can...
Perturbation technique to unsteady MHD periodic flow of viscous fluid through a planer channel
April 2010
In the present paper we investigate an unsteady periodic flow of a viscous incompressible fluid through a porous planer channel in the presence of transverse magnetic field. The governing equations have been solved by Perturbation technique. The analytical expressions for the velocity profiles of the fluid have been obtained and numerical computations involved in the solution have been shown by tables. The...
Bio-methanisation of Jatropha curcas defatted waste
March 2010
The study deals with the use of Jatropha curcas defatted waste as an alternative feed in biogas plant for its bio-methanisation. As it remains as defatted cake after the extraction of non-edible oil from Jatropha seeds, it cannot be used directly for any purpose due to presence of toxic substance called ‘curcin’. This toxin renders it unsafe for the animal feed and other purposes. It...
Development of a multipurpose, efficient and inexpensive bearing test rig
March 2010
The basic objective of this research is to develop an inexpensive, multipurpose and efficient test rig for condition monitoring of rolling element bearings. The fundamental philosophy of measurement of lubricant film thickness for monitoring the condition of rolling element bearings has been exploited and transformed in the form of a test rig. The developed test rig is potent enough for performance evaluation...
Assessment of attitude of university and polytechnic communities’ members in South-west Nigeria to engineering and technological innovations
March 2010
This communication seeks to assess the disposition of members of polytechnic and university communities to locally produced equipment and machines, the bulk of which come from polytechnics and universities, technological institutions. Only 52.56% of total respondents patronise the products with 78.37% of those who do not patronise saying they preferred imported ones, after confirming that the product quality...
Using an informational approach for the analysis of an industrial system: Case study
February 2010
After a presentation of the cereal activities in Tunisia, we present, according to a systemic analysis approach, the grading system of cereals. A model describing the functioning of the complex system was established and was allowed the identifying of the information that ruled it. An information matrix was defined and elaborated, it enables the one hand to identify the produced and consumed information...
The permeable lifting profile
February 2010
The permeable lifting profile (PLP) is a new concept in hydraulics and aerodynamics and is now submitted as a Patent application to the Romanian Patent Office. This profile has both very interesting hydraulic and mechanic properties. From the hydraulic point of view, this profile is increasing the lifting force and is stabilizing the surrounding flow, avoiding the boundary layer’s detachment. The...
Intelligent location management for UMTS networks using fuzzy neural networks
January 2010
Present generation mobile systems provide access to a wide range of services and enable mobile users to communicate regardless of their geographical location and their roaming characteristics. Due to the growing number of mobile users, global connectivity, and the small size of cells, one of the most critical issues regarding these networks is location management. In recent years, several strategies have been...
Contribution of siderite fines additions on the Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC) strength
January 2010
The technology of Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC) for pavement uses, as additions, various kind of fines such as fly ashes, silica fume and pozzolan. But these products are very expensive and are not yet available in some geographical regions like Tunisia. In the present work, the use of the siderite fines type “Siderite of Jerissa” of Tunisia was introduced, in RCC for pavement. This partial...
Supervision of a counting system of the natural gas of a thermal power plant
December 2009
After a presentation of the functionality of a supervisory system for complex processes, we present the concepts of a supervisory control and data acquisition(SCADA) system. An application of supervision of a counting system of the natural gas (NG) of a thermal power plant (TPP) in Tunisia was realized. The paper briefly discusses the different steps of this application and some advantages of SCADA...
Turbulence study in the internal combustion engine
December 2009
In this paper, we are interested in the study of turbulent and time dependant flow inside a cylinder of an alternative engine through the investigation of the distribution of the turbulent kinetic energy in the whole space of the chamber. This research is carried out during the intake stroke. The arbitrary lagrangian eulerian technique coupled with the finite element method is used to solve the Navier Stokes...
Thermal stresses in a plate with hyperelliptical hole
November 2009
The aim of this paper is to study the thermal stress analysis in a plate with a hole in a hyperelliptical shape assuming the state of plane stress. The system of stress is analyzed using complex variable method under isothermal conditions. The high stress concentration found at the edge of a hole is of great importance, therefore stress system at the tip and in the neighborhood of the tip of the hole...
Combined low-Reynolds-number k–ω model with length scale correction term for recirculating flows
November 2009
A concept for a new turbulence model, which combines the Low-Reynolds-Number (LRN) k–ω model with a Length Scale Correction (LSC) term is proposed. The present model was developed for solving recirculating flow which is an important feature in many engineering applications. The LSC term employed here is ω–LSC – a new LSC uses the analogy of Yap correction. By...
The new era of engineering: A proposal of establishing school of engineering education
November 2009
In this paper, the proposal of setting up a new "School of Engineering Education' has been presented. The paper discusses the prospective location, the possible degrees offered by this institution, the future prospects of the development of this concept as well as the reasons why Engineering Education needs to be handled in this new format of education. The article tries to support the new field by...
Public key cryptosystems based on chaotic Chebyshev polynomials
October 2009
Due to rapid developments in limits and possibilities of communications and information transmissions, there is a growing demand of cryptographic techniques, which has spurred a great deal of intensive research activities in the study of cryptography. This paper describes a public key encryption based on chebyshev polynomials by Alfred et al. (1996). We discuss the algorithm for textual data and present...
Neural network based CAD model for the design of rectangular patch antennas
October 2009
A new method of calculation of patch dimensions of a rectangular microstrip patch antennas using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been adopted in this paper. An ANN model has been developed and tested for rectangular patch antenna design. It transforms the data containing the dielectric constant (εr), thickness of the substrate (h), and antenna’s dominant-mode resonant frequency (fr) to...
Supporting intelligent terminals by cross-layer adaptation over HSDPA network
October 2009
Next generation of mobile networks will support intelligent terminals having different categories and generating traffic with various qualities of service (QoS) requirements. To provide an end-to-end QoS, application terminals need to be adaptive and deal with network changing conditions. Knowledge has to be shared between network layers to obtain the highest possible adaptivity. In this context, we propose...
Applying machine learning techniques for e-mail management: Solution with intelligent e-mail reply prediction
October 2009
In today’s world, much of our communication is done via e-mail. Many companies and internet users now view e-mail as one of their most critical personal and business applications and would experience serious consequences if their e-mail messages could not be available or experience high volume of messages which lead to congestions, overloads and limited storage space coupled with un-organized e-mail...
Simplification of jaw crusher for artisanal aggregates miners
September 2009
A small-scale mobile jaw-crusher unit with a throughput of 1-1.5 tons of aggregates per hour has been designed, manufactured and tested at the Department of Chemical and Processing Engineering, University of Dar es Salaam. The equipment is aimed at reducing the drudgery and hardships faced by artisanal miners, mostly women, who spend long hours in quarrying sites excavating and crushing aggregates using...
Engineering properties of marine clays from the eastern coast of India
September 2009
The paper deals with the engineering properties of a marine clay collected from Visakhapatnam, India. First of all, the physical, chemical and mineralogical properties were determined. Thereafter, the strength and stiffness of the soil-water matrix were established. The properties under cyclic stress reversal were also studied. The detailed test results and observations are discussed sequentially in the...
Rock cutting with surface miner: A computational approach
September 2009
Surface miner is proved to be an efficient rock excavation technique in surface mines. However, till date, mining industry is facing a problem in selecting best surface miner model suitable to their conditions amongst the models available in the market. The readily available models are purchased by the mine authority and then, are deployed in the mines. This results into the increase in mining cost and...
Feature subset selection in keystroke dynamics using ant colony optimization
August 2009
The need to secure sensitive data and computer systems from intruders, while allowing ease of access for authenticated users is one of the main problems in computer security. Traditionally, passwords have been the usual method for controlling access to computer systems but this approach has many inherent flaws. Keystroke Dynamics is a relatively new method of biometric identification and provides a...
Study of the thermal and spectral sensitivities of organic-inorganic fabrication materials based arrayed waveguide grating for passive optical network applications
August 2009
In the present paper, the study of the spectral and thermal sensitivities of the inorganic materials such as (Silica-doped, Lithium Niobate) materials and organic materials such as (PMMA Polymer) based waveguides employed in arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) in Passive Optical Networks (PONs) against spectral wavelength and ambient temperature variations. Moreover, we have investigated the best performance...
Design of minimum error digital down-converter (DDC) for GSM mask requirements
August 2009
In this paper we present a new design of 2 FIR filters for use on a digital down-converter (DDC) to be used to downconvert a GSM signal. The hardware to work with is a Graychip 4016 multi-standard quad DDC chip (Graychip, Inc2001). The design of FIR filters using windows methods leads to good performance filters, however, sometimes there is a need to design a FIR filter that does not only perform well...
Restriction analysis of rDNA regions to differentiate non-Saccharomyces wine species in mixed cultures
July 2009
The control of wine quality is related also to the knowledge of composition and dynamics of yeast-flora occurring throughout the vinification process. The restriction analysis of NTS and ITS regions was used to differentiate in mixed fermentation non-Saccharomyces species frequently encountered in the early fermentation phase, such as Hanseniaspora uvarum, Candida stellata and Metschnikowia pulcherrima....
SCTP-multihoming for intra and inter-RAT data handover management
July 2009
SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol) provides interesting features, as multihoming and multistreaming, to enhance information transport performances over air interfaces. Additional extensions have been proposed to adapt SCTP to wireless context (mSCTP: mobile SCTP). However, published approaches do not take into account channel state information during handover processes. The present work proposes a...
Sorption of lead (ii) ions by granular activated carbon from animal horns: A comparative study
June 2009
The physico-chemical properties of wastewater effluent from the plants of a brewering industry in Nigeria have been analyzed. The lead ions removal capacity of Granular activated carbon from animal horns and its comparison with commercial granulated activated carbon (GAC) was studied. Batch kinetics and isotherm studies were carried out for the adsorption of Pb2+. The equilibrium...
Effect of varying concentration of sodium nitrate on biological oxidation of petroleum hydrocarbon polluted water
June 2009
The bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbon polluted water using Aspergillus niger and varying concentrations of sodium nitrate was investigated in this study. Five samples of petroleum hydrocarbon polluted water innoculated with A. nigercontaining 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 M NaNO3(aq) and the control was monitored for parameters such as Total Hydrocarbon Content (THC), Biological Oxygen...
Approach to calculate solar radiation inside a semi-cylindrical greenhouse
May 2009
A semi-cylinderical greenhouse is simple in construction, requires less material and can withstand high wind pressure. The transmission of solar radiation through the curved surface is dependent on angle of incidence of solar radiation on the cover. A calculation procedure has been developed for the transmission of obliquely incident beam radiation through a semi-cylindrical greenhouse. An analysis has also...
Publication process for engineers
May 2009
Journal publication is an important indicator of research productivity for individual researchers as well as academic institutions. However, for young faculty members the publication process can appear equivocal and daunting. If the academic does not actively engage themselves early in this process, then her or his career becomes an uphill (and sometimes insurmountable) battle. To assist the young academic,...
Dynamic wave soil structure interaction analysis of a two way asymmetric building system DSSIA-3D
May 2009
In this paper structural response to dynamic loading, which is expressed in terms of displacements of the structure, is studied. A two-way asymmetrical multistory building model is subjected to bi-directional harmonic and earthquake loadings. The time histories of the vertically and horizontal displacements and rotation of the roof are obtained using the scaled boundary finite-element...
Identification of insilico 3D structure of amylase (Drosophila melanogaster) and comparative computational studies
May 2009
Comparative studies are useful in the prediction of validated 3D structure of a query protein (Amylase). Modeler is used for structure prediction of amylase. All the structural models are verified by results of ramachandran plot, Whatif server, Prosa (ll) and Procheck (Checks the stereochemical quality of a protein structure, producing a number of postscript plots analyzing its overall and residue-by- residue...
Building a proposed expert system using blood testing
April 2009
This paper introduces a program which is designed to assist in medical diagnosis depending on blood test results. The program is based on the laboratory test results and the symptoms of each tract. The result of the program depends on the information supplied by the physician. Entering incorrect or misleading information will cause erroneous or unreliable results. This program does not make medical diagnosis,...
Modeling and fuzzy control of a photovoltaic-assisted watering system
April 2009
The effective management of water and soil is crucial for countries with main agricultural activities. Therefore, it is very important to improve practices and irrigation methods to provide suitable and necessary moisture for proper crop development. In this article, we propose first a study of an irrigation system suitable for remote sites and using photovoltaic energy as a power source for pumping. After...
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