Abstract

The quantum of wind power generation, globally, is increasing rapidly. The background for this development is improved technology, decreased costs for the units, and increased concern regarding environmental problems of competing technologies such as fossil fuels. The present work is aimed at investigating the underlying economics of wind power. From being a source of energy that until recently appeared only on the fringes of the energy supply system, wind power has, over recent years, moved to centre stage in the government’s energy policy. This paper examines whether the economic analysis of this source of energy really justifies such a major role and whether alternative policy options should be considered. We need a “cheap, reliable and sustainable” source of energy. These three adjectives refer to the three main objectives of contemporary energy policy, namely economic efficiency, stability of supply, and a reduction in carbon emissions. These are themes, which will recur throughout this paper. This paper also covers the cost effectiveness of wind turbine power plants.

Abstract

The overall objective of this study is to assess the benefits and limitations of the diesel fuel blended with oxygenated compounds, (oxygenates), on combustion and performance in diesel engines. In the wide variety of oxygenates, it is very essential to identify the suitable oxygenates to blend with diesel and to be used as diesel formulations based on their physical and chemical properties. The impact and the limitations of oxygenates on the diesel combustion process have been defined only to a limited extent, because the data available in the literature are confounded by different engine types and operating conditions.  However in this paper, three selected oxygenates were tested in the same engine, under identical operating conditions.

The experimental investigation was carried out in three phases. Firstly, initial screening of oxygenates were carried out by studying their physical and chemical characteristics after an extensive literature survey and review.  Based on this, dibutyl maleate, diethyl malonate and diethyl maleate were selected and blended with diesel in different proportions by volume for engine testing and investigation. In the second phase, experimental investigations were carried out to evaluate the effects of these oxygenates on combustion and performance. The tests were carried out on a single cylinder, naturally aspirated, direct injection diesel engine.

Finally, the evaluated experimental values were compared with the values obtained with the standard commercial diesel fuel and the results were found to be satisfactory in the acceptable level.

The study showed that the premixed combustion is prolonged and the duration of the diffusive combustion is shortened with the increase in oxygenates addition. The cylinder gas pressure, the rate of pressure rise, the heat release and the rate of heat release also increased with the addition of oxygenates whereas the maximum gas temperature decreases with the increase in oxygenate addition. The ignition delay increases while the rapid combustion duration and the total combustion duration shows less variation with the addition. The brake specific energy consumption and the thermal efficiency increases with the increase in addition of oxygenate. The CO, smoke and PM emissions decrease with the increase in oxygenates addition and there is no increase of NOx.

Abstract

Many industries are operated and controlled by Programmable Logic Controller. A reliability analysis of such an industrial system, along with a very practical concept of inspection for detecting the type of failure is introduced in this paper. The real data of one of the PLC controlled manufacturing unit have been used for various failure, inspection, repair, replacement and reinstallation rates. Thus, the whole situation is embedded into a model where a single unit PLC system with four types of failure is analyzed and important reliability indices are obtained. Furthermore, semi-Markov processes and regenerative point techniques are used in obtaining the reliability indices. Profit incurred to the system is also evaluated. The particular case is examined graphically.

Abstract

Flexural vibration of an infinite piezocomposite solid cylinder made of inner solid and outer hollow piezoelectric layer of 6mm-class bonded together by an isotropic CFRP (Carbon fiber-reinforced plastics) layer is studied by using Mathematical equations. The frequency equations are obtained for the traction free surfaces with continuity condition at the interfaces. Numerical results are carried out for the cylinder PZT4/CFRP/PZT4 and the dispersion curves are compared with that of a solid piezoelectric cylinder and a similar model embedding a linear elastic material with voids (LEMV).The proposed method is to analyze the attenuation and damping effect of the said material.

Abstract

Masonry infill walls increase the initial stiffness of reinforced concrete (RC) frames and attract more seismic shear forces on buildings thereby reducing the demand on the RC frame members. Sometimes window or ventilator openings have been left in the infill wall for architectural necessities. The purpose of this study is to experimentally investigate the behaviour of RC non-ductile frame with partial masonry infills under lateral loads. A two-bay two-storeyed one-third scale model is built with partial brick masonry infill and tested under reversed cyclic lateral load. Test results showed that the failure of the RC frame is highly influenced by the damage of column portion adjacent to the partial infill. The partially filled masonry wall induced captive-column effect and leads to a brittle shear failure of the column in the regions without infill. The stiffness of the infilled frame decreased very rapidly after the initiation of cracks in the captive columns and is followed by the diagonal failure of the partial masonry infill. Results demonstrated the failure with respect to ductility, strength and hysteretic characteristics.

Abstract

Textures are replications, symmetries and combinations of various basic patterns, usually with some random variation one of the gray-level statistics. Detecting of object boundaries is an important step to analyze of an image. The main objective is to locate prominent edges in an image.  In the proposed scheme, fuzzy concept is used. Here the texture number is reduced to 2030 in Base5 fuzzy schemes. By combining the traditional edge detection techniques with proposed texture measure can solve this problem. Promising results are obtained when locating texture boundaries of some of the Brain images and texture images and it shows a good method of extracting information that is crucial to a successful intensity based edge detection for detecting texture edges of texture images.

Abstract

Rigid Polyvinyl Chloride (RPVC) fittings are fast replacing the conventional metallic fittings in many applications such as agriculture, irrigation, sanitation,   electrical conduits, portable water, chemical processing plants etc., because of light weight and good chemical resistant properties. Hence proper design of rigid PVC is crucial for efficient and economical production. In the present work, the rigid PVC elbow with sharp corner is considered for analysis. In elbow, the stress concentration occurs at the corners. In this work the elbow with sharp corner has been modeled   using PRO-E WILDFIRE and also various elbow models have been modeled by varying the parameters such as wall thickness at curvature of elbow, wall thickness at socket end and geometry at junction of elbow. All the models have been subjected to 0.6MPa pressure and analyzed for maximum stresses using ANSYS 10.0.  The multiple regression model has been developed for the prediction of maximum stress in terms of the above parameters. The adequacy of the developed model is verified by using coefficient of determination and analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). An attempt also has been made to optimize the maximum stress using genetic algorithm.

Abstract

High rise buildings provide a decent shelter with minimum possible area of land for the maximum possible requirements at a reasonable cost. Well - designed shear wall in a seismic area provides structural safety and gives a good protection for non-structural items like false ceiling, wall panels, etc.(whose cost would come upto 70% of the total) from damage during moderate seismic disturbances. In this paper the experimental investigation consisted of testing quarter-sized five storey one bay reinforced concrete shear wall frame under static lateral reversed cyclic load was presented. Load was applied at the fifth, third and first storey level. The deflections at all storey levels were measured using LVDT. The strains in steel and concrete were monitored at maximum load and unloading conditions during all cycles of loading. The important parameters considered for study were load carrying capacity, stiffness degradation, ductility factor and energy dissipation capacity. The formation and propagation of cracks, hinge formation and failure pattern have been recorded. Theoretical analysis were carried out using finite element software ANSYS, SAP2000Nonlinear (push over analysis), compared and concluded with experimental results.

Abstract

Tolerance synthesis directly influences the functionality of products and their related production costs. The problem of synthesis is to discretise tolerances without affecting functionality of a product.  A promising method of tolerance synthesis is to assign component tolerances that minimize the cost of production of an assembly. In this paper the neural network is applied to fit the cost-tolerance relationship. The neural network has been reported to be an effective tool for determining the relationship between input factor and output responses. The available case studies in the literature for the tolerance synthesis are used to investigate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

Abstract

In the present paper, a novel Elliptic curve and quasi pseudo random sequence based Genetic algorithm for data encryption has been proposed. By combining the spatial domain encryption of digital image by the proposed technique and a new pseudo random generator, the security of encryption scheme has been enhanced effectively. Instead of encrypting an image in a chaotic signal directly, the proposed scheme uses multi-chaotic systems based on the idea of higher level of secrecy. Two of the chaotic systems are used to generate a pseudo random sequence, which is better than the existing ones. The other chaotic system is used for encryption purpose. The encryption by this method is such that the real time signal can be transformed into completely disordered data. The security of encryption scheme is analyzed in detail. The proposed algorithm possesses interesting features like, High level of security, Less memory usage requirement, Low computational complexity, Larger key space, Sensitive to key and can resist brute force attacks, Small key size, Faster implementation and Less Bandwidth. Thus the proposed scheme is very much suitable for the digital image encryption.