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- 2020 (33) (remove)
Die Mahlung als Zerkleinerungsprozess stellt seit den Anfängen der Menschheit eine der wichtigsten Verarbeitungsformen von Materialien aller Art dar - von der Getreidemahlung, über das Aufschließen von Heilkräutern in Mörsern bis hin zur Herstellung von Tonern für Drucker und Kopierer. Besonders die Zementmahlung ist in modernen Gesellschaften sowohl ein wirtschaftlicher als auch ein ökologischer Faktor. Mehr als zwei Drittel der elektrischen Energie der Zementproduktion werden für Rohmehl- und Klinker- bzw. Kompositmaterialmahlung verbraucht. Dies ist nur ein Grund, warum der Mahlprozess zunehmend in den Fokus vieler Forschungs- und Entwicklungsvorhaben rückt. Die Komplexität der Zementmahlung steigt im zunehmenden Maße an. Die simple „Mahlung auf Zementfeinheit“ ist seit langem obsolet. Zemente werden maßgeschneidert, mit verschiedensten Kombinationsprodukten, getrennt oder gemeinsam, in unterschiedlichen Mahlaggregaten oder mit ganz neuen Ansätzen gefertigt. Darüber hinaus gewinnt auch der Sektor des Baustoffrecyclings, mit allen damit verbundenen Herausforderungen, immer mehr an Bedeutung. Bei der Fragestellung, wie der Mahlprozess einerseits leistungsfähige Produkte erzeugen kann und andererseits die zunehmenden Anforderungen an Nachhaltigkeit erfüllt, steht das Mahlaggregat im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtungen. Dementsprechend gliedert sich, neben einer eingehenden Literaturrecherche zum Wissensstand, die vorliegende Arbeit in zwei übergeordnete Teile:
Im ersten Teil werden Untersuchungen an konventionellen Mahlaggregaten mit in der Zementindustrie verwendeten Kernprodukten wie Portlandzementklinker, Kalkstein, Flugasche und Hüttensand angestellt. Um eine möglichst effektive Mahlung von Zement und Kompositmaterialien zu gewährleisten, ist es wichtig, die Auswirkung von Mühlenparametern zu kennen. Hierfür wurde eine umfangreiche Versuchsmatrix aufgestellt und
abgearbeitet. Das Spektrum der Analysemethoden war ebenfalls umfangreich und wurde sowohl auf die gemahlenen Materialien als auch auf die daraus hergestellten Zemente und Betone angewendet. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass vor allem die Unterscheidung zwischen Mahlkörpermühlen und mahlkörperlosen Mühlen entscheidenden Einfluss auf die Granulometrie und somit auch auf die Zementperformance hat. Besonders stark wurden die Verarbeitungseigenschaften, insbesondere der Wasseranspruch und damit auch das Porengefüge und schließlich Druckfestigkeiten sowie Dauerhaftigkeitseigenschaften der aus diesen Zementen hergestellten Betone, beeinflusst. Bei Untersuchungen zur gemeinsamen Mahlung von Kalkstein und Klinker führten ungünstige Anreicherungseffekte des gut mahlbaren Kalksteins sowie tonigen Nebenbestandteilen zu einer schlechteren Performance in allen Zementprüfungen.
Der zweite Teil widmet sich der Hochenergiemahlung. Die dahinterstehende Technik wird seit Jahrzehnten in anderen Wirtschaftsbranchen, wie der Pharmazie, Biologie oder auch Lebensmittelindustrie angewendet und ist seit einiger Zeit auch in der Zementforschung anzutreffen. Beispielhaft seien hier die Planeten- und Rührwerkskugelmühle als Vertreter genannt. Neben grundlegenden Untersuchungen an Zementklinker
und konventionellen Kompositmaterialien wie Hüttensand und Kalkstein wurde auch die Haupt-Zementklinkerphase Alit untersucht. Die Hochenergiemahlung von konventionellen Kompositmaterialien generierte zusätzliche Reaktivität bei gleicher Granulometrie gegenüber der herkömmlichen Mahlung. Dies wurde vor allem bei per se reaktivem Zementklinker als auch bei latent-hydraulischem Hüttensand beobachtet. Gemahlene Flugaschen konnten nur im geringen Maße weiter aktiviert werden. Der generelle Einfluss von Oberflächenvergrößerung, Strukturdefekten und Relaxationseffekten eines Mahlproduktes wurden eingehend untersucht und gewichtet. Die Ergebnisse bei der Hochenergiemahlung von Alit zeigten, dass die durch Mahlung eingebrachten Strukturdefekte eine Erhöhung der Reaktivität zur Folge haben. Hierbei konnte festgestellt werden, das maßgeblich Oberflächendefekte, strukturelle (Volumen-)defekte und als Konterpart Selbstheilungseffekte die reaktivitätsbestimmenden Faktoren sind. Weiterhin wurden Versuche zur Mahlung von Altbetonbrechsand durchgeführt. Im Speziellen wurde untersucht, inwieweit eine Rückführung von Altbetonbrechsand, als unverwertbarer Teil des Betonbruchs, in Form eines Zement-Kompositmaterials in den Baustoffkreislauf möglich ist. Die hierfür verwendete Mahltechnik umfasst sowohl konventionelle Mühlen als auch Hochenergiemühlen. Es wurden Kompositzemente mit variiertem Recyclingmaterialanteil hergestellt und auf grundlegende Eigenschaften untersucht. Zur Bewertung der Produktqualität wurde der sogenannte „Aktivierungskoeffizient“ eingeführt. Es stellte sich heraus, dass die Rückführung von Altbetonbrechsand als potentielles Kompositmaterial wesentlich vom Anteil des Zementsteins abhängt. So konnte beispielsweise reiner Zementstein als aufgemahlenes Kompositmaterial eine bessere Performance gegenüber dem mit Gesteinskörnung beaufschlagtem Altbetonbrechsand ausweisen. Bezogen auf die gemessenen Hydratationswärmen und Druckfestigkeiten nahm der Aktivierungskoeffzient mit fallendem Abstraktionsgrad ab. Ebenfalls sank der Aktivierungskoeffizient mit steigendem Substitutionsgrad. Als Vergleich wurden dieselben Materialien in konventionellen Mühlen aufbereitet. Die hier erzielten Ergebnisse können teilweise der Hochenergiemahlung als gleichwertig beurteilt werden. Folglich ist bei der Aktivierung von Recyclingmaterialien weniger die Mahltechnik als der Anteil an aktivierbarem Zementstein ausschlaggebend.
Why Do Digital Native News Media Fail? An Investigation of Failure in the Early Start-Up Phase
(2020)
Digital native news media have great potential for improving journalism. Theoretically, they can be the sites where new products, novel revenue streams and alternative ways of organizing digital journalism are discovered, tested, and advanced. In practice, however, the situation appears to be more complicated. Besides the normal pressures facing new businesses, entrepreneurs in digital news are faced with specific challenges. Against the background of general and journalism specific entrepreneurship literature, and in light of a practice–theoretical approach, this qualitative case study research on 15 German digital native news media outlets empirically investigates what barriers curb their innovative capacity in the early start-up phase. In the new media organizations under study here, there are—among other problems—a high degree of homogeneity within founding teams, tensions between journalistic and economic practices, insufficient user orientation, as well as a tendency for organizations to be underfinanced. The patterns of failure investigated in this study can raise awareness, help news start-ups avoid common mistakes before actually entering the market, and help industry experts and investors to realistically estimate the potential of new ventures within the digital news industry.
In Germany, bridges have an average age of 40 years. A bridge consumes between 0.4% and 2% of its construction cost per year over its entire life cycle. This means that up to 80% of the construction cost are additionally needed for operation, inspection, maintenance, and destruction. Current practices rely either on paperbased inspections or on abstract specialist software. Every application in the inspection and maintenance sector uses its own data model for structures, inspections, defects, and maintenance. Due to this, data and properties have to be transferred manually, otherwise a converter is necessary for every data exchange between two applications. To overcome this issue, an adequate model standard for inspections, damage, and maintenance is necessary. Modern 3D models may serve as a single source of truth, which has been suggested in the Building Information Modeling (BIM) concept. Further, these models offer a clear visualization of the built infrastructure, and improve not only the planning and construction phases, but also the operation phase of construction projects. BIM is established mostly in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector to plan and construct new buildings. Currently, BIM does not cover the whole life cycle of a building, especially not inspection and maintenance. Creating damage models needs the building model first, because a defect is dependent on the building component, its properties and material. Hence, a building information model is necessary to obtain meaningful conclusions from damage information. This paper analyzes the requirements, which arise from practice, and the research that has been done in modeling damage and related information for bridges. With a look at damage categories and use cases related to inspection and maintenance, scientific literature is discussed and synthesized. Finally, research gaps and needs are identified and discussed.
Temporary changes in precipitation may lead to sustained and severe drought or massive floods in different parts of the world. Knowing the variation in precipitation can effectively help the water resources decision-makers in water resources management. Large-scale circulation drivers have a considerable impact on precipitation in different parts of the world. In this research, the impact of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on seasonal precipitation over Iran was investigated. For this purpose, 103 synoptic stations with at least 30 years of data were utilized. The Spearman correlation coefficient between the indices in the previous 12 months with seasonal precipitation was calculated, and the meaningful correlations were extracted. Then, the month in which each of these indices has the highest correlation with seasonal precipitation was determined. Finally, the overall amount of increase or decrease in seasonal precipitation due to each of these indices was calculated. Results indicate the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), NAO, and PDO have the most impact on seasonal precipitation, respectively. Additionally, these indices have the highest impact on the precipitation in winter, autumn, spring, and summer, respectively. SOI has a diverse impact on winter precipitation compared to the PDO and NAO, while in the other seasons, each index has its special impact on seasonal precipitation. Generally, all indices in different phases may decrease the seasonal precipitation up to 100%. However, the seasonal precipitation may increase more than 100% in different seasons due to the impact of these indices. The results of this study can be used effectively in water resources management and especially in dam operation.
Pressure fluctuations beneath hydraulic jumps potentially endanger the stability of stilling basins. This paper deals with the mathematical modeling of the results of laboratory-scale experiments to estimate the extreme pressures. Experiments were carried out on a smooth stilling basin underneath free hydraulic jumps downstream of an Ogee spillway. From the probability distribution of measured instantaneous pressures, pressures with different probabilities could be determined. It was verified that maximum pressure fluctuations, and the negative pressures, are located at the positions near the spillway toe. Also, minimum pressure fluctuations are located at the downstream of hydraulic jumps. It was possible to assess the cumulative curves of pressure data related to the characteristic points along the basin, and different Froude numbers. To benchmark the results, the dimensionless forms of statistical parameters include mean pressures (P*m), the standard deviations of pressure fluctuations (σ*X), pressures with different non-exceedance probabilities (P*k%), and the statistical coefficient of the probability distribution (Nk%) were assessed. It was found that an existing method can be used to interpret the present data, and pressure distribution in similar conditions, by using a new second-order fractional relationships for σ*X, and Nk%. The values of the Nk% coefficient indicated a single mean value for each probability.
In this paper, an artificial neural network is implemented for the sake of predicting the thermal conductivity ratio of TiO2-Al2O3/water nanofluid. TiO2-Al2O3/water in the role of an innovative type of nanofluid was synthesized by the sol–gel method. The results indicated that 1.5 vol.% of nanofluids enhanced the thermal conductivity by up to 25%. It was shown that the heat transfer coefficient was linearly augmented with increasing nanoparticle concentration, but its variation with temperature was nonlinear. It should be noted that the increase in concentration may cause the particles to agglomerate, and then the thermal conductivity is reduced. The increase in temperature also increases the thermal conductivity, due to an increase in the Brownian motion and collision of particles. In this research, for the sake of predicting the thermal conductivity of TiO2-Al2O3/water nanofluid based on volumetric concentration and temperature functions, an artificial neural network is implemented. In this way, for predicting thermal conductivity, SOM (self-organizing map) and BP-LM (Back Propagation-Levenberq-Marquardt) algorithms were used. Based on the results obtained, these algorithms can be considered as an exceptional tool for predicting thermal conductivity. Additionally, the correlation coefficient values were equal to 0.938 and 0.98 when implementing the SOM and BP-LM algorithms, respectively, which is highly acceptable. View Full-Text
This paper proposes a practice-theoretical journalism research approach for an alternate and innovative perspective of digital journalism’s current empirical challenges. The practice-theoretical approach is introduced by demonstrating its explanatory power in relation to demarcation problems, technological changes, economic challenges and challenges to journalism’s legitimacy. Its respective advantages in dealing with these problems are explained and then compared to established journalism theories. The particular relevance of the theoretical perspective is due to (1) its central decision to observe journalistic practices, (2) the transgression of conventional journalistic boundaries, (3) the denaturalization of journalistic norms and laws, (4) the explicit consideration of a material, socio-technical dimension of journalism, (5) a focus on the conflicting relationship between journalistic practices and media management practices, and (6) prioritizing order generation over stability.
Welfare‐state transformation and entrepreneurial urban politics in Western welfare states since the late 1970s have yielded converging trends in the transformation of the dominant Fordist paradigm of social housing in terms of its societal function and institutional and spatial form. In this article I draw from a comparative case study on two cities in Germany to show that the resulting new paradigm is simultaneously shaped by the idiosyncrasies of the country's national housing regime and local housing policies. While German governments have successively limited the societal function of social housing as a legitimate instrument only for addressing exceptional housing crises, local policies on providing and organizing social housing within this framework display significant variation. However, planning and design principles dominating the spatial forms of social housing have been congruent. They may be interpreted as both an expression of the marginalization of social housing within the restructured welfare housing regime and a tool of its implementation according to the logics of entrepreneurial urban politics.
Rechargeable lithium ion batteries (LIBs) play a very significant role in power supply and storage. In recent decades, LIBs have caught tremendous attention in mobile communication, portable electronics, and electric vehicles. Furthermore, global warming has become a worldwide issue due to the ongoing production of greenhouse gases. It motivates solutions such as renewable sources of energy. Solar and wind energies are the most important ones in renewable energy sources. By technology progress, they will definitely require batteries to store the produced power to make a balance between power generation and consumption. Nowadays,rechargeable batteries such as LIBs are considered as one of the best solutions. They provide high specific energy and high rate performance while their rate of self-discharge is low.
Performance of LIBs can be improved through the modification of battery characteristics. The size of solid particles in electrodes can impact the specific energy and the cyclability of batteries. It can improve the amount of lithium content in the electrode which is a vital parameter in capacity and capability of a battery. There exist diferent sources of heat generation in LIBs such as heat produced during electrochemical reactions, internal resistance in battery. The size of electrode's electroactive particles can directly affect the produced heat in battery. It will be shown that the smaller size of solid particle enhance the thermal characteristics of LIBs.
Thermal issues such as overheating, temperature maldistribution in the battery, and thermal runaway have confined applications of LIBs. Such thermal challenges reduce the Life cycle of LIBs. As well, they may lead to dangerous conditions such as fire or even explosion in batteries. However, recent advances in fabrication of advanced materials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes with extraordinary thermal conductivity and electrical properties propose new opportunities to enhance their performance. Since experimental works are expensive, our objective is to use computational methods to investigate the thermal issues in LIBS. Dissipation of the heat produced in the battery can improve the cyclability and specific capacity of LIBs. In real applications, packs of LIB consist several battery cells that are used as the power source. Therefore, it is worth to investigate thermal characteristic of battery packs under their cycles of charging/discharging operations at different applied current rates. To remove the produced heat in batteries, they can be surrounded by materials with high thermal conductivity. Parafin wax absorbs high energy since it has a high latent heat. Absorption high amounts of energy occurs at constant temperature without phase change. As well, thermal conductivity of parafin can be magnified with nano-materials such as graphene, CNT, and fullerene to form a nano-composite medium. Improving the thermal conductivity of LIBs increase the heat dissipation from batteries which is a vital issue in systems of battery thermal management. The application of two-dimensional (2D) materials has been on the rise since exfoliation the graphene from bulk graphite. 2D materials are single-layered in an order of nanosizes which show superior thermal, mechanical, and optoelectronic properties. They are potential candidates for energy storage and supply, particularly in lithium ion batteries as electrode material. The high thermal conductivity of graphene and graphene-like materials can play a significant role in thermal management of batteries. However, defects always exist in nano-materials since there is no ideal fabrication process. One of the most important defects in materials are nano-crack which can dramatically weaken the mechanical properties of the materials. Newly synthesized crystalline carbon nitride with the stoichiometry of C3N have attracted many attentions due to its extraordinary mechanical and thermal properties. The other nano-material is phagraphene which shows anisotropic mechanical characteristics which is ideal in production of nanocomposite.
It shows ductile fracture behavior when subjected under uniaxial loadings. It is worth to investigate their thermo-mechanical properties in its pristine and defective states. We hope that the findings of our work not only be useful for both experimental and theoretical researches but also help to design advanced electrodes for LIBs.
Evaporation is a very important process; it is one of the most critical factors in agricultural, hydrological, and meteorological studies. Due to the interactions of multiple climatic factors, evaporation is considered as a complex and nonlinear phenomenon to model. Thus, machine learning methods have gained popularity in this realm. In the present study, four machine learning methods of Gaussian Process Regression (GPR), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Random Forest (RF) and Support Vector Regression (SVR) were used to predict the pan evaporation (PE). Meteorological data including PE, temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), wind speed (W), and sunny hours (S) collected from 2011 through 2017. The accuracy of the studied methods was determined using the statistical indices of Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), correlation coefficient (R) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE). Furthermore, the Taylor charts utilized for evaluating the accuracy of the mentioned models. The results of this study showed that at Gonbad-e Kavus, Gorgan and Bandar Torkman stations, GPR with RMSE of 1.521 mm/day, 1.244 mm/day, and 1.254 mm/day, KNN with RMSE of 1.991 mm/day, 1.775 mm/day, and 1.577 mm/day, RF with RMSE of 1.614 mm/day, 1.337 mm/day, and 1.316 mm/day, and SVR with RMSE of 1.55 mm/day, 1.262 mm/day, and 1.275 mm/day had more appropriate performances in estimating PE values. It was found that GPR for Gonbad-e Kavus Station with input parameters of T, W and S and GPR for Gorgan and Bandar Torkmen stations with input parameters of T, RH, W and S had the most accurate predictions and were proposed for precise estimation of PE. The findings of the current study indicated that the PE values may be accurately estimated with few easily measured meteorological parameters.
Acoustic travel-time TOMography (ATOM) allows the measurement and reconstruction of air temperature distributions. Due to limiting factors, such as the challenge of travel-time estimation of the early reflections in the room impulse response, which heavily depends on the position of transducers inside the measurement area, ATOM is applied mainly outdoors. To apply ATOM in buildings, this paper presents a numerical solution to optimize the positions of transducers. This optimization avoids reflection overlaps, leading to distinguishable travel-times in the impulse response reflectogram. To increase the accuracy of the measured temperature within tomographic voxels, an additional function is employed to the proposed numerical method to minimize the number of sound-path-free voxels, ensuring the best sound-ray coverage of the room. Subsequently, an experimental set-up has been performed to verify the proposed numerical method. The results indicate the positive impact of the optimal positions of transducers on the distribution of ATOM-temperatures.
Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) is a procedure that estimates structural scores for buildings and prioritizes their retrofit and upgrade requirements. Despite the speed and simplicity of RVS, many of the collected parameters are non-commensurable and include subjectivity due to visual observations. This might cause uncertainties in the evaluation, which emphasizes the use of a fuzzy-based method. This study aims to propose a novel RVS methodology based on the interval type-2 fuzzy logic system (IT2FLS) to set the priority of vulnerable building to undergo detailed assessment while covering uncertainties and minimizing their effects during evaluation. The proposed method estimates the vulnerability of a building, in terms of Damage Index, considering the number of stories, age of building, plan irregularity, vertical irregularity, building quality, and peak ground velocity, as inputs with a single output variable. Applicability of the proposed method has been investigated using a post-earthquake damage database of reinforced concrete buildings from the Bingöl and Düzce earthquakes in Turkey.
Image Analysis Using Human Body Geometry and Size Proportion Science for Action Classification
(2020)
Gestures are one of the basic modes of human communication and are usually used to represent different actions. Automatic recognition of these actions forms the basis for solving more complex problems like human behavior analysis, video surveillance, event detection, and sign language recognition, etc. Action recognition from images is a challenging task as the key information like temporal data, object trajectory, and optical flow are not available in still images. While measuring the size of different regions of the human body i.e., step size, arms span, length of the arm, forearm, and hand, etc., provides valuable clues for identification of the human actions. In this article, a framework for classification of the human actions is presented where humans are detected and localized through faster region-convolutional neural networks followed by morphological image processing techniques. Furthermore, geometric features from human blob are extracted and incorporated into the classification rules for the six human actions i.e., standing, walking, single-hand side wave, single-hand top wave, both hands side wave, and both hands top wave. The performance of the proposed technique has been evaluated using precision, recall, omission error, and commission error. The proposed technique has been comparatively analyzed in terms of overall accuracy with existing approaches showing that it performs well in contrast to its counterparts.
In einer systematischen Interpretation von Vilém Flussers Werk schlägt die Arbeit vor, Flussers Ansatz als einen medienphilosophischen zu verstehen, insofern er das „wie“ der medienphilosophischen Fragestellung in den Mittelpunkt rückt. Medien werden nicht erst dann zu einem wesentlichen Bestandteil von Flussers Philosophie, wenn er sie explizit zum Gegenstand seiner Untersuchungen der gegenwärtigen Kultur und Gesellschaft oder historischer Rückblicke macht; Denken vollzieht sich immer in Medien oder medialen Praktiken, es wird nicht nur von ihnen (mit) geprägt – ohne Medien gäbe es kein Denken und umgekehrt verändert sich Philosophie mit den (jeweils) neuen Medien. Ausgehend von Begriffen oder eher Denkfiguren, die neben dem „was“ des jeweils verhandelten Themas auch das „wie“ der Reflexion selbst adressieren, wird der „Umbruch in der Struktur des Denkens“ zugleich als Beschreibung von Medienumbrüchen verstanden – mit dem Fluchtpunkt des Sprungs in das Universum der Komputation – und als Vollzug der gegenwärtigen Veränderung der „Methode des Denkens“. Flussers (Ver)Suche einer Reflexion, die nicht mehr durch das Medium Schrift strukturiert ist, sondern sowohl alten Medien wie dem Bild – bzw. Praktiken des Abbildens, Darstellens, Einbildens usw. – als auch neuen Medien – dem Komputieren – Geltung verschafft, laufen auf eine widersprüchliche Diagnose des neuen Universums der Komputation (anders: der technischen Bilder) hinaus : eine kybermetisch inspirierte Vision der frei modellierbaren Wirklichkeit(en) einerseits und die Dystopie einer Welt, in der Apparaten Denken, Wahrnehmen und Handeln beherrschen andererseits. Die Arbeit zeigt auf, wie Flusser zu dieser Aporie der Medienreflexion – die weit über Flussers Werk hinaus virulent bleibt – gelangt und wie sie, ausgehend von seiner Figur der Geste, im Sinne einer performativen Medienreflexion gelöst werden könnte.
While Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is widely adopted across various sectors, it raises a question on its meagre utilisation in the housing sector. This paper, therefore, gauges the perspective of the stakeholders in the building industry towards the application of PPP in various building sectors together with housing. It assesses the performance reliability of PPP for housing by learning possible take-aways from other sectors. The role of key stakeholders in the industry becomes highly responsible for an informed understanding and decision-making. To this end, a two-tier investigation was conducted including surveys and expert interviews, with several stakeholders in the PPP industry in Europe, involving the public sector, private sector, consultants, as well as other community/user representatives.
The survey results demonstrated the success rate with PPPs, major factors important for PPPs such as profitability or end-user acceptability, the prevalent practices and trends in the PPP world, and the majority of support expressed in favour of the suitability of PPP for housing. The interviews added more detailed dimensions to the understanding of the PPP industry, its functioning and enabling the formation of a comprehensive outlook. The results present the perspective, approaches, and experiences of stakeholders over PPP practices, current trends and scenarios and their take on PPP in housing. It shall aid in understanding the challenges prevalent in the PPP approach for implementation in housing and enable the policymakers and industry stakeholders to make provisions for higher uptake to accelerate housing provision.
Energy‐Efficient Method for Wireless Sensor Networks Low‐Power Radio Operation in Internet of Things
(2020)
The radio operation in wireless sensor networks (WSN) in Internet of Things (IoT)applications is the most common source for power consumption. Consequently, recognizing and controlling the factors affecting radio operation can be valuable for managing the node power consumption. Among essential factors affecting radio operation, the time spent for checking the radio is of utmost importance for monitoring power consumption. It can lead to false WakeUp or idle listening in radio duty cycles and ContikiMAC. ContikiMAC is a low‐power radio duty‐cycle protocol in Contiki OS used in WakeUp mode, as a clear channel assessment (CCA) for checking radio status periodically. This paper presents a detailed analysis of radio WakeUp time factors of ContikiMAC. Furthermore, we propose a lightweight CCA (LW‐CCA) as an extension to ContikiMAC to reduce the Radio Duty‐Cycles in false WakeUps and idle listening though using dynamic received signal strength indicator (RSSI) status check time. The simulation results in the Cooja simulator show that LW‐CCA reduces about 8% energy consumption in nodes while maintaining up to 99% of the packet delivery rate (PDR).
Conventional superplasticizers based on polycarboxylate ether (PCE) show an intolerance to clay minerals due to intercalation of their polyethylene glycol (PEG) side chains into the interlayers of the clay mineral. An intolerance to very basic media is also known. This makes PCE an unsuitable choice as a superplasticizer for geopolymers. Bio-based superplasticizers derived from starch showed comparable effects to PCE in a cementitious system. The aim of the present study was to determine if starch superplasticizers (SSPs) could be a suitable additive for geopolymers by carrying out basic investigations with respect to slump, hardening, compressive and flexural strength, shrinkage, and porosity. Four SSPs were synthesized, differing in charge polarity and specific charge density. Two conventional PCE superplasticizers, differing in terms of molecular structure, were also included in this study. The results revealed that SSPs improved the slump of a metakaolin-based geopolymer (MK-geopolymer) mortar while the PCE investigated showed no improvement. The impact of superplasticizers on early hardening (up to 72 h) was negligible. Less linear shrinkage over the course of 56 days was seen for all samples in comparison with the reference. Compressive strengths of SSP specimens tested after 7 and 28 days of curing were comparable to the reference, while PCE led to a decline. The SSPs had a small impact on porosity with a shift to the formation of more gel pores while PCE caused an increase in porosity. Throughout this research, SSPs were identified as promising superplasticizers for MK-geopolymer mortar and concrete.
Earthquake is among the most devastating natural disasters causing severe economical, environmental, and social destruction. Earthquake safety assessment and building hazard monitoring can highly contribute to urban sustainability through identification and insight into optimum materials and structures. While the vulnerability of structures mainly depends on the structural resistance, the safety assessment of buildings can be highly challenging. In this paper, we consider the Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) method, which is a qualitative procedure for estimating structural scores for buildings suitable for medium- to high-seismic cases. This paper presents an overview of the common RVS methods, i.e., FEMA P-154, IITK-GGSDMA, and EMPI. To examine the accuracy and validation, a practical comparison is performed between their assessment and observed damage of reinforced concrete buildings from a street survey in the Bingöl region, Turkey, after the 1 May 2003 earthquake. The results demonstrate that the application of RVS methods for preliminary damage estimation is a vital tool. Furthermore, the comparative analysis showed that FEMA P-154 creates an assessment that overestimates damage states and is not economically viable, while EMPI and IITK-GGSDMA provide more accurate and practical estimation, respectively.
In this research, an attempt was made to reduce the dimension of wavelet-ANFIS/ANN (artificial neural network/adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system) models toward reliable forecasts as well as to decrease computational cost. In this regard, the principal component analysis was performed on the input time series decomposed by a discrete wavelet transform to feed the ANN/ANFIS models. The models were applied for dissolved oxygen (DO) forecasting in rivers which is an important variable affecting aquatic life and water quality. The current values of DO, water surface temperature, salinity, and turbidity have been considered as the input variable to forecast DO in a three-time step further. The results of the study revealed that PCA can be employed as a powerful tool for dimension reduction of input variables and also to detect inter-correlation of input variables. Results of the PCA-wavelet-ANN models are compared with those obtained from wavelet-ANN models while the earlier one has the advantage of less computational time than the later models. Dealing with ANFIS models, PCA is more beneficial to avoid wavelet-ANFIS models creating too many rules which deteriorate the efficiency of the ANFIS models. Moreover, manipulating the wavelet-ANFIS models utilizing PCA leads to a significant decreasing in computational time. Finally, it was found that the PCA-wavelet-ANN/ANFIS models can provide reliable forecasts of dissolved oxygen as an important water quality indicator in rivers.