Propose Design Improvements Research Articles

Analysis and Design of Water Distribution Network for Jabalpur Cantonment Board Area

In this research paper focuses on studying and improving the water distribution network in the Jabalpur Cantonment Board Area. Water distribution networks are crucial infrastructures for ensuring reliable water supply to communities. However, many areas, including Jabalpur Cantonment, face challenges related to water distribution efficiency, reliability, and equitable access. The study begins with a comprehensive analysis of the existing water distribution network in the Jabalpur Cantonment Board Area. Factors such as network layout, pipe material, age of infrastructure, and water demand patterns are thoroughly examined to identify existing inefficiencies and areas for improvement. Using advanced engineering tools such as WaterGems and methodologies, an optimized design for the water distribution network is proposed. This design considers factors such as hydraulic efficiency, pressure management, and resilience to minimize water losses and ensure consistent water supply to consumers. Furthermore, the study incorporates considerations for future growth and development in the Jabalpur Cantonment Board Area. By employing sustainable design practices and incorporating modern technologies, the proposed water distribution network aims to meet the present and future water needs of the community while minimizing environmental impact. By implementing the proposed design improvements, the Jabalpur Cantonment Board can achieve a more sustainable, efficient, and reliable water supply network, ultimately improving the quality of life for its residents.

Experimental Evaluation of SOFC System Exposed to Marine Inclination Conditions

To comply with future emission regulations, the marine industry needs to reduce emissions. Marine actors are showing an increased interest in the application of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) for ocean going ships, because of their high conversion efficiency, low pollutant emissions, and fuel flexibility. However, operation in ships is fundamentally different from stationary applications, since the installation rooms accelerate and incline due to wave-induced ship motions. This could lead to pressure variations in the fuel streams or detrimental mechanical stresses. So far it has not been extensively investigated what the consequences of inclinations and motions are on the operation of SOFCs. The goal of this research is to evaluate the influence of marine conditions in terms of static and dynamic inclinations on the operation, safety, and lifetime of SOFC systems. Ship motions are simulated with a one-axial oscillation platform. The inclination conditions the SOFC system is exposed to are derived from ship motion studies and marine regulations. The test campaign consists of two phases. In this paper, the results of the first test phase will be explained in detail. Moreover, the learned lessons and their implementation into the plan of the second test phase will also be shared.In the first phase of the test campaign, a 1.5kW SOFC system is inclined around two horizontal axes of rotation while producing power at nominal conditions. During the static experiments, the SOFC system is operated at fixed inclinations from -30 degrees to 30 degrees with steps of 5 degrees. In the dynamic experiment, the system is oscillated up to an angle of 30 degrees with frequencies of 0.025, 0.033, 0.05, and 0.1 Hz. The experiment showed no gas leakages or other significant safety risks during the experiment. However, for slow oscillations, relatively large deviations in several system parameters (e.g., fuel flow, stack voltage, and fuel utilisation) were found compared with the non-inclined operation. This indicates the natural frequency behaviour of particular components in the system. Although the deviations were much larger than in regular operation, the early stage indication was that these deviations do not result in safety issues or decreased system lifetime.The second phase of the test campaign was focused on including a larger range of possible ship motions and increasing test durations. An additional aim was to find the physical cause of the deviations in system parameters during oscillations. Additionally, a 100h test on one oscillation condition is included to evaluate whether the ship motions could cause increased cell degradation. Furthermore, several part-load conditions are included in the experiment.The results of the experiments are used to propose design improvements for SOFC systems that require to be inclined or accelerated. These proposals contribute to the marinization of SOFC systems. Furthermore, the results will be used to help class societies defining proper regulations for SOFC implementation in seagoing vessels. Figure 1

Experimental Evaluation of SOFC System Exposed to Marine Inclination Conditions

Marine actors are showing an increased interest in the application of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) for deep sea shipping, because of their high conversion efficiency, low pollutant emissions, and fuel flexibility. However, it is unknown how the operation of SOFC systems is affected by large inclinations and motions, which can be present in ships for instance by seawaves. The goal of this research is to evaluate the influence of static and dynamic inclinations on the operation and safety of SOFC systems. Ship motions are emulated using a one-axial oscillation platform up to 30 degrees of inclination. The SOFC system was successfully operated on the platform and demonstrated stable power production under a variety of test conditions without any noticeable safety hazards. The results of the experiments are used to propose design improvements for marine SOFC systems, ultimately contributing to reduce the emissions of the shipping industry.

Design and Testing of a Novel, High-Performance Two DoF Prosthetic Wrist

Extrinsically powered prosthetic wrists have the potential to offer significant improvements to the functionality and dexterity of a prosthetic hand. They can also reduce a user’s overreliance on their intact limb and help prevent injury from overuse of upper limb (both intact and residual) and trunk joints. Despite these potential advantages, there are very few prosthetic wrist options that are commercially available and these devices are not commonly used by prosthetic hand users due to several factors including inadequate performance specifications. In this paper, we first seek to establish the target specifications for a prosthetic wrist suitable for both median men and women. We then complete a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art in extrinsically powered prosthetic wrists in the research, commercial, and patent literature. This review determines that no existing prosthetic wrist meets the target specifications due to the presence of actuators and transmissions that do not offer sufficient torque density, power density, and specific power. In order to address this challenge and produce a prosthesis that achieves target specifications, we next review the performance of existing actuators and transmissions and determine that Brushless DC motors with planetary gearboxes and ball screws offer the best potential to achieve the target specifications. We then present the design of a novel two Degree of Freedom parallel kinematic prosthetic wrist that incorporates this actuator-transmission combination. This first iteration of the proposed prosthetic wrist meets the target torque, speed, and weight but does not meet the target dimensions or range of motion yet. We propose design improvements in subsequent iterations that could lead to a prosthetic wrist that meets all the target specifications of torque, speed, weight, and volume.

Magnetic Circuit Analysis and Fluid Flow Modeling of an MR Damper With Enhanced Magnetic Characteristics

A novel design of a magnetorheological (MR) damper is developed, fabricated, modeled, and tested. The design includes some features that enhance the magnetic characteristics of the damper. The iron–cobalt–vanadium “Vacoflux-50” alloy and the “AMT-Smartec+” MR fluid, whose magnetic characteristics have been predicted to enhance the performance of the damper, are used in the new design. Moreover, the location of the MR fluid region in the piston construction has been chosen so that the magnetic field maximizes. To evaluate the impact of the proposed design improvements, an approach to modeling the performance of a previously tested MR damper of a different design, different magnetic material, and different MR fluid has been developed. The approach combines a finite element analysis (FEA) of the magnetic circuit and a nonlinear analytical model of fluid flow. The results of the FE/analytical approach have been validated using the available published results of the same damper. Hence, the approach has been used to predict the performance of the same damper due to the use of the proposed design improvements. The FE/analytical approach accounts for the nonlinear characteristics caused by the magnetic saturation of materials and the effects of fluid compressibility and aeration in the damper. It has been found that the implementation of the proposed design features leads to a remarkable increase in the magnetic field and the fluid yield stress. Also, the inclusion of the nonlinear magnetic and fluid flow characteristics have been found to affect the magnetic field distribution and the fluid yield stress greatly.

Practical Papers, Articles and Application Notes

With the advancements of robotic technology, robots have been widely deployed in factory automation and health care. One of the major applications of robots in health care is the myoelectric artificial hand. It consists of a myoelectric signal detector connected to a motor-controlled artificial hand driving unit by wires. In the near future, they will be connected wirelessly for convenience but this may pose an EMI risk to the normal operation of the artificial hand. One possible source of EMI is the electrostatic discharge (ESD) from a charged human body. As the malfunction of a myoelectric artificial hand due to ESD has a direct impact on human life, high immunity performance is required. Yasuhiro Morinaga, Keinosuke Nagai, Jianqing Wang and Daisuke Anzai from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan, look into this impact and propose design improvements to enhance the immunity of the myoelectric artificial hand against ESD in the paper “Impact of Electrostatic Discharge on Wearable Robotic Hand and Improvement of Immunity Performance by Wireless Control.”

EYE MOVEMENT STUDY TO INCREASE CONSUMER’S ATTENTION ON VISUAL POSTING OF PRE-LOVED LUXURY FASHION BRAND IN MOBILE APP

Introduction - Dubois (2002) said that luxury is identical with perception of comfort, beauty, and sumptuous lifestyle. There are five key factors of perceived luxury goods such as uniqueness, quality, hedonic, conspicuousness, and extended self (Vigneron and Johnson, 2004). So that, the definition of luxury fashion brand itself is goods (in terms of fashion) that has brand image and perceived as something that has uniqueness, quality, hedonic, conspicuousness, and extended self and could give comfort, beauty, and sumptuous lifestyle. Online visual display nowadays is one of maketer’s channel to promote the product. In terms of exclusivity, there is only few channels that has been used by marketer, such as website of the luxury brand itself, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and so on. This research of online luxury fashion brand is focused on one mobile app, named Instagram. Instagram is choosen because the usage of Instagram is increasing over time, especially in Indonesia. This research is focused on pre-loved luxury fahion brand on online shop at Instagram. There is one problem of this research, which is the percentage of middle to high income is increasing in 5 years (2010-2015) in Indonesia, but consumer is less likely to buy pre-loved luxury fashion brand. The tendency that consumer is less likely to buy because of decreasing sales of some pre-loved online shops in Indonesia. Exploratory research was taken and it can be concluded that the root cause of decreasing sales happens because visual display of pre-loved online luxury fashion brand is not too attractive. Method - The method that which is used is experiment design. The respondent of this research are choosen by non-probability sampling, which is judgemental sampling (we already know the priority characteristic of respondent, such as middle to high income) and female (because the online shop that will be observed is only offer luxury fashion for female). This research will use eye tracker, named Gaze Point. To get the quantitative experiment data, the minimum respondents that will be need is 39 people if we want to generate until get the heatmaps (Kara Pernice and Jakob Nielsen, 2009). Users will be given some oral question after they finished the experiment with eye tracking. There are some contents that will be measured in this reseach, such as caption, image clarity, and background of product. This research will be conducted only for consumer in Bandung. Respondents are female with middle to high income that has been bought pre-loved luxury fashion bag. The variables which are used in this research are the result of combination of construct from previous research about luxury brand perception and attractiveness of visual display. Sensory stimuli of sights will make automated perception actives and determine whether the information attractive or not. Findings – This research found that pre-loved online luxury fashion brand is currently growing rapidly. However, more respondents still prefer to buy online product if the visual display could be more attractive and the longer respondent saw the visual display, means that the respondents tend to be more interested of that posting. Author made proposed design improvements. Author then recommend them to the owner of pre-loved online luxury bag.

Coding Algorithm for Grayscale Images – Design of Piecewise Uniform Quantizer with Golomb–Rice Code and Novel Analytical Model for Performance Analysis

Scalar quantizer selection for processing a signal with a unit variance is a difficult problem, while both selection and quantizer design for the range of variances is even tougher and to the authors’ best knowledge, it is not theoretically solved. Furthermore, performance estimation of various image processing algorithms is unjustifiably neglected and there are only a few analytical models that follow experimental analysis. In this paper, we analyse application of piecewise uniform quantizer with Golomb-Rice coding in modified block truncation coding algorithm for grayscale image compression, propose design improvements and provide a novel analytical model for performance analysis. Besides the nature of input signal, required compression rate and processing delay of the observed system have a strong influence on quantizer design. Consequently, the impact of quantizer range choice is analysed using a discrete designing variance and it was exploited to improve overall quantizer performance, whereas variable-length coding is applied in order to reduce quantizer’s fixed bit-rate. The analytical model for performance analysis is proposed by introducing Inverse Gaussian distribution and it is obtained by discussing a number of images, providing general closed-form solutions for peak-signal-to-noise ratio and the total average bit-rate estimation. The proposed quantizer design ensures better performance in comparison to the other similar methods for grayscale image compression, including linear prediction of pixel intensity and edge-based adaptation, whereas analytical model for performance analysis provides matching with the experimental results within the range of 1 dB for PSQNR and 0.2 bpp for the total average bit-rate.

Structural crashworthiness analysis of a ladder frame chassis subjected to full frontal and pole side impacts

ABSTRACTAutomobile chassis is a major element of structural crashworthiness in road motor vehicles. Various chassis geometry and topology research studies have been conducted to improve crash energy absorption characteristics of the chassis. In side impacts, crashworthiness of an automobile body depends not only on the chassis geometry and topology, but also on the design and reliability of other structural members such as B-pillar and side panels. This study aims to contribute to the investigations on the effects of chassis geometry over crashworthiness, particularly focusing on the structure of a ladder frame chassis subjected to full frontal and pole side collisions. Preliminary work has been conducted to evaluate the behaviour of steel beam profiles under impact loading through finite element (FE) modelling, which helps understand the mechanics of the particular beams chosen as chassis elements. Another FE model is developed utilising a previously generated mesh of a pickup truck with a ladder frame chassis. The FE model is employed to simulate full frontal and pole side crash test scenarios on the isolated chassis as well as on the whole body of the vehicle. Crash energy absorption results and reaction forces are collected for different thicknesses and beam profile cross sections of the vehicle chassis to be utilised in several proposed design improvements aiming to enhance crashworthiness. Computational results exhibit good agreement with experimental findings.

Studying the Effect of a Competitive Game Show in a Learning by Teaching Environment

In this paper we investigate how competition among tutees in the context of learning by teaching affects tutors’ engagement as well as tutor learning. We conducted this investigation by incorporating a competitive Game Show feature into an online learning environment where students learn to solve algebraic equations by teaching a synthetic peer, called SimStudent. In the Game Show, pairs of SimStudents trained by students beforehand competed against each other by solving challenging problems to attain higher ratings. The results of a classroom study with 141 7th through 9th grade students showed the following: (1) Students improved their proficiency to solve equations after teaching SimStudent, but there was no observed improvement in their conceptual understanding. (2) Overall, the competitive Game Show promoted students’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivations—when the competitive Game Show was available, students’ engagement in tutoring (intrinsic motivation) was increased; students who arguably had a higher desire to win strategically selected opponents with lower proficiency for an easy win (extrinsic motivation). (3) The availability of the competitive Game Show did not affect tutor learning; there was no notable correlation between students’ motivation (intrinsic or extrinsic) and tutor learning. Based on these findings, we propose design improvements to increase tutor learning.

Preliminary investigation of magneto-rheological fluid durability in continuous slippage clutch

Magneto-rheological (MR) devices, such as dampers, engine mounts and clutches, are now appearing in the ground vehicle industry. Although important work has been directed to assess the longevity of MR dampers, few studies have targeted the aspect of magnetorheological fluid (MRF) durability when used in continuous shear, such as in MR clutches. The objective of this research is to identify the degradation phenomena associated with MRF used in continuous shear and to understand the main causes and effects, in order to propose design improvements to enhance clutch durability. Experiments are conducted on two test benches in order to reproduce MRF aging in a controlled environment and to evaluate the proposed solutions. The effect of the operating conditions (shear rate, shear stress and temperature) on the long term degradation of the torque-current relationship is evaluated. Two degradation phenomena are identified: base oil expansion and particle oxidation. The dominant failure mode of the tested clutches is a MRF leakage resulting from the base oil expansion which occurs between 1.5 MJ/mL and 9 MJ/mL of dissipated energy depending of the operating conditions. Two solutions are proposed to extend clutch durability: 1- MRF circulation and 2-compliant elements.

Comparison between semiclassical and full quantum transport analysis of THz quantum cascade lasers

We implement and compare two theoretical models for stationary electron transport in quantum cascade lasers and Stark ladders. The first one, the nonequilibrium Green's function method is a very general scheme to include coherent quantum mechanics and incoherent scattering with phonons and device imperfections self-consistently. However, it is numerically very demanding and cannot be used for systematic device parameter scans. For this reason, we also implement the approximate, numerically efficient ensemble Monte Carlo method and assess its applicability on the above mentioned transport problems. We identify a transport regime in which results of both methods quantitatively agree. In this regime, the ensemble Monte Carlo method is well suited to propose design improvements.

Micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems alignment stages with Vernier latch mechanisms

Latching alignment stages for micro-opto-mechanical systems are constructed by deep reactive-ion etching of bonded silicon on insulator. Linear, rotary and tilt stages are demonstrated. Linear stages are driven using buckling electrothermal actuators, and latching is performed by a rack-and-tooth mechanism driven by shape bimorph actuators. In-plane rotation is obtained by using a linear actuator to drive a passive rotary table, and tilt motion is achieved using an inserted mirror. Finite element modelling is used to estimate limitations in performance and propose design improvements. A rack period of 10 µm is achieved with a structural depth of 85 µm. A Vernier mechanism based on multiple rack-and-tooth latches is used to increase precision beyond the value set by pattern transfer. Two- and four-section Vernier latches are demonstrated, and difficulties with multi-section latches are identified.

Higher Order Perturbation Theory — An Example for Discussion

Higher order perturbation theory is developed in the form of a Taylor series expansion to third order to calculate the thermal utilization of a nonuniform cell. The development takes advantage of the self-adjoint property of the diffusion operator to provide a simple development of this illustration of generalized perturbation theory employing scalar perturbation parameters. The results show how a designer might employ a second-order theory to quantify proposed design improvements, together with the limitations of second- and third-order theory. The chosen example has an exact optimization solution and thus provides a clear understanding of the role of perturbation theory at its various orders. Convergence and the computational advantages and disadvantages of the method are discussed.