Novel Perspectives of Engineering Research Vol. 4

In the present work, we have designed a biomedical parameter monitoring system using Node MCU to monitor body temperature, heart rate and oxygen saturation level (SpO₂) signals. These signals are sensed by respective sensors. In our laboratory, we designed the necessary signal conditioning circuits using off-the-shelf electronic components. ESP 32 Node MCU based data acquisition system has been designed for acquisition of respective biomedical parameters. The developed prototype is the cost effective solution to the commercially available biomedical parameters monitoring systems. Necessary processing code is developed using C language in Arduino IDE and uploaded into the Node MCU. All the acquired parameters have been displayed on OLED display module. The developed system has been tested on 50 subjects of different age group and sex. Error analysis has been done on obtained results. The developed prototype shows that accuracy of the system for measured parameters is 98%. The designed system provides portability, high functionality and low cost which makes it an easy accessible tool for common man, clinical environment and other medical purposes.

To address transmission issues and generate correct economic signals in restructured electricity markets, an effective transmission pricing method is required. Transmission line constraints can cause energy prices to fluctuate across the network. These prices are determined by generator bids, load levels, and transmission network constraints. Locational Marginal Pricing (LMP) is a popular method for identifying nodal prices and managing transmission congestion in the energy market.   This chapter gives a Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based security constrained economic dispatch (SCED) approach for evaluating LMPs at all buses while minimizing total system fuel cost for a constrained transmission system, both with and without system losses. The proposed GA-based SCED approach is used on the EEE 14 bus system, the 75-bus Indian power system, and the New England 39-bus system. Using Power World Simulator, the obtained results are compared to conventional Linear Programming-based DCOPF. For generators, both fixed and linear bids are considered. It is assumed that the load is inelastic.  The proposed GA-based SCED for LMP calculation has been shown to be very simple, reliable, and efficient in all of the cases studied. Furthermore, optimal redispatch of generators using GA results in an overall reduction in generation fuel cost.

This book chapter has been devoted to the Internal Model Control (IMC) of discrete under-actuated and over-actuated non-linear systems. The control of non-square systems presents many difficulties because of the complexity of this class of systems. Therefore, the synthesis of a non-linear internal controller is difficult to achieve. Then, the proposed solution consists on combining the IMC structure with neural networks, in order to facilitate the realization of an approximate inverse of the non-linear model of the process to be controlled.

In the basic IMC structure, a neural network can be introduced in the internal model controller with the two methods, direct and indirect. The learning of the neural network is done in the direct method with the input / output data of the system to represent its inverse dynamics. In the indirect method, the neural network represents the dynamics of the system. The simulation results obtained are satisfactory for the case of overactuated and underactuated systems and show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy in ensuring satisfactory nominal and robust performance.

Computationally-intensive problems across engineering and science are often solved by using a metamodel-assisted evolutionary algorithm. A commonly used metamodel is the radial basis functions (RBF) which depends on a hyperparameter. The latter needs to determined by a numerical procedure which by itself could be an intensive task, and this raises the question in which cases it is justified, namely when do variations of the hyperparameter yield significant performance gains. To address this issue this study presents an extensive set of numerical experiments and their analysis to identify when is the hyperparameter variation justified.

This study presents a lab-scale recirculation aquaculture system (RAS) designed to reduce, recycle and reuse fish farm wastewater. The system has a trickling filter as a biological treatment unit, a settling tank and a fish tank. The tank housed four samples of fish for 21 days. Then, there was a continuous recirculation of highly concentrated fish farm wastewater for 16 days, to build a considerable mass of bacteria on the filter. The reason is to ensure adequate nitrification processes, after which fish were put into the fish tank for rearing. The result of water analysis showed that the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, dissolved oxygen, pH and total suspended solids in RAS were within the acceptable level for African catfish culture. The RAS for the 21 days culture used up 32.89L of water to produce a percentage increase in weight gain ranging from 17.69% - 37.05%. That showed that the system is efficient for maintaining the required effluent quality for catfish rearing.

The main objective of this chapter is to describe the strategy for development of the public transport terminals in the city of Bratislava, Capital of Slovak Republic. In Bratislava, there is a huge development boom from the Danube river bank and on the edge of the Old City, where is risen up a new down town of the city. The territory specified will have around 20 high-rises with different function and there will be more than 22 000 new parking spaces together will app. 2 mil. m² of new activities. The city position in this issue must consist of systematic regulation of build-out in order to reach contemporary modern conception of forming so called „smart cities“– sustainable living and sustainable mobility. Nowadays, the reality is that, we have saturated flows on the street network around the contact area. In this area a new bus station is built, which will influence an existing public transport network created by city bus and trolleybus network. For changing the modal split toward better using the public transport (PT), there is a complex of technical studies to realize around the centre a new tramway lines connecting the operated tramway network in Bratislava.

The article deals with the suburb terminal in city of Bratislava, which is a central BUS station directly in this new city centre (just realized and put in operation to the end of 2021) and a smart solution of tramway links around this centre. The other main issue is about the methods of the traffic surveys and results of traffic model, which will be used not only for the prognosis scenarios of dynamic traffic flows but also for changing the modal split for the public transport to reflect the new tram routes. The results of technical studies and possible discussion on put inside this area a modern nonconventional elevated automatic public transport system is an open deal. The appraisal of saturated traffic flows, new traffic form investment and the bus station together with a huge city PT lines create a methodology of traffic modelling for improving the operation of the territory with designing the new tramway lines as a form of sustainable mobility. Some tools for decision making and steps for realization will be shown. The main issue is to change the modal split for PT. There are identifying opportunities to improve the attractiveness of public transport, together with suburban bus service (SBS), thus providing for its precedence over individual car traffic in the city of Bratislava (Fig. 1) and its agglomeration in the Bratislava region. The solution is shown how is possible to be a part of the integrated public transport services possibility to operate regular all days’ mobility problems in the city and not only to cover the rush hours. Behind is an overview of 5 years work of traffic engineers and planners to keep clear systematic approach and solutions with developers and municipality administration.

Seepage from earth dams is important to study because of its applications in reservoir management. The loss of water due to seepage is a substantial issue that hydraulic designers consider. Seepage loss depletes fresh water resources while also causing water logging, salinization, groundwater contamination, and health hazards. This research provides both numerical and analytical solutions for seepage from a homogeneous earth dam resting on an impervious base. A steady-state two-dimensional (2D) flow through a homogeneous earth dam is analysed for this purpose. The phreatic line location is computed by the finite element method (FEM). The numerical simulation results are compared to the analytical solutions of Schaffernak and Casagrande. The numerical solution predicts more seepage than the other two solutions, namely Casagrande and Schaffernak methods. In most cases, Schaffernak’s solution has more than 20% error and Casagrande’s solution has more than 30% error. On the other hand, both Schaffernak and Casagrande solutions are for simple cases: (i)- homogeneous embankment (ii)- resting of an embankment dam atop an impervious foundation. None of these assumption or simplification are needed in FEM simulation. This study shows the capability of FEM for modeling water flow in a porous medium comprising complicated conditions including, for instance, non-homogeneous (heterogeneous) embankment dams, non-isotropic soils, pervious foundations and different boundary conditions.

Guinea is known as a geological scandal due to the importance and diversity of its mineral resources. Experts use superlatives to highlight the country's bauxite potential, regardless of the assessing system. Several geological surveys agree that Guinea contains 33% of the world's known bauxite reserves. There is inconsistency in the way the content of a deposit is defined, and the concepts and definitions are mixed up in different statistical data.  As a result, an expert comparing various bauxite deposits must recognise the terms in use and adjust them in his assessment for consistency. The vast bauxite potential presents a serious opportunity for the country to become a forerunner in the bauxite and aluminium industries, as well as to develop red mud valorization opportunities. This article discusses the bauxite potential and the local alumina industry in Guinea, as well as the technologies used to value the resulting red mud. The bauxite and alumina sector is responsible for the largest direct contribution to GDP in Guinea.

Flooding of River Rima is an annual issue affecting farmland located within the floodplains. This phenomena causes loss of farm produce and mass destruction of buildings, including roads and bridges in the area. Estimating the farmland affected by the flood will help the policy makers in decision making on how to mitigate the impact of flooding in the affected areas. The Terra/MODIS satellite image with 7-2-1 bands combination was used to classify the image into four landcover types. The area covered by flood was selected to calculate the flood area using Image Calculator module on QGIS software. The class of water was imposed (Map Overlay) on Digital Elevation Model that was obtained from Environmental Monitoring Satellite called The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The result shows that River Rima flood occupies about 17,517 km2, equivalent to 1.7 million hectares of farmland that is below 230 meters (ASL). It was recommended that the local authorities and decision makers may use the flood map to showing flood risk zones so as to deter construction beyond the buffer. Farmers should adhere strictly to NiMet’s advice based on flood predictions. The civil engineers should also take note of the maximum water level during flooding so as to apply professional advice when constructing roads and bridges in the area. Losses of life and property will be minimised during floods if hydrological and environmental knowledge are considered when performing projects.

In order to determine the absolute hardness of film or coating, it is necessary to separate the contribution of substrate. It is known that the film thickness and on the applied load are generally the principal two parameters that can determine in this case the absolute hardness of film.  The apparent hardness values obtained from indentation measurements are the result of the contributions of the substrate and the film. In order to determine the true hardness of the film, these two contributions must be separated. Several authors have worked on this topic over the years, and there are a large number of models written under an additive linear function that are available in the literature. The purpose of this research is to determine the absolute hardness of nitride thin layers produced by two activation rates of plasma of 50% and 65%. At the surface of the specimens, a series of classical Vickers indentation at various loads was applied. The separation of substrate contribution of the  on the measurement hardness of the film reported in the literature is very complicated due to several parameters that they intervene, and for this reason, we used in this study Jonsson- Hogmark model (J-H) which is simple and  gives according to the several previous studies the best results.

The objective of this study is to assess the influence of wood sawdust and sand on the compressive strength and water absorption of clay pavers. In this work, the authors produced paving bricks by mixing cement-stabilized clay with sawdust from different woods (limba or kambala) and different sands (white or crushed). The mineralogical composition of the clay raw material was determined by X-ray diffraction and showed that its phyllite fraction is essentially constituted by 95% of kaolinite and 5% of smectite and/or chlorite/smectite interstratified. The determination of the compressive strengths gave better strengths for the combinations "clay stabilized with 4% cement mixed with 4% of kambala sawdust and 5% of white sand" and "clay stabilized with 4% cement mixed with 4% of limba sawdust and 5% of crushed sand". The paving bricks had a water absorption rate ranging from 18.1 to 20.4%.

An ultrasonic velocity profiler, UVP was used to study the flow properties in the near wake of the rigid and flexible protruding surface. Experiments were conducted in a water tunnel. The performance of turbulence enhancement depends heavily on the motion of the cylinder. An organized oscillating motion is in favor of a higher performance of turbulence enhancement. This research work has provided useful insights of the turbulence characteristics of flow around the fully three-dimensional flexible cantilever, in which the combination of two or three UVP probes are capable in measuring three velocity components.

The leaf is extremely important in plant species. There are some leaves that have medicinal properties. Identification of leaf with look-alike is becoming a major task in day to day life. To overcome this, a computer vision technique that includes an image processing algorithm is used. The features and texture of the leaf are extracted using this technique, and the closest match is used to determine which class it belongs to. This paper discusses a morphological processing algorithm in which the signature parameter serves as the vein. Morphological processing includes the structuring element, that is a dilation and erosion process. Authenticating an image with its signature parameter will be the most efficient technique in terms of accuracy, outperforming other methods.

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the recent technical achievements in high level semantic based image retrieval. It identifies five major categories of the state of the art techniques in narrowing down the semantic gap. Those are (a) Data Mining techniques for the data analysis, data accessing and knowledge discovery processor to show experimentally and practically that how consistent, able and fast are these techniques for the study in the particular field, A solid mathematical threshold (0 to 1) is set to analyze the data. (b) Low level image features like Color, Texture, Shape and Spatial location [1]. (c) Similarity measurement and reducing the semantic gap. (d) A constructed decision tree presents effective models of decision-making, which can be learned to support image classification by the expert. A tool for data mining and image processing is presented and its application to image mining is shown on the task of Hep-2 cell-image classification. (e) Most reports of CBIR systems provide only qualitative measures of performance based on how similar retrieved images are to a target. Experiment 2 puts Picture Hunter into this context with a more rigorous test. We first establish a baseline for our database by measuring the time required to find an image that is similar to a target when the images are presented in random order. To implement a full-fledged image retrieval system with high-level semantics requires, the integration of salient low-level feature extraction, effective learning of high-level semantics, friendly user interface, and efficient indexing tool.

This paper depicts about prediction of tool wear in hard turning of 817M40 (EN 24) steel material with 48 HRC at conventional lathe using Multicoated hard metal inserts with sculptured rake face geometry. In hard turning, tool wear becomes an important parameter affecting the surface quality of finished parts.  Also, an effort is made to bring together the cutting force, cutting temperature and tool vibration (displacement) in conjunction with cutting velocity, feed and depth of cut to foresee the tool wear. Taguchi L18 orthogonal array (mixed design) optimization using Minitab software was used in this work to optimise various cutting parameters such as cutting velocity, feed, and depth of cut. Furthermore, the Design of Experiment results are weighed against the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) Response Surface methodology (RSM). The result obtained from Response surface methodology (RSM) and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) conforms very strongly to the results obtained by Design of Experiment (DoE).

In this work, with the purpose of studying the effects of oil absorption behavior on flexural and tensile strength properties, the glass fiber/epoxy composites were subjected to oil immersion tests, using universal multi-grade engine oil (20W-40) and an extra high performance hydraulic brake fluid (DOT3). The study has been accomplished by observing the weight changes, and how it affects the flexural properties and the tensile strength, after and before immersion in both the solutions. Flexural and tensile behaviour are the main mechanical properties evaluated, while they are supplemented with Rockwell hardness test, obtaining comprehensive mechanical information. However, for all tests performed, the automotive brake fluid (DOT 3) exhibited lower values compared to the automotive engine oil (20W40). These days, composite materials are used in several engineering applications, as a significance of their high specific strength and stiffness, viable cost, good static and dynamic properties, good resistance to corrosion and easy fabrication. In this perspective, these materials are exposed at diverse environment conditions, which influence notably their mechanical properties.