A DFT Study on Structural,Electronic Mechanical and Thermodynamic Properties of 5f-Electron System BaAmO<Subscript>3</Subscript>

The structural, electronic, mechanical and thermodynamic properties of the perovskite oxide BaAmO₃ have been predicted using the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method. The equilibrium lattice constant, bulk modulus and pressure derivative were computed using different exchange correlations. The optimization of structure was carried out in ferromagnetic, anti-ferromagnetic and non-magnetic states, and the compound was found to be stable in the ferromagnetic state. A systematic study on the band structure and density of states was accomplished using generalized gradient approximation (GGA), Hubbard approximation (GGA + U) and modified Becke–Johnson exchange potential (mBJ),and the compound was found to have a half-metallic nature in all the approximations. The calculated total spin magnetic moment was found to be 5 μ _B in all the approximations used. The second-order elastic constants, Young modulus, shear modulus, Poisson ratio and anisotropic factor have also been calculated. In order to have a complete understanding of BaAmO₃, the thermodynamic properties were studied in the pressure range of 0 to 40 GPa and the temperature range extending from 0 to 600 K.     

Physiological strain and decision making affected by different cooling tactics following live‐fire training

Multiple factors, including different environmental, physical, and psychophysiological agents, influence firefighters’ health and safety in real fire and rescue operations. This experimental study investigated the effect of live‐fire training and cooling strategies on both physiological response and decision making. Twenty‐three healthy male firefighters performed live‐fire tasks in four separate conditions: namely rest or without cooling method (WCM), cool vest (CV), forearm immersion (FI), and cool vest and forearm immersion (CV + FI). Cooling effects of the employed interventions were evaluated based on heart rate (HR), tympanic temperature (TT), and Iowa gambling task (IGT) scores. At the end of the four experimental conditions, HR and TT increased, whereas IGT scores as a measure of decision making decreased relative to baseline. HR (beats per minute) and TT (°C) were significantly lower at the end of the experiment in the CV, FI, and CV + FI compared with the WCM conditions. There was no significant difference in Iowa scores between experimental conditions. These consequences demonstrate that live‐fire tasks are effective in raising the physiological and decision‐making responses following firefighting activities. It is concluded that CV, FI, and CV + FI were more effective than the WCM in attenuating physiological responses and decision making during live‐fire training.     

Dynamics and circuit of a chaotic system with a curve of equilibrium points

Although chaotic systems have been intensively studied since the 1960s, new systems with mysterious features are still of interest. A novel chaotic system including hyperbolic functions is proposed in this work. Especially, the system has an infinite number of equilibrium points. Dynamics of the system are investigated by using non-linear tools such as phase portrait, bifurcation diagram, and Lyapunov exponent. It is interesting that the system can display coexisting chaotic attractors. An electronic circuit for realising the chaotic system has been implemented. Experimental results show a good agreement with theoretical ones.     

Design and implementation of a new high step-up DC-DC converter for renewable applications

In this paper, a new structure for a DC-DC boost converter is proposed. The presented converter provides a high voltage transfer gain with lower duty cycle. Low current and low voltage stress on the switch, enlarged area of operating in continuous conduction mode (CCM), reduced size of the inductors, and the input filter are the main advantages of the proposed converter. The high voltage transfer gain with low number of elements has made it suitable to implement. Hence, using only one switch has made the control of the proposed converter easy. Besides, decreased switching losses and higher efficiency are obtained. The proposed structure is a combination of the Luo converter and a booster unit, which its analysis is studied in three modes, CCM, boundary conduction mode (BCM), and discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). Furthermore, in order to validate the analysis and feasibility of the proposed converter, the experimental results are developed on a low power prototype.     

Towards novel deep neuroevolution models: chaotic levy grasshopper optimization for short-term wind speed forecasting

High accurate wind speed forecasting plays an important role in ensuring the sustainability of wind power utilization. Although deep neural networks (DNNs) have been recently applied to wind time-series datasets, their maximum performance largely leans on their designed architecture. By the current state-of-the-art DNNs, their architectures are mainly configured in manual way, which is a time-consuming task. Thus, it is difficult and frustrating for regular users who do not have comprehensive experience in DNNs to design their optimal architectures to forecast problems of interest. This paper proposes a novel framework to optimize the hyperparameters and architecture of DNNs used for wind speed forecasting. Thus, we introduce a novel enhanced version of the grasshopper optimization algorithm called EGOA to optimize the deep long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network architecture, which optimally evolves four of its key hyperparameters. For designing the enhanced version of GOA, the chaotic theory and levy flight strategies are applied to make an efficient balance between the exploitation and exploration phases of the GOA. Moreover, the mutual information (MI) feature selection algorithm is utilized to select more correlated and effective historical wind speed time series features. The proposed model’s performance is comprehensively evaluated on two datasets gathered from the wind stations located in the United States (US) for two forecasting horizons of the next 30-min and 1-h ahead. The experimental results reveal that the proposed model achieves the best forecasting performance compared to seven prominent classical and state-of-the-art forecasting algorithms.

     

High-temperature functional analysis of bitumen modified with composite of nano-SiO2 and styrene butadiene styrene polymer

In recent decades, researchers have always considered the production of modified bitumen that could perform suitably in both high and low temperatures. One bitumen modifier is styrene butadiene styrene (SBS) polymer. Because bitumen modified with styrene butadiene styrene polymer does not show expected field performance in high and low temperatures largely due to phase separation of bitumen and polymer, the present research study is an attempt to use the composite of nano-SiO₂ and styrene butadiene styrene polymer in modification of bitumen and analyze its high-temperature performance. The study revealed that adding nano-SiO₂ to bitumen modified with SBS polymer resulted to an improvement of complex modulus, phase angle, resistance potential against rutting, storage modulus, loss modulus, and high-temperature functional performance in general. Additionally, the study uncovered that adding nano-SiO₂ with 3% and 4% of bitumen weight, compared with other composites, considerably improved the high-temperature functional performance of bitumen modified with styrene butadiene styrene polymer. As 4.5%SBS+4%nano-SiO₂ could not estimate less than 3 Pa.sec rotational viscosity in 135°C, 4.5%SBS+3%nano-SiO₂ is offered as the optimal composite. The study is the first one in its own type in the world and is, therefore, innovative.     

Design of a Dynamic ADC Comparator with Low Power and Low Delay Time for IoT Application

Wireless Personal Communications - In this paper, a low power and low delay comparator circuit for the IoT applications has been designed and analyzed. In the proposed comparator, two different...     

Semi-active fuzzy control of Lali Cable-Stayed Bridge using MR dampers under seismic excitation

Seismic control of cable-stayed bridges is of paramount importance due to their complex dynamic behavior, high flexibility, and low structural damping. In the present study, several semi-active Fuzzy Control Algorithms (FCAs) for vibration mitigation of Lali Cable-Stayed Bridge are devised. To demonstrate the efficiency of the algorithms, a comprehensive nonlinear 3-D model of the bridge is created using OpenSees. An efficient method for connecting MATLAB and OpenSees is devised for applying FCAs to the structural model of the bridge. Two innovative fuzzy rule-bases are introduced. A total of six different fuzzy rule-bases are utilized. The efficiency of the FCAs is evaluated in a comparative manner. The performance of fuzzy control systems is also compared with a sky-hook and a passive-on system. Moreover, the sensitivity of efficiency of control systems to the peak ground acceleration is evaluated qualitatively. In addition, the effect of time lag is also investigated. This study thoroughly examines the efficiency of the FCAs in different aspects. Therefore, the results can be regarded as a general guide to design semi-active fuzzy control systems for vibration mitigation of cable-stayed bridges.     

Chemically Modified CaO/Fe3O4 Nanocomposite by Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate for Cr(III) Removal from Water

A CaO/Fe₃O₄ nanocomposite was modified by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and used for Cr(III) removal from aqueous solution. The physical and surface characteristics of the adsorbent were studied by different analysis techniques. The effects of key parameters such as pH, contact time, temperature, initial concentration of Cr(III) ions, and adsorbent dose were investigated at a fixed mixing rate. Parameters were optimized to attain the best possible removal efficiency of Cr(III) ions. The maximum adsorption capacities obtained from the Langmuir model were determined. The results of equilibrium and kinetic studies indicate that the adsorption process follows the Langmuir isotherm model and the pseudo‐second‐order kinetic model. The thermodynamic study demonstrated that the adsorption process was suitable, spontaneous, and exothermic.     

A bridge technique for memristor state programming

ABSTRACT

In order to effectively use a memristor in analog circuits, its memristance should be adjusted to a desired value between its limits. Since the maximum and minimum required memristance typically varies considerably between different types of memristors, it is almost impossible to tune the resistance of each memristor based on a reference resistor. Which is mostly done using some programmer circuits. Moreover, those programming strategies involving pulses are time-consuming and they impose high hardware headroom. In this paper, a novel CMOS circuit is presented for programming memristors. A Wheatstone bridge circuit is used to measure the current memristance, while the programming current is flowing through the device. Using such an approach reading the state and its adjustment are done simultaneously, which reduces the programming latency. In the proposed method, instead of tuning the memristance, the state of the memristor will be set to the desired value, which is proportional to a control voltage. The low programming latency, six-bit accuracy, and use of a simple circuit for programming, are the main advantages of our solution. The proposed circuit is designed and laid out in 0.35 µm CMOS technology and takes 0.0273mm². Furthermore, the proposed approach is applied to a memristor emulator to demonstrate its correct operation in real applications.