Risk Assessment of Agricultural Water Conveyance and Delivery Systems by Fuzzy Fault Tree Analysis Method

Improving the efficiency of main Agricultural Water Conveyance and Delivery Systems (AWCDS) has a significant impact on improving water productivity in agriculture. Therefore, risk assessment of mentioned systems is necessary to increase reliability of operational performance. Accordingly, this study for the first time presents a unique framework to assess the adequacy, equity, and efficiency of agricultural water distribution and delivery risk assessment within AWCDS. In this way, the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) technique is employed for risk assessment of “undesirability of supply and delivery”. The west Dez main irrigation canal in Khuzestan province of Iran was determined as the case study of the research. A set of questionnaires filled up by managers and experts of this irrigation district, the failure probabilities of the basic events are gathered in the form of linguistic terms. Due to the uncertainty in these terms, the system’s risk assessment to determine the failure probability of the top event was performed based on Fuzzy Fault Tree Analysis method (FFTA). The results of the study showed that the failure probability in the fuzzy approach is 0.55 which is roughly 0.15 more than crisp approach. Also, the rating of the basic events based on their contribution to the occurrence of the top event was carried out using importance measures. Five major events were identified with an emphasis on operational and socio-economic issues related to distribution and delivery of water. Comparing the results of risk assessment with the mathematical model reveals that the latter’s failure probability will be less than the system’s FTA due to non-consideration of some important factors.     

Photocatalysis assisted by activated-carbon-impregnated magnetite composite for removal of cephalexin from aqueous solution

The simultaneous presence of antibiotics and bacteria in aqueous media has been recognized as an environmental threat, due to the enhancement of antibiotic resistance of bacteria. We synthesized an activated carbon impregnated magnetite composite (PAC/Fe3O4) and used it for removal of cephalexin (CEX) from aqueous solution via UV system. A series of batch experiments was carried out under various experimental conditions such as pH of solution (3–11), contact time (0–120 min), catalyst dosages (0.1–2 g/L) and initial CEX concentrations (10, 25, 50 and 100 mg/L). Some common isotherm models were used for study of CEX adsorption and finding the best model. In addition, kinetic studies of CEX photocatalytic removal were performed by fitting the experimental data on first-order and second-order models. Results of comparative studies showed that UV+PAC/Fe₃O₄ and UV+TiO₂ systems, compared to UV/Fe3O4, naked Fe₃O₄, PAC/Fe₃O₄ and UV only, had more capability of removing CEX from aqueous solution, indicating PAC/Fe₃O₄ is effectively catalyzed by UV light. Furthermore, increasing catalyst dosages and decreasing initial CEX concentrations led to the enhancing photocatalytic removal of CEX from solution. The obtained results of kinetic studies also represent that among the studied models, second-order model with significant coefficient of correlation (R²) had higher ability than first-order model to fit the data of CEX removal. Finally, the findings of reusability tests, showed that the applied catalyst would be applicable for CEX removal, even after five consecutive cycles.     

Effects of the porous medium and water-silver biological nanofluid on the performance of a newly designed heat sink by using first and second laws of thermodynamics

The aim of this numerical investigation is to evaluate the laminar forced convection of biologically synthesized water-silver nanofluid through a heat sink (HS) filled with porous foam (PHS) using first and second laws of thermodynamics. The impacts of inlet velocity (V = 0.5–3 m·s⁻¹) and volume fraction of nanofluid (φ = 0–1%) on the performance metrics of HS are assessed and the outcomes are compared with those of the non-porous HS (NHS). The outcomes revealed that for both the PHS and NHS, the increase of V causes an intensification in convection coefficient, pumping power, and entropy generation due to fluid friction, while the maximum CPU temperature, thermal resistance, and entropy generation due to the heat transfer reduces by boosting V. Also, it was found that the augmentation of V results in intensification in convection coefficient, pumping power, overall hydrothermal performance, and frictional entropy generation, while the opposite is true for maximum CPU temperature, thermal resistance, and thermal entropy generation. Furthermore, it was reported that, except for φ = 0.5%, the overall hydrothermal performance of NHS is better than that of PHS, while PHS has better second-law performance than NHS in all the studied cases. Also, it can be concluded that the best hydrothermal performance for PHS belongs to φ = 1% and V = 0.5 m·s⁻¹, while for NHS, these values are 1% and 2 m·s⁻¹.     

Effect of the Geometry of a Swirl Generator on Energy Loss and Shockwave Position in Arina Nozzle

To investigate the effect of the swirl generator (SG) on shockwave position and pressure drop, 3D simulation is conducted and validated by Arina's study. An increase of the blade number, height, and end angle leads to shockwave displacement toward the nozzle outlet. The maximum increment of the shockwave displacement, which is due to enlarging the angle of the blade end, is about 47 %. For this case, the pressure drop share of the SG is nearly half of the total pressure drop, while the residence time of particles is prolonged by about 51 %. As a general finding, increasing the swirl intensity provides a longer residence time to separate adequately the liquid from the gas. However, a higher energy loss is not desirable for the high-pressure process at the downstream of the 3S separator.     

Modeling of naphtha reforming unit applying detailed description of kinetic in continuous catalytic regeneration process

Naphtha reforming is one of the most important processes in refineries in which high value-added reformate for gasoline pool and aromatics such as benzene, toluene, and xylene are produced. It is necessary to establish new naphtha reforming units and develop the traditional units to increase the efficiency of the processes. In this study, according to the recent progresses in the naphtha reforming technology, mathematical modeling of this process in continuous catalyst regeneration mode of operation is accomplished in two dimensions (radial and axial) by considering cross flow pattern. In addition, a new catalyst deactivation model has been proposed and a new reaction network model based on 32 pseudo-components with 84 reactions is investigated. Then, this model has been validated by comparing with industrial data, and its results have acceptable agreement.     

Vibration analysis of rotating rods based on the nonlocal elasticity theory and coupled displacement field

Free longitudinal vibration analysis of a rotating rod based on the Eringen’s nonlocal elasticity is studied in this paper. Rod is supposed to rotate around a fixed axis with a constant angular velocity. To capture the effect of the rotational motion into analysis of the continuous system, a linear proportional relation is introduced between axial and angular velocities. For the first time the mentioned relation is presented based on the internal motions of the infinitesimal element. This novelty makes the rotational displacement as a dependent function of axial displacement playing a significant role through the analysis. Variational approach is adopted to derive the equations of motion for clamped–clamped and clamped-free boundary conditions. For verification of the results obtained from the Galerkin approach, comparison with technical literature is reported. Finally current results illustrate the dependency of the dynamic-vibration analysis of the presented system on the nonlocality and the rotational velocity parameter. This dependency shows the decrement of the frequency with increment in both the angular velocity and the nonlocal parameter. As a result, the mentioned parameters are key factors in the design and analysis of such systems.

     

Preparation and photocatalytic study of CoFe2O4/TiO2/Au nanocomposites and their applications in organic pollutant degradation and modeling by an artificial neural network (ANN)

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - Due to the increase of environmental pollution by various industries in recent decades, preparing drinking water has become one of the most...     

Effects of the trench geometry on vibration mitigation level in high-speed railway tracks

Train-induced ground vibration is numerically analyzed using the finite element method (FEM) in this paper. Varieties of open trenches including partial and full length systems with different geometries are employed as the vibration mitigation strategies. Ground is modeled by multiple soil layers and the train load pattern is simulated by series of successive moving loads. A parametric study is then carried out after verification of the numerical model. Effects of different parameters including the trench type, size and geometry and the train speed on the vibration mitigation level are investigated. The operational speeds are set to be in vicinity of the Rayleigh wave propagation velocity. Two types of active and passive trenches are considered with three different geometries consisting of rectangular, triangular (wedge) and circular cross sections.     

Investigation of heat transfer in a geometry with variable cross section

In this paper, the thermal conductivity that plays an important role in heat transfer efficiency is investigated. He's homotopy perturbation method (HPM) and Adomian decomposition method (ADM) are applied to the nonlinear heat transfer equations and the comparison between results is illustrated within several plots. Here, thermal conductivity has been considered as a function of temperature. Also the variable heat generation has been taken into account. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20266 Copyright © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

What is this page known for? Computing Web page reputations

The textual content of the Web enriched with the hyperlink structure surrounding it can be a useful source of information for querying and searching. This paper presents a search process where the input is the URL of a page, and the output is a ranked set of topics on which the page has a reputation. For example, if the input is www.gamelan.com, then a possible output is ‘Java'. We propose several algorithmic formulations of the notion of reputation using simple random walk models of Web-browsing behavior. We give preliminary test results on the effectiveness of these algorithms.