An experimental analysis of electrostatically vibrated array of polysilicon cantilevers

Micromechanical cantilevers are one of the most fundamental and widely studied structures in micro-electromechanical systems. Dynamic response of such cantilevers has long been an interesting subject to researchers and different analytical and experimental approaches have been reported to determine it. Theoretical estimation of different damping mechanisms have been reported over years which are relevant particularly in studying the dynamics of the micro-mechanical structures. Most properties and functionalities of the MEMS devices are invariably dependant on the dynamic response of the devices, which in turn depends on the quality factor of the devices or in other words the overall damping present in the system. This paper presents a thorough experimental analysis of vibration characteristics of micro-mechanical cantilevers of different dimensions. Arrays of polysilicon micro-cantilevers of different dimensions have been designed and fabricated using surface micromachining process. The beams are resonated by electrostatic actuation and their vibration characteristics have been observed using Laser Doppler Vibrometer. Also a thorough analysis of modal behaviour of the beams is presented using analytical approach and finite element method based simulation. Different damping mechanisms have been critically reviewed and a semi-analytical estimation of the overall damping is presented. The results are compared with experimental values.     

Bayesian binary kernel probit model for microarray based cancer classification and gene selection

With the arrival of gene expression microarrays a new challenge has opened up for identification or classification of cancer tissues. Due to the large number of genes providing valuable information simultaneously compared to very few available tissue samples the cancer staging or classification becomes very tricky.In this paper we introduce a hierarchical Bayesian probit model for two class cancer classification. Instead of assuming a linear structure for the function that relates the gene expressions with the cancer types we only assume that the relationship is explained by an unknown function which belongs to an abstract functional space like the reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Our formulation automatically reduces the dimension of the problem from the large number of covariates or genes to a small sample size. We incorporate a Bayesian gene selection scheme with the automatic dimension reduction to adaptively select important genes and classify cancer types under an unified model. Our model is highly flexible in terms of explaining the relationship between the cancer types and gene expression measurements and picking up the differentially expressed genes. The proposed model is successfully tested on three simulated data sets and three publicly available leukemia cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer real life data sets.     

A layered algorithm for quantifier elimination from linear modular constraints

Linear equalities, disequalities and inequalities on fixed-width bit-vectors, collectively called linear modular constraints, form an important fragment of the theory of fixed-width bit-vectors. We present a practically efficient and bit-precise algorithm for quantifier elimination from conjunctions of linear modular constraints. Our algorithm uses a layered approach, whereby sound but incomplete and cheaper layers are invoked first, and expensive but complete layers are called only when required. We then extend this algorithm to work with arbitrary Boolean combinations of linear modular constraints as well. Experiments on an extensive set of benchmarks demonstrate that our techniques significantly outperform alternative quantifier elimination techniques based on bit-blasting and linear integer arithmetic.     

Impact of hydrogen generated by splitting water with nano-silicon and nano-aluminum on diesel engine performance

Efficient utilization of hydrogen generated during the reactions of nano-silicon/water and nano-aluminum/water in internal combustion engine has been investigated in the current work. Engine performance and emission studies of formulated and stabilized nanoemulsion fuels (water in diesel W/D), nano-aluminum in water/diesel (W/DA) and water in nano-silicon/diesel (W/DS) have been compared with those of diesel. Experimental investigations showed reduction in brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) by 21% and 37%; rise in brake thermal efficiency (BTE) by 16% and 14% when engine was fueled with W/DA and W/DS respectively. For nanoemulsion fuels an increase in induced power was also recorded. Brake mean effective pressure, BTE and NOx emission dropped for W/D due to reduced exhaust gas temperatures. Nevertheless due to elevated peak cylinder pressures and exhaust gas temperatures a marginal rise in NOx, CO, HC and radiative heat emissions was observed with W/DA and W/DS.     

Rolling element bearing design through genetic algorithms

The design of rolling element bearings has been a challenging task in the field of mechanical engineering. While most of the real aspects of the design are never disclosed by bearing manufacturers, the common engineer is left with no other alternative than to refer to standard tables and charts containing the bearing performance characteristics. This paper presents a more viable method to solve this problem using genetic algorithms (GAs). Since the algorithm is basically a guided random search, it weakens the chances of getting trapped in local maxima or minima. The method used has yielded improved performance parameters than those catalogued in standard tables.     

Selective greedy routing: exploring the path diversity in backbone mesh networks

This paper proposes a new routing protocol for IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh network to overcome the problems associated with the conventional proactive and reactive routing approaches. The proposed ‘Selective Greedy’ (SelG) routing protocol operates in two phases. In the first phase it exploits the proactive mode of Hybrid Wireless Mesh Protocol, the standard routing protocol for IEEE 802.11s mesh, and constructs a set of potential forwarders for every mesh point, that can act as the next-hop relay. In the second phase, during the actual data communication, a candidate is selected from the set of potential forwarders based on a local optimization. The optimization procedure considers the statistical effect of local link quality fluctuation and interference over the global routing path selection. This way the SelG protocol reduces the control packet flooding in the network (a major drawback for reactive protocols). At the same time, the optimization procedure captures the network dynamics, and thus avoids the possibility of routing based on stale information (a drawback for proactive protocols). The routing properties and the correctness of the SelG protocol is established theoretically, and the performance of the protocol is analyzed through simulation results. The proposed protocol is implemented in an indoor wireless mesh testbed, and the performance is evaluated and compared with other traditional approaches.