Aging of 154 kV underground power cable insulation under combined thermal and electrical stresses

This work the combined electrical and thermal stresses of the 154 kV XLPE power cable used in the underground power transmission in Turkey. The dependence of aging on electrical and thermal stresses is given by a straight line in a certain range of electric field (E) values which indicates that the aging is a thermochemical process. Furthermore, cable tests are conducted in oil, and the results are valid for immersed insulation but might not be completely representative of XLPE used in service in a "dry" environment. Therefore, each cable insulator has to be tested and the parameters must be determined for each cable separately.     

Generating cutter swept envelopes in five-axis milling by two-parameter families of spheres

This paper presents an efficient parametric approach of determining the shape of the envelope surface by a generalized cutter that follows five-axis tool path during NC machining. In this approach the cutter is modeled as a canal surface. By considering the tool motions the cutter is decomposed into a set of characteristic and great circles which are generated by two-parameter families of spheres. The center of a sphere from these families is described by two parameters which represent the spine curve and the tool path, and the radius of the sphere is described by one parameter representing the spine curve. Considering the relationship between characteristic and great circles the grazing points on the tool surface are identified. Analytically it is proven for the NC cutter geometries that any point on the envelope surface is located at the intersection of the characteristic and great circles. Then based on the proofs a closed-form solution for computing the grazing points generated by a surface of revolution is presented. The presented methodology is reduced to a simpler parametric form when the NC cutters are described by pipe surfaces.     

An example of facade colour design of mass housing

The colours and architectural characteristics of building facades are the major factors affecting the general appearance of cities. When cities are examined from various perspectives, first impressions are obtained from the geometrical forms and facade colours of buildings. The facade colour arrangements should reflect the features of the region and buildings. In this context various features of natural and artificial environments such as plant life, water elements, climate, and historical texture should be examined, and a facade colour arrangement should be designed according to the examination results. In addition, the other factors effective in determining the colour and style of a building, such as social‐cultural background of the society and traditional and natural building materials, should not be forgotten because in some regions traditional buildings with special construction styles, materials, and colours create a specific identity for the settlements and cities. The aims of this article are to elucidate the colour contrast, colour arrangement, and colour design stages of mass housing and to explain the colour design of Bizimkent Mass Housing, which was constructed in a new dwelling zone in Istanbul, Turkey, as an example of such an arrangement. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 27, 291–299, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.10068     

Modelling of hydrogen production from hydrogen sulfide in geothermal power plants

Geothermal power plants emit high amount of hydrogen sulfide (H₂S). The presence of H₂S in the air, water, soils and vegetation is one of the main environmental concerns for geothermal fields. There is an increasing interest in developing suitable methods and technologies to produce hydrogen from H₂S as promising alternative solution for energy requirements. In the present study, the AMIS technology is the invention of a proprietary technology (AMIS^® - acronym for “Abatement of Mercury and Hydrogen Sulfide” in Italian language) for the abatement of hydrogen sulphide and mercury emission, is primarily employed to produce hydrogen from H₂S. A proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer operates at 150 °C with gaseous H₂S sulfur dimer in the anode compartment and hydrogen gas in the cathode compartment. Thermodynamic calculations of electrolysis process are made and parametric studies are undertaken by changing several parameters of the process. Also, energy and exergy efficiencies of the process are calculated as % 27.8 and % 57.1 at 150 °C inlet temperature of H₂S, respectively.     

Automated evaluation of physical therapy exercises using multi-template dynamic time warping on wearable sensor signals

We develop an autonomous system to detect and evaluate physical therapy exercises using wearable motion sensors. We propose the multi-template multi-match dynamic time warping (MTMM-DTW) algorithm as a natural extension of DTW to detect multiple occurrences of more than one exercise type in the recording of a physical therapy session. While allowing some distortion (warping) in time, the algorithm provides a quantitative measure of similarity between an exercise execution and previously recorded templates, based on DTW distance. It can detect and classify the exercise types, and count and evaluate the exercises as correctly/incorrectly performed, identifying the error type, if any. To evaluate the algorithm's performance, we record a data set consisting of one reference template and 10 test executions of three execution types of eight exercises performed by five subjects. We thus record a total of 120 and 1200 exercise executions in the reference and test sets, respectively. The test sequences also contain idle time intervals. The accuracy of the proposed algorithm is 93.46% for exercise classification only and 88.65% for simultaneous exercise and execution type classification. The algorithm misses 8.58% of the exercise executions and demonstrates a false alarm rate of 4.91%, caused by some idle time intervals being incorrectly recognized as exercise executions. To test the robustness of the system to unknown exercises, we employ leave-one-exercise-out cross validation. This results in a false alarm rate lower than 1%, demonstrating the robustness of the system to unknown movements. The proposed system can be used for assessing the effectiveness of a physical therapy session and for providing feedback to the patient.     

Phenotypic and genotypic characterization of foodborne bacteria isolated from Sinop Province,Turkey

In this study, genotypic and phenotypic characteristics of the strains, antibiotic susceptibility, and antibiotic resistance genes of the Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Listeria spp., and Salmonella spp. isolated from various animal foods in Sinop province were determined. Resistance percentages of the isolated strains to the antibiotics penicillin, vancomycin, clindamycin, tetracycline, ampicillin/sulbactam, gentamicin, ciprofloxacin, and chloramphenicol were 87.8, 71.9, 69.7, 63.4, 27.5, 23.1, 20.9, and 13.4%, respectively. Antibiotic resistance genes tetA, bla_CMY-2, and cat1 were found in 45, 21.25, and 6.25% of all the strains, respectively. The virulence genes were also investigated in the isolated in E. coli strains; the eae gene was found in 13.1% of the strains, while the stx1 was not identified in any strains. As a result, we can say that SDS-PAGE method may provide discrimination at species level; however, surveys at subspecies level demand molecular approaches such as ERIC and (GTG)₅-PCR. In addition, we can suggest that molecular techniques may be especially helpful in the rapid identification of multidrug-resistant and isolates with virulence genes. This study has revealed that the investigated bacteria in animal foods is a significant reservoir of resistance genes.     

Loadability of power transformer under regional climate conditions: the case of Turkey

This paper presents an accurate methodology and examines the effects of long-term ambient temperature changes on the power transformer loadability and its service life loss considering regional climate characteristics. The daily ambient temperature variation is modeled on yearly basis for different climate regions according to historical records. For this purpose, four different regions are selected in Turkey. Thermal and service life loss models are tested under two loading conditions for selected climate projections. Models used in the study, are created in accordance with IEEE C57.91-95 and IEC 60076-7 standards. Calculations are made in high resolution as the basis of second distinct from related standards, for mineral oil-immersed power transformer parameters. In this way, the impact of regional climate conditions on power transformer loadability is determined more accurately. The results show that the power transformer loadability is a function of the regional climate conditions. In addition, the result of the analysis, some coefficients are recommended for power transformer loadability to complete a normal service life range (20.55 years) under selected regional climate conditions. This methodology is applicable to the different climate regions and power transformers outside scope of this study.     

TiO(2) fibers enhance film integrity and photovoltaic performance for electrophoretically deposited dye solar cell photoanodes

Nanoparticulated TiO(2) fibers as one-dimensional long structures were introduced into TiO(2) P25 nanoparticle films using coelectrophoretic deposition. This prevented the usual crack formation occurring in wet coatings, and resulted in less porosity and higher roughness factor of the films that provided more favorable conditions for electron transport. The films used as the photoanode of a dye solar cell (DSC) produced 65% higher photovoltaic efficiency. TiO(2) fibers can be excellent binders in single-step, organic-free electrophoretic deposition of TiO(2) for DSC photoanode.     

Second law analysis of wind turbine power plants: Cesme, Izmir example

In this study, the energy and exergy efficiency results of the Wind Turbine Power Plants (WTPPs) are presented. Exergy, energy and technical availability analysis are performed. The case study includes the actual system data taken from the system in Cesme, Izmir WTPP. General energy, exergy and other performance parameters are also presented. Investigated WTPP is Turkey’s first installed (1998) wind plant (1.50 MW) located in Izmir. Exergy efficiency of the power plant found to be between 0% and 68.20%. The monthly average technical availabilities are 96.11%, 98.71%, 98.52% for turbine 1, turbine 2, and turbine 3, respectively. Furthermore, authors developed some correlations, which are capable of predicting the values of exergy efficiencies of the WTPP for different power factor value.