Development of a novel ANFIS-GA method for investigation of effect of inhibitors on asphaltene precipitation

Asphaltene precipitation and deposition in different parts of petroleum industry increase considerably cost and problems in oil production. Due to these facts controlling asphaltene precipitation becomes one of valuable topics for research in petroleum engineering. Utilization of Asphaltene inhibitors is known as one of the dominant methods for controlling asphaltene precipitation so in this paper Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is joint with Genetic Algorithm (GA) to study effectiveness of asphaltene inhibitors on precipitation in terms of oil and inhibitors properties. In order to prepare and evaluate the ANFIS-GA algorithm, some reliable experimental data were gathered. The obtained results from the comparison shows the coefficient of determination (R²) for training and testing phases are 0.98804 and 0.9916 respectively. The determined indexes and graphical comparisons expresses that ANFIS-GA has enough accuracy and potential to estimate effectiveness of inhibitors on asphaltene precipitation reductions.     

Radiation pattern design of photonic crystal LED optimized by using multi-objective grey wolf optimizer

Photonic Network Communications - This paper proposes an effective method for shaping the radiation pattern intensity of photonic crystal (PhC) light-emitting diode (LED). In this method, the...     

Effect of Co addition on microstructural and mechanical properties of WC–B4C–SiC composites

In this study, the effect of Co addition on microstructural and mechanical properties of WC-B₄C–SiC composites sintered by spark plasma sintering (SPS) method was investigated. For this purpose, three batches of WC-B₄C–SiC with different contents of Co (10 vol%, 15 vol%, and 20 Vol %) were sintered at 1400 °C. The results of X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis of the samples indicated the formation of W₂B₅, W₃CoB₃ as well as the remained C phases and unreacted SiC phase. It was observed that by increasing the Co content, the amount of W₂B₅ phase reduces and W₃CoB₃ and C contents increase. Therefore, W₂B₅ peaks were not detected in the sample containing 20vol% Co. Relative density values above 97% were obtained for all the composites. However, a decrease was observed in relative density by increasing the Co content in the composites. The highest flexural strength (510 ± 42 MPa), fracture toughness (10.34 ± 0.82 MPa m^1/2), and hardness (20.63 ± 0.75 GPa) were also obtained for the sample containing 10vol% Co compared to the other samples. In addition, Transgranular fracture of SiC as well as pulling out of W₃CoB₃ and W₂B₅ particles were observed in the fracture surface micrographs of the samples. The presence of micro-cracks in the SiC grains, fracture of W₃CoB₃ grains, and crack deflection was reported as dominant toughening mechanisms.     

Development of ensemble machine learning approaches for designing fiber-reinforced polymer composite strain prediction model

Engineering with Computers - Over the past few decades, it has been observed a remarkable progression in the development of computer aid models in the field of civil engineering. Machine learning...     

Stability enhancement of garlic essential oil using new opopanax gum/gelatin nanofibres

Opopanax gum/gelatin nanofibre was produced by the electrospinning method, and the efficiency of this new technique for encapsulation of garlic essential oil was investigated. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy results showed the physical and weak interactions between opopanax gum and gelatin, as well as the improvement of their thermal stability in the nanofibres structure. Incorporating 10% garlic essential oil based on biopolymer weight in nanofibres was considered the best percentage. The results confirmed the presence of garlic essential oil in the nanofibres and the improvement of its thermal stability by entrapment to the nanofibre structure. The data of analysis of the stability of garlic essential oil in the forms of free and encapsulated conditions showed that its stability increased at 25 °C from 20 days to more than 60 days. It indicated the efficiency of opopanax gum/gelatin nanofibres as an applicable coating material for stability enhancement of essential oils.     

‘Breaking’ news: uncovering sense-breaking patterns in social media crisis communication during the 2017 Manchester bombing

ABSTRACT

Individuals, (media-) organisations, and crisis responders who are involved in ad hoc crisis communication steadily deploy social media to contribute to collective sense-making as an endeavour to create meaning in highly uncertain situations. Exerting sense-giving in order to shape others’ conceptions is causally preceded by an initial breakup of existing understanding. This study aims to explore patterns of sense-breaking in social media crisis communication and its impact on collective sense-making and sense-giving. To this end, we conducted a case study of the Manchester bombing in 2017, including a social network analysis of 708,147 Twitter postings and a content analysis of 2006 original tweets. We found individual role types to be initiators of sense-breaking in early crisis stages when uncertainty is at its height. Exerting successive sense-giving becomes more challenging if the collective sense-making has progressed along with the sequence of events. This understanding aims to encourage emergency management organisations to move their sense-giving actions closer to the point in time when sense-breaking occurs.     

Forced Vibration Analysis of Functionally Graded Anisotropic Nanoplates Resting on Winkler/Pasternak-Foundation

This study investigates the forced vibration of functionally graded hexagonal nano-size plates for the first time. A quasi-three-dimensional (3D) plate theory including stretching effect is used to model the anisotropic plate as a continuum one where smallscale effects are considered based on nonlocal strain gradient theory. Also, the plate is assumed on a Pasternak foundation in which normal and transverse shear loads are taken into account. The governing equations of motion are obtained via the Hamiltonian principles which are solved using analytical based methods by means of Navier’s approximation. The influences of the exponential factor, nonlocal parameter, strain gradient parameter, Pasternak foundation coefficients, length-to-thickness, and length-to-width ratios on the dynamic response of the nanoplates are examined. In addition, the accuracy of an isotropic approximate instead of the anisotropic model is studied. The dynamic behavior of the system shows that mechanical mathematics-based models may get better results considering the anisotropic model because the dynamic response can cause prominent differences (up to 17%) between isotropic approximation and anisotropic model.     

Conducting Polymer Microcups for Organic Bioelectronics and Drug Delivery Applications

An ideal neural device enables long‐term, sensitive, and selective communication with the nervous system. To accomplish this task, the material interface should mimic the biophysical and the biochemical properties of neural tissue. By contrast, microfabricated neural probes utilize hard metallic conductors, which hinder their long‐term performance because these materials are not intrinsically similar to soft neural tissue. This study reports a method for the fabrication of monodisperse conducting polymer microcups. It is demonstrated that the physical surface properties of conducting polymer microcups can be precisely modulated to control electrical properties and drug‐loading/release characteristics.