Wear behavior of laser metal deposited 17-4 PH SS-W composite at varied tungsten powder flow rate

This research studies the wear behavior of laser metal deposition of 17-4 PH SS-W composite using a 6 mm alumina-stainless steel ball under a load of 10 N, for 16 minutes, 40 seconds and with acquisition rate of 100 Hz conducted at 25 °C. The effect of laser power of between 2600 W and 1500 W; and powder flow rate of between 0.5 min⁻¹ and 2.0 min⁻¹ on wear resistance is investigated. Other processing parameters are constant throughout the experiments. The results show that the 17-4 PH SS-W composite produced at a high laser power of 2600 W exhibits a higher wear resistance as compared to the 17-4 PH SS-W composite samples produced at low laser power of 1500 W. The 17-4 PH SS-W composite sample produced at high laser power of 2600 W with tungsten powder flow rate of 2.0 min⁻¹ has the highest wear resistance with wear volume of 0.0276 mm³ and wear rate of 8.8 ⋅ 10⁻⁵ mm³/N m while the 17-4 PH SS-W composite sample produced at a low laser power of 1500 W with tungsten powder flow rate of 1.0 min⁻¹ has the wear volume of 0.02834 mm³ and wear rate of 9.0 ⋅ 10⁻⁵ mm³/N m.     

The impact of non‐financial incentives on bricklayers' productivity in Nigeria

High productivity is regarded as a goal that ensures long‐term survival of firms. In Nigeria's labour‐intensive construction industry, firms are currently applying various non‐financial incentive schemes aimed at improving operatives' productivity. A questionnaire survey involving the management and operatives of construction firms was conducted to determine the impact of these scheme on the productivity of bricklayers. The survey was complemented with on‐site observation and measurement of bricklayers' output on 40 construction projects in order to determine the impact of non‐financial incentive schemes on productivity. Comparative analysis of sites with and without incentives showed that non‐financial incentive schemes significantly improved bricklayers' productive time and these schemes accounted for 6% to 26% of the variations in output between the two sets of sites on block laying and concreting activities measured.     

Dietary Oil Type and Late Feed Restriction Elicit Synergistic Effects on Growth,Caeca Bacteria,Carcass, Fat Accretion,and Muscle Lipids in Female Broilers

The influence of dietary oil type (OT) and late feed restriction (FR) on growth, caeca bacteria count, carcass, separable fat depots, serum and muscle lipids, and meat quality in broilers is examined. In total, 224, 21-day-old female Arbor acres broilers are randomly allotted to either PN, Unrestricted+50 g kg⁻¹ palm oil (PO); PR, 25%-FR+PO; SN, Unrestricted+50 g kg⁻¹ soybean oil (SO); or SR, 25%-FR+SO for 21 d. The SN and PR birds have the heaviest and lightest body weight gain (BWG), respectively. Feed conversion ratio (FCR) is poorer in the PN birds. Feed-restricted birds have more caeca Lactobacillus and lower Salmonella, serum cholesterol, and triglycerides. Carcass yield is higher in SR birds and lower in PN birds. The FR-OT interaction is significant for muscle lipids and weight of fat depots. The PN birds deposit more abdominal, intramuscular, sartorial, mesentery and neck fats, muscle saturated fatty acids, and C18:1n-9 and lower C18:3n-3 and C20:5n-3 than other birds. Neither OT nor FR affects the pH, color, water holding capacity, and oxidative stability of breast meat. The changes elicited by 25%-FR on BWG, FCR, carcass yield, depot fats, and muscle lipids in female broilers are dependent on dietary OT. Practical Application: Fast growth rate and unrestricted access to feed can predispose broiler chickens to excessive fat accretion, which is counterproductive. Producing high-quality carcasses that meet consumers’ expectation is crucial for sustainable and efficient broiler production. The possible interaction between dietary OT and late quantitative FR in mitigating excessive fat accretion and altering production indices in female broilers is explored. Late quantitative FR reduces BWG, FCR, serum lipids, caeca pH and Salmonella spp. and fat accretion in fat depots, and enhances carcass yield and caeca Lactobacillus spp. However, the impacts are more pronounced in the PO birds than the SO birds. Late FR improves the C18:3n-3 and C18:2n-6 contents in PO meat while reducing the C14:0 and C16:0 contents in SO meat. These findings explicate that dietary OT and late quantitative FR can be synergistically used to mitigate excessive fat accretion and alter growth, caeca microflora, and muscle lipids in broilers.     

Modelling outflow following rupture in pipeline networks

A numerical model for simulating the fluid dynamics following rupture in pressurised pipeline networks containing multi-component hydrocarbon mixtures is described. Based on the solution of the conservation equations using the method of characteristics, the model accounts for pipeline bends, branches and couplings. Modelling of hypothetical full bore ruptures in straight and branched pipelines indicate the importance of accounting for pipeline system configuration complexity when simulating such type of failure.     

African Water Cities

The impact of climate change is pronounced in Africa, where coastal cities are now experiencing a significant rise in sea level and increases in rainfall. In Nigeria, 30 per cent of Lagos is already under water. Made up of houses built on stilts, the informal settlement of Makoko in Lagos subsists on logging and fishing. Here, Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ explores Makoko as a potential contemporary model for adapting other African cities to the rise in water levels with minimal resources.     

Managing Transportation Infrastructure for Sustainable Development

Major requirements for operationalization of the concept of sustainable development in urban transportation infrastructure operations management are presented. In addition, it is shown that the current approach to management is incompatible with the requirements for sustainable urban development. Consequently, the conceptual framework of a desirable approach is proposed. The philosophy of this approach is that the basic mission of infrastructure operations management is to obtain and maintain the maximum levels of people and goods mobility possible within the resources and environmental capacities in an area. A mathematical model is presented for obtaining the desirable levels and characteristics of traffic on each segment of an urban transportation network. In addition, three illustrative applications of the implemented model are presented.     

Comparing ANN and ARIMA model in predicting the discharge of River Opeki from 2010 to 2020

Many attempts have been made in the recent past to model and forecast streamflow using various techniques with the use of time series techniques proving to be the most common. Time series analysis plays an important role in hydrological research. Traditionally, the class of autoregressive moving average techniques models has been the statistical method most widely used for modelling water discharge, but it has been shown to be deficient in representing nonlinear dynamics inherent in the transformation of runoff data. In contrast, the relatively newly improved and efficient soft computing technique artificial neural networks has the capability to approximate virtually any continuous function up to an arbitrary degree of accuracy, which is not otherwise true of other conventional hydrological techniques. This technique corresponds to human neurological system, which consists of a series of basic computing elements called neurons, which are interconnected together to form networks. The aim of the study is to compare the artificial neural network and autoregressive integrated moving average to model River Opeki discharge (1982–2010) and to use the best predictor to forecast the discharge of the river from 2010 to 2020. The performance of the two models was subjected to statistical test based on correlation coefficient (r) and the root‐mean‐square error. The result showed that autoregressive integrated moving average performs better considering the level of root‐mean‐square error and higher correlation coefficient.     

Fast and effective soft links

Inspired by requirements traceability problems, we present a method for implementing fast and effective hypertext links to specific locations within documents. These soft links do not depend on tags, markup, or closed tool sets, yet they can generally survive extensive edits to a document collection, allowing the targets of these links to be located in real collections after years of ongoing and frequent changes. We base our implementation of soft links on an existing passage retrieval algorithm, originally designed for question answering. The method treats the text surrounding the target of a soft link as a passage to be retrieved, creates a signature for that passage, and resolves the link by searching for the passage. The method is evaluated over a large collection of text and two large collections of source code, one written in the C programming language and one written in Java. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of Eco-Friendly Basalt Fibre Reinforced Cementitious Composites Using Taguchi Method

Silicon - In order to improve the sustainability of cementitious composites used for repair and construction applications, environmentally friendly materials can be incorporated as components in...