Behavior Study of the Nanostructured Zn1-xCdxO (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.1) Semiconductor Thin Films Deposited onto Silicon Substrate by Dip-Coating Method

Silicon - The specimens of nanostructured semiconductor of Zn1-xCdxO (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.1) thin films were grown on silicon substrate using a dip-coating method. The...     

Dédoublement du tunnel d’Aokas (BEJAIA): geologie et caractérisation géotechnique du massif traversé. Stabilité de l’ouvrage

Underground work’s constructions and design techniques depend closely on the geological environment. The properties of the rock mass influence directly on the various steps of their realization so that geological and geotechnical studies become an absolute necessity to characterize the rock mass and to control the imposed constraints. At the end, we can conclude that the present work aims to define the geological and geotechnical conditions of the drilled rock mass; it consists mainly in determining the nature and the structure of the rock mass to cross, in addition to determining the rock mass stability and the reinforcement works. The route of the tunnel Aokas (Béjaïa) crosses a fractured limestone, where the karstification phenomenon is well developed and the best example being “fairy caves” contiguous on the old tunnel road in the NR 09. The two tunnel heads are located at the foot of two towering cliffs. All these characteristics make the tunnel in precarious potential stability. The detailed geological study allowed to determinate that the tunnel crosses through a karstified dolomitic limestone of the Babor’s chain of the lower Jurassic age, and a geotechnical study allowed a characterization of this rock mass regarding fracturing, mechanical and physical characteristics and led finally to a geomechanical classification. The stability of the tunnel is ensured by a strong support system.     

Cold hole expansion effect on the fatigue crack growth in welds of a 6061-T6 aluminum alloy

Compact test specimens were extracted from a 6061-T6 aluminum alloy welded plate with a thickness of 9 mm to analyze the cold hole expansion effect on fatigue crack growth tests conducted in mode I cyclic loading. At R = 0.1, a sharp crack in base metal, weld metal and heat affected zone was propagated from 17 to 24 mm. The fatigue crack growth at 24 mm (α = a/W = 0.3) was delayed by drilling a hole at the crack tip and applying a cold hole expansion of 4.1%. The residual stress fields due to cold hole expansion were determined with the finite element method. The fatigue crack growth testing was continued up to a crack length of 35 mm (α ∼ 0.43) at the same R, and crack opening displacements of the post-expansion crack were also determined with the finite element method. The results were expressed in terms of crack length versus number of cycles, as well as, fatigue crack growth rate as a function of applied and effective stress intensity factor range. The cold hole expansion contributed to delay the fatigue crack growth in base metal, and to a lesser extent in the weld metal and heat affected zone. A crack closure effect was determined by means of load versus crack opening displacement curves of the post-expansion crack, which was, completely or partially closed, in welded zones with compressive residual stress fields. The fracture surfaces of each welded zone were analyzed to elucidate the crack nucleation zone and its relation with the residual stress field. In all cases the crack was initiated at the surface of the specimen where the residual stresses were positive.     

A novel scores fusion approach applied on speaker verification under noisy environments

To improve the speaker verification system in adverse conditions, a novel score fusion approach using adaptive method, based on a prior Equal Error Rate (EER), is presented in this paper. Currently, the most commonly used methods are the mean, product, minimum, maximum, or the weighted sum of scores. Our method introduces the MLP network which approximates the estimated scores under noisy conditions, to those of the ideal estimated in clean environments and gives the optimally weighted parameters, to be added in the adaptive weights used for weighting sum of scores. This method is assessed by using the NIST 2000 corpus and different feature extraction methods. Noisy conditions are created using NOISEX-92. In severely degraded conditions, the results show that the speaker verification process using our proposed score fusion approach applied to the GMM-UBM and GMM-SVM based systems, achieves better performances in terms of EER reduction than each system used alone.     

Instabilités gravitaires dans la région de Béjaïa (Algérie): Inventaire et appréciation de l’importance relative des différents paramètres conduisant au déclenchement,au maintien ou à l’activation des instabilités

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - This article contributes to the analysis of the various factors that interact in triggering and reactivating of landslides in Béjaïa...     

Two meta-heuristic algorithms for two-echelon location-routing problem with vehicle fleet capacity and maximum route length constraints

In the present research, a two-echelon location-routing problem with constraints of vehicle fleet capacity and maximum route length is considered. The problem’s objective is to determine the location and number of two types of capacitated facilities, the size of two different vehicle fleets, and the related routes on each echelon. Two algorithms hybrid genetic algorithm and simulated annealing are then applied to solve the problem. Results of numerical experiments show that the applied hybrid genetic and simulated annealing algorithms are much more effective than the solutions of the solved examples by the software LINGO. Finally, solutions of simulated annealing and hybrid genetic algorithms were compared with each other.     

Diagnosis Support System based on clinical guidelines: comparison between Case-Based Fuzzy Cognitive Maps and Bayesian Networks

Several studies have described the prevalence and severity of diagnostic errors. Diagnostic errors can arise from cognitive, training, educational and other issues. Examples of cognitive issues include flawed reasoning, incomplete knowledge, faulty information gathering or interpretation, and inappropriate use of decision-making heuristics. We describe a new approach, case-based fuzzy cognitive maps, for medical diagnosis and evaluate it by comparison with Bayesian belief networks. We created a semantic web framework that supports the two reasoning methods. We used database of 174 anonymous patients from several European hospitals: 80 of the patients were female and 94 male with an average age 45 ± 16 (average ± stdev). Thirty of the 80 female patients were pregnant. For each patient, signs/symptoms/observables/age/sex were taken into account by the system. We used a statistical approach to compare the two methods.     

Influence of Low Cd-Doping Concentration (0.5 and 3 wt.%) and Different Substrate Types (Glass and Silicon) on the Properties of Dip-Coated Nanostructured ZnO Semiconductors Thin Films

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - The investigation of semiconductor films of undoped ZnO and doped with two weight percentages of Cadmium (0.5 and 3) were grown on...