A kinetic study of microwave and fluidized-bed drying of a Chinese lignite

The drying kinetics of Chinese lignite in nitrogen fluidized-bed, superheated steam fluidized-bed and microwave were investigated. The changes in the mass as a function of drying time were measured under various drying conditions. The variations of moisture ratio with time were used to test ten different thin-layer empirical drying models given in the literature. In studying the consistency of all the models, some statistical tests, such as χ², residual sum of squares (RSS) and F-value were also used as well as coefficient of determination R². In nitrogen fluidized-bed and superheated steam fluidized-bed, the Midilli–Kucuk model best described the lignite drying process. Drying data in microwave were best described by the Page model, indicative of a difference in kinetics between the two drying methods. This difference was attributed to different heat transfer mechanisms under conventional and microwave drying conditions. The effects of drying parameters in nitrogen fluidized-bed, superheated steam fluidized-bed and microwave drying on the constants and coefficients of the selected models were studied by multiple regression analysis. The apparent diffusion coefficient of moisture in samples was obtained from the kinetics data and the apparent activation energies under nitrogen fluidized-bed, superheated steam fluidized-bed and microwave drying were found to be rather similar.     

呼伦贝尔褐煤溶剂萃取及萃余煤的双氧水氧化产物分析

以CS2、乙醇和丙酮作为溶剂,对呼伦贝尔褐煤进行连续萃取,并利用气相色谱/质谱联用(GC/MS)技术对萃取物进行分析。结果表明:CS2萃取物主要由长链脂肪烃和芳烃组成,而这些脂肪烃存在于3种溶剂萃取物中。在40℃条件下,用H2O2溶液采用恒温水浴和超声两种方式氧化萃余煤,超声条件下氧化剧烈,并用FTIR分析了原煤、萃余煤、氧化煤的化学结构的变化。氧化后的水溶物用乙酸乙酯萃取后,用GC/MS检测萃取物,恒温水浴氧化可以检测到30种化合物,而超声氧化只检测到14种,且都是以酯类为主。     

A Modified Sliding Mode Fault Tolerant Control for Large‐Scale Civil Infrastructure

Adaptable active control strategies besides advance sensors and actuators technologies lead to higher performance of vibrational control in civil infrastructures under severe ground motions. These resilience control systems are robust against model uncertainties as well as being online recoverable from the malfunctioning of sensors and actuators. In this study, resilient control system based on sliding mode (SM) fault detection observer and SM fault tolerant control is improved for actuator fault in large‐scale systems. The SM fault detection observer is modified for eliminating the excessive chattering in estimating states and actuators’ fault, and the reconfigurable SM fault tolerant control is improved to minimizing input forces in control framework under seismic action. Design of observer and controller is performed using linear matrix inequalities. Numerical simulations on the cable‐stayed bridge benchmark demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed fault‐tolerant system. Despite the high order of this large‐scale structure, the proposed fault detection and diagnosis method can effectively find the location and size of faults in actuators without performance degradation and computational costs. The fault‐tolerant controller maintains the performance of the structure at an acceptable level in the post‐fault case by redistribution of control signal to actuators.     

Taxi drivers' views on risky driving behavior in Tehran: a qualitative study using a social marketing approach

The use of the social marketing approach for public health issues is increasing. This approach uses marketing concepts borrowed from the principles of commercial marketing to promote beneficial health behaviors. In this qualitative study, four focus groups involving 42 participants were used in consumer research to explore taxi drivers’ views on the driving situation and the determinants of risky driving behaviors in Tehran, as well as to gather their ideas for developing a social marketing program to reduce risky driving behaviors among taxi drivers in Tehran, Iran.Participants were asked to respond to questions that would guide the development of a marketing mix, or four Ps (product, price, place and promotion). The discussions determined that the program product should involve avoiding risky driving behaviors through increased attention to driving. They pointed out that developing and communicating with a well-designed persuasive message meant to draw their attention to driving could affect their driving behaviors. In addition, participants identified price, place and promotion strategies. They offered suggestions for marketing nonrisky driving to the target audience.The focus group discussions generated important insights into the values and the motivations that affect consumers’ decisions to adopt the product. The focus group guided the development of a social marketing program to reduce risky driving behaviors in taxi drivers in Tehran, Iran.     

Vibration characteristics of embedded multi-layered graphene sheets with different boundary conditions via nonlocal elasticity

A nonlocal elastic plate model accounting for the small scale effects is developed to investigate the vibrational behavior of multi-layered graphene sheets under various boundary conditions. Based upon the constitutive equations of nonlocal elasticity, derived are the Reissner–Mindlin-type field equations which include the interaction of van der Waals forces between adjacent and non-adjacent layers and the reaction from the surrounding media. The set of coupled governing equations of motion for the multi-layered graphene sheets are then numerically solved by the generalized differential quadrature method. The present analysis provides the possibility of considering different combinations of layerwise boundary conditions in a multi-layered graphene sheet. Based on exact solution, explicit expressions for the nonlocal frequencies of a double-layered graphene sheet with all edges simply supported are also obtained. The results from the present numerical solution, where possible, are indicated to be in excellent agreement with the existing data from the literature.     

A Fault Detection Scheme for the FPGA Implementation of SHA-1 and SHA-512 Round Computations

The Secure Hash Algorithm is the most popular hash function currently used in many security protocols such as SSL and IPSec. Like other cryptographic algorithms, the hardware implementation of hash functions is of great importance for high speed applications. Because of the iterative structure of hash functions, a single error in their hardware implementation could result in a large number of errors in the final hash value. In this paper, we propose a novel time-redundancy-based fault diagnostic scheme for the implementation of SHA-1 and SHA-512 round computations. This scheme can detect permanent as well as transient faults as opposed to the traditional time redundancy technique which is only capable of detecting transient errors. The proposed design does not impose significant timing overhead to the original implementation of SHA-1 and SHA-512 round computation. We have implemented the proposed design for SHA-1 and SHA-512 on Xilinx xc2p7 FPGA. It is shown that for the proposed fault detection SHA-1 and SHA-512 round computations, there are, respectively, 3% and 10% reduction in the throughput with 58% and 30% area overhead as compared to the original schemes. The fault simulation of the implementation shows that almost 100% fault coverage can be achieved using the proposed scheme for transient and permanent faults.     

New configuration memory cells for FPGA in nano-scaled CMOS technology

In nano-scaled CMOS technology, the reduction of soft error rate and leakage current are the most important challenges in designing Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). To overcome these challenges, based on the observations that most configuration bit-streams of FPGA are zeros across different designs and that configuration memory cells are not directly involved with signal propagation delays in FPGA, this paper presents three new low-leakage and hardened configuration memory cells for nano-scaled CMOS technology. These cells are completely hardened when zeros are stored in the cells and cannot flip from particle strikes at the sensitive cell nodes. These cells retain their data with leakage currents and positive feedback without a refresh cycle. Simulation results show that the proposed cells are working correctly during their configuration and idle cycles and that our cells have a lower soft error rate and leakage current in 22-nm as well as in 65-nm technologies.     

Sensitive Colorimetric Detection of Explosive 2,6‐Bis(picrylamino)pyridine after Preconcentration by Dispersive Liquid‐Liquid Microextraction

An experimental investigation for sensitive spectrophotometric detection of explosive, 2,6‐bis(picrylamino)pyridine (BPAP) using dispersive liquid‐liquid microextraction was carried out. Based on this procedure, which is a dispersive‐solvent‐free technique, the extractant is dispersed in the aqueous sample solution using Aliquat 336 (acted as disperser agent and carrier to extraction solvent) and monitored with microvolume UV/Vis spectrophotometer. The effect of different variables such as pH, concentration of sodium hydroxide, type and volume of extraction solvent, concentration of Aliquat 336 solution and coexisting substances were systematically investigated and optimized. Interference tests showed that the developed method has a good selectivity and could be used conveniently for determination of explosive analyte. The proposed method is capable of determining BPAP over a range of 2.0–150.0 ng mL⁻¹ with a limit of detection 1.0 ng mL⁻¹. Relative standard deviations (RSD) for 20.0 and 80.0 ng mL⁻¹ of BPAP were 3.3 and 1.2 % (n=10), respectively. This colorimetric method was applied to determine BPAP in different water and soil samples.     

Dual-Band Antenna Fed with CPW Technology Using Modified Mirrored L-Shaped Conductor-Back Plane

This paper describes a novel configuration of a CPW-fed printed monopole antenna that depicts dual-band operations of WLAN and X-bands. The proposed antenna consists of a simple rectangular-shaped patch as the main radiator, the modified mirrored L-shaped conductor back plane element, and the partial rectangular CPW-ground surface. Dual-band performances can be obtained by embedding and adjusting dimensions of strips on mirrored L-Shaped conductor back plane element. The impedance bandwidth with \(\hbox {s}_{11} < -10\)  dB is about 2.2 GHz (5.05–7.25 GHz) or 36 % for 5 GHz band and 5.2 GHz (7.6–12.8 GHz) or 51 % for X-band. The measured peak gains are about 1.8 dBi at WLAN-band and 4.3 dBi at X-band. The Experimental results indicate that the fabricated antenna with proper dimensions, good radiation characteristics, and reasonable measured gains can be a good candidate for various applications of the future multi-band wireless communication systems and mobile device.     

Efficient time gating in ultrafast optical TDM networks

Ultrafast optical communication is the backbone of high-speed global networking infrastructure. Optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) is a popular technique for embedding data from many simultaneous users on a single optical channel. This paper studies the optimal clock signal used in optical time gating to extract the data of the desired user in an OTDM network. We show that the pulse width of the clock signal can be optimized to achieve a minimum bit error rate (BER) in these networks. In this paper, we assume that the optical clock signal used for time gating has jitter, and there is therefore a delay variation between the clock and data signals. We model this delay as a zero mean Gaussian random variable. Using this model, an analytical BER expression is derived for systems with Gaussian pulses. In the numerical results, we find the optimal values of the clock pulse width by evaluating the BER versus the pulse width for different variances of the delay. Simulation results are also presented to evaluate the accuracy of the analytical expression.