Evaluation of wear of turning carbide inserts using neural networks

Recent trends, being towards mostly unmanned automated machining systems and consistent system operations, need reliable on-line monitoring processes. A proper on-line cutting tool condition monitoring system is essential for deciding when to change the tool. Many methods have been attempted in this connection.Recently, artificial neural networks have been tried for this purpose because of its inherent simplicity and reasonably quick data-processing capability. The present work uses the back propagation algorithm for training the neural network of 5-3-1 structure. The technique shows close matching of estimation of average flank wear and directly measured wear value. Thus the system developed demonstrates the possibility of successful tool wear monitoring on-line.     

Activation analysis of environmental pollutants

Activation analysis is a highly sensitive and specific technique for the detection of trace heavy metal pollutants in environmental materials. Comparison of natural “baseline” levels with elevated levels provides direct evidence of contamination. Neutron activation analysis (NAA) is used in this study to determine arsenic, zinc, cadmium, and mercury. Photo-nuclear activation analysis (PNAA) is used to determine lead in soils. Holland Marsh, a market-gardening area north of Toronto, has been studied as various herbicides and fungicides have been used there. The analyses of soil and vegetation samples, and of human head hair collected from residents are reported.     

Learning Read-Constant Polynomials of Constant Degree Modulo Composites

Boolean functions that have constant degree polynomial representation over a fixed finite ring form a natural and strict subclass of the complexity class ACC⁰. They are also precisely the functions computable efficiently by programs over fixed and finite nilpotent groups. This class is not known to be learnable in any reasonable learning model. In this paper, we provide a deterministic polynomial time algorithm for learning Boolean functions represented by polynomials of constant degree over arbitrary finite rings from membership queries, with the additional constraint that each variable in the target polynomial appears in a constant number of monomials. Our algorithm extends to superconstant but low degree polynomials and still runs in quasipolynomial time.     

Kinetics of the enzymatic degradation of poly(vinyl acetate) in solution

The enzymatic degradability of poly(vinyl acetate) was investigated in toluene solutions at various temperatures with hog pancreas lipase. The polymer degraded by specific scission to yield oligomeric products with a molecular weight of 700. Continuous distribution kinetics were used to determine the rate coefficients. The variation of the rate coefficients with the temperature indicated an optimum at 55°C. The p‐toluene sulfonic acid catalyzed degradation of poly(vinyl acetate) was also investigated. The degradation mechanism was random chain scission, and the energy of activation for degradation was determined from the variation of the rate coefficients with the temperature. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 89: 2579–2582, 2003     

Combustion of single char particles in a turbulent fluidized bed

The combustion of single bituminous char particles (4-12 mm diameter) was studied in a turbulent fluidized bed operated at 1098 K using air as the fluidising medium. Results indicated that particles burn with constant density following a shrinking sphere model. Burning rates are much higher than those observed in a bubbling fluidized bed. The rate of transfer of oxygen to the particle surface is also higher than that observed in bubbling beds. A model is proposed to calculate the Sherwood numbers of the burning carbon particles. Experimental values of the Sherwood numbers agree well with those predicted from the model.     

Thermal and surface characterization of polyurethane–urea clay nanocomposite coatings

This paper reports synthesis and characterization of polyurethane–urea (PU‐urea) and the nanocomposites derived from the PU‐urea with silicate clays. Organophilic montmorillonite cotreated by cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) was synthesized and used to prepare PU‐urea/montmorillonite nanocomposites coatings. PU‐ureas were prepared from polyethylene glycol (PEG), polypropylene glycol (PPG), trimethylol propane (TMP), and 4,4′‐diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI) by reacting excess diisocyanate with polyether glycols. The excess isocyanate of the prepolymers was cured with atmospheric moisture. The synthesized moisture cured PU‐urea and nanocomposites were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetric (DSC), and angle resolved X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (AR‐XPS). The thermal stability of the PU‐urea nanocomposites was higher relative to the mother PU‐urea films. DSC results showed a slight enhancement in the soft segment glass transition temperature after 3 wt % clay loading. The surface properties showed an enrichment of the soft segment toward the surface. An enhancement in the hard segment composition in the nanocomposite coatings has resulted in enhancing the phase mixing process. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 100: 2393–2401, 2006     

Supervised Self-Organization of Homogeneous Swarms Using Ergodic Projections of Markov Chains

This paper formulates a self-organization algorithm to address the problem of global behavior supervision in engineered swarms of arbitrarily large population sizes. The swarms considered in this paper are assumed to be homogeneous collections of independent identical finite-state agents, each of which is modeled by an irreducible finite Markov chain. The proposed algorithm computes the necessary perturbations in the local agents' behavior, which guarantees convergence to the desired observed state of the swarm. The ergodicity property of the swarm, which is induced as a result of the irreducibility of the agent models, implies that while the local behavior of the agents converges to the desired behavior only in the time average, the overall swarm behavior converges to the specification and stays there at all times. A simulation example illustrates the underlying concept.     

Query-oriented topical influential users detection for top-k trending topics in twitter

Applied Intelligence - Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become inevitable for any new methodology both for viral promoting applications and instructing the creation of inciting information and...     

Effect of undulation on SH-wave propagation in corrugated magneto-elastic transversely isotropic layer

This article delves to study the effect of corrugated boundary surfaces on the propagation of horizontally-polarized shear waves (SH-waves) in a magnetoelastic transversely isotropic layer under a hydrostatic state of stress lying over an elastic half-space under gravity. A dispersion equation has been derived in closed-form and is found to be in good agreement to the classical Love-wave equation. The effect of magnetoelasticity, hydrostatic state of stress, gravity, corrugation, position parameter, and undulation on the phase velocity of the SH-wave has been identified. Numerical computation along with graphical demonstration has been carried out for cadmium, magnesium, and zinc materials of hexagonal symmetry to highlight some significant facts.