Ultra-high-Q optical filter based on photonic crystal ring resonator

In this study, a photonic crystal ring resonator with a triangular lattice is used to design an optical filter. The proposed structure is able to filter the central wavelength of 1548 nm with a transmission coefficient of over 95%. Moreover, this structure has an ultra-high-quality factor (Q) of about 1290. With altering the features of the structure including the refractive index, the lattice constant and the radius of the rods in the resonator core, their effects on the central wavelength of the filter, transmission coefficient, quality factor and bandwidth are investigated. The plane wave expansion and finite-difference time-domain methods are used to extract photonic band gap and investigate the photonic behavior of the proposed structure, respectively.     

Performance improvement for recommender systems using ontology

Recommender systems have emerged in the e-commerce domain and have been developed to actively recommend appropriate items to online users. The use of recently developed hybrid recommendation systems has helped overcome the main drawbacks of Content-Based Filtering (CBF) and Collaborative Filtering (CF). In hybrid recommendation systems that combine CF and CBF, the CF part uses two methods, including memory- and model-based approaches. Both approaches have some advantages and disadvantages for item recommendation. Sparsity has been one of the main difficulties associated with these approaches, whereas recommendation with high accuracy has been one of the important advantages of the memory-based approach. However, this approach is not scalable for current recommendation systems as their databases include huge numbers of items and users. In contrast, the model-based approach generates recommendations with low accuracy but is scalable for large databases in e-commerce recommender systems. Accordingly, to address this problem and take advantage of both approaches, in this work, we propose a new hybrid recommendation method and evaluate it using a real-world dataset. The aim is to improve efficiency and accuracy by designing a heuristic hybrid recommender method that combines memory-based and model-based approaches. Specifically, we use ontology in the CF part and improve ontology structure by eliminating uniformity of edges of the hierarchical relation between concepts (IS-A relation) in item ontology in the CBF part. Ontology structure is considered for improving accuracy; according to this, a new method for measuring semantic similarity that is more accurate than the traditional methods is presented. This new method can enhance the accuracy of CF and CBF in our method. In addition, the number of searches required to find similar clusters and neighbor users of the target user is decreased significantly using ontology, enhanced clustering and the new proposed algorithm. We evaluate the proposed method using a real-world dataset. The experimental results show that our method is more scalable and accurate than the benchmark k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) and model-based recommendation methods.     

Efficient cluster head selection using Naïve Bayes classifier for wireless sensor networks

Data mining and approaches based on it have always been of approaches that have been considered in solving problems in the field of computer, but on some issues, this approach has been neglected. The area of wireless sensor networks and specifically the issue of optimal determining of the cluster head node are of these issues. To solve the problem of optimal determining of the cluster head node, Naïve Bayes that is the subset of data mining techniques is used in this paper. The results obtained after simulation of the presented algorithm show that the efficiency of this algorithm is significantly higher compared with other approaches that have so far been used to solve this problem, and thus it can be said that using this algorithm will lead to improved outcomes of solving this problem.     

Investigation of the effect of temperature and layup on the press forming of polyvinyl chloride-based composite laminates and fiber metal laminates

Semi-crystalline thermoplastic-based composite laminates and fiber metal laminates have a narrow forming temperature window, which limits formability of these products. The intention of this study was investigation of non-melting amorphous polyvinyl chloride as a proper matrix to increase the formability and forming temperature window of these products. For this, [45/?45] and [0/90] layups of polyvinyl chloride-based composite laminates and fiber metal laminates were produced using the film-stacking procedure and later press formed into channel sections at six temperatures in the range of 80 to 200 °C. The effects of the layups and forming temperatures on the forming loads and spring back of the formed profiles were measured, and their effects on the fiber buckling, wrinkling, and delamination of the profiles were evaluated using optical microscope images. The effects of layups and forming temperatures on the deformation mechanisms were also analyzed using the grid strain analysis method. Of the fiber metal laminates, 160 °C was found as the minimum forming temperature, and for the composite laminates, 120 and 160 °C were found as the minimum proper forming temperatures of [45/?45] and [0/90] layups, respectively. Finally, the forming temperature windows and formability of polyvinyl chloride matrix composite laminates and fiber metal laminates were found higher than semi-crystalline matrices.     

Study of active millimeter-wave image speckle reduction by Hadamard phase pattern illumination

Active millimeter-wave images typically exhibit characteristic speckle noise, due to the coherence of artificial millimeter-wave sources. We study the Hadamard speckle contrast reduction (SCR) technique, which has been successfully used in laser projection systems, in the context of millimeter-wave imaging. We show the impact of Hadamard pattern order and size and of image and pattern resolution on speckle reduction efficiency. Practical limitations of Hadamard pattern implementations and their effect on speckle reduction efficiency are also discussed.     

Flexural design curves of steel plate I-girders at elevated temperatures: I-girders with yield or local buckling failure mode

The present study was undertaken to characterize the structural behavior and ultimate flexural strength of steel plate I-girders under pure flexural moment at elevated temperatures. A novel design procedure along with flexural design curves was proposed to predict the flexural behavior of the I-girders and estimate corresponding ultimate flexural strengths. The main strategy of the procedure is to find an ambient-temperature equivalent of the I-girder by quantifying and formulating the effects of elevated temperatures. The proposed procedure comprises overall and partial phases. The former phase deals with the determination of equivalent laterally unbraced length, and the latter phase addresses the equivalent web and compression flange slenderness parameters. The calibration factor was defined to adapt the design curves to the effects of high compression flange slenderness parameters and residual stress at elevated temperatures. To generate comparative results, a numerical study was conducted by analyzing 216 finite element (FE) models. Fifty-four out of 216 FE models with different cross-sectional elements were dedicated to the I-girders fail by yield or local buckling failure mode, the results of which are reported in the present paper. Data fitting analysis was carried out to capture the variation of calibration factor with respect to compression flange slenderness parameters. By calibrating the proposed design procedure, the results were converged and, therefore, good conformity was reached between the numerical and parametric results.     

Effect of hydrogen combustion reaction on the dehydrogenation of ethane in a fixed-bed catalytic membrane reactor

A two-dimensional non-isothermal mathematical model has been developed for the ethane dehydrogenation reaction in a fixed-bed catalytic membrane reactor. Since ethane dehydrogenation is an equilibrium reaction, removal of produced hydrogen by the membrane shifts the thermodynamic equilibrium to ethylene production. For further displacement of the dehydrogenation reaction, oxidative dehydrogenation method has been used. Since ethane dehydrogenation is an endothermic reaction, the energy produced by the oxidative dehydrogena-tion method is consumed by the dehydrogenation reaction. The results show that the oxidative dehydrogenation method generated a substantial improvement in the reactor performance in terms of high conversions and significant energy saving. It was also established that the sweep gas velocity in the shell side of the reactor is one of the most important factors in the effectiveness of the reactor.