An optimization strategy based on a metamodel applied for the prediction of the initial blank shape in a deep drawing process

The transformation of the sheet into a product without failure and excess of material in a deep drawing operation means that the initial blanks should be correctly designed. Therefore, the initial blank design is a critical step in deep drawing design procedure. Consequently, an easy approach for engineers in predicting the initial blank shape is necessary to reduce wastage in material and to overcome the large time consumed in the classical approaches. Thus, the aim of the present investigation is to propose an automatic procedure for the quick sheet metal forming optimization. In fact, a metamodel will be build based on artificial neural networks which will be coupled then with an optimization procedure in order to predict the initial blank shape in a rectangular cup deep drawing operation. The metamodel is built from the finite element simulations using ABAQUS commercial code. This procedure allows a significant reduce of the CPU time compared to classical optimization one. The results show that the desired shape is in good agreement with the one calculated using the optimized blank shape.     

Traction–separation laws for progressive failure of bonded scarf repair of composite panel

Repair of composites has become of considerable importance recently as modern commercial airliners employ much more composites in their airframes then previously. Major maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) centers must contend with issues of damage tolerance, efficiency, integrity and cost of repairs. Computational methods have been developed to sufficiently sophisticated levels to aid in the design, evaluation and optimization of proposed repair schemes before they are implemented, potentially saving time and cost. In this paper, parametric studies on progressive failure analysis of a bonded scarf repair of a composite panel was performed. The study finds that finite element models with an appropriate material property degradation scheme using the micromechanics of failure criterion are able to predict the failure load of undamaged and damaged specimen. Results of the parametric studies on adhesive properties suggest that the failure stress of a repaired composite panel is more sensitive to the strength of the cohesive elements than to its toughness when a linear or trapezoidal softening traction–separation law is used, but the influence of adhesive strength is not significant when exponential softening traction–separation law is used.     

A deep stacked wavelet auto-encoders to supervised feature extraction to pattern classification

The major issue in pattern classification is in the extraction of features in the training phase. The focus of this work is on combining the ability of wavelet networks and the deep learning techniques to propose a new supervised feature extraction method to pattern classification. This new approach allows the classification of all classes of the dataset by the reconstruction of a Deep Stacked wavelet Auto-Encoder. This Network is obtained after a series of wavelet Auto-Encoders followed by a Softmax classifier at the last layer. Finally, a fine-tuning is applied for the improvement of our result using a back propagation algorithm. Our approach is tested with different image datasets which are the COIL-100, the APTI and the ImageNet datasets and is also tested with two other audio corpuses that contain Arabic words and French words. The experimental test demonstrates the efficiency of our network for image and audio classification compared to other methods.     

TCP flow control technique for an interworking interface: hardware implementation

Current TCP flow control depends on packet losses to find the workload that a network can support. A variety of situations, including lossy wireless networks, asymmetric networks and web traffic workload, violates many of the assumptions made by TCP, causing degraded end-to-end performances. To improve the performance of TCP over heterogeneous networks (Ethernet and ATM interconnection), we propose a new technique, which we call Vegas–Snoop+, based on Vegas and Snoop protocols. Two modified service elements take part on the Vegas–Snoop+ technique. First, Vegas service element manages the connection parameters to achieve better throughput. Second, Snoop service element isolates the Ethernet senders from the characteristics of the ATM link. The objective in this paper is to win from advantages of Vegas and Snoop protocols, as well as to search an interconnection interface for networks interoperability. Actually, the development of two new integrated circuits (the BCM5680 (switch) and the BCM5401 (PHY)) orientate researchers to implement, at higher layer of the OSI model, flow control mechanisms to ensure reliability. Vegas–Snoop+ is an implementation of TCP, which gives in this way a solution for traffic management and congestion control improving good throughput with more reliability.     

Adsorption characteristics of a fully exchanged potassium chabazite zeolite prepared from decomposition of zeolite Y

In this work a comprehensive study was undertaken to characterize the porous nature of a fully exchanged potassium chabazite zeolite (KCHA) and evaluate its adsorption properties under different conditions. A synthetic chabazite was prepared from the decomposition of zeolite Y and ion-exchanged to produce a fully exchanged potassium chabazite with Si/Al ratio of 2.4. In addition, sodium chabazite (NaCHA) and lithium chabazite (LiCHA) were synthesized for comparison purposes. Equilibrium isotherms for N₂ and CO₂ were measured at 273 K for further characterization. Our results show that the porous structure characterization by N₂ at 77 K and Ar at 87 K following the standard methods of BET for surface area, t-plot, DR and DFT for pore size distribution and volume reveal pore blockage phenomenon with substantially diminished adsorption capacities. However, CO₂ adsorption capacity on KCHA at 273 K reveals magnitudes of 70.1% and 78.7% of those on LiCHA and NaCHA, and a DFT pore volume of 0.214 cm³ g^?1. The surface area of KCHA calculated from the CO₂ isotherm using the Tóth model in its revised form demonstrates a surface area of 584.4 m² g^?1. This is in contrast to 17.82 and 13.48 m² g^?1 obtained from the BET model using N₂ and Ar at 77 and 87 K, respectively. It was concluded that the reliability of standard methods (viz. BET using N₂ at 77 K) for characterizing these particular porous solids is questionable under certain circumstances leading to misevaluation of adsorbent properties.     

A Secure Hardware Implementation for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm

Since the end of the 1990s, cryptosystems implemented on smart cards have had to deal with two main categories of attacks: side-channel attacks and fault injection attacks. Countermeasures have been developed and validated against these two types of attacks, taking into account a well-defined attacker model. This work focuses on small vulnerabilities and countermeasures related to the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) algorithm. The work done in this paper focuses on protecting the ECDSA algorithm against fault-injection attacks. More precisely, we are interested in the countermeasures of scalar multiplication in the body of the elliptic curves to protect against attacks concerning only a few bits of secret may be sufficient to recover the private key. ECDSA can be implemented in different ways, in software or via dedicated hardware or a mix of both. Many different architectures are therefore possible to implement an ECDSA-based system. For this reason, this work focuses mainly on the hardware implementation of the digital signature ECDSA. In addition, the proposed ECDSA architecture with and without fault detection for the scalar multiplication have been implemented on Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) platform (Virtex-5). Our implementation results have been compared and discussed. Our area, frequency, area overhead and frequency degradation have been compared and it is shown that the proposed architecture of ECDSA with fault detection for the scalar multiplication allows a trade-off between the hardware overhead and the security of the ECDSA.     

Almost Sure Practical Exponential Stability of Nonlinear Disturbed Stochastic Systems with Guaranteed Decay Rate

In this paper, we consider nonlinear stochastic differential equations driven by multiplicative noises and affected by exogenous disturbances. Sufficient conditions are investigated for almost sure practical exponential stability of the non trivial solutions of these equations. A lower bound of the decay rate of these solutions is guaranteed.     

Aqueous hydrazine borane N2H4BH3 and nickel-based catalyst: An effective couple for the release of hydrogen in near-ambient conditions

Nickel-based bimetallic catalysts were screened using the sodium borohydride NaBH₄ hydrolysis and the aqueous hydrazine borane N₂H₄BH₃ dehydrogenation. A total of 22 bimetallic catalysts were synthesized according to an easy process while focusing on metals like Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Rh, Pd, Ag, Ir, Pt and Au. In the end, the bimetallic candidate Ni_87.5Pt_12.5 showed to be the most active and the most selective for the dehydrogenation of N₂H₄BH₃. At 70?°C, it is able to decompose N₂H₄BH₃ into 5.8 equivalents of H₂+N₂ in less than 12?min such as: N₂H₄BH₃?+?3H₂O?→?0.95 N₂?+?0.1 NH₃?+?B(OH)₃?+?4.85H₂. Durability and stability tests were also performed. In our conditions, Ni_87.5Pt_12.5 was found to suffer from small loss of performance because of an electronic evolution of the catalytic surface leading to modified sorption properties of the catalytic sites. Our main results are reported and discussed herein.     

Electrochemical oxidation of 1,3,5-trimethoxybenzene in aqueous solutions at gold oxide and lead dioxide electrodes

A kinetic study of the electrochemical oxidation of 1,3,5-trimethoxybenzene (TMB) by direct electron transfer at treated gold disk was combined with results of electrolysis in order to produce total degradation into CO₂ and H₂O at Ta/PbO₂ anode. The oxidation of TMB at gold electrode was studied by cyclic voltammetry. The cyclic voltammogram shows one irreversible anodic peak (I) corresponding to the oxidation of adsorbed TMB molecules. The proposed mechanism is based on the hypothesis of two-electron oxidation of TMB molecule leading, via intermediate of a radical cation, to the formation of the 2,4,6-trimethoxyphenol (TMP) and an adsorbed polymeric film. The TMP molecule undergoes a rapid oxidation leading to the formation of 2,6-dimethoxy-p-benzoquinone (DMBQ) as a major product. Degradation of TMB was studied by galvanostatic electrolysis using Ta/PbO₂ anode. The influence of initial TMB concentration and applied current density was investigated. Measurement of total organic carbon (TOC) and analysis by HPLC were used to follow this degradation. The experimental data indicated that the removal of TMB follows a pseudo first-order kinetic. The efficiency of the electrochemical process increases at lower current density and higher TMB initial concentration while it decreases with the TOC removal progress.     

Modified microwave method for the synthesis of visible light-responsive TiO2/MWCNTs nanocatalysts

Recently, TiO₂/multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) hybrid nanocatalysts have been a subject of high interest due to their excellent structures, large surface areas and peculiar optical properties, which enhance their photocatalytic performance. In this work, a modified microwave technique was used to rapidly synthesise a TiO₂/MWCNT nanocatalyst with a large surface area. X-ray powder diffraction, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller measurements were used to characterise the structure, morphology and the surface area of the sample. The photocatalytic activity of the hybrid nanocatalysts was evaluated through a comparison of the degradation of methylene blue dye under irradiation with ultraviolet and visible light. The results showed that the TiO₂/MWCNT hybrid nanocatalysts degraded 34.9% of the methylene blue (MB) under irradiation with ultraviolet light, whereas 96.3% of the MB was degraded under irradiation with visible light.