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Appl. Sci., Volume 9, Issue 9 (May-1 2019) – 244 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): By using metallurgical slag from an electric arc furnace as an inventory material in thermal energy storage for concentrated solar power plants, it is possible to make a significant step forward in two transformation processes: energy and raw materials. In this paper, design studies of slag-based thermal energy storage are carried out. Different slag-specific design concepts are developed, calculated, and evaluated by a method based on established management tools. Finally, concepts for further investigations are defined. The highest aptitude value and the lowest risk value are achieved by the vertical storage design with axial flow direction. View this paper.
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17 pages, 5304 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of Structural and Mechanical Properties of Porous Artificial Bone Scaffolds Fabricated via Advanced TBA-Based Freeze-Gel Casting Technique
by Tae-Rim Kim, Min-Su Kim, Tae Sik Goh, Jung Sub Lee, Yun Hak Kim, Seog-Young Yoon and Chi-Seung Lee
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1965; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091965 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 49 | Viewed by 5722
Abstract
Porous hydroxyapatite (HA) artificial bone scaffolds were prepared via the freeze-gel casting process in order to improve their mechanical strengths. As a porogen, various volumes of poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) powders were added to obtain high porosity, such as in cancellous bone. After [...] Read more.
Porous hydroxyapatite (HA) artificial bone scaffolds were prepared via the freeze-gel casting process in order to improve their mechanical strengths. As a porogen, various volumes of poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) powders were added to obtain high porosity, such as in cancellous bone. After fabrication, the porous and mechanical properties of the scaffolds were examined. The HA60 scaffold, with a porosity over 80%, had proper compressive strength and modulus and satisfied the range of properties of cancellous bone. Moreover, it was found that the investigated mechanical properties were affected by the scaffolds’ porosity. However, a section was found where the compressive strength was high despite the increase in the porosity. Specifically, HA30 had a porosity of 62.9% and a compressive strength of 1.73 MPa, whereas the values for HA60 were 81.9% and 3.23 MPa, respectively. The results indicate that there are factors that can preserve the mechanical properties even if the porosity of the scaffold increases. Therefore, in this study, various parameters affecting the porous and mechanical properties of the scaffolds during the manufacturing process were analyzed. It is expected that the improvement in the mechanical properties of the artificial bone scaffold having a high porosity can be applied to tissue engineering. Full article
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13 pages, 4547 KiB  
Article
Composition and Morphology Characteristics of Magnetic Fractions of Coal Fly Ash Wastes Processed in High-Temperature Exposure in Thermal Power Plants
by Dinh-Hieu Vu, Hoang-Bac Bui, Bahareh Kalantar, Xuan-Nam Bui, Dinh-An Nguyen, Qui-Thao Le, Ngoc-Hoan Do and Hoang Nguyen
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1964; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091964 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4835
Abstract
Coal-fired power stations are one of the primary sources of power generation in the world. This will produce considerable amounts of fly ash from these power stations each year. To highlight the potential environmental hazards of these materials, this study is carried out [...] Read more.
Coal-fired power stations are one of the primary sources of power generation in the world. This will produce considerable amounts of fly ash from these power stations each year. To highlight the potential environmental hazards of these materials, this study is carried out to evaluate the characterization of fly ashes produced in thermal power plants in northern Vietnam. Fly ash was firstly fractionated according to size, and the fractions were characterized. Then, each of these fractions was analyzed with regard to their mineralogical features, morphological and physicochemical properties. The analytical results indicate a striking difference in terms of the characteristics of particles. It was found that magnetic fractions are composed of magnetite hematite and, to a lower rate, mullite, and quartz. Chemical analyses indicate that the non-magnetic components mainly consist of quartz and mullite as their primary mineral phases. As the main conclusion of this research, it is found that the magnetic and non-magnetic components differ in terms of shape, carbon content and mineralogical composition. In addition, it was found that magnetic components can be characterized as more spheroidal components compared to non-magnetic ones. This comprehensive characterization not only offers a certain guideline regarding the uses of different ash fractions but it will also provide valuable information on this common combustion process. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water-Energy-Environment Nexus (WEEN-2019))
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18 pages, 3182 KiB  
Article
Impact of Subharmonic and Aperiodic Laryngeal Dynamics on the Phonatory Process Analyzed in Ex Vivo Rabbit Models
by Fabian Thornton, Michael Döllinger, Stefan Kniesburges, David Berry, Christoph Alexiou and Anne Schützenberger
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1963; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091963 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 6749
Abstract
Normal voice is characterized by periodic oscillations of the vocal folds. On the other hand, disordered voice dynamics (e.g., subharmonic and aperiodic oscillations) are often associated with voice pathologies and dysphonia. Unfortunately, not all investigations may be conducted on human subjects; hence animal [...] Read more.
Normal voice is characterized by periodic oscillations of the vocal folds. On the other hand, disordered voice dynamics (e.g., subharmonic and aperiodic oscillations) are often associated with voice pathologies and dysphonia. Unfortunately, not all investigations may be conducted on human subjects; hence animal laryngeal studies have been performed for many years to better understand human phonation. The rabbit larynx has been shown to be a potential model of the human larynx. Despite this fact, only a few studies regarding the phonatory parameters of rabbit larynges have been performed. Further, to the best of our knowledge, no ex vivo study has systematically investigated phonatory parameters from high-speed, audio and subglottal pressure data with irregular oscillations. To remedy this, the present study analyzes experiments with sustained phonation in 11 ex vivo rabbit larynges for 51 conditions of disordered vocal fold dynamics. (1) The results of this study support previous findings on non-disordered data, that the stronger the glottal closure insufficiency is during phonation, the worse the phonatory characteristics are; (2) aperiodic oscillations showed worse phonatory results than subharmonic oscillations; (3) in the presence of both types of irregular vibrations, the voice quality (i.e., cepstral peak prominence) of the audio and subglottal signal greatly deteriorated compared to normal/periodic vibrations. In summary, our results suggest that the presence of both types of irregular vibration have a major impact on voice quality and should be considered along with glottal closure measures in medical diagnosis and treatment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computational Methods and Engineering Solutions to Voice)
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12 pages, 4762 KiB  
Article
Preparation and Characterization of High Thermal Conductivity and Low CTE Polyimide Composite Reinforced with Diamond Nanoparticles/SiC Whiskers for 3D IC Interposer RDL Dielectric
by Jiangbo Luo, Yongpeng Wu, Yunna Sun, Guilian Wang, Yanmei Liu, Xiaolin Zhao and Guifu Ding
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1962; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091962 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 5728
Abstract
Low thermal conductivity and large coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) are the most serious disadvantages of the polymer dielectric for the interposer redistribution layer (RDL). In this paper, a high thermal conductivity and low CTE composite with polyimide (PI) matrix and diamond nanoparticles/SiC [...] Read more.
Low thermal conductivity and large coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) are the most serious disadvantages of the polymer dielectric for the interposer redistribution layer (RDL). In this paper, a high thermal conductivity and low CTE composite with polyimide (PI) matrix and diamond nanoparticles/SiC whiskers reinforcement is proposed. The preparation and characterization of the composite film are presented and the effects of the composite on the improvement of the interposer properties are investigated. With 10 wt% diamond-nanoparticles and 7 wt% SiC-whiskers, the composite film has a thermal conductivity of 1.63 W/m·K and a CTE of 16.7 ppm/°C (compared with 0.19 W/m·K and 55.6 ppm/°C of the PI). Interposers with PI RDL dielectric and the composite RDL dielectric are fabricated, respectively. The simulation result shows that the composite dielectric can significantly enhance the properties of the interposer compared with the PI dielectric. The thermal resistance of the interposer decreases from 8.04 °C/W to 1.15 °C/W. The maximum von Mises stress decreases from 72.8 MPa to 16.9 MPa and the warpage decreases from 1.13 μm to 0.15 μm. Thermal distribution tests are performed as well. The results show that the maximum temperature of the interposer decreases from 64 °C to 45.1 °C. The composite developed in this study can reduce the temperature and enhance the reliability of the chips with interposers. It has the potential to expand the application of the interposers in high thermal density integration and high reliability devices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Polyimide Films: Preparation, Properties and Applications)
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12 pages, 835 KiB  
Article
Effects of Hepatic Steatosis on Non-Invasive Liver Fibrosis Measurements Between Hepatitis B and Other Etiologies
by Cheng-Jen Chen, Pei-Kwei Tsay, Shiu-Feng Huang, Po-Hsiang Tsui, Wan-Ting Yu, Tse-Hwa Hsu, Jennifer Tai and Dar-In Tai
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1961; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091961 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3259
Abstract
Fibrosis-4 (FIB4), transient elastography (TE), and acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) are popular modalities to assess liver fibrosis. Their cutoff values for degrees of fibrosis vary between studies. The influence of hepatic steatosis on fibrosis measurements for different etiologies was evaluated. Data from [...] Read more.
Fibrosis-4 (FIB4), transient elastography (TE), and acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) are popular modalities to assess liver fibrosis. Their cutoff values for degrees of fibrosis vary between studies. The influence of hepatic steatosis on fibrosis measurements for different etiologies was evaluated. Data from a consecutive series of patients who received fibrosis measurement were included for the training group. An additional series with histology served as the validation group. A standardized protocol was performed for both TE and ARFI, mostly by a single technician. Patients with alcoholism, autoimmune disease, active inflammation, or who were receiving therapy were excluded. The training group included 215 patients and the validation group included 221. The correlation of liver stiffness between TE and ARFI was good (R2 linear = 0.798; p < 0.001). Different correlations between ARFI and TE were noted between high and low control attenuation parameter (CAP) values (cutoff: 290 dB/m), especially in the non-hepatitis B subgroups. Relatively lower FIB4 and TE values were seen in the high CAP versus low CAP in patients with histology-proven non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and chronic hepatitis C. FIB4 cutoff values were >25% lower among F2-F4 stages and the TE cutoff value for F4 was 8.5% lower in the high versus low CAP group. Such findings were not observed in chronic hepatitis B. Different fibrogenesis mechanisms between hepatitis B and non-B are discussed. We conclude that hepatic steatosis significantly impacts FIB4 and TE fibrosis measurements in non-hepatitis B-related liver diseases. Fibrosis grade should be interpreted with caution in severe steatosis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasound Technology for Clinical Diagnosis and Decisions Making)
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27 pages, 8081 KiB  
Review
GIS-Based Solar Radiation Mapping, Site Evaluation, and Potential Assessment: A Review
by Yosoon Choi, Jangwon Suh and Sung-Min Kim
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1960; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091960 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 70 | Viewed by 17007
Abstract
In this study, geographic information system (GIS)-based methods and their applications in solar power system planning and design were reviewed. Three types of GIS-based studies, including those on solar radiation mapping, site evaluation, and potential assessment, were considered to elucidate the role of [...] Read more.
In this study, geographic information system (GIS)-based methods and their applications in solar power system planning and design were reviewed. Three types of GIS-based studies, including those on solar radiation mapping, site evaluation, and potential assessment, were considered to elucidate the role of GISs as problem-solving tools in relation to photovoltaic and concentrated solar power systems for the conversion of solar energy into electricity. The review was performed by classifying previous GIS-based studies into several subtopics according to the complexity of the employed GIS-based methods, the type of solar power conversion technology, or the scale of the study area. Because GISs are appropriate for handling geospatial data related to solar resource and site suitability conditions on various scales, the applications of GIS-based methods in solar power system planning and design could be expanded further. Full article
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14 pages, 2191 KiB  
Article
Nondestructive Determination and Visualization of Quality Attributes in Fresh and Dry Chrysanthemum morifolium Using Near-Infrared Hyperspectral Imaging
by Juan He, Susu Zhu, Bingquan Chu, Xiulin Bai, Qinlin Xiao, Chu Zhang and Jinyan Gong
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1959; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091959 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2727
Abstract
Rapid and nondestructive determination of quality attributes in fresh and dry Chrysanthemum morifolium is of great importance for quality sorting and monitoring during harvest and trade. Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging covering the spectral range of 874–1734 nm was used to detect chlorogenic acid, luteolin-7- [...] Read more.
Rapid and nondestructive determination of quality attributes in fresh and dry Chrysanthemum morifolium is of great importance for quality sorting and monitoring during harvest and trade. Near-infrared hyperspectral imaging covering the spectral range of 874–1734 nm was used to detect chlorogenic acid, luteolin-7-O-glucoside, and 3,5-O-dicaffeoylquinic acid content in Chrysanthemum morifolium. Fresh and dry Chrysanthemum morifolium flowers were studied for harvest and trade. Pixelwise spectra were preprocessed by wavelet transform (WT) and area normalization, and calculated as average spectrum. Successive projections algorithm (SPA) was used to select optimal wavelengths. Partial least squares (PLS), extreme learning machine (ELM), and least-squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) were used to build calibration models based on full spectra and optimal wavelengths. Calibration models of fresh and dry flowers obtained good results. Calibration models for chlorogenic acid in fresh flowers obtained best performances, with coefficient of determination (R2) over 0.85 and residual predictive deviation (RPD) over 2.50. Visualization maps of chlorogenic acid, luteolin-7-O-glucoside, and 3,5-O-dicaffeoylquinic acid in single fresh and dry flowers were obtained. The overall results showed that hyperspectral imaging was feasible to determine chlorogenic acid, luteolin-7-O-glucoside, and 3,5-O-dicaffeoylquinic acid. Much more work should be done in the future to improve the prediction performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Hyperspectral Imaging for Food and Agriculture II)
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12 pages, 3525 KiB  
Article
Decolorization of Orange-G Aqueous Solutions over C60/MCM-41 Photocatalysts
by John Kyriakopoulos, Eleana Kordouli, Kyriakos Bourikas, Christos Kordulis and Alexis Lycourghiotis
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1958; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091958 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3528
Abstract
The majority of the photocatalysts studied for azo-dye degradation are based on semiconductor materials. Studies reported on non-semiconducting materials are very scarce. In the present work, we studied the fullerene (C60) ability to accelerate photodegradation of the dye’s azo bond in [...] Read more.
The majority of the photocatalysts studied for azo-dye degradation are based on semiconductor materials. Studies reported on non-semiconducting materials are very scarce. In the present work, we studied the fullerene (C60) ability to accelerate photodegradation of the dye’s azo bond in the presence of ascorbic acid. A series of C60 supported on ordered mesoporous silica (MCM-41) catalysts, containing 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 wt % of fullerene C60, was studied using Orange G (OG) as representative azo-dye. This study showed that partial decolorization is achieved in the dark by simple adsorption of the dye on the bare surface of the carrier. The extent of decolorization increases with the irradiation of the suspension due to photocatalytic degradation of the azo-bond. This is maximized over the sample containing 3 wt % of C60 and it has been attributed to the best combination of the extent of the dye adsorption with the high intrinsic photocatalytic activity of small C60 clusters predominated in this sample. This catalyst proved to be quite stable upon five subsequent photocatalytic cycles, losing less than 5% of its initial activity. No degradation of OG takes place in the absence of ascorbic acid. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Chemical and Molecular Sciences)
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13 pages, 726 KiB  
Article
Long-Term Effects of a Soft Robotic Suit on Gait Characteristics in Healthy Elderly Persons
by Shanhai Jin, Xiaogang Xiong, Dejin Zhao, Changfu Jin and Motoji Yamamoto
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1957; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091957 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3778
Abstract
As a walking assistive device for elderly persons, one of the major aims should be to improve and rehabilitate gait characteristics after long-term repeated use of the device. However, most of the existing research on walking assistive devices only emphasize their immediate effects, [...] Read more.
As a walking assistive device for elderly persons, one of the major aims should be to improve and rehabilitate gait characteristics after long-term repeated use of the device. However, most of the existing research on walking assistive devices only emphasize their immediate effects, and there is limited research indicating the long-term effects. To address this gap, this paper experimentally validates the effects of our soft wearable robotic suit on gait characteristics of elderly persons after repeated use of the device for six weeks. Experimental results on four elderly subjects (age = 74.8 ± 5.0 year) show that, after six weeks of gait rehabilitation training by the robotic suit, the gait characteristics of the subjects were improved, leading to an increased walk ratio with an average of 9.8% compared with the initial state. The results of this research will benefit the potential use of the robotic suit in gait training and rehabilitation for elderly persons and also will be useful to the establishment of practical guidelines that maximize the training and rehabilitation effectiveness of the robotic suit. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Human Health Engineering)
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15 pages, 3114 KiB  
Article
Regularized Urdu Speech Recognition with Semi-Supervised Deep Learning
by Mohammad Ali Humayun, Ibrahim A. Hameed, Syed Muslim Shah, Sohaib Hassan Khan, Irfan Zafar, Saad Bin Ahmed and Junaid Shuja
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1956; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091956 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 4953
Abstract
Automatic Speech Recognition, (ASR) has achieved the best results for English, with end-to-end neural network based supervised models. These supervised models need huge amounts of labeled speech data for good generalization, which can be quite a challenge to obtain for low-resource languages like [...] Read more.
Automatic Speech Recognition, (ASR) has achieved the best results for English, with end-to-end neural network based supervised models. These supervised models need huge amounts of labeled speech data for good generalization, which can be quite a challenge to obtain for low-resource languages like Urdu. Most models proposed for Urdu ASR are based on Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). This paper proposes an end-to-end neural network model, for Urdu ASR, regularized with dropout, ensemble averaging and Maxout units. Dropout and ensembles are averaging techniques over multiple neural network models while Maxout are units in a neural network which adapt their activation functions. Due to limited labeled data, Semi Supervised Learning (SSL) techniques are also incorporated to improve model generalization. Speech features are transformed into a lower dimensional manifold using an unsupervised dimensionality-reduction technique called Locally Linear Embedding (LLE). Transformed data along with higher dimensional features is used to train neural networks. The proposed model also utilizes label propagation-based self-training of initially trained models and achieves a Word Error Rate (WER) of 4% less than that reported as the benchmark on the same Urdu corpus using HMM. The decrease in WER after incorporating SSL is more significant with an increased validation data size. Full article
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16 pages, 834 KiB  
Article
Heated Metal Mark Attribute Recognition Based on Compressed CNNs Model
by He Yin, Keming Mao, Jianzhe Zhao, Huidong Chang, Dazhi E and Zhenhua Tan
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1955; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091955 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2177
Abstract
This study considered heated metal mark attribute recognition based on compressed convolutional neural networks (CNNs) models. Based on our previous works, the heated metal mark image benchmark dataset was further expanded. State-of-the-art lightweight CNNs models were selected. Technologies of pruning, compressing, weight quantization [...] Read more.
This study considered heated metal mark attribute recognition based on compressed convolutional neural networks (CNNs) models. Based on our previous works, the heated metal mark image benchmark dataset was further expanded. State-of-the-art lightweight CNNs models were selected. Technologies of pruning, compressing, weight quantization were introduced and analyzed. Then, a multi-label model training method was devised. Moreover, the proposed models were deployed on Android devices. Finally, comprehensive experiments were evaluated. The results show that, with the fine-tuned compressed CNNs model, the recognition rate of attributes meta type, heating mode, heating temperature, heating duration, cooling mode, placing duration and relative humidity were 0.803, 0.837, 0.825, 0.812, 0.883, 0.817 and 0.894, respectively. The best model obtained an overall performance of 0.823. Comparing with traditional CNNs, the adopted compressed multi-label model greatly improved the training efficiency and reduced the space occupation, with a relatively small decrease in recognition accuracy. The running time on Android devices was acceptable. It is shown that the proposed model is applicable for real time application and is convenient to implement on mobile or embedded devices scenarios. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Deep Learning)
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17 pages, 6204 KiB  
Article
A Modified Leakage Localization Method Using Multilayer Perceptron Neural Networks in a Pressurized Gas Pipe
by Qi Wu and Chang-Myung Lee
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1954; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091954 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3613
Abstract
Leak detection and location in a gas distribution network are significant issues. The acoustic emission (AE) technique can be used to locate a pipeline leak. The time delay between two sensor signals can be determined by the cross-correlation function (CCF), which is a [...] Read more.
Leak detection and location in a gas distribution network are significant issues. The acoustic emission (AE) technique can be used to locate a pipeline leak. The time delay between two sensor signals can be determined by the cross-correlation function (CCF), which is a measure of the similarity of two signals as a function of the time delay between them. Due to the energy attenuation, dispersion effect and reverberation of the leakage-induced signals in the pipelines, the CCF location method performs poorly. To improve the leakage location accuracy, this paper proposes a modified leakage location method based on the AE signal, and combines the modified generalized cross-correlation location method and the attenuation-based location method using multilayer perceptron neural networks (MLPNN). In addition, the wave speed was estimated more accurately by the peak frequency of the leakage-induced AE signal in combination with the group speed dispersive curve of the fundamental flexural mode. To verify the reliability of the proposed location method, many tests were performed over a range of leak-sensor distances. The location results show that compared to using the CCF location method, the MLPNN locator reduces the average of the relative location errors by 14%, therefore, this proposed method is better than the CCF method for locating a gas pipe leak. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultrasonic Guided Waves)
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21 pages, 6449 KiB  
Article
Effect of PVA/SiO2 NPs Additive on the Structural, Durability, and Fire Resistance Properties of Geopolymers
by Muhammad Akbar Malik, Manas Sarkar, Shilang Xu and Qinghua Li
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1953; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091953 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3370
Abstract
This exertion introduces polyvinyl alcohol fiber/silica nanoparticles (poly vinyl alcohol (PVA)/SiO2 NPs) in the fly ash-based geopolymer at ambient curing temperature. The present study aims at investigating the structural properties (compressive, bond strength, fracture parameters (fracture toughness (KIc), crack mouth [...] Read more.
This exertion introduces polyvinyl alcohol fiber/silica nanoparticles (poly vinyl alcohol (PVA)/SiO2 NPs) in the fly ash-based geopolymer at ambient curing temperature. The present study aims at investigating the structural properties (compressive, bond strength, fracture parameters (fracture toughness (KIc), crack mouth opening displacement (CMOD)), cyclic compression), durability (freeze-thaw), and fire resistivity of the newly developed PVA/SiO2 NPs mediated geopolymer. The outcomes suggest that geopolymers incorporated with 5% PVA fibers showed improved structural properties and durability as compared to other specimens. Investigation on the fire resistivity of the geopolymers exposed to different heating temperatures (400 °C, 600 °C, 800 °C), showed that geopolymers with PVA/SiO2 NPs significantly prevented the explosive concrete spalling. Microstructural studies confirmed that PVA fibers in the geopolymeric matrixes were well distributed and developed a fiber-bridging texture with improved performance. Addition of the nano-silica particles accelerated the heat evolution during the hydration process and the geopolymeric reaction (formation of sodium aluminosilicate N-A-S-H gel) at ambient curing environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Civil Engineering)
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22 pages, 2320 KiB  
Article
Plant Disease Diagnosis for Smart Phone Applications with Extensible Set of Diseases
by Nikos Petrellis
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1952; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091952 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 40 | Viewed by 3821
Abstract
A plant disease diagnosis method that can be implemented with the resources of a mobile phone application, that does not have to be connected to a remote server, is presented and evaluated on citrus diseases. It can be used both by amateur gardeners [...] Read more.
A plant disease diagnosis method that can be implemented with the resources of a mobile phone application, that does not have to be connected to a remote server, is presented and evaluated on citrus diseases. It can be used both by amateur gardeners and by professional agriculturists for early detection of diseases. The features used are extracted from photographs of plant parts like leaves or fruits and include the color, the relative area and the number of the lesion spots. These classification features, along with additional information like weather metadata, form disease signatures that can be easily defined by the end user (e.g., an agronomist). These signatures are based on the statistical processing of a small number of representative training photographs. The extracted features of a test photograph are compared against the disease signatures in order to select the most likely disease. An important advantage of the proposed approach is that the diagnosis does not depend on the orientation, the scale or the resolution of the photograph. The experiments have been conducted under several light exposure conditions. The accuracy was experimentally measured between 70% and 99%. An acceptable accuracy higher than 90% can be achieved in most of the cases since the lesion spots can recognized interactively with high precision. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering)
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13 pages, 4950 KiB  
Article
Application of Integrated Optical Electric-Field Sensor on the Measurements of Transient Voltages in AC High-Voltage Power Grids
by Shijun Xie, Yu Zhang, Huaiyuan Yang, Hao Yu, Zhou Mu, Chenmeng Zhang, Shupin Cao, Xiaoqing Chang and Ruorong Hua
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1951; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091951 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3449
Abstract
Transient voltages in the power grid are the key for the fault analysis of a power grid, optimized insulation design, and the standardization of the high-voltage testing method. The traditional measuring equipment, based on electrical engineering, normally has a limited bandwidth and response [...] Read more.
Transient voltages in the power grid are the key for the fault analysis of a power grid, optimized insulation design, and the standardization of the high-voltage testing method. The traditional measuring equipment, based on electrical engineering, normally has a limited bandwidth and response speed, which are also featured by a huge size and heavy weight. In this paper, an integrated optical electric-field sensor based on the Pockels effect was developed and applied to measure the transient voltages on the high-voltage conductors in a non-contact measuring mode. The measuring system has a response speed faster than 6 ns and a wide bandwidth ranging from 5 Hz to 100 MHz. Moreover, the sensors have the dimensions of 18 mm by 18 mm by 48 mm and a light weight of dozens of grams. The measuring systems were employed to monitor the lightning transient voltages on a 220 kV overhead transmission line. The switching transient voltages were also measured by the measuring system during the commissioning of the 500 kV middle Tibet power grid. In 2017, 307 lightning transient voltages caused by induction stroke were recorded. The characteristics of these voltage waveforms are different from the standard lightning impulse voltage proposed by IEC standards. Three types of typical switching transient voltage in 500 kV AC power grid were measured, and the peak values of these overvoltages can reach 1.73 times rated voltage. Full article
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13 pages, 3804 KiB  
Article
Adaptive Compensation of Bandwidth Narrowing Effect for Coherent In-Phase Quadrature Transponder through Finite Impulse Response Filter
by Qiang Wang, Yang Yue, Jian Yao and Jon Anderson
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1950; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091950 - 13 May 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3225
Abstract
Coherent in-phase quadrature (IQ) transponders are ubiquitous in the long-haul and the metro optical networks. During the transmission, the coherent signal experiences a bandwidth narrowing effect after passing through multiple reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs). The coherent signal also experiences a bandwidth narrowing [...] Read more.
Coherent in-phase quadrature (IQ) transponders are ubiquitous in the long-haul and the metro optical networks. During the transmission, the coherent signal experiences a bandwidth narrowing effect after passing through multiple reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexers (ROADMs). The coherent signal also experiences a bandwidth narrowing effect when electrical or optical components of the coherent IQ transponder experience aging. A dynamic method to compensate the bandwidth narrowing effect is thus required. In the coherent optical receiver, signal bandwidth is estimated from the raw analog-to-digital converter (ADC) outputs. By adaptively adjusting the tap coefficients of the finite impulse response (FIR) filter, simple post-ADC FIR filters can increase the resiliency of the coherent signal to the bandwidth narrowing effect. The influence of chromatic dispersion, polarization mode dispersion, and polarization dependent loss are studied comprehensively. Furthermore, the bandwidth information of the transmitted analog signal is fed back to the coherent optical transmitter for signal optimization, and the transmitter-side FIR filter thus changes accordingly. Full article
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13 pages, 4026 KiB  
Article
Timely and Durable Polymer Modified Patching Materials for Pothole Repairs in Low Temperature and Wet Conditions
by Sen Han, Mengmei Liu, Weigong Shang, Xiang Qi, Zhuang Zhang and Shihao Dong
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1949; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091949 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3739
Abstract
Aiming to solve the contradiction between the workability and performance of pothole patching using cold mixtures, this paper proposed new patching materials based on the microcapsule technique and polymer reinforcement, namely cold mixtures with polymer modified asphalt and dense graded (DG) of aggregates [...] Read more.
Aiming to solve the contradiction between the workability and performance of pothole patching using cold mixtures, this paper proposed new patching materials based on the microcapsule technique and polymer reinforcement, namely cold mixtures with polymer modified asphalt and dense graded (DG) of aggregates (PADG) mixtures. Laboratory tests were conducted to compare the PADG mixtures with commonly used DG mixtures and open graded (OG) mixtures concerning workability, storability, cohesion, stability, and durability of each mixture. The results found that the PADG mixtures were satisfactory in their workability and storability and were as satisfactory as the OG mixtures. Meanwhile, stability and durability of the PADG mixtures was better than the DG mixtures and OG mixtures, i.e., the PADG mixtures showed stability in the conditions of the timeliness, low temperature, and immersion, as well as the freeze-thaw resistance and wear resistance in wet conditions. Therefore, it can be concluded that PADG mixtures are applicable in timely and durable pothole repairs in low temperatures and wet conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Asphalt Materials)
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3 pages, 154 KiB  
Editorial
Special Issue on “Nanotech for Oil and Gas”
by Zhixin Yu and Yingfang Zhou
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1948; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091948 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2320
Abstract
Nanotechnology has important applications in many industries, including oil and gas [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanotech for Oil and Gas)
14 pages, 760 KiB  
Article
Evaluation of Performance of Inexpensive Laser Based PM2.5 Sensor Monitors for Typical Indoor and Outdoor Hotspots of South Korea
by Sungroul Kim, Sujung Park and Jeongeun Lee
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1947; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091947 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 34 | Viewed by 4369
Abstract
Inexpensive (<$300) real-time particulate matter monitors (IRMs), using laser as a light source, have been introduced for use with a Wi-Fi function enabling networking with a smartphone. However, the information of measurement error of these inexpensive but convenient IRMs are still limited. Using [...] Read more.
Inexpensive (<$300) real-time particulate matter monitors (IRMs), using laser as a light source, have been introduced for use with a Wi-Fi function enabling networking with a smartphone. However, the information of measurement error of these inexpensive but convenient IRMs are still limited. Using ESCORTAIR (ESCORT, Seoul, Korea) and PurpleAir (PA) (PurpleAir U.S.A.), we evaluated the performance of these two devices compared with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Federal Equivalent Monitoring (FEM) devices, that is, GRIMM180 (GRIMM Aerosol, Germany) for the indoor measurement of pork panfrying or secondhand tobacco smoking (SHS) and Beta-ray attenuation monitor (BAM) (MetOne, Grants Pass, OR) for outdoor measurement at the national particulate matter (PM2.5) monitoring site near an urban traffic hotspot in Daejeon, South Korea, respectively. The PM2.5 concentrations measured by ESCORTAIR and PA were strongly correlated to FEM (r = 0.97 and 0.97 from indoor pan frying; 0.92 and 0.86 from indoor SHS; 0.85 and 0.88 from outdoor urban traffic hotspot). The two IRMs showed that PM2.5 mass concentrations were increased with increased outdoor relative humidity (RH) levels. However, after applying correction factors for RH, the Median (Interquartile range) of difference compared to FEM was (14.5 (6.1~23.5) %) for PA and 16.3 (8.5–28.0) % for ESCORTAIR, supporting their usage in the home or near urban hotspots. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Indoor Air Quality)
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20 pages, 4474 KiB  
Article
Combined Solar Thermochemical Solid/Gas Energy Storage Process for Domestic Thermal Applications: Analysis of Global Performance
by Oleksandr Skrylnyk, Emilie Courbon, Nicolas Heymans and Marc Frère
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1946; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091946 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3426
Abstract
Thermal energy used below 100 °C for space heating/cooling and hot water preparation is responsible for a big amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector. The conjecture of thermal solar and thermochemical solid/gas energy storage processes renders the heat generation to [...] Read more.
Thermal energy used below 100 °C for space heating/cooling and hot water preparation is responsible for a big amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the residential sector. The conjecture of thermal solar and thermochemical solid/gas energy storage processes renders the heat generation to become ecologically clean technology. However, until present, few pilot scale installations were developed and tested. The present work is devoted to the experimental study of global performance of a pilot scale thermochemical energy storage prototype. Two working modes, namely fixed packed bed and moving bed, were tested using 2.2 kg and 5.5 kg of composite material (silica gel impregnated with calcium chloride) under indoor atmospheric conditions. The global experimental efficiency of a 49l water tank charging process during 75 min was found as high as 0.8–0.85. The energy storage density reached in the fixed bed mode by the material was 158 kWh/m3, while in the moving bed mode it was 2.5 times lower. The reasons for such a difference are discussed in depth in the text. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Materials for Thermal Energy Storage)
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14 pages, 2891 KiB  
Article
Deep Forest-Based Monocular Visual Sign Language Recognition
by Qifan Xue, Xuanpeng Li, Dong Wang and Weigong Zhang
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1945; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091945 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3546
Abstract
Sign language recognition (SLR) is a bridge linking the hearing impaired and the general public. Some SLR methods using wearable data gloves are not portable enough to provide daily sign language translation service, while visual SLR is more flexible to work with in [...] Read more.
Sign language recognition (SLR) is a bridge linking the hearing impaired and the general public. Some SLR methods using wearable data gloves are not portable enough to provide daily sign language translation service, while visual SLR is more flexible to work with in most scenes. This paper introduces a monocular vision-based approach to SLR. Human skeleton action recognition is proposed to express semantic information, including the representation of signs’ gestures, using the regularization of body joint features and a deep-forest-based semantic classifier with a voting strategy. We test our approach on the public American Sign Language Lexicon Video Dataset (ASLLVD) and a private testing set. It proves to achieve a promising performance and shows a high generalization capability on the testing set. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Intelligent Imaging Technology)
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17 pages, 6106 KiB  
Article
Lateral Torsional Buckling of Steel Beams Elastically Restrained at the Support Nodes
by Rafał Piotrowski and Andrzej Szychowski
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1944; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091944 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 6086
Abstract
The study shows the results of theoretical investigations into lateral torsional buckling of bisymmetric I-beams elastically restrained against warping and against rotation in the plane of lateral torsional buckling (i.e., against lateral rotation) at the support nodes. The analysis accounted for the whole [...] Read more.
The study shows the results of theoretical investigations into lateral torsional buckling of bisymmetric I-beams elastically restrained against warping and against rotation in the plane of lateral torsional buckling (i.e., against lateral rotation) at the support nodes. The analysis accounted for the whole variation range of node stiffnesses, from complete warping freedom to full restraint, and from complete lateral rotation freedom to full restraint. It was assumed the beams are simply supported against bending about the major axis of the section. To determine the critical moment, the energy method was used. Both the twist angle function and the lateral deflection function of the beam were described using power polynomials with simple physical interpretation. Computer programmes were developed to make numerical and symbolic “computations”. General approximation formulas for the critical moment for lateral torsional buckling were derived. The formulas covered the basic and most frequently found loading diagrams. Detailed computations were performed for different values of the index of fixity against warping and against rotation in the plane of lateral torsional buckling. The critical moments determined using the programmes devised and approximation formulas were compared with the values obtained with LTBeam software (FEM). A very good congruence of results was found. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Civil Engineering)
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16 pages, 6779 KiB  
Article
An Improved Gradient Boosting Regression Tree Estimation Model for Soil Heavy Metal (Arsenic) Pollution Monitoring Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing
by Lifei Wei, Ziran Yuan, Yanfei Zhong, Lanfang Yang, Xin Hu and Yangxi Zhang
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1943; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091943 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 69 | Viewed by 4932
Abstract
Hyperspectral remote sensing can be used to effectively identify contaminated elements in soil. However, in the field of monitoring soil heavy metal pollution, hyperspectral remote sensing has the characteristics of high dimensionality and high redundancy, which seriously affect the accuracy and stability of [...] Read more.
Hyperspectral remote sensing can be used to effectively identify contaminated elements in soil. However, in the field of monitoring soil heavy metal pollution, hyperspectral remote sensing has the characteristics of high dimensionality and high redundancy, which seriously affect the accuracy and stability of hyperspectral inversion models. To resolve the problem, a gradient boosting regression tree (GBRT) hyperspectral inversion algorithm for heavy metal (Arsenic (As)) content in soils based on Spearman’s rank correlation analysis (SCA) coupled with competitive adaptive reweighted sampling (CARS) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the CARS algorithm is used to roughly select the original spectral data. Second derivative (SD), Gaussian filtering (GF), and min-max normalization (MMN) pretreatments are then used to improve the correlation between the spectra and As in the characteristic band enhancement stage. Finally, the low-correlation bands are removed using the SCA method, and a subset with absolute correlation values greater than 0.6 is retained as the optimal band subset after each pretreatment. For the modeling, the five most representative characteristic bands were selected in the Honghu area of China, and the nine most representative characteristic bands were selected in the Daye area of China. In order to verify the generalization ability of the proposed algorithm, 92 soil samples from the Honghu and Daye areas were selected as the research objects. With the use of support vector machine regression (SVMR), linear regression (LR), and random forest (RF) regression methods as comparative methods, all the models obtained a good prediction accuracy. However, among the different combinations, CARS-SCA-GBRT obtained the highest precision, which indicates that the proposed algorithm can select fewer characteristic bands to achieve a better inversion effect, and can thus provide accurate data support for the treatment and recovery of heavy metal pollution in soils. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing and Health Problems)
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22 pages, 10617 KiB  
Article
Shear Strength of Trapezoidal Corrugated Steel Webs for Horizontally Curved Girder Bridges
by Sumei Liu, Hanshan Ding, Luc Taerwe and Wouter De Corte
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1942; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091942 - 12 May 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3803
Abstract
Curved composite girder bridges with corrugated steel webs (CSWs) have already been constructed around the world. However, limited work has been done on their shear behavior. In this paper, the corrugated steel web (CSW) in horizontally curved girders (HCGs) is treated as an [...] Read more.
Curved composite girder bridges with corrugated steel webs (CSWs) have already been constructed around the world. However, limited work has been done on their shear behavior. In this paper, the corrugated steel web (CSW) in horizontally curved girders (HCGs) is treated as an orthotropic cylindrical shallow shell, and the analytical formula for the elastic global shear buckling stress is deduced by the Galerkin method. Calculation tables for the global shear buckling coefficient for a four-edge simple support, for a four-edge fixed support, and for the two edges constrained by flanges fixed and the other two edges simply supported are given. Then, a parametric study based on a linear buckling analysis is performed to analyze the effect of the curvature radius and girder span on the shear buckling stress. Analytical and numerical results show that the difference of shear buckling stress of CSWs between curved girders and straight girders is small, so the shear design formulas for straight girders can be applied for curved girders. Finally, a series of tests were performed on three curved box girders with CSWs. Similar to CSWs in straight girders, the shear strain distributions of CSWs in HCGs are almost uniform along the direction of the web height and the principal strain direction angles are close to 45°. For the three specimens, CSWs carry about 76% of the shear force. In the destructive test, shear buckling after yielding occurred in all specimens which is in good agreement with the theoretical prediction, which means that the analytical formulas provide good predictions for the shear buckling stress of CSWs in HCGs and can be recommended for design purposes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Civil Engineering)
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13 pages, 1544 KiB  
Article
Probing Attosecond Electron Coherence in Molecular Charge Migration by Ultrafast X-Ray Photoelectron Imaging
by Kai-Jun Yuan and André D Bandrauk
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1941; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091941 - 11 May 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3475
Abstract
Electron coherence is a fundamental quantum phenomenon in today’s ultrafast physics and chemistry research. Based on attosecond pump–probe schemes, ultrafast X-ray photoelectron imaging of molecules was used to monitor the coherent electron dynamics which is created by an XUV pulse. We performed simulations [...] Read more.
Electron coherence is a fundamental quantum phenomenon in today’s ultrafast physics and chemistry research. Based on attosecond pump–probe schemes, ultrafast X-ray photoelectron imaging of molecules was used to monitor the coherent electron dynamics which is created by an XUV pulse. We performed simulations on the molecular ion H 2 + by numerically solving time-dependent Schrödinger equations. It was found that the X-ray photoelectron angular and momentum distributions depend on the time delay between the XUV pump and soft X-ray probe pulses. Varying the polarization and helicity of the soft X-ray probe pulse gave rise to a modulation of the time-resolved photoelectron distributions. The present results provide a new approach for exploring ultrafast coherent electron dynamics and charge migration in reactions of molecules on the attosecond time scale. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Science at X-ray Free Electron Lasers)
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17 pages, 4383 KiB  
Article
A Novel Indirect Calibration Approach for Robot Positioning Error Compensation Based on Neural Network and Hand-Eye Vision
by Chi-Tho Cao, Van-Phu Do and Byung-Ryong Lee
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1940; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091940 - 11 May 2019
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 5249
Abstract
It is well known that most of the industrial robots have excellent repeatability in positioning. However, the absolute position errors of industrial robots are relatively poor, and in some cases the error may reach even several millimeters, which make it difficult to apply [...] Read more.
It is well known that most of the industrial robots have excellent repeatability in positioning. However, the absolute position errors of industrial robots are relatively poor, and in some cases the error may reach even several millimeters, which make it difficult to apply the robot system to vehicle assembly lines that need small position errors. In this paper, we have studied a method to reduce the absolute position error of robots using machine vision and neural network. The position/orientation of robot tool-end is compensated using a vision-based approach combined with a neural network, where a novel indirect calibration approach is presented in order to gather information for training the neural network. In the simulation, the proposed compensation algorithm was found to reduce the positional error to 98%. On average, the absolute position error was 0.029 mm. The application of the proposed algorithm in the actual robot experiment reduced the error to 50.3%, averaging 1.79 mm. Full article
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15 pages, 1215 KiB  
Article
Two-Level Attentions and Grouping Attention Convolutional Network for Fine-Grained Image Classification
by Yadong Yang, Xiaofeng Wang, Quan Zhao and Tingting Sui
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1939; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091939 - 11 May 2019
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3484
Abstract
The focus of fine-grained image classification tasks is to ignore interference information and grasp local features. This challenge is what the visual attention mechanism excels at. Firstly, we have constructed a two-level attention convolutional network, which characterizes the object-level attention and the pixel-level [...] Read more.
The focus of fine-grained image classification tasks is to ignore interference information and grasp local features. This challenge is what the visual attention mechanism excels at. Firstly, we have constructed a two-level attention convolutional network, which characterizes the object-level attention and the pixel-level attention. Then, we combine the two kinds of attention through a second-order response transform algorithm. Furthermore, we propose a clustering-based grouping attention model, which implies the part-level attention. The grouping attention method is to stretch all the semantic features, in a deeper convolution layer of the network, into vectors. These vectors are clustered by a vector dot product, and each category represents a special semantic. The grouping attention algorithm implements the functions of group convolution and feature clustering, which can greatly reduce the network parameters and improve the recognition rate and interpretability of the network. Finally, the low-level visual features and high-level semantic information are merged by a multi-level feature fusion method to accurately classify fine-grained images. We have achieved good results without using pre-training networks and fine-tuning techniques. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Intelligent Imaging Technology)
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22 pages, 10474 KiB  
Article
From Nanostructural Characterization of Nanoparticles to Performance Assessment of Low Clinker Fiber–Cement Nanohybrids
by Styliani Papatzani and Kevin Paine
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1938; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091938 - 11 May 2019
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2657
Abstract
With the current paper three nano-Montmorillonites (nMt) are applied in cement nanohybrids: an organomodified nMt dispersion, nC2; an inorganic nMt dispersion, nC3; and an organomodified powder, nC4. nC4 is fully characterized in this paper (X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy/X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy and [...] Read more.
With the current paper three nano-Montmorillonites (nMt) are applied in cement nanohybrids: an organomodified nMt dispersion, nC2; an inorganic nMt dispersion, nC3; and an organomodified powder, nC4. nC4 is fully characterized in this paper (X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy/X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy and thermal gravimetric analysis/differential thermogravimetry. Consecutively a ternary non pozzolanic combination of fiber–cement nanohybrids (60% Portland cement (PC) and 40% limestone (LS)) was investigated in terms of flexural strength, thermal properties, density, porosity, and water impermeability. Flexural strength was improved after day 28, particularly with the addition of the inorganic nMt dispersion. There was no change in density or enhancement in pozzolanic reactions for the powder nMt. Mercury intrusion porosimetry showed that the pore related parameters were increased. This can be attributed to mixing effects and the presence of fibers. Water impermeability tests yielded ambiguous results. Clearly, novel manufacturing processes of cement nanohybrids must be developed to eliminate mixing issues recorded in this research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Micro/Nano Manufacturing)
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13 pages, 1050 KiB  
Article
Identification and Characterization of Janthinobacterium svalbardensis F19, a Novel Low-C/N-Tolerant Denitrifying Bacterium
by Yinyan Chen, Peng Jin, Zhiwen Cui, Tao Xu, Ruojin Zhao and Zhanwang Zheng
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1937; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091937 - 11 May 2019
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3477
Abstract
Herein, we isolated Janthinobacterium svalbardensis F19 from sludge sediment. Strain F19 can simultaneously execute heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification under aerobic conditions. The organism exhibited efficient nitrogen removal at a C/N ratio of 2:1, with an average removal rate of 0.88 mg/L/h, without [...] Read more.
Herein, we isolated Janthinobacterium svalbardensis F19 from sludge sediment. Strain F19 can simultaneously execute heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification under aerobic conditions. The organism exhibited efficient nitrogen removal at a C/N ratio of 2:1, with an average removal rate of 0.88 mg/L/h, without nitrite accumulation. At a C/N ratio of 2, an initial pH of 10.0, a culturing temperature of 25 °C, and sodium acetate as the carbon source, the removal efficiencies of ammonium, nitrate, nitrite, and hydroxylamine were 96.44%, 92.32%, 97.46%, and 96.69%, respectively. The maximum removal rates for domestic wastewater treatment for ammonia and total nitrogen were 98.22% and 92.49%, respectively. Gene-specific PCR amplification further confirmed the presence of napA, hao, and nirS genes, which may contribute to the heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification capacity of strain F19. These results indicate that this bacterium has potential for efficient nitrogen removal at low C/N ratios from domestic wastewater. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Denitrification in Agricultural Soils)
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26 pages, 8745 KiB  
Article
Reliability of Field Experiments, Analytical Methods and Pedestrian’s Perception Scales for the Vibration Serviceability Assessment of an In-Service Glass Walkway
by Chiara Bedon and Marco Fasan
Appl. Sci. 2019, 9(9), 1936; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app9091936 - 11 May 2019
Cited by 32 | Viewed by 4181 | Correction
Abstract
The vibration performance of pedestrian structures attracts the attention of several studies, especially with respect to unfavorable operational conditions or possible damage scenarios. Given a pedestrian system, specific vibration comfort levels must be satisfied in addition to basic safety requirements, depending on the [...] Read more.
The vibration performance of pedestrian structures attracts the attention of several studies, especially with respect to unfavorable operational conditions or possible damage scenarios. Given a pedestrian system, specific vibration comfort levels must be satisfied in addition to basic safety requirements, depending on the class of use, the structural typology and the materials. To this aim, guideline documents of the literature offer simplified single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) approaches to estimate the maximum expected vibrations and to verify the required comfort limits. Most of these documents, however, are specifically calibrated for specific scenarios/structural typologies. Dedicated methods of design and analysis, in this regard, may be required for structural glass pedestrian systems, due to their intrinsic features (small thickness-to-size ratios, high flexibility, type and number of supports, live-to-dead load ratios, use of materials that are susceptible to mechanical degradation with time/temperature/humidity, etc.). Careful consideration could be then needed not only at the design stage, but also during the service life of a given glass walkway. In this paper, the dynamic performance of an in-service glass walkway is taken into account and explored via field vibration experiments. A set of walking configurations of technical interest is considered, involving 20 volunteers and several movement features. The vibration comfort of the structure is then assessed based on experimental estimates and existing guideline documents. The intrinsic uncertainties and limits of simplified approaches of literature are discussed, with respect to the performance of the examined glass walkway. In conclusion, the test predictions are also used to derive “perception index” data and scales that could support a reliable vibration comfort assessment of in-service pedestrian glass structures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Vibration-Based Structural Health Monitoring)
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