Sedimentation engineering embraces the identification, planning, analysis, and remediation, principally in the context of civil and hydraulic engineering practice, of projects or technical investigations to avoid and/or mitigate problems caused by sedimentation processes. These processes include erosion, entrainment, transport, deposition, and compaction of sediment. External agents and forces …
Synthetic polymers and fibre reinforced polymer composite systems have become increasingly important to the civil and structural engineer over the last decade and now have a wide range of applications in a variety of engineering fields. A large percentage of all fibre reinforced products are made from unsaturated polyester resins reinforced with glass fibre. However, epoxy and toughened…
We began to formulate the initial ideas for this Manual as early as 2006. It had become apparent to us that civil and structural engineers not specialising in geotechnics face a daunting knowledge gap when they come up against a geotechnical problem. Most civil engineers leave university with very little grounding in geotechnical engineering. They will have a fair grasp of applied mechanics …
We began to formulate the initial ideas for this Manual as early as 2006. It had become apparent to us that civil and structural engineers not specialising in geotechnics face a daunting knowledge gap when they come up against a geotechnical problem. Most civil engineers leave university with very little grounding in geotechnical engineering. They will have a fair grasp of applied mechanics …
What makes earthquake risks so catastrophic and dreadful? Possible reasons are attributed to the sudden, unpredictable, involuntary, and large-scale nature of the risks. As a consequence of a devastating earthquake, a tremendous surge of seismic damage and loss may overwhelm the risk-bearing capacities of households, companies, municipalities, and insurers, and may eventually cause serious…
Nature has never attended a course in probability theory. This poignant philosophical statement underlines the fact that the phenomenon of uncertainty cannot be described by means of probability theory alone. Data and models encountered in the natural sciences and engineering are more or less characterized by uncertainty. With the inclusion of interval variables and random variables classical m…
The most significant issues facing mankind today are related to the quality of our environment. Past decisions did not always consider environmental factors as critical elements. However, current decisions made daily should reflect the importance of the environment. All environment-related issues are multidisciplinary, ranging from science and engineering to social, economic, and regulatory iss…
The treatment of contaminated land to eliminate or reduce the presence of pollutants in the contaminated site has received (and will continue to receive) considerable attention from the practicing profession. Extensive research and development are still underway in respect to the delivery of more effective (and economic) means for site decontamination. The ongoing results can be seen in the…
This book presents the state-of-the-art principles, practices, and techniques related to estimating building costs in metric. It is primarily designed as a textbook for graduate and upper-division undergraduate students in civil engineering, architectural engineering, construction engineering and management, and related programs. Instructors should find the book very useful and suitable for…
It is becoming increasingly evident that human activities are the major cause of climate change and global warming. Human activities have caused major changes in our land, water, and atmosphere leading to permanent modifications to our environment such as removing major areas of forest land on Earth and increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases. As the threat of climate change becomes more p…
Damages due to catastrophic earthquakes are huge. Over a million and half people have been killed during the most catastrophic ten earthquakes that have occurred since 1900. Still, the number of victims and material damage due to earthquakes has permanently been growing although, according to statistics, the number of catastrophic earthquakes per annum is constant. For example, the Haiti ea…
Module parallel connection for three-phase VSC can increase the system level effectively. However, the circulating currents problem will occur. The circulating currents will distort the three-phase currents, increase the power loss and decrease the system efficiency.Anovel deadbeat circuiting currents control method is proposed in this paper. Based on the analysis of the average model of parall…
This paper presents an electric circuit-based battery and a capacity fade model suitable for electric vehicles (EVs) in vehicle-to-grid applications. The circuit parameters of the battery model (BM) are extracted using genetic algorithm-based optimization method. A control algorithm has been developed for the battery, which calculates the processed energy, charge or discharge rate, and state of…
We propose a 2D shape deformation method to fit technical drawings of garments (“flats”) to body figure drawings with a diversity of fashion poses. We first dress a flat onto a body figure in a standard standing pose using Radial Basis Function (RBF) mapping. For different types of clothing, we suggest two levels of treatment to determine handles automatically. We deform the flats using th…
This paper introduces the development and implementation of a ball mill grinding circuit simulator, NEUSimMill. Compared to the existing simulators in this field which focus on process flowsheeting, NEUSimMill is designed to be used for the test and verification of grinding process control system including advanced control system such as integrated control. The simulator implements the dynamic…
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a ubiquitous wireless technology which allows objects to be identified automatically. An RFID tag is a small electronic device with an antenna and has a unique identification (ID) number. RFID tags can be categorized into passive and active tags. For passive tags, a standard communication protocol known as EPC-globalGeneration-2, or briefly EPC Gen-2, is…
We examine a scheduling problemof cluster tools that concurrently process two wafer types in a cyclic operational sequence. Whereas the process steps for different wafer types are assigned to different processing modules (PMs), the wafer loading and unloading tasks at the PMs are performed by a single robot. For a given cycle plan, which is a mix of different wafers for each cycle, we wish to d…
We used a seven-step process to identify genes involved in glucosinolate biosynthesis and metabolism in the Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa). We constructed an annotated data set with 34,570 unigenes from B. rapa and predicted 11,526 glucosinolate-related candidate genes using expression profiles generated across nine stages of development on a 47k-gene microarray. Using our multi-layered screen…
This paper reports the development of a maximum power-point tracking (MPPT) method for photovoltaic (PV) systems under partially shaded conditions using firefly algorithm. The major advantages of the proposed method are simple computational steps, faster convergence, and its implementation on a lowcost microcontroller. The proposed scheme is studied for two different configurations of PV arrays…
When a single Cloud service (i.e., a software image and a virtual machine), on its own, cannot satisfy all the user requirements, a composition of Cloud services is required. Cloud service composition, which includes several tasks such as discovery, compatibility checking, selection, and deployment, is a complex process and users find it difficult to select the best one among the hundreds, if n…
Condition monitoring helps reduce the operations and maintenance costs by providing information about the physical condition of wind power systems. This study proposes to use a statistical method for effective condition monitoring. The turbine operation is significantly affected by external weather conditions.We model the wind turbine response as a function of weather variables, using a nonpar…
This paper presents a concurrent error detection (CED) scheme for orthogonal Latin square (OLS) parallel decoders. Different from a CED scheme found in the technical literature that protects only the syndrome generator, the proposed CED scheme protects the whole OLS decoder for single stuck-at faults. This paper presents the detailed design and analysis of the proposed CED scheme and shows that…
With cloud data services, it is commonplace for data to be not only stored in the cloud, but also shared across multiple users. Unfortunately, the integrity of cloud data is subject to skepticism due to the existence of hardware/software failures and human errors. Several mechanisms have been designed to allow both data owners and public verifiers to efficiently audit cloud data integrity witho…
Over the past decade the scientific acti vities of the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS), which focuses on the role of the oceans in controlling climate change via the transport and storage of greenhouse gases and organic matter, have led to an increased interest in the study ofthe biogeochemistry of organic matter. There is also a growing interest in global climate fluctuations. This, …
This Dictionary aims to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date reference of construction, surveying, and civil engineering terms within one publication. The entries address the needs of those studying on built environment courses or engaged in professional practice as well as providing much useful information for those with a general interest in architecture or construction. Builders, trade…
Ensemble learning is a common tool for data stream classification, mainly because of its inherent advantages of handling large volumes of stream data and concept drifting. Previous studies, to date, have been primarily focused on building accurate ensemble models from stream data. However, a linear scan of a large number of base classifiers in the ensemble during prediction incurs significant c…
A novel signal folding and reconstruction scheme for neural recording applications that exploits the characteristics of neural signals is described in this paper. The amplified output is ‘folded’ into a predefined range of voltages by using comparison and reset circuits along with the core amplifier. After this output signal is digitized and transmitted, a reconstruction algorithm can be ap…
In this paper, a new single-error-correction and double-adjacent-error-correction (SEC-DAEC) code is proposed for simultaneous testing of the most general memory fault models in both data bit and check bit arrays of memories. Simultaneous testing of data bit and check bit arrays eliminates the test time and hardware overheads required for separate check bit array tests. In order to test data b…
Activity cycle diagram (ACD), which is essentially a timed Petri net, is one of the oldest formal modeling tools for discrete-event systems, and a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a highly automated job shop that is used widely in mechanical and electronics industries. Previous FMS modeling studies have indicated that formal modeling of real-life (or industrial) FMSs with classical ACDs …
In single-particle electron microscopy (EM), multiple micrographs of identical macromolecular structures or complexes are taken from various viewing angles to obtain a 3D reconstruction. A high-quality EM reconstruction typically requires several thousand to several million images. Therefore, an automated pipeline for performing computations on many images becomes indispensable. In this paper,…
This paper proposes a noninvasive temperature measurement technique of indirect type, applicable in the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives. The motor temperature is required for protection and monitoring purposes, as well as for updating temperature-dependent control parameters. Direct measurement with dedicated sensors requires peripherals and cabling; hence, it is quite involve…
One of the important tasks for bridge maintenance is bridge deck crack inspection. Traditionally, a human inspector detects cracks using his/her eyes and marks the location of cracks manually. However, the accuracy of the inspection result is low due to the subjective nature of human judgement. We propose a crack inspection system that uses a camera-equipped mobile robot to collect images on th…
In real-world cargo transportation, there are charges associated with both the traveling distance and the loading quantity. Cargo trucks must comply with a mandatory lower carbon emissions policy: the emissions of large-volume cargo truck/containers depend greatly on the cargo loading and the traveling distance. To address this issue, instead of assuming a constant vehicle loading from one cust…
Analytical description of a constant power fed supercapacitor behavior is revealed in the paper. The derivation is based on a simple RC model with parameters taken from a manufacturer datasheet. Different power and energy-related figures of merit are obtained using the derived expressions. It is shown that some of the performance figures used in datasheets are strictly theoretical and cannot be…
A novel power curve monitoring method for wind turbines was developed to prevent a turbine failure in a wind farm. Compared with the existing methods, this algorithm automatically calculates the power curve limits for power curve monitoring, even when a considerable number of abnormal data are included in wind speed-output power data measured at a wind turbine. In addition, the proposed algori…
Dueto the wind speed variation, wind shear and tower shadow effects, grid connected wind turbines are the sources of power fluctuations which may produce flicker during continuous operation. This paper presents a model of an MW-level variablespeed wind turbine with a doubly fed induction generatorto investigate the flicker emission and mitigation issues. An individual pitch control (IPC) strat…
Biosensors based on microcantilevers convert biological recognition events into measurable mechanical displacements. They offer advantages such as small size, low sample volume, labelfree detection, ease of integration, high-throughput analysis, and low development cost. The design and development of a microcantilever-based aptasensor employing SU-8 polymer as the fabrication material is presen…
The ability to detect changes is an essential competence that robots should possess for increased autonomy. In several applications, such as surveillance, a robot needs to detect relevant changes in the environment by comparing current sensory data with previously acquired information from the environment. We present an efficientmethod for point cloud comparison and change detection in 3D envir…
Management of uncertain data in spatial queries has drawn extensive research interests to consider the granularity of devices and noises in the collection and the delivery of data. Most previous works usually model and handle uncertain data to find the required results directly. However, it is more difficult for users to obtain useful insights when data uncertainty dramatically increases. In th…
Though the structured light measurement system has been successfully applied to the profilemeasurement of diffuse objects, it is still a challenge to measure shiny objects due to the mix of both specular and diffuse reflections. To this end, we propose a robust encoding and decoding method in this paper. First, the monochromatic stripe patterns are utilized to eliminate the effect of texture an…
Recently, performance and monetary cost optimizations for workflows from various applications in the cloud have become a hot research topic. However, we find that most existing studies adopt ad hoc optimization strategies, which fail to capture the key optimization opportunities for different workloads and cloud offerings (e.g., virtual machines with different prices). This paper proposes ToF, …
The problem of mobile sequential recommendation is to suggest a route connecting a set of pick-up points for a taxi driver so that he/she is more likely to get passengers with less travel cost. Essentially, a key challenge of this problem is its high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic programming based method to solve the mobile sequential recommendation problem…
Efficient operation of the integrated optimization or automation system in an industrial plant depends mainly on good measurement of product quality. However, measuring or estimating the product quality online in many industrial plants is usually not feasible using the available techniques. In this paper, a data-driven soft-sensor using case-based reasoning (CBR) and fuzzy-similarity rough set…
To overcome the serious thermal recession problem that has been associated with the braking torque of conventional eddy current brakes, and to conserve energy, this paper has proposed a novel self-excited eddy current retarder (S-ECR). The design includes a stator with an internally cooled channel, a rotor with double salient poles, and a built-in generator. The electromagnetic field analysis …
The construction of marine pipelines is a relatively new field of engineering, having developed in the course of the last five decades. Yet, with more than 100 000 km of subsea lines installed worldwide it must be regarded as a mature technology, although advances continue in extending the limits as regards pipe dimensions, pressures, flow regimes, products, installation methods, water dept…
Reinforced concrete is a widely used construction material for bridges, buildings and platforms as well as for underground structures such as tunnels or reinforced concrete pipelines. In general, reinforced concrete is a very durable material capable of withstanding a large range of severe environments including marine, industrial and alpine conditions. Despite the fact that the majority o…
Construction Equipment Management for Engineers, Estimators, and Owners is intended to be a reference book for construction project managers, estimators, construction equipment fleet managers, and professional engineers. The book also contains information relevant to both the public and private sectors. It contains a great deal of ‘‘hands-on, how-to’’ information about equipment man…
This book covers methods adopted for undertaking the design and construction of civil engineering projects. The options for separate design and construction are compared with design and build projects, construction management, and management contracting. The salient differences are shown between the various conditions of contract used. The roles of the engineer, employer's project manager or hi…
As I mentioned in the preface to the thirteenth edition, I am chagrined to admit that I never read a single preface while I was in college. Out of the prefaces of 100 or so textbooks written by witty, clever, dedicated, and famous experts, I never read a single word. Since then, I’ve added hundreds of additional books to my library, and I’ve only read a few of their prefaces. I certainly ha…