Current Issue : July - September Volume : 2018 Issue Number : 3 Articles : 5 Articles
The application of nonedible feedstock for the production of biodiesel has become an area of research interest among clean energy\nexperts in the past few years. This research is aimed at the utilization of Pongamia pinnata (karanja), a nonedible feedstock from\nthe state of Sarawak,Malaysia, to produce biodiesel to be known as crude karanja oil (CKO). A one-step transesterification process\nutilizing 7 : 1ââ?¬â??10 : 1 wt% methanol (CH3OH) and 0.5ââ?¬â??1.2 wt% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) at 65âË?Ë?C for 1.5 hrs has been used for the\nbiodiesel production yielding 84% conversion. The physiochemical properties of the CKO produced revealed that it conforms with\nEN14214 standards for brake power (BP), brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), and brake thermal efficiency (BTE) as they are\nall noted be optimal at B40....
Errant vehicles occur as a result of the driver losing control of the vehicle.\nThis may be due to sudden illness, dozing off or skidding while attempting a\nmanoeuvre. In containing such an errant vehicle on a highway, the priority is\nto avoid collision with other vehicles. A sloped highway median provides a\nrun-off area for such vehicles where the vehicle can be slowed down and\nstopped without the danger of being re-directed into the path of other vehicles\nas may occur with edge barriers. Here, the effect of a containment barrier at\nthe bottom of the sloped median is studied with a view to prevent the vehicle\nfrom being redirected outside the median after colliding with the barrier. The\nfocus of this work is on the change of kinematic states due to the collision, so\na momentum-based vehicle collision analysis is developed, with the collision\nenergy loss related to the vehicle stiffness being considered by coefficient of\nrestitution. The average maximum lateral displacements post-collision are\nread from the diagram of vehicle x-y trajectories. In this way, the most suitable\nmedian slope 1:6 is selected....
Since 2012, the Smart Power Team has been actively participating in the Shell Eco-marathon, which is a worldwide competition.\nFrom the very beginning, the team has been working to increase driver�s safety on the road by developing Advanced Driver\nAssistance Systems. This paper presents unique method for designing ADAS systems in order to minimize the costs of the design\nphase and system implementation and, at the same time, to maximize the positive effect the system has on driver and vehicle safety.\nThe described method is based on using virtual prototyping tool to simulate the system performance in real-life situations. This\napproach enabled an iterative design process, which resulted in reduction of errors with almost no prototyping and testing costs....
Urban rail transit plays an increasingly important role in urbanization processes. Communications-Based Train Control (CBTC)\nSystems, Passenger Information Systems (PIS), and Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) are key applications of urban rail transit\nto ensure its normal operation. In existing urban rail transit systems, different applications are deployed with independent train\nground communication systems. When the train ground communication systems are built repeatedly, limited wireless spectrum\nwill be wasted, and the maintenance work will also become complicated. In this paper, we design a network virtualization based\nintegrated train ground communication system, in which all the applications in urban rail transit can share the same physical\ninfrastructure. In order to better satisfy the Quality of Service (QoS) requirement of each application, this paper proposes a virtual\nresource allocation algorithm based on QoS guarantee, base station load balance, and application station fairness. Moreover, with\nthe latest achievement of distributed convex optimization, we exploit a novel distributed optimization method based on alternating\ndirection method of multipliers (ADMM) to solve the virtual resource allocation problem. Extensive simulation results indicate\nthat the QoS of the designed integrated train ground communication system can be improved significantly using the proposed\nalgorithm....
To solve the problems associated with multiple-vehicle simulations of railway vehicles including large scale modelling, long\ncomputing time, low analysis efficiency, need for high performance computing, and large storage space, the middle part of the\ntrain where no plastic deformation occurs in the vehicle body was simplified using mass and beam elements. Comparative analysis\nof the collisions between a single railway vehicle (including head and intermediate vehicles before, and after, simplification) and\na rigid wall showed that variations in impact kinetic energy, internal energy, and impact force (after simplification) are consistent\nwith those of the unsimplified model. Meanwhile, the finite element model of a whole high-speed train was assembled based on\nthe simplified single-vehicle model. The numbers of nodes and elements in the simplified finite element model of the whole train\nwere 63.4% and 61.6%, respectively, compared to those of the unsimplified model.Thesimplified whole train model using the above\nmethod was more accurate than the multibody model. In comparison to the full-size finite element model, it is more specific, had\nmore rapid computational speed, and saved a large amount of computational power and storage space. Finally, the velocity and\nacceleration data for every car were discussed through the analysis of the collision between two simplified trains at various speeds....
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