Description:
Manufacturing industries today are focusing on controlling negative environmental impacts, reducing cost, conserving energy and natural resources while producing new products through various methods and tools of Sustainable manufacturing assessment. This paper proposes science-based guidelines for modeling and evaluation of key performance indicators (KPIs) in an aluminium extrusion process. The proposed methodology consists of the following main components: 1) identification of key performance indicators 2) classification of manufacturing processes on the basis of KPIs 3) evaluation of key performance indicators. We discuss in detail the steps of the proposed indicators for aluminium extrusion process. The proposed indicators also contribute towards the development of standard reference methodology to help further sustainability in the manufacturing industries. In this paper we propose science-based guidelines, which can be used to determine key performance indicators, namely energy consumption, solid waste and carbon emissions of an aluminium extrusion process. The proposed methodology has been verified with actual shop floor data obtained from the industry.
Description:
Most density-based clustering algorithms suffer from large density variations among clusters. This paper proposes a new measure called Neighbourhood Contrast (NC) as a better alternative to density in detecting clusters. The proposed NC admits all local density maxima, regardless of their densities, to have similar NC values. Due to this unique property, NC is a better means to detect clusters in a dataset with large density variations among clusters. We provide two applications of NC. First, replacing density with NC in the current state-of-the-art clustering procedure DP leads to significantly improved clustering performance. Second, we devise a new clustering algorithm called Neighbourhood Contrast Clustering (NCC) which does not require density or distance calculations, and therefore has a linear time complexity in terms of dataset size. Our empirical evaluation shows that both NC-based methods outperform density-based methods including the current state-of-the-art.
Description:
Background: This regional pilot site ‘end-user attitudes’ study explored nurses’ experiences and impressions of using the Nurses’ Behavioural Assistant (NBA) (a knowledge-based, interactive ehealth system) to assist them to better respond to behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) and will be reported here. Methods: Focus groups were conducted, followed by a four-week pilot site ‘end-user attitudes’ trial of the NBA at a regional aged care residential facility (ACRF). Brief interviews were conducted with consenting nursing staff. Results: Focus group feedback (N = 10) required only minor cosmetic changes to the NBA prototype. Post pilot site end-user interview data (N = 10) indicated that the regional ACRF nurses were positive and enthusiastic about the NBA, however several issues were also identified. Conclusions: Overall the results supported the utility of the NBA to promote a person centred care approach to managing BPSD. Slight modifications may be required to maximise its uptake across all ACRF nursing staff.
Description:
Desiccation cracking is a common, undesirable phenomenon in many geotechnical engineering applications, particularly in compacted clay liners as it causes significant changes to the hydraulic and mechanical properties of soils. This is one of the major concerns in design and construction of landfill clay liners in arid regions. This paper reports the findings of laboratory tests conducted to investigate the effects of adding nylon fibre, guar gum and organic enzyme to the soil to control desiccation cracks. Merri-Creek clay, a highly expansive soil from Victoria, Australia, was used in the tests. The additives were mixed with soil in different combinations and in varying proportions. Desiccation tests were conducted in thin, long moulds as in the free shrinkage tests. It was observed that very small quantities of these additives were sufficient to alter the properties of overall mixture. The results indicated that fibre – enzyme is the most effective combination to reduce desiccation cracks. This additive combination contained 0.3% percent of fibres by dry weight of soil and 0.35 g of enzyme per kg of dry soil. There was a modest improvement in dry density in the fibre -enzyme mixture compared to pure Merri-Creek clay. Fibre-enzyme combination also showed the ability to reduce the hydraulic conductivity. It was discovered that guar gum is not desirable to mix with clays in terms of reducing desiccation cracking or decreasing hydraulic conductivity.
Description:
Multi-instance multi-label learning (MIML) is a learning paradigm where an object is represented by a bag of instances and each bag is associated with multiple labels. Ordinary MIML setting assumes a fixed target label set. In real applications, multiple novel labels may exist outside this set, but hidden in the training data and unknown to the MIML learner. Existing MIML approaches are unable to discover the hidden novel labels, let alone predicting these labels in the previously unseen test data. In this paper, we propose the first approach to discover multiple novel labels in MIML problem using an efficient augmented lagrangian optimization, which has a bag-dependent loss term and a bag-independent clustering regularization term, enabling the known labels and multiple novel labels to be modeled simultaneously. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is validated in experiments.
Description:
The protocol diversities of mobile ad hoc have already got hold of the field to a peak of a matured and developed area. Still, the restraint of delay and bandwidth of mobile ad hoc network have kept a little room to draft a routing protocol for the pursuit of providing quality of service. In the paper, we proposed protocol namely Efficient Route Selection in Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing. We select the best path among multiple paths from source to destination using covariance and delay. We consider the delay, link stability and energy to devise a covariance-based metric to discover the most balanced path. We also propose a metric for the selection of a node that acts as a local backup node for the most vulnerable nodes on the selected path. We accomplish our implementation in NS3and it shows the more reliable path and less end to end delay than other counterpart protocols.
Description:
The protocol diversities of mobile ad hoc have already got hold of the field to a peak of a matured and developed area. Still, the restraint of delay and bandwidth of mobile ad hoc network have kept a little room to draft a routing protocol for the pursuit of providing quality of service. In the paper, we proposed protocol namely Efficient Route Selection in Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing. We select the best path among multiple paths from source to destination using covariance and delay. We consider the delay, link stability and energy to devise a covariance-based metric to discover the most balanced path. We also propose a metric for the selection of a node that acts as a local backup node for the most vulnerable nodes on the selected path. We accomplish our implementation in NS3and it shows the more reliable path and less end to end delay than other counterpart protocols.
Description:
Hydraulic performance and its evolution over time is a key design parameter for stormwater filter systems. The major impact affecting stormwater filters is the reduction in infiltration rate, or otherwise known as clogging. This paper focuses on the effect of biological clogging of non-vegetated high flow stormwater filters in Australian conditions. An experimental column study was undertaken. Five semi-synthetic stormwater dosing configurations were tested: (i) Typical stormwater (base), (ii) Stormwater with high nutrient load, (iii) Typical stormwater with chlorine tablets, (iv) sterilized stormwater, and (v) potable water. Each configuration had 6 replicate columns, 3 were placed inside under controlled laboratory conditions and 3 were placed outside under normal Australian spring weather conditions, except for the potable water case (v) where it only had 2 replicate columns and both were placed outside. The results found were inconclusive due to the insignificant reduction of the infiltration rate over time and the columns did not clog, which is due to the size of sediment used in this study. It is suggested that further work should be undertaken on investigating the effect of stormwater composition in stormwater filters in real world conditions.
Description:
External confining devices are often used to enhance the strength and ductility of reinforced concrete columns. Among the available external confining devices, steel tube is one of the most widely used in construction. However, steel tube has some drawbacks such as local buckling which needs to be considered when estimating the axial load carrying capacity of the concrete-filled-steel-tube (CFST) column. To tackle this problem in design, Eurocode 4 provided guidelines to estimate the effective yield strength of the steel tube material. To study the behavior of CFST column, in this paper, a non-linear analysis using a fiber-based approach was conducted. The use of the fiber-based approach allows the engineers to predict not only the axial load carrying capacity but also the complete load-deformation curve of the CFST columns for a known confining pressure. In the proposed fiber-based approach, an inverse analysis is used to estimate the constant confining pressure similar to design-oriented models. This paper also presents comparisons between the fiber-based approach model with the experimental results and the 3D non-linear finite element analysis.
Description:
External confining devices are often used to enhance the strength and ductility of reinforced concrete columns. Among the available external confining devices, steel tube is one of the most widely used in construction. However, steel tube has some drawbacks such as local buckling which needs to be considered when estimating the axial load carrying capacity of the concrete-filled-steel-tube (CFST) column. To tackle this problem in design, Eurocode 4 provided guidelines to estimate the effective yield strength of the steel tube material. To study the behavior of CFST column, in this paper, a non-linear analysis using a fiber-based approach was conducted. The use of the fiber-based approach allows the engineers to predict not only the axial load carrying capacity but also the complete load-deformation curve of the CFST columns for a known confining pressure. In the proposed fiber-based approach, an inverse analysis is used to estimate the constant confining pressure similar to design-oriented models. This paper also presents comparisons between the fiber-based approach model with the experimental results and the 3D non-linear finite element analysis.
Description:
One pass learning updates a model with only a single scan of the dataset, without storing historical data. Previous studies focus on classification tasks with a fixed class set, and will perform poorly in an open dynamic environment when new classes emerge in a data stream. The performance degrades because the classifier needs to receive a sufficient number of instances from new classes to establish a good model. This can take a long period of time. In order to reduce this period to deal with any-time prediction task, we introduce a framework to handle emerging new classes called One-Pass Class Incremental Learning (OPCIL). The central issue in OPCIL is: how to effectively adapt a classifier of existing classes to incorporate emerging new classes. We call it the new class adaptation issue, and propose a new approach to address it, which requires only one new class instance. The key is to generate pseudo instances which are optimized to satisfy properties that produce a good discriminative classifier. We provide the necessary propertiesand optimization procedures required to address this issue. Experiments validate the effectiveness of this approach.