As one type of resistance furnace, the electrical tube furnace (ETF) typically experiences input noise, measurement noise, system uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances, which significantly degrade its temperature control performance. To provide precise, and robust temperature tracking performance for the ETF, a robust composite control (RCC) method is proposed in this paper. The overall RCC method consists of four elements: First, the mathematical model of the ETF system is deduced, then a state feedback control (SFC) is constructed. Third, a novel disturbance observer (DO) is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance with one observer parameter. Moreover, the stability of the closed loop system including controller

The applications of hot plasma are many and numerous applications require high values of the temperature of the electrons within the plasma region. Improving electron temperature values is one of the important processes for using this specification in plasma for being adopted in several modern applications such as nuclear fusion, plating operations and in industrial applications. In this work, theoretical computations were performed to enhance electron temperature under dense homogeneous plasma. The effect of   power and duration time of pulsed Nd:YAG laser   was studied on the heating of   plasmas  by inverse bremsstrahlung  for  several values for the electron density ratio. There results for these ca

In this work the effect of annealing temperature on the structure and the electrical properties of Bi thin films was studied, the Bi films were deposited on glass substrates at room temperature by thermal evaporation technique with thickness (0.4 µm) and rate of deposition equal to 6.66Å/sec, all samples are annealed in a vacuum for one hour. The X-ray diffraction analysis shows that the prepared samples are polycrystalline and it exhibits hexagonal structure. The electrical properties of these films were studied with different annealing temperatures, the d.c conductivity for films decreases from 16.42 ? 10-2 at 343K to 10.11?10-2 (?.cm)-1 at 363K. The electrical activation energies Ea1 and Ea2 increase from 0.031 to 0.049eV and

This study investigates the possibility of using waste plastic as one of the components of expired lead-acid batteries to produce lightweight concrete. Different percentages of lead-acid battery plastic were used in the production of lightweight concrete. The replacements were (70, 80 and 100%) by volume of the fine and coarse aggregate. Results demonstrated that a reduction of approximately 23.6% to 35% in the wet density was observed when replacement of 70% to 100% of the natural aggregate by lead-acid battery plastic. Also, the compressive strength decreased slightly with the increase in plastic content at different curing ages of 7, 28, 60, 90, 120 days. The lowest value of compressive strength was (20.7 MPa) for (wa

Non-thermal (low-temperature) plasma may act as an alternative approach to control superficial wound and skin infections when the effectiveness of chemical agents is weak due to natural pathogen or biofilm resistance. In this paper an atmospheric pressure plasma needle jet device which generates a cold plasma jet is used to measure the effectiveness of plasma treatment against different pathogenic bacteria and to test the individual susceptibility of pathogenic bacteria to non-thermal argon plasma. It is found that, Gram-negative bacteria were more susceptible to plasma treatment than Gram-positive bacteria. For the Gram-negative bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, there were no survivors among the initial 1x10⁸C.F.U (Co

Mortar of ordinary Portland cement was blended with cockles shell
powder at different weight ratios to investigate the effect of powder
admixture on their strength and thermal conductivity. Results showed
that addition of cockles shell powder at 50% of mortar weight
improves hardness and compressive strength notably and reduces the
thermal conductivity of the end product. Results suggest the
possibility to incorporate cockles shell powders as constituents in
cement mortars for construction and plastering applications.

   A square experimental arena with vegetation on one interior side was deployed in a Sharjah, United Arab Emirates desert. Individual darkling beetles (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae) Akis subtricostata Redtenbacher, 1850 and Trachyderma philistina Reiche and Saulcy, 1857 were placed inside the arena at temperatures ranging between 27 - 49°C. Whether they chose the vegetated side of the arena or not was recorded, as well as how long it took for them to reach the vegetated side, if they chose it. Both species preferred the vegetated side at all temperatures, and the chance of them choosing the vegetated side increased significantly with increasing temperature (logistic regression, p = 0.0096 and p = 0.0003 for