Silicon (Si)-based materials are sought in different engineering applications including Civil, Mechanical, Chemical, Materials, Energy and Minerals engineering. Silicon and Silicon dioxide are processed extensively in the industries in granular form, for example to develop durable concrete, shock and fracture resistant materials, biological, optical, mechanical and electronic devices which offer significant advantages over existing technologies. Here we focus on the constitutive behaviour of Si-based granular materials under mechanical shearing. In the recent times, it is widely recognised in the literature that the microscopic origin of shear strength in granular assemblies are associated with their ability to establish anisotropic networks (fabrics) comprising strong-force transmitting inter-particle contacts under shear loading. Strong contacts pertain to the relatively small number of contacts carrying greater than the average normal contact force. However, information on how such fabrics evolve in Si-based assemblies under mechanical loading, and their link to bulk shear strength of such assemblies are scarce in the literature. Using discrete element method (DEM), here we present results on how Si-based granular assemblies develop shear strength and their internal fabric structures under bi-axial quasi-static compression loading. Based on the analysis, a simple constitutive relation is presented for the bulk shear strength of the Si-based assemblies relating with their internal fabric anisotropy of the heavily loaded contacts. These findings could help to develop structure-processing property relations of Si-based materials in future, which originate at the microscale.
Background: Obesity tends to appear in modern societies and constitutes a significant public health problem with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Objective: This study aims to determine the agreement between actual and perceived body image in the general population.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was conducted with a sample size of 300. The data were collected from eight major populated areas of Northern district of Karachi Sindh with a period of six months (10th January 2020 to 21st June 2020). The Figure rating questionnaire scale (FRS) was applied to collect the demographic data and perception about body weight. Body mass index (BMI) used for ass
... Show MoreThere is various human biometrics used nowadays, one of the most important of these biometrics is the face. Many techniques have been suggested for face recognition, but they still face a variety of challenges for recognizing faces in images captured in the uncontrolled environment, and for real-life applications. Some of these challenges are pose variation, occlusion, facial expression, illumination, bad lighting, and image quality. New techniques are updating continuously. In this paper, the singular value decomposition is used to extract the features matrix for face recognition and classification. The input color image is converted into a grayscale image and then transformed into a local ternary pattern before splitting the image into
... Show MoreThis paper proposes feedback linearization control (FBLC) based on function approximation technique (FAT) to regulate the vibrational motion of a smart thin plate considering the effect of axial stretching. The FBLC includes designing a nonlinear control law for the stabilization of the target dynamic system while the closedloop dynamics are linear with ensured stability. The objective of the FAT is to estimate the cubic nonlinear restoring force vector using the linear parameterization of weighting and orthogonal basis function matrices. Orthogonal Chebyshev polynomials are used as strong approximators for adaptive schemes. The proposed control architecture is applied to a thin plate with a large deflection that stimulates the axial loadin
... Show MoreIn this paper, a handwritten digit classification system is proposed based on the Discrete Wavelet Transform and Spike Neural Network. The system consists of three stages. The first stage is for preprocessing the data and the second stage is for feature extraction, which is based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The third stage is for classification and is based on a Spiking Neural Network (SNN). To evaluate the system, two standard databases are used: the MADBase database and the MNIST database. The proposed system achieved a high classification accuracy rate with 99.1% for the MADBase database and 99.9% for the MNIST database
This study presents an adaptive control scheme based on synergetic control theory for suppressing the vibration of building structures due to earthquake. The control key for the proposed controller is based on a magneto-rheological (MR) damper, which supports the building. According to Lyapunov-based stability analysis, an adaptive synergetic control (ASC) strategy was established under variation of the stiffness and viscosity coefficients in the vibrated building. The control and adaptive laws of the ASC were developed to ensure the stability of the controlled structure. The proposed controller addresses the suppression problem of a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) building model, and an earthquake control scenario was conducted and simulat
... Show MoreCalculating the Inverse Kinematic (IK) equations is a complex problem due to the nonlinearity of these equations. Choosing the end effector orientation affects the reach of the target location. The Forward Kinematics (FK) of Humanoid Robotic Legs (HRL) is determined by using DenavitHartenberg (DH) method. The HRL has two legs with five Degrees of Freedom (DoF) each. The paper proposes using a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimize the best orientation angle of the end effector of HRL. The selected orientation angle is used to solve the IK equations to reach the target location with minimum error. The performance of the proposed method is measured by six scenarios with different simulated positions of the legs. The proposed
... Show MoreFree-Space Optical (FSO) can provide high-speed communications when the effect of turbulence is not serious. However, Space-Time-Block-Code (STBC) is a good candidate to mitigate this seriousness. This paper proposes a hybrid of an Optical Code Division Multiple Access (OCDMA) and STBC in FSO communication for last mile solutions, where access to remote areas is complicated. The main weakness effecting a FSO link is the atmospheric turbulence. The feasibility of employing STBC in OCDMA is to mitigate these effects. The current work evaluates the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) performance of OCDMA operating under the scintillation effect, where this effect can be described by the gamma-gamma model. The most obvious finding to emerge from the analysis
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