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.
This paper presents a comprehensive numerical analysis of the improvement in bearing capacity and settlement performance of hexagonal shallow footings with inclined skirts. Various numerical analyses were conducted using PLAXIS 3D to investigate the influence of skirt length-to-footing width (L/B) ratios and skirt inclination angles (θ) on hexagonal footings in loose sand. The models showed very good agreement with experimental data reported in previous studies, with an R² value of 0.996 and a maximum error of less than 4.31%. It was concluded that the inclusion of inclined skirts has a positive effect on bearing capacity, increasing it by up to approximately 2.97 times compared to non-inclined configurations, while significantly
... Show MoreMoisture-induced damage is one of the primary causes of premature distress in asphalt pavements, leading to reduced service life and increased maintenance costs. Although nanomaterials have shown potential in enhancing asphalt performance, the underlying composite interaction mechanisms among nanomaterials, asphalt binder, and aggregate phases under moisture exposure are still not fully understood. In addition, comparative evaluations under consistent experimental conditions remain limited. This study investigates the influence of five nanomaterials: nano-silica (NS), nano-alumina (NA), nano-titanium dioxide (NT), nano-zinc oxide (NZ), and carbon nanotubes (CNT) on the physical and mechanical properties of asphalt binders and mixtur
... Show MoreStroke is the second largest cause of death worldwide and one of the most common causes of disability. However, several approaches have been proposed to deal with stroke patient rehabilitation like robotic devices and virtual reality systems, researchers have found that the brain-computer interfaces (BCI) approaches can provide better results. In this study, the electroencephalography (EEG) dataset from post-stroke patients were investigated to identify the effects of the motor imagery (MI)-based BCI therapy by investigating sensorimotor areas using frequency and time-domain features and to select particular methods that help in enhancing the MI-based BCI systems for stroke patients using EEG signal processing. Therefore, to detect
... Show MoreFractal geometry is receiving increase attention as a quantitative and qualitative model for natural phenomena description, which can establish an active classification technique when applied on satellite images. In this paper, a satellite image is used which was taken by Quick Bird that contains different visible classes. After pre-processing, this image passes through two stages: segmentation and classification. The segmentation carried out by hybrid two methods used to produce effective results; the two methods are Quadtree method that operated inside Horizontal-Vertical method. The hybrid method is segmented the image into two rectangular blocks, either horizontally or vertically depending on spectral uniformity crit
... Show MoreComputer systems and networks are being used in almost every aspect of our daily life, the security threats to computers and networks have increased significantly. Usually, password-based user authentication is used to authenticate the legitimate user. However, this method has many gaps such as password sharing, brute force attack, dictionary attack and guessing. Keystroke dynamics is one of the famous and inexpensive behavioral biometric technologies, which authenticate a user based on the analysis of his/her typing rhythm. In this way, intrusion becomes more difficult because the password as well as the typing speed must match with the correct keystroke patterns. This thesis considers static keystroke dynamics as a transparent layer of t
... Show MoreAutomatic recognition of individuals is very important in modern eras. Biometric techniques have emerged as an answer to the matter of automatic individual recognition. This paper tends to give a technique to detect pupil which is a mixture of easy morphological operations and Hough Transform (HT) is presented in this paper. The circular area of the eye and pupil is divided by the morphological filter as well as the Hough Transform (HT) where the local Iris area has been converted into a rectangular block for the purpose of calculating inconsistencies in the image. This method is implemented and tested on the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIA V4) iris image database 249 person and the IIT Delhi (IITD) iris
... Show More