The effects of using aqueous nanofluids containing covalently functionalized graphene nanoplatelets with triethanolamine (TEA-GNPs) as novel working fluids on the thermal performance of a flat-plate solar collector (FPSC) have been investigated. Water-based nanofluids with weight concentrations of 0.025%, 0.05%, 0.075%, and 0.1% of TEA-GNPs with specific surface areas of 300, 500, and 750 m2/g were prepared. An experimental setup was designed and built and a simulation program using MATLAB was developed. Experimental tests were performed using inlet fluid temperatures of 30, 40, and 50 °C; flow rates of 0.6, 1.0, and 1.4 kg/min; and heat flux intensities of 600, 800, and 1000 W/m2. The FPSC’s efficiency increased as the flow rate and heat flux intensity increased, and decreased as inlet fluid temperature increased. When using nanofluids in the FPSC, the measured temperatures of absorber plate and tube wall decreased down to 3.35% and 3.51%, respectively, with the increase in weight concentration and specific surface area, while the efficiency increased up to 10.53% for 0.1- wt% TEA-GNPs nanofluid with specific surface area of 750 m2/g, in comparison with water. When using water as heat transfer fluid, very good agreement was obtained between the experimental and predicted values of absorber plate temperature, tube wall temperature, and collector’s efficiency with maximum differences of 3.02%, 3.19%, and 3.26%, respectively. While, when using nanofluids, higher differences were found, up to 4.74%, 4.7%, and 13.47% for TEA-GNPs nanofluid with specific surface area of 750 m2/g, respectively. Accordingly, the MATLAB code was capable of simulating the thermal performance of FPSCs utilizing nanofluids as their heat transfer fluids with acceptable accuracy. Values of performance index were all greater than 1, and increased as weight concentration increased up to 1.104 for 0.1- wt% TEA-GNPs nanofluid with specific surface area of 750 m2/g, implying higher positive effects on efficiency than negative effects on pressure drop. Accordingly, the investigated nanofluids can efficiently be used in FPSCs for enhanced energy efficiency, and the 0.1- wt% water-based TEA-GNPs nanofluid with specific surface area of 750 m2/g was comparatively the superior one.
In this work laser detection and tracking system (LDTS) is designed and implemented using a fuzzy logic controller (FLC). A 5 mW He-Ne laser system and an array of nine PN photodiodes are used in the detection system. The FLC is simulated using MATLAB package and the result is stored in a lock up table to use it in the real time operation of the system. The results give a good system response in the target detection and tracking in the real time operation.
The use of blended cement in concrete provides economic, energy savings, and ecological benefits, and also provides. Improvement in the properties of materials incorporating blended cements. The major aim of this investigation is to develop blended cement technology using grinded local rocks . The research includes information on constituent materials, manufacturing processes and performance characteristics of blended cements made with replacement (10 and 20) % of grinded local rocks (limestone, quartzite and porcelinite) from cement.
The main conclusion of this study was that all ty
... Show MoreThe use of blended cement in concrete provides economic, energy savings, and ecological benefits, and also provides. Improvement in the properties of materials incorporating blended cements. The major aim of this investigation is to develop blended cement technology using grinded local rocks . The research includes information on constituent materials, manufacturing processes and performance characteristics of blended cements made with replacement (10 and 20) % of grinded local rocks (limestone, quartzite and porcelinite) from cement. The main conclusion of this study was that all types of manufactured blended cement conformed to the specification according to ASTM C595-12 (chemical and physical requirements). The percentage of the compress
... Show MoreBackground: Irrigation of the canal system permits removal of residual tissue in the canal anatomy that cannot be reached by instrumentation of the main canals so the aim of this study was to compare and evaluate the efficiency of conventional irrigation system, endoactivator sonic irrigation system,P5 Newtron Satelec passive ultrasonic irrigation and Endovac irrigation system in removing of dentin debris at three levels of root canals and to compare the percentage of dentin debris among the three levels for each irrigation system. Materials and methods: Forty extracted premolars with approximately straight single root canals were randomly distributed into 4 tested groups of 10 teeth each. All canals were prepared with Protaper Universal ha
... Show MoreFrequency equations for rectangular plate model with and without the thermoelastic effect for the cases are: all edges are simply supported, all edges are clamped and two opposite edges are clamped others are simply supported. These were obtained through direct method for simply supported ends using Hamilton’s principle with minimizing Ritz method to total energy (strain and kinetic) for the rest of the boundary conditions. The effect of restraining edges on the frequency and mode shape has been considered. Distributions temperatures have been considered as a uniform temperature the effect of developed thermal stresses due to restrictions of ends conditions on vibration characteristics of a plate with different
... Show MoreThis paper features the modeling and design of a pole placement and output Feedback control technique for the Active Vibration Control (AVC) of a smart flexible cantilever beam for a Single Input Single Output (SISO) case. Measurements and actuation actions done by using patches of piezoelectric layer, it is bonded to the master structure as sensor/actuator at a certain position of the cantilever beam.
The smart structure is modeled based on the concept of piezoelectric theory, Bernoulli -Euler beam theory, using Finite Element Method (FEM) and the state space techniques. The number of modes is reduced using the controllability and observability grammians retaining the first three
dominant vibratory modes, and for the reduced syste
A set of hydro treating experiments are carried out on vacuum gas oil in a trickle bed reactor to study the hydrodesulfurization and hydrodenitrogenation based on two model compounds, carbazole (non-basic nitrogen compound) and acridine (basic nitrogen compound), which are added at 0–200 ppm to the tested oil, and dibenzotiophene is used as a sulfur model compound at 3,000 ppm over commercial CoMo/ Al2O3 and prepared PtMo/Al2O3. The impregnation method is used to prepare (0.5% Pt) PtMo/Al2O3. The basic sites are found to be very small, and the two catalysts exhibit good metal support interaction. In the absence of nitrogen compounds over the tested catalysts in the trickle bed reactor at temperatures of 523 to 573 K, liquid hourly space v
... Show MoreIn Computer-based applications, there is a need for simple, low-cost devices for user authentication. Biometric authentication methods namely keystroke dynamics are being increasingly used to strengthen the commonly knowledge based method (example a password) effectively and cheaply for many types of applications. Due to the semi-independent nature of the typing behavior it is difficult to masquerade, making it useful as a biometric. In this paper, C4.5 approach is used to classify user as authenticated user or impostor by combining unigraph features (namely Dwell time (DT) and flight time (FT)) and digraph features (namely Up-Up Time (UUT) and Down-Down Time (DDT)). The results show that DT enhances the performance of digraph features by i
... Show More