The convergence speed is the most important feature of Back-Propagation (BP) algorithm. A lot of improvements were proposed to this algorithm since its presentation, in order to speed up the convergence phase. In this paper, a new modified BP algorithm called Speeding up Back-Propagation Learning (SUBPL) algorithm is proposed and compared to the standard BP. Different data sets were implemented and experimented to verify the improvement in SUBPL.

A Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA 2) approach for solving the multi-objective Environmental / Economic Power Dispatch (EEPD) problem is presented in this paper. In the past fuel cost consumption minimization was the aim (a single objective function) of economic power dispatch problem. Since the clean air act amendments have been applied to reduce SO2 and NOX emissions from power plants, the utilities change their strategies in order to reduce pollution and atmospheric emission as well, adding emission minimization as other objective function made economic power dispatch (EPD) a multi-objective problem having conflicting objectives. SPEA2 is the improved version of SPEA with better fitness assignment, density estimation, an

This paper develops a fuzzy multi-objective model for solving aggregate production planning problems that contain multiple products and multiple periods in uncertain environments. We seek to minimize total production cost and total labor cost. We adopted a new method that utilizes a Zimmermans approach to determine the tolerance and aspiration levels. The actual performance of an industrial company was used to prove the feasibility of the proposed model. The proposed model shows that the method is useful, generalizable, and can be applied to APP problems with other parameters.

In this paper we proposed the method of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) determination of some essential trace elements in medicinal herbs and vitamin-mineral complexes at the level of 10⁰-10¹ mg/ml. To increase sensitivity and selectivity of the determination we simple and effective approach based on the extraction of metal ions from aqueous solutions with chemically modified polyurethane foam sorbents followed by direct XRF analysis. The conditions of sorption preconcentration of Co(II), Ni(II) and Zn(II) ions with modified sorbents were optimized. The proposed approach is used for the determination of trace elements in several kinds of medicinal herbs (coltsfoot leaves, nettle leaves and yarrow herb) and vitamin-mineral

Flexible pavements are subjected to three main distress types: fatigue crack, thermal crack, and permanent deformation. Under severe climate conditions, thermal cracking particularly contributes largely to a considerable scale of premature deterioration of pavement infrastructure worldwide. This challenge is especially relevant for Europe, as weather conditions vary significantly throughout the year. Hydrated lime (HL) has been recognized as an effective additive to improve the mechanical properties of asphalt concrete for pavement applications. Previous research has found that a replacement of conventional limestone dust filler using hydrated lime at 2.5% of the total weight of aggregates generated an optimum improvement in the mec

The objective of this study was to develop neural network algorithm, (Multilayer Perceptron), based correlations for the prediction overall volumetric mass-transfer coefficient (k_La), in slurry bubble column for gas-liquid-solid systems. The Multilayer Perceptron is a novel technique based on the feature generation approach using back propagation neural network. Measurements of overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient were made with the air - Water, air - Glycerin and air - Alcohol systems as the liquid phase in bubble column of 0.15 m diameter. For operation with gas velocity in the range 0-20 cm/sec, the overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient was found to decrease w

This paper describes DC motor speed control based on optimal Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) technique. Controller's objective is to maintain the speed of rotation of the motor shaft with a particular step response.The controller is modeled in MATLAB environment, the simulation results show that the proposed controller gives better performance and less settling time when compared with the traditional PID controller.

In this research, the focus was on estimating the parameters on (min- Gumbel distribution), using the maximum likelihood method and the Bayes method. The genetic algorithmmethod was employed in estimating the parameters of the maximum likelihood method as well as  the Bayes method. The comparison was made using the mean error squares (MSE), where the best  estimator  is the one who has the least mean squared error. It was noted that the best estimator was (BLG_GE).