Price Faculty of Engineering Scholarly Works

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http://hdl.handle.net/1993/36351

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    Open Access
    Synchrotron tomography applications in agriculture and food sciences research: a review
    (2022-08-13) Indore, Navnath S.; Karunakaran, Chithra; Jayas, Digvir S.
    Abstract Synchrotron imaging is widely used for research in many scientific disciplines. This article introduces the characteristics of synchrotron X-ray imaging and its applications in agriculture and food science research. The agriculture and food sector are a vast area that comprises of plants, seeds, animals, food and their products; soils with thriving microbial communities; and natural resources such as water, fertilizers, and organic matter. These entities have unique internal features, structures and compositions which differentiate them from each other in varieties, species, grades, and types. The use of a bright and tuneable monochromatic source of synchrotron imaging techniques enables researchers to study the internal features and compositions of plants, seeds, soil and food in a quick and non-destructive way to enhance their use, conservation and productivity. Synchrotron’s different X-ray imaging techniques offer a wide domain of applications, which make them perfect to enhance the understanding of structures of raw and processed food products to promote food safety and security. Therefore, this paper summarizes the results of major experiments carried out with seeds, plants, soil, food and relevant areas of agricultural sciences with more emphasis on two synchrotron X-ray imaging techniques: absorption and phase-contrast imaging and computed tomography.
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    Open Access
    Euler equations for isentropic gas dynamics with general pressure law
    (2022-01-28) Ibrahim, Muhammad; Din, Anwarud; Yusuf, Abdullahi; Lv, Yu-Pei; Jahanshahi, Hadi; Aly, Ayman A.
    Abstract In this work, we explore the limiting behavior of Riemann solutions to the Euler equations in isentropic gas dynamics with general pressure law. We demonstrate that in the distributional sense the delta wave of zero-pressure gas dynamics is formed by a limit solution. Finally, to present the concentration phenomena, we also offer some numerical outcomes.
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    Open Access
    Design Around Bundle Patent Portfolio Based on Technological Evolution
    (2019-10-25) Li, Hui; Yuan, Jiefeng; Tan, Runhua; Peng, Qingjin
    Abstract Product innovation can be achieved by analyzing leading products patents in the market. Different methods have been proposed for design around patent, commonly using the elimination or replacement of a single patent element. However, the existing research fails to restore the position and function of the design around object in the original patent portfolio of enterprises, which often leads to the phenomenon of evading one patent and violating another. This paper proposes a method for design around patent through using the fusion of technologies of the evolution theory and bundle-type patent portfolio analysis in the initial stage of product development. The object system is analyzed to select technical opportunities through the evolutionary path of technologies and functional trimming methods to achieve circumvent barriers of bundle-type patents. The bundle patent portfolio is analyzed for the product evolution with a radar map. The technological evolution path is combined with the TRIZ innovation method to identify and solve the design problem. Patentability of the new design is evaluated using the patent system rules for innovative scheme difference from the original patent portfolio. The method is verified in a case study for the design of a glass-wiping robot. The design solution has been patented.
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    Open Access
    Optimizing radio resources for multicasting on high-altitude platforms
    (2019-08-29) Ibrahim, Ahmed; Alfa, Attahiru S
    Abstract High-altitude platforms (HAPs) are quasi-stationary aerial wireless communications platforms meant to be located in the stratosphere, to provide wireless communications and broadband services. They have the ability to fly on demand to temporarily or permanently serve regions with unavailable infrastructure. In this paper, we consider the development of an efficient method for resource allocation and controlling user admissions to multicast groups in a HAP system. Power, frequency, space and time domains are considered in the problem. The combination of these many aspects of the problem in multicasting over an OFDMA HAP system were not, to the best of our knowledge, addressed before. Due to the strong dependence of the total number of users that could join different multicast groups on the possible ways we may allocate resources to the different multicast groups, it is important to consider a joint user to multicast group assignments and radio resource management across the groups. From the service provider’s point of view, it would be in its best interest to be able to admit as many users as possible, while satisfying their quality of service requirements. The problem turns out to be a mixed integer non-convex non-linear program for which branch and bound solution framework is guaranteed to solve the problem. Branch and bound (BnB) can be also used to obtain sub-optimal solutions with desired quality. Even though branch and bound is guaranteed to find the optimal solution, the computational cost could be extremely high, which is why we considered different types of enhancements to BnB. Mainly, we consider reformulations by linearizing a specific set of quadratic constraints in the derived formulation, as well as the application of different branching techniques to find the one that performs the best. Based on the conducted numerical experiments, it was concluded that linearization, applied for at least 100 presolving rounds, and cloud branching achieve the best performance.
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    Case study scenarios in site selection of hazardous material facilities based on transportation preferences
    (2019-06-08) Mehran, Babak; Khan, Musharraf A; Mehran, Mina; Roh, Hyukjae; Sharma, Satish
    Abstract A methodology is proposed to evaluate and rank potential sites for facilities dealing with hazardous materials (HAZMAT). The proposed methodology incorporates HAZMAT route planning into facility siting while considering transportation preferences and challenges. The area of interest is divided into smaller zones representing potential sites for a HAZMAT facility. A multimodal transportation network including railways and roads is considered for transportation of HAZMAT. Each zone is evaluated based on its accessibility from a set of selected points of interests (POIs), which are defined as potential origin/destination points for transportation of HAZMAT. The shortest routes between each POI and potential zones are evaluated based on a cost function which can accommodate multiple criteria to determine the associated disutility for each potential zone. Finally, zones are ranked based on their cumulative disutility scores. The proposed analysis method is quantitative, and at the same time it is adequately flexible to allow inclusion of subjective criteria. Application of the proposed methodology is demonstrated for identifying optimal locations for a HAZMAT facility (e.g., a nuclear facility) using the Canadian province of Saskatchewan as an example. Three scenarios were evaluated including (1) all network segments and POIs were treated equally, (2) network segments were rank ordered based on their functional classification while POIs were treated equally and (3) network segments were rank ordered based on their functional classification with preferences given to specific POI(s).