IMPACT : International Journal of Research in Engineering & Technology

1-12

Authors: ADITYA KAMATH

NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition is an annual robotics competition organized by NASA Kennedy Space Center at their Visitors Complex in Florida every year. In May 2013, a team from Manipal University participated in the 4th Annual Lunabotics Mining Competition. The participating teams need to develop a tele-operated or automatic lunar excavation robot to mine lunar soil (regolith) on a simulated lunar surface. This article presents the methods used by the team in order to achieve full autonomy of the robot for the traversal of the pre-described arena. This paper describes the project from the formulation of the navigation algorithm to the simulation in detail keeping focus on the basic and specific functionality of the robot.

19-32

Authors: RAVIKUMAR B. CHOODEGOWDA, GILBERT MALINGA & KEDARNATH

Land development in urbanized watersheds poses a potential of increasing storm runoff rates and therefore increasing the risk of flooding in the downstream areas of a watershed. To investigate the temporal change in land use practices on the watershed hydrology, a hydrological analysis was conducted on Little Kitten Creek watershed located near Manhattan city of Riley county, Kansas, USA. Native land use types in the watershed changed in to commercial development and residential parcels due to rapid development over the period of ten years. Data collected and analyzed included digital elevation model (DEM) of study site, stream network and soil data using Arc GIS and Arc-Hydro Software. Watershed characteristics were also computed. The delineated watershed boundary, stream segments and soil data layers were over laid to produce soil maps. Time of concentration (Tc) was determined for the pre and post development conditions in the watershed using seven different methods. These computed time of concentration values were observed to be shorter for the post-development condition when compared to the pre-development condition of the watershed. The reduced time of concentration in the post development condition is attributed to increase in percentage of impervious areas due to increased residential development in the watershed resulted in increased runoff rates.

41-48

Authors: VIDYA DESHMUKH & ABHILASHA MISHRA

In this paper, E-shaped microstrip patch antenna with slot is proposed for ISM BAND application. The proposed antenna project is about microstrip antenna with meandered ground plane. The design adopts contemporary techniques; coaxial probe feeding, E-shape patch structure and slotted patch. The composite effect of introducing the proposed patch, offer a low profile, broadband, and low cross-polarization level. The results for the return loss, VSWR, gain and co-and cross-polarization patterns are presented. The antenna operating the band of 2.40-2.48GHz shows an comparative impedance bandwidth and its gain table for various shape arrangement. The entire project is design and simulated in an soft HFSS software.

55-62

Authors: HESHAM ELZANATY

The alloys of different weight percentage of Cu–namely, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 wt.% are produced by conventional melting and mould casting route. The effect of different Cu–weight percentage on the tensile properties, percent elongation, hardness and wear behavior of the alloys is investigated. It was observed that the hardness of the alloys increased continuously with increasing copper content up to 5 wt.%. The tensile strength increased and the wear loss decreased with increasing Cu–content up to 2 wt. % for Zn–40Al but up to 3 wt. % for Al–40Zn. However, the coefficient of friction and temperature were found to be less for the copper containing alloys than the ones without copper.

69-76

Authors: WACŁAW KOLLEK & URSZULA RADZIWANOWSKA

This paper presents the results of modernization of gear micropump casing in order to achieve minimization of overall dimensions and mass of the construction. Three different cases of the pump casing size were analyzed during numerical simulations with the use of finite element method (FEM). The dimensions of the first of the casings were identical to prototype unit, the second model was characterized by 15% reduction in size and the third casing was reduced by 25%. During the analysis, stress and displacement distribution in pump casings were observed. In the first modernized casing (85%), maximal stress value was equal to 104MPa, and the maximal value of displacement 0.012mm. In the second modification of pump casing (75%), the highest stress values achieved 134MPa, and maximal displacement 0.017mm. Strength and stiffness criteria in both modernized pump bodies were achieved.

81-84

Authors: AKHIL SAOKAR, SHREYANSH JAIN & ARUNA GAWADE

In recent years, introduction of a renewable energy source such as solar energy is expected due to the expected depletion of other conventional energy sources. Solar energy is one of the most promising renewable energy sources. In order to integrate this type of source into an existing power distribution system, system planners need an accurate model that predicts the availability of the generating capacity. In order to predict this to a successful extent, an artificial neural network is applied. This paper shows the results of our earlier proposed neural network model used for prediction of solar irradiation, as well as compares outputs from various neural network models based on supervised learning rules and Error Back Propagation Training Algorithm. The irradiation and other training data of one year (December 2012 to November 2013) have been obtained from Tata Power Company’s Mulshi Solar Power Plant.

93-104

Authors: SAID CHARFI, REDOUAN LAHMYED & LALITHA RANGARAJAN

Computer-aided detection/diagnosis (CAD) systems can enhance the diagnostic capabilities of physicians and reduce the time required for accurate diagnosis. The objective of this paper is to review the recent published segmentation and classification techniques and their state-of-the-art for the human brain magnetic resonance images (MRI). The review reveals the CAD systems of human brain MRI images are still an open problem. In the light of this review we proposed a hybrid intelligent machine learning technique for computer-aided detection system for automatic detection of brain tumor through magnetic resonance images. The proposed technique is based on the following computational methods; the histogram dependent thresholding for image segmentation, the discrete wavelet transform for features extraction, the principal component analysis for reducing the dimensionality of the wavelet coefficients, and the feed forward back-propagation neural network to classify inputs into normal or abnormal. The experiments were carried out on 80 images consisting of 37 normal and 43 abnormal (malignant and benign tumors) from a real human brain MRI dataset. The classification accuracy on both training and test images is 90% which was significantly good. The results revealed that the proposed hybrid approach is accurate and fast and robust. Finally, possible future directions are suggested.

113-122

Authors: RATIBA WIDED BIARA & DJAMAL ALKAMA

"Foggara" certainly reflects a system of conventional irrigation, which has long served as caravan dwellers and roaming in their travels through the Sahara. But, it reports ingenious irrigation process conjecture, is adapting to the climate, inherent social context to this region. It’s a method for groundwater capture who assured the payment of local institutions in the Algerian Sahara. History testified to an evolution of the oasis, where the parties y related to abandoned, while others replaced the percolates gardens. Causes emanate from the drawdown of the sheet, either to silting, or at the same time. There are overriding reasons that justify the occupation of the ground of human settlements in the Gourara. If the foggara, has of sustainability for long periods the Algerian oasis; It is also important to mention that the hydraulic evolution, which were subject, has been proven in the Gourara: typically at Timmoun. Unfortunately today we are witnessing the decline of countless oasis of foggara. Thus, it can be assumed a quasi interim implementation in the Gourara; even can be downright fear further severe natural conditions, final desertification in the region. In view of this is to ask: How can we preserve and safeguard this hydraulic heritage?

127-132

Authors: BHAVNA KHATRI, VIMAL N. PANDEY & PRADEEP CHOUKSEY

Educational Datamining (EDM) is an emerging dicipline, concerned with developing methods for exploring the unique types of data that come from educational system and using those methods to better understand students, and the system which they learn in. This paper is designed to justify the capabilities of datamining techniques in context of higher education by offering a datamining model for higher education system in technical institution. In this, we are proposing a detection techniques for detecting abnormal values in the student’s result sheets. For this we are applying dataminig techniques like classification, decision tree etc. on the huge educational data, for finding errors in the sheets with respect to score or grade or any calculation mistakes.

141-156

Authors: SINGH PAPU, SINGH SWETA & SINGH BR

Garlic is a semi-perishable vegetable spice and nearly 30% of the crop is wasted due to respiration and microbiological spoilage during storage. Through garlic is produced abundantly and consumed as such, little efforts have so far been made to produce dehydrated garlic and garlic powder. The proper drying techniques are the most important aspect of fruits and vegetables preservation. The use of solar dryer helps not only to reduce losses and improves the quality of product but also helps in conserving the convectional energy sources. A greenhouse type solar dryer was used the experiments were conducted to develop dehydrated garlic slices so as to enhance the availability of garlic slices during off season. In the present study, fresh garlic slices were pretreated in two ways (i) KMS treated samples (ii) NaCl treated samples (ratio of water 1:4 w/w) and untreated garlic slices were also dried as control samples. The slices were dried at different thicknesses of 3.0 mm, 4.5 mm, and 6.0 mm under greenhouse type solar dryer and in open sun. Physico-chemical analysis i. e. moisture content, moisture ratio, drying rate, ascorbic acid, acidity, total sugar, reducing sugar, colour, and pungency were evaluated during the experiment. Experiments were also conducted to study the effect of drying conditions on sensory quality and rehydration characteristics. It was found that total drying time decreased in drying air temperature at 51.630C under greenhouse type solar dryer condition. Major drying took place in falling rate period. The average drying rate increased with increase in temperature and decrease with time and thickness. Chemically treated samples dried under greenhouse type solar dryer took lesser time than untreated samples. It was observed that total moisture loss increased with increase in drying temperature. The rehydration ratio for dehydrated garlic increased under greenhouse type solar dryer as compared to open sun drying. The product quality was found to be more acceptable in case of 3.0 mm thickness, KMS treated samples dried under greenhouse type solar dryer.

163-168

Authors: AVINASH V NAIR & SWAPNA HARI

In recent years we have been watching a tremendous increase in the growth of online social networks(OSNs). OSNs enable people to share personal and public information and make social connections with friends, family members and other peoples. In addition to the rapid increase in the use of social network, it raises a number of security and privacy issues. While OSNs allow users to restrict access to shared data, they currently do not provide any mechanism to totally enforce privacy issue solver associated with multiple users. The proposed method implements a solution yo facilitate collaborative management of common data item in OSNs. Each controller of the data item can set his privacy settings to the shared data item. The proposed method also identifies privacy conflicting segments and helps in resolving the privacy conflicts and a final decision is made whether or not to provide access to the shared data item.