European Journal of Advances in Engineering and Technology

428-434

Authors: Ayan Karmakar, AK Chauhan, Gunaram and Vijay Sharma

The design of a compact planar monopole antenna featuring ultra-wideband characteristics and simultaneous signal rejection in the 6.5-8.5 GHz band is presented here. Five different antenna configurations have been proposed with the same RF performance and radiation characteristics. Co-Planar Waveguide(CPW) is used to feed the radiating element. The presented results depict that the prototype antenna of 47×47 mm2 dimension has a bandwidth from 3 GHz to more than 10.6 GHz excluding the rejection band. Measured peak gain of the fabricated prototype antenna varies from 1.5 dBi to 5.5 dBi except the notch band. This gain can be improved by 3 dB (avg.) implementing honeycomb superstrate along with metallic shield.

444-450

Authors: EK Orhorhoro, OW Orhorhoro and V Atumah

This research work focus on the evaluation of water-based eggshells powder as a quenching medium for hardening medium steel. Medium carbon steel sample with original diameter of 12.00mm and gauge length of 50m was quenched in both the agitated and non-agitated water-based eggshell powder quenchant. The medium carbon steel samples were initially normalized and this was followed by austenitizing the samples at 930oC for 20 minutes which was eventually quench in both the agitated and non-agitated water-based eggshell powder quenchant. Hardness test was carried out on the as-quenched samples to determine the performance of the water-based egg-shell powder quenchant which was compared with water and oil. Also, the specific latent heat of vaporization, cooling rates of all the selected quenching media and metallographic analysis was carried out for each as-quenched sample in the selected media. The results obtained show that water-based eggshell powder quenchant has a higher specific latent heat of vaporization than water. The microstructure of samples quenched in agitated water-based eggshell powder quenchant revealed complete transformation of the austenite into martensite and a good degree of hardness was obtained. Therefore, water-based eggshell powder quenchant can be used as a quenching medium for hardening steel.

457-465

Authors: IR Ejilah, K Dahuwa and BA Gambo

A TD 110-TD 115 single cylinder four-stroke compression ignition engine test bed, and incorporated with a hy-draulic dynamometer was used to conduct the engine performance analysis to study the influence of marula oil methyl ester (MOME)- diesel fuel(DF) on engine performance The engine performance experiments of DF samples and MOME –DF blended fuel samples; B5 (i.e. 5% MOME and 98% Diesel fuel by volumetric proportion), B10, B15, B20, and B25 were conducted in accordance with standardized SAE practice SAE J1312 procedure for four-stroke compression ignition engines (SAE, 1995). The findings of the tests show that: the brake power reached to a maximum at 2000g engine load, and decreases slightly thereafter for all tested fuel samples. The brake power for B5 and B10 fuel samples were observed to be 0.19% and 0.094% higher than DF(2.315 kW), with B15 fuel sample exhibiting brake power value similar to DF benchmark, this could be attributed to their comparably higher fuel mass flow rate, better fuel oxygenation, and air-fuel mixtures than DF sample; the minimum brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC) values for all tested fuel samples was recorded at the engine load of 2500g, with B5 and B10 fuel samples lower than the DF benchmark (309.10 g/kWh) by 18.7% and 0.16%, thus suggesting a propensity for improved fuel economy on account of their lower fuel consumption patterns, lubricity and higher fuel mass flow rate; the drop in brake specific energy consumption (BSEC) values for B5 (2.75%), B10 (1.95%), B15(1.66%), B20(1.37%), and B25(0.22%) fuel samples were also found to be lower than the DF (13.83MJ/kWhr) benchmark, to further explains the influence of biodiesel proportion in the fuel samples, whose increase lowers the calorific values, air-fuel mixtures, and consequently raises the densities and viscosities of fuel samples with an adverse effect on fuel atomization and combustion. The combined effects of improved fuel combustion and inherent lubricity of fuel blends enabled B5 (2.68%), B10 (1.91%), B15 (1.53), and B20 (1.15%) fuel samples to exhibit higher brake thermal efficiency (BTE) values than B25 (26.1%) and DF (26.1%) samples respectively under similar loading condition. Consequently, the rise in biodiesel proportion in the blends is the culprit for poor fuel atomization and combustion behavior, which in turn serves as a pointer to higher blend viscosities and lower calorific values respectively. It could be seen from foregoing that B5, B10 and B15 MOME-DF blended fuel samples clearly demonstrated superior performance characteristics than conventional diesel fuel, and is therefore suitable for use as fuel, and diesel fuel extender and/or conserver in Nigeria.

471-477

Authors: Mevlut Kizil

The design steps of cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) are usually performed sequentially without considering interactions between stages. There needs to be a certain feedback among different parts of CMS design so that the system can be designed simultaneously for a better functionality. In this paper, an intuitive approach to eliminate congestions in CMS was developed. Part routings were determined by a machine resource minimizing model, ma-chines were grouped to form cells, and a simulation analysis was performed to determine the effects of fixed part routings on cell formation and the material handling system. A procedure to eliminate congestions in the material handling system by intelligently altering part routings was proposed. A sample problem was solved. Numerical results indicate that the proposed procedure is effective.

488-491

Authors: Barenya Bikash Hazarika and Syed Sazzad Ahmed

In data-mining, many algorithms can’t process continuous value, so, discretization is an important method in data-mining application. Discretization describes converting some continuous data into some discrete values. In our paper firstly, we will try to implement three discretization techniques on a dataset, namely, Equal Width, Global Equal Width and Equal Frequency. Secondly we will apply two causality finding techniques namely, Mutual Information and Transfer Entropy and compare the performance among those discretization techniques.