Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology

6

Authors: Hazrat Ali, Ali Zahir, Shahid Khan, Naseer Ahmad, Ahmad Fayyaz

Pesticide spray is essential for pest control, crop production and protection. However, the direct contact of these pesticides with humans may cause cancer, complication in the respiratory system and neurological disorders. This problem is more severe in developing countries as each year more than 100 thousand death cases are reported by World Health Organization. This work presents a modification approach of Quadcopter into a UAV, in such a way that it can fly in manual as well as autopilot mode and can spray on agricultural lands using its ground control station. In this work, a stable system is developed for aerial distribution of pesticides as well as fertilizer to reduce human contact with pesticides. The system consists of; a) a remote-controlled UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) which is controlled from ground through a flight controller and b) a spraying system which is manually triggered by RF controlled circuit. The reliability of the proposed framework is evaluated on a test area of around 1000m2. The pumping rate of sprayer system is adjusted to 40 mL/min with PWM at 45% duty cycle. From results it can be concluded that the integration of UAV with the spray system results in a spraying mechanism which is very efficient and hazard-free for crop pest management in the small field area.

7

Authors: Waqar Ahmed, Aneela Yasmin, Ayesha Tajammul, Najeebullah Channa, Jamil Ahmed

The growth pattern of different algal biofilms investigated in the presence of Ibuprofen and Benzoyl Metronidazole in batch reactors at varying organic loads. Study suggests that the inhibition of algal growth is correlated to organic loads in water rather than the concentrations of PhCs (Pharmaceuticals). Mortality of algae was recorded in BG11 media with binary mixtures of PhCs and no growth inhibition was monitored in the activated sludge with PhCs. These outcomes indicate that the presence of PhCs as pollutants in drinking water have severe effect on algal biofilms due to low organic load thus can alter the aquatic ecosystem. Additionally, PhCs might not adversely hinder the growth of microbes in WWTP (Wastewater Treatment Plants) or in waters with high organic loads. Nevertheless, inference of these results to a full-scale WWTP need more evidence through extensive studies using variable organic substrates and PhCs with numerous ranges of organic loads. These findings suggest that PhCs as water contaminant are able to shift microbial ecology in water bodies.

8

Authors: Aatif Ahmad Khan, Sanjay Kumar Malik

Semantic Search refers to set of approaches dealing with usage of Semantic Web technologies for information retrieval in order to make the process machine understandable and fetch precise results. Knowledge Bases (KB) act as the backbone for semantic search approaches to provide machine interpretable information for query processing and retrieval of results. These KB include Resource Description Framework (RDF) datasets and populated ontologies. In this paper, an assessment of the largest cross-domain KB is presented that are exploited in large scale semantic search and are freely available on Linked Open Data Cloud. Analysis of these datasets is a prerequisite for modeling effective semantic search approaches because of their suitability for particular applications. Only the large scale, cross-domain datasets are considered, which are having sizes more than 10 million RDF triples. Survey of sizes of the datasets in triples count has been depicted along with triples data format(s) supported by them, which is quite significant to develop effective semantic search models.

9

Authors: Hashim Hasnain Hadi, Imran Khan, Ghulam Sarwar, Muhammad Mushtaque, Salman Masroor

Water is a prerequisite for the existence of life on earth. Rapid growth in the global population and industrialization have created a dearth of freshwater resources. Escalating water scarcity suggests that the use of passive solar stills is the most suitable and viable option in the arid and semi-arid areas around the world. In this study, the yield of wick type floating solar still is experimentally investigated for different wick materials. Capillary rise and absorbency of two different absorbers are considered as performance parameters for analysis of the research. Based on results, crepe paper with absorbency (1.8s) and capillary rise (112mm/h) proved a better absorber for higher productivity of the still. The efficiency of still with crepe paper was observed to be 16.68% higher than that of glass fiber sheet when applied in still during the investigation. The maximum internal temperature and the productivity of still were 9.1°C and 0.8 L/day respectively higher when crepe paper was used instead of a glass fiber sheet as a wicking material.

10

Authors: Amjad Ali, Fahad Saleem Baig, Abdul Hameed Memon

Energy is considered as a vital sign of any country. The energy resource of any country is governed by their owned resources either through fossiliferous or alternative/renewable energy reserves. Due to depleting reserves of fossil fuel, countries including Pakistan are now focusing and converting themselves on renewable energy sources. Out of the different renewable sources, Hydel Power is among those indigenous sources which are considered as cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly. Pakistan is among those countries, which have the largest irrigation system which portrays a huge hydel potential within it. Government of Pakistan has also identified different potential sites where Hydel Energy can be obtained. However, apart from the recognized potential sites, there are still many streams/canals/ drains that can also be studied for their hydro potential and estimated generation capacity using mini/micro hydropower plant. Different studies have been carried out in calculating the energy potential of canals. In this paper, Hydropower Potential (HPP) of a Drainage System that is Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD), at Sindh has been calculated using field-based data parameters such as hydraulic depth, the width of the canal and flow velocity. Other studies were also reviewed for data collection. Based on the calculated HPP, five types of turbines with their benefits have been identified and proposed. This study concludes that different locations of LBOD can be considered for setting up a micro hydropower plant; however, a vertical head through extended penstock or weir needs to be considered for an effective hydropotential.

10

Authors: Mehwish Leghari, Shahzad Memon, Lachman Das Dhomeja, Akhter Hussain Jalbani

Now-a-days, in the field of machine learning the data augmentation techniques are common in use, especially with deep neural networks, where a large amount of data is required to train the network. The effectiveness of the data augmentation technique has been analyzed for many applications; however, it has not been analyzed separately for the multimodal biometrics. This research analyzes the effects of data augmentation on single biometric data and multimodal biometric data. In this research, the features from two biometric modalities: fingerprint and signature, have been fused together at the feature level. The primary motivation for fusing biometric data at feature level is to secure the privacy of the user’s biometric data. The results that have been achieved by using data augmentation are presented in this research. The experimental results for the fingerprint recognition, signature recognition and the feature-level fusion of fingerprint with signature have been presented separately. The results show that the accuracy of the training classifier can be enhanced with data augmentation techniques when the size of real data samples is insufficient. This research study explores that how the effectiveness of data augmentation gradually increases with the number of templates for the fused biometric data by making the number of templates double each time until the classifier achieved the accuracy of 99%.

11

Authors: Raja Muhammad Riaz, Khawar Naeem, Abdul Salam Khan, Muhammad Abbas, Misbah Ullah

The purpose of this study is to assess the relationship between the number of accidents and pilot’s age. The pilot considered for this study is General Aviation Pilot. Normal distribution of the accidents shows the mean pilot’s age = 54.60 with S. Dage = 14.38. There is a non-linear relationship between pilot’s age and accident rate and there is a significant difference in accidents across the age intervals F(19, 234) = 9.3116, p < 0.0001. There is no statistical difference in the number of accidents between the interval 40-70 age group. Also, there is statistical difference in the number of accidents above and below 60-year age with respect to event severity and cause of accident (Wiki’s lemma= 0.36, F(26, 160) = 4.00, p < 0.0001). The follow up shows that the number of fatal and non-fatal accidents were statistically different for both above F(2, 92) = 4.58, p < 0.0127 and for below F(2,129) = 7.2, p < 0.0011 while the number of accidents with respect to its causes above 60 are not statistically different but there is statistical difference (F = (5, 126) = 8.74, p < 0.0001) in the number of accidents caused by pilot and caused by technical fault or weather/wind in the age group below 60.

12

Authors: Nawaz Muhammad Hamza Shah, Muhammad Junaid, Nawab Muhammad Faseeh, Dong Ryeol Shin

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) have been very successful in classification and object recognition. A lot of related work has been done to modify the performance of the networks, but they could either perform better with accuracy at high cost or decrease the time taken by a model on training datasets. We propose a deep neural network model ’Multi-Blocked Model’ which tends to decrease this gap and is efficient and accurate with less convolutional layers, easy to deploy online or embedded systems. We choose three datasets that are publicly available and popular for their own uniqueness among the datasets in deep neural networks. These three diverse datasets are: Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST), Street View House Number (SVHN) and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research with 10 Cases (CIFAR-10). Our stateof-the-art Multi-Blocked model is presented well on all three data sets. Dropout is added to overcome the overfitting problem. The multi-blocked model is designed in a way that it uses a minimum number of parameters so that it is able to run on a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), which requires less power. The experimental results show that our proposed Multi-Blocked model tends to achieve the accuracy of these datasets by 99.40%, 90.8%, 88.07% consuming under 2 GB of graphical memory.

13

Authors: Rao Jang Sher, Muhammad Irfan-ul-Hassan, Muhammad Talha Ghafoor, Atif Qayyum

Bridges are the most important component of transportation system of any country due to their ability of accelerating the development of the nation. Design of bridge highly depends on its function, nature of soil strata where it is constructed and the material used to construct it. Extensive growth of population and traffic leads to many changes in the use and development of different types of bridges. Box and T-beam girders are most commonly used superstructure in case of bridges. In this research work, analysis and design of box and T beam girder has been performed using SAP2000 in order to find out the most suitable type of bridge superstructure. The main objective of this study is to compare the structural behavior, optimization of materials used in each component and cost comparison of box and T beam girder bridge. Previous research in this regard is based upon working stress method but this research follows limit state design. Detailed comparison shows that box girder is more suitable as compared to T beam girder even for shorter span in terms of structural stability and cost efficiency.

17

Authors: Reena Majid Memon, Ravindar Kumar Khiani, Sajjad Ali, Tamkeena Mustafa, Yasira Naeem Pasha

Traffic congestion is a major issue of Asian megacities which causes the irritation, anger and frustrations among drivers and owners of vehicles during driving in these cities. This paper aims at understanding traffic congestion issues from the perception and experiences of car drivers and owners and their satisfaction level concerning accessibility of circulation within urban roads of Karachi. The issues addressed in this respect are road construction, traffic flow, road crossing, shopping malls along roads, traffic blockage due to VIP movement, congestion during school timing, animal presence on roads, traffic police behavior, marriage halls along the roads, peak hour traffic jams, traffic jams during sociopolitical and religious rallies, road disputes, traffic congestion due to young inexperienced drivers, alternate road availability and pedestrian bridges. The method of investigating these issues is through 42 questionnaire surveys with car drivers and car owners from June to October 2018 on urban roads of Karachi. The analysis of feedback from respondents showed that, more than 90% respondents were satisfied with construction of pedestrian bridges and annoyed with sociopolitical and religious rallies on main urban roads. More than 80% respondents were satisfied with marriage halls along the roads, felt congestion during peak hours and preferred alternate routes to go home. More than 70% agreed that, young and inexperienced drivers cause traffic congestion and felt unsatisfied and displeased with disputes on the streets among residents, traffic police and drivers. More than 60% respondents were satisfied with the road construction but annoyed with VIP protocol and felt congestion during school timings and quite uncomfortable while crossing the road. More than 50% respondents were unsatisfied with shopping malls on both sides of the road, presence of animals on main roads and behavior of traffic police during traffic jams. Finally, concerning traffic flow the respondents were equally divided in their perception. Thus this research presents a detailed perspective of people regarding traffic congestion issues in Karachi for the appropriate response by decision makers of urban transport planning and urban traffic management institutions in city.