Digital Commons Network^™

A Knowledge-Based Expert System For Managing Underground Coal Mines In The U.S., H. Singh, S. Yuan, C. M. Watts, J. M. Dean, N. P. Reddy, R. S. Nutter Jr., R. Larry Grayson

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Mine Management Support System which is being developed as a knowledge-based expert system for better management of underground coal mines, is presented. Concentrating on capturing the complex body of knowledge needed to enhance efficient management of a mine, it will encompass information and preferred rules on work scheduling, work practices, regulations impinging on the accomplishment of work, responses to operating problems, and the labor-management work agreement. Different components of the mine system, modeled using an object-oriented layering technique, are displayed graphically to aid in coordinating work plans and to present locations of equipment, supplies, and proposed subsystem components.

Navier-Stokes Simulations Of Flows About Complex Configurations Using Domain Decomposition Techniques, Kamran Fouladi-Semnani

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

An algorithm is developed to obtain numerical simulations of flows about complex configurations composed of multiple and nonsimilar components with arbitrary geometries. The algorithm uses a hybridization of the domain decomposition techniques for grid generation and to reduce the computer memory requirement. Three dimensional, Reynolds-averaged, unsteady, compressible, and complete Navier-Stokes equations are solved on each of the subdomains by a fully-vectorized, finite-volume, upwind-biased, approximately-factored, and multigrid method. The effect of Reynolds stresses is incorporated through an algebraic turbulence model with several modifications for interference flows. The present algorithm combines the advantages of an efficient, geometrically conservative, minimally and automatically dissipative …

Visual Speech Training Aid For The Deaf, Subhashri Venkat

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A computer-based vowel articulation training aid has been developed. A "continuous" acoustic-phonetic transformation is performed to map speech parameters to a lower dimensionality display space. There are two possible approaches to this transformation problem. The transformation could be either linear or a combination nonlinear/linear. The nonlinear transformation is performed using a multi-layered feedforward neural network with linear output layers. Speech parameters are extracted either from an analog filter bank arrangement (band energies) or by a digital signal processing procedure (Discrete Cosine Transform Coefficients). The speech parameters obtained from both methods correspond to the spectral envelope of the speech signals. The …

Damage Effects To Si-Sio2 Structures Due To Reactive Ion Etching, Moshe D. Bunyan

Theses

This thesis presents the damage effects to the Si ? SiO₂ structures due to Reactive Ion Etching (RIE). The research was carried out on Si ? SiO₂ MOS capacitors which were fabricated using RIE and wet etch (Hydrofluoric acid etch (HFE)) Process. The experiment was carried out using CV technique and Ellipsometry. Various electrical parameters were measured from CV *curves of these MOS capacitors. It was observed that the CV curve obtained for the RIE etched sample showed considerable deviation from that of the control sample. This indicates the presence of excess of interface trap charge density which …

Synergy Of Artificial Neural Networks And Knowledge-Based Expert Systems For Intelligent Fms Scheduling, Luis Carlos Rabelo, Sema E. Alptekin, Ali S. Kiran

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In this paper we describe a hybrid architecture that integrates artificial neural networks and knowledge-based expert systems to generate solutions for the real time scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems. The artificial neural networks perform pattern recognition and, due to their inherent characteristics, support the implementation of automated knowledge acquisition and refinement schemes through a feedback mechanism. The artificial neural network structures enable the system to recognize patterns in the tasks to be solved in order to select the best scheduling rule according to different demands. The knowledge-based expert systems are the higher order elements which drive the inference strategy and …

Functional Requirements For Computer Conferencing And Computer Mediated Communications, Computerized Conferencing & Communications Center, Murray Turoff, Starr Roxanne Hiltz, James Whitescarver, John Foster

Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center Reports

This paper is a compilation of the desirable functionality for Computerized Conferencing Systems. It is based upon the research and evaluation activities of the Conferencing Center at NJIT and can he considered as an overall set of objectives for the development of its Conferencing Systems.

Acuta Enews June 1990, Vol. 19, No. 6

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

WMU gets 'complete' cable

President's message

Profiles of new staff members

Orlando update

Election preview

Bulletin Board

Healthcare Management: Operation Research Perspectives, Basu Ghosh

IIMB Management Review

No abstract provided.

Freight Transport Management In India Railways Through Improved Wagon Utilization, T Krishna Kumar, D M Pradyumna, R D Saklani

IIMB Management Review

Application of management concepts and tools to the service sector, particularly in the public sector, is of very recent origin. Such applications to rail freight transport, particularly in developing countries, are very few. This paper presents such an application to the problem of freight transport management in Indian Railways. The problem considered is that of efficient utilization of the scarce rolling stock -wagons. The plan of the paper is as follows. Section 2 gives a brief background of Indian Railways. A brief review of freight management models is presented in Section 3. The same section also gives a description of …

Coke Oven Emissions: A Case Study Of Technology-Based Regulation, John D. Graham, David R. Holtgrave

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

After examining and analyzing the experience with coke ovens, the authors conclude that attempts to force technology beyond its demonstrated competence can be both expensive and ineffective in controlling hazards. They also suggest implications for pending proposals to further control air pollution.

Irish Building Services News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

On The Performance Of Minimum Redundancy Array For Multisource Direction Finding, Byung-Seub Lee

Dissertations

As an application of power spectrum estimation, the multi-source direction finding has been evolved from conventional FFT method to Superresolution methods such as Multiple Signal Classification(MUSIC) algorithm. Uniform Regular Array(URA) was mainly used in all these approaches.

The Minimum Redundancy array(MRA); a non-uniform thinned array which results in an input signals covariance matrix with minimum redundancy has been shown to have certain interesting properties for spectrum estimation. Only recently it was suggested to use the MRA for spatial estimation. The purpose of this research was to study the performance of this array in multi-source direction finding estimation and compare it …

Mass Transfer Of Hazardous Organic Compounds In Soil Matrices Relevant To Thermal Desorption/Incineration, Jong-In Dong

Dissertations

Soils contaminated with hazardous organic compounds have been known to threaten human health both directly through various contact mechanisms and indirectly through leaching or transfer to the food chain. Thermal desorption of contaminated soil matrices with secondary treatment of the effluent gases (collection, incineration, etc) is one of most feasible and developing technologies for cleaning of contaminated soils. There is, however, little known about the mass transfer principles of organic contaminants through the heated soil matrices. The objectives of this study is, therefore, to learn and understand details of the mass transfer processes of organic compounds in these soil matrices. …

Statistical Process Control For High Precision Deep Drawn Sheet Metal Parts, Sunil S. Shah

Theses

In today's world, industrial expertise has come to be judged in terms of the quality of the product. Good quality has become the ultimate aim in a manufacturing environment, which leads to many innovations for ease in the inspection of parts. In considering a metal working company like Hudson Tool & Die Company, a study of the various operations and the application of Statistical Process Control to the forming operations is performed using STORM software. Important characteristics have been carefully studied with regards to metal forming like uniform metal thickness, radius of the bend, depth of the drawing operation. In-depth …

Memory Card Memory Read-Out Module For 8052ah Basic Single Board Computer, Yongyi Sun

Theses

A Memory Card Memory Read-out Module is described that is used to collect the data stored in the RAMs of 8052AH BASIC SBCs and transfer it to the storage of another system called stationary recall unit.

The motivation for this system is as follows:

Automatic Rail Diagnostic System (ARDS) of New Jersey Transit Rail Operation (NJTRO) will revolutionize the maintenance of rail cars by monitoring selected on-board subsystems and components. The on-board unit of ARDS is a data gatherer. It can collect data describing the status and performance of selected on-board operating subsystems and components. A 8052AH BASIC SBC is …

Performance Evaluation And Comparison Of Ordinary, Adaptive And Exhaustive Service In The Token Ring Network, Darshakkumar J. Patel

Theses

In the token ring network different types of services gives different delay characteristics. Results to date have shown that in asymmetric traffic, exhaustive service gives more delay to lightly loaded stations where ordinary service wastes time in circulating the token after each transmission. In general, there is a need for more efficient service, which is compromised between ordinary and exhaustive service.

Ordinary and exhaustive service are analyzed in this thesis, and a new service, adaptive service, is proposed. By using timer and counter, adaptive service dynamically changes token holding time at the station. Different types of delay characteristics are derived …

Eeg Mapping Using The Personal Computer, Zhuan-Zhang Pei

Theses

An approach for brain electrical activity mapping using a personal computer has been investigated to enhance the visibility of the EECs. An automatic procedure from data acquisition to the final mapping has been developed for on-line or off-line data processing, in which a table-look-up technique has been introduced to eliminate redundant processing. The power spectra in different EEC frequency bands for four electrodes are coded into 15 colors and mapped on a color monitor. The data correspondings to the areas between electrodes are interpolated by the surface spline method. The mapping speed and smoothness has been optimized. An experiment has …

Teaching Mechanical Design Using The Axiomatic Approach, Lisa E. Hailey

Theses

Many authors on the subject of design state that it cannot be taught, it must be learned through experience. This thesis offers a method in which design can be taught to senior mechanical engineering students. The axiomatic approach to design, authored by Dr. Nam P. Suh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, states that all good designs follow two axioms, the independence axiom and the information axiom. By teaching students to use these axioms, and the corollaries and theorems derived from the axioms, educators can teach students the basic concepts of good design.

To show how this approach can be …

Automatic Infrared Inspection Of Solder Joints On Mounted Circuit Boards, Ken Kekuan Zhou

Theses

This thesis reports the research work on automatic infrared and visual light inspections of solder joints on printed circuit boards (PCBs) utilizing an image processing system and statistical pattern recognition techniques.

A small scale image processing system, consisting of a SUN workstation and several DATACUBE modules, is set up for the research. Software packages for imaging, displaying and solder joint inspection are developed and ready for public usage.

The capability of infrared inspection for solder joints on PCBs is demonstrated. The fusing of infrared and visual light imagery for the inspection is shown to offer better results than that obtainable …

Modification Of Turret For Enhancement Of Internal Turning Operations On A Cnc Lathe, Talla Rajasekhar

Theses

Towards the modification of the CNC turret a complete set of tool holders have been designed. They have been manufactured and installed according to the specifications. A detailed study of MARK CENTURY 2000 controller and PartMaster is presented. Additionally a component has been designed to be machined on the CNC lathe utilizing the MC2000 part programming capabilities. The part program of the machine component has been developed utilizing various phases of MC2000's Partmaster software. The generated part program has been executed on the CNC lathe.

Interconnection Of X.25 Networks, Syed Ayaz Qutubuddin Ahmed

Theses

The purpose of this work was to investigate the performance of two interconnected X.25 networks via CCITT internet protocol X.75. Since internet protocol X.75 follow the same flow approach as X.25, we are allowed to model the acknowledgement queue in such a way that this queue provides a feed back path from destination to the source queue. Thus we are able to model our interconnected network as a closed queueing network with limited number of packets in transit within the network. Mean Value Analysis with Blocking (MVA) algorithm was applied to obtain the performance characteristics as the resources available were …

An Implementation Of Mht Algorithm For Adaptive Transform Coding Of Speech, Peter Battenschlag

Theses

The Modified Hermite Transform (MHT), a suboptimum block transform scheme, is implemented on a TMS320C25 signal processing system with the objective of reducing the redundancy in speech signals and transmit a quantized vector representation at bitrates as less as 0.5 bits per sample.

The generation of the Hermite polynomials with a binomial and several first order IIR filter structures is presented focusing on the fact that no muliplications are required which simplifies the MHT algorithm considerably.

An assembler program performs forward and inverse transformation together with a vector quantization using adaptive bitallocation based on short-time statistics for the transform coefficients. …

Multichannel Input Moniter, Geng Lin Chen

Theses

In order to communicate ,with each other, people must use the same kind of language. MIDI, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, was established as a hardware and software specification which makes the communication between musical instruments become possible.

What this thesis does is interfacing a musical instrument with other devices using MIDI protocol. The hardware is a multichannel priority interrupt system which has already been done and was included in the discussion of this thesis. The focus of this thesis is concentrated on the software development of multichannel input monitor.

Configuring Maps For A Satellite Communication Network By Self- Organization, Yizhong Chen

Theses

There are several management tasks in a telecommunication network. Among which traffic management is one of the most important and difficult tasks. It is concerned with maximizing network efficiency when the network is under stress either due to overload or failure. New attempts to automate this task such as expert system based approach are yet to be perfected. In this thesis, we advocate a new concept of traffic management. Our scheme consists of two levels. At the first level, we introduce a Self-organization model to dynamically configure a map for a satellite communication network. The second level is a routing …

A Micro-Based Machine Vision System, Hsueh-Chung Michael Feng

Theses

In this thesis, a low-cost general purpose machine vision system based on a personal computer of the PC-XT/AT family and an electronic camera controller based upon a Motorola 6811C11 single-chip microcontroller has been designed and implemented. This work is focused on image formation. The system supports a long distance camera-computer configuration. A picture editor, generic image manipulation software was designed and implemented. A single computer can supervise multiple cameras.

Design And Analysis Of Movable Boundary Allocation Protocol, Karun Sekhri

Theses

The increasing digital communications traffic will require very high speed networks. The use of high communication speed increases the ratio between end to end propagation delay and the packet transmission time. This increase causes rapid performance deterioration and restricts the utilization of the high system bandwidth in broadcast channel based systems. Using several parallel channels in place of a single channel improves this ratio. For a given system bandwidth the total system capacity is increased by bandwidth division and parallel communication. FTDMA protocols have been suggested for the parallel channel network and these protocols are suitable for different loads. In …

Multiprocessor System Design Tutor : Expert System Approach, Rakesh Kamdar

Theses

To increase computational bandwidth and system resilience, integration of several microprocessors in a single system becomes necessary. The overall throughput and efficiency of such a system is directly dependent on the hardware and software interconnection supported by the basic microprocessor chip. Sometimes it becomes difficult to put together all the information for design criteria and all the design related formulas.

The approach made here is to continuously update the hardware and software information in the database related to a given microprocessor. This information can be accessed at any time for efficient design solution. Intel 80386 and Motorola 68020 microprocessors are …

Construction Cost Estimating In Project Management, Kalpit N. Patel

Theses

The primary objective of Cost Estimating is to support the timely generation of bid or alternative estimates. Cost Estimating also supports management analysis of estimate accuracy, reasonableness and project risk through the generation of summary reports and analysis. Estimates also provide a base of information during construction for such items as scope changes to the contract, variations in costs of the project cost, total project cost, feedback for scheduling etc.

Contruction cost estimating is the process of identifying and compiling the many items of cost that will enter into a construction project. This is a procedure that requires very detailed …

A Study Of The Effects Of Weighting Matrices In Power System State Estimation, Yanshi Wang

Theses

The effects of weighting matrices that may be used in the Weighted Least Squares (WLS) method when applied to the problem of Power System State Estimation (PSSE) are studied. These weighting matrices include the one usually used in the literature and the one used in the utility PSSE programs

The performances of these weighting matrices are compared using the Monte Carlo simulation technique.

To test the performances of the weighting matrices, a PSSE program is developed, different performance indices for state comparison are defined, and many cases are studied.

Results show that the weighting matrix usually used in literature, 1/σ², …

Trellis Coded Tamed Frequency Modulation In Rayleigh Fading Channels, Kiran R. Patel

Theses

It is usually difficult to reduce the effects of channel impairements on transmitted information. A fading channel is one such media in which digital communications system operates. A signal is subject to distortion in amplitude and phase when propagating towards the receiver. This puts constraint in required SNR at the receiver, for given performance. Various modulation/coding and demodulation/decoding techniques are employed to lessen the effects of fading. Bit error rate is a performance parameter that sets the criteria for signal design, system architecture and performance.

Here, a slow Rayleigh fading channel with three propagation paths possesing a scattering function of …