Reinforced cement concrete (RCC) framed structures combined with shear walls have been widely used to resist lateral forces during earthquakes in tall buildings. Shear walls are generally provided for full height of the frames. Lateral forces are carried mostly by frames in the upper portion of the building and shear walls contribute the least in this region. This concept has been extended to 10, 20, and 30 storeyed symmetric RCC buildings with curtailment of shear walls at various heights. Efforts have been made to study the effect of height on the curtailment of shear wall. Three-dimensional models of RC special moment resisting frames have been analyzed using STAAD-Pro (Research Engineers, USA, 2005) software. The results show that curtailment of shear wall up to 50% height of the building, has a marginal effect on the distribution of horizontal storey shear among the shear wall frames and interior frames. But height of the building has a significant role in storey shear distribution.

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In this paper, the findings of boiler house efficiency improvement study carried out in a large boiler house unit of a pulp and paper mill has been presented. The causes of poor boiler efficiency were various heat losses such as loss due to unburnt carbon in refuse, loss due to dry flue gas, loss due to moisture in fuel, loss due to radiation, loss due to blow down, and loss due to burning hydrogen, etc. The various heat losses were analyzed and a set of recommendations were made to the plant management for implementation, so that efficiency of boiler can be increased. Five important recommendations were implemented by plant management, and it has been seen that there is tremendous increase in boiler efficiency. Economic analysis reveals that the expenditure on the proposed system will be recovered in a short span of time. This work, with only five recommendations implemented, has resulted in net increase of 2% in overall boiler efficiency and an annual saving of Rs. 34,12,395. In addition, it is observed that carefulness in the operation of boiler can help a great deal in energy efficiency improvement in boiler.

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This article presents the application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for steady state monitoring of a power system. In steady state monitoring of a power system, it is important to predict the line flows and bus voltages for different operating conditions. In this article ANN has been proposed as an alternative method to solve the power system problems where the desired speed has not been achieved by conventional methods. The proposed method describes an adoptive pattern recognition approach based on highly parallel information processing. We provide a pattern of system description parameters to a neural network and net returns an estimate of line flows and bus voltages. Training data were obtained by Newton Rapson load flow simulation using Mipower Software Simulation Package for different system topologies over a range of load levels and the results were compiled to form the training data set. A back propagation algorithm was used for training ANN. Results of this approach help the power system operator to successfully handle the topologically independent steady state security assessment. To illustrate the proposed approach, IEEE-14 Bus system was considered. The difference between the actual and the estimated power flows and bus voltages was found to be good in terms of accuracy.

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This article presents the theoretical investigations of the rheological effects of the lubricant on the performance of asymmetric slot-entry hybrid journal bearing system. Finite element method (FEM) has been used to solve the Reynolds equation governing the flow of lubricant in the bearing clearance space along with the restrictor flow equation. The non-Newtonian lubricant has been assumed to follow the cubic shear stress law. The simulated results of bearing characteristics parameters in terms of minimum fluid film thickness and bearing flow have been presented for the wide range of values of nonlinearity factor and external load. The computed results reveal that the variation of viscosity due to non-Newtonian behavior of the lubricant affects the performance of slot-entry hybrid journal bearing system quite significantly.

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In this article, a fuzzy inference-based method for short-term load forecasting has been presented. Load data from European Energy Exchange has been selected for the case study. The "time," "temperature," and "historical load" are taken as inputs for the fuzzy logic controller and the "forecast load" is the output. Each of the input variables "time" and "temperature" has been divided into 7 triangular membership functions, whereas the input variable "historical load" has been divided into 10 triangular membership functions. The "forecast load" as output has been divided into 10 triangular membership functions. Then, 1 day ahead load forecast for each hourly interval has been performed using fuzzy logic method. Furthermore, performance of the fuzzy logic model is compared with a conventional model. It has been shown that the proposed method possesses better forecasting abilities than the other model.

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Just in Time (JIT) is viewed in terms of elimination of waste or non-value-added activities. JIT as a management philosophy can be applied not only in manufacturing industries but also in the service sector. This article gives a useful insight into the applicability of JIT in the education sector by a survey of 25 institutes in Northern India. JIT takes a lot of time to be fully implemented in an organization. This article highlights the importance of some of the JIT elements, such as housekeeping, training and development, process simplification, administrative efficiency, to get the maximum utilization of all these.

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Sometimes the line of action of the load does not pass through the axis of a bearing and is shifted on either side by a few degrees. The effect of load orientation on the stability of a three-lobe pressure dam bearing has been studied in this article. A three-lobe pressure dam bearing is produced by incorporating two pressure dams in the upper lobes and a relief track in the lower lobe of an ordinary three-lobe bearing. The results show that the stability of a three-lobe pressure dam bearing supporting either rigid or flexible rotor is increased for the positive values of load orientation, that is, when the load line is shifted in the opposite direction of rotation.

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Scour around bridge elements found in erodible sediment beds have always been a topic of interest for investigators on the subject. An insight into the mechanism of flow modification responsible for initiating and continuing the process of scour is the only way to understand and curb this undesirable hydraulic phenomenon. In this article, results of an experimental work on initiation and propagation of a vortex in the wake zone of a wing wall type abutment model are presented. Hydrogen bubble flow visualization technique is used for observing the vortex, and photographs for the initiation, strengthening, and diffusion of wake vortex are presented and discussed in a sequential manner.

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High-speed steel (HSS) tools are the most commonly used tools in small and medium-scale industry. So far, a few studies have been carried out pertaining to the life of HSS single point cutting tool. Studies on cryogenically treated (CT) cutting tools show microstructural changes in the material that can influence the life of the tools significantly. This paper primarily reports performance of CT HSS tools as compared to untreated (UT) HSS tools. The results show that CT HSS tools exhibit better performance based on tool wear, surface roughness of the work specimen, and power consumption during operation than the UT HSS tools.

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A performance study of a 3-phase symmetric Cockcroft-Walton (CW)-multistage voltage multiplier (VM) is proposed. It consists of 1 smoothing column and 6 oscillating columns. The oscillating columns are connected to a 3-phase power through center-tap transformers. The capacitors of the smoothing column are charged 6 times per cycle by 6 oscillating columns and are discharged 6 times through the load, unlike the conventional symmetric VM in which they are charged and discharged twice per cycle. The 3-phase symmetric structure completely eliminates the first 5 harmonic components of load-generated voltage ripple. Theoretic analysis indicates that the proposed 3-phase symmetric CW-VM has one-third the voltage ripple and voltage drop of the conventional single-phase symmetric CW-VM. Simulation results of the proposed 3-phase symmetric CW-VM as well as those of the conventional single-phase symmetric CW-VM are presented. A comparison shows that the 3-phase symmetric CW-VM has significantly less voltage ripple, half the voltage drop, and a 4-fold increase in the output power over the conventional single-phase symmetric CW-VM.

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Cryogenic treatment ("Cryo") is a supplementary process to improve the properties of metals like high carbon high chromium alloy tool steels (D-3) which are increasingly used in manufacturing high-performance cutting tools (dies and punches), blanking and punching tools, extrusion tools, parts of aerospace and automotive industries, etc. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of parameters like pulse width, time between two pulses, maximum feed rate, servo reference mean voltage, short pulse time, and wire mechanical tension, on cutting rate (cr) of cryogenic-treated D-3 in wire electrical discharge machining. An L27 orthogonal array has been used to conduct experiments and statistically evaluate the experimental data by analysis of variance (ANOVA). It is seen that cr decreases with increase in pulse width, time between two pulses, and servo reference mean voltage. cr first decreases and then increases with increase in wire mechanical tension. The confirmation experiments have also been conducted to validate the results obtained by Taguchi technique.

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This paper presents the numerical analysis of fluid flow in a parallel plate channel having dual triangular prisms in side-by-side arrangement. The computational domain is considered two dimensional. The fluid flow is assumed to be incompressible, steady and laminar with constant thermophysical properties. The computations are performed for a Reynolds number of 100 and blockage ratio (b) of 0.25, where the blockage ratio (b) is the ratio of prism base to the channel height (b = B/H). The unstructured triangular grid is used for the computational domain. The results are compared with the channel having single triangular prism and plane channel. The channel walls are subjected to a constant wall temperature. Unsteady two-dimensional Navier Stokes and energy equations are solved numerically using a control volume method. The SIMPLE discretization algorithm is used for the convective terms in the solution equations. CFD software FLUENT 6.2 is used to simulate the fluid flow and temperature field. A preprocessor GAMBIT is used to generate the required mesh for the solver. Results illustrate that the Nusselt numbers on the channel walls are strongly modified by the vortices induced by the presence of triangular prisms. In the presence of triangular prisms, the average Nusselt number is 8.5% more as compared to plane channel and 4.5% as compared to channel having single prism at the same Reynolds number and blockage ratio.

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The present work describes the fluid-film pressure (p) distributions, fluid-film thickness (h) profiles and fluid-film temperature (T_f) distributions of orifice-compensated symmetric hole-entry hybrid journal bearing considering the combined influence of rise in temperature and non-Newtonian behavior of the lubricant. The required governing equations have been solved using the finite element method and a suitable iterative technique. The non-Newtonian lubricant has been assumed to follow the cubic shear stress law. The computed results illustrate that variation of viscosity due to rise in temperature and non-Newtonian behavior of the lubricant affects the performance of symmetric hole-entry hybrid journal bearing system quite significantly.

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To improve the global throughput of computational grid, effective and efficient load balancing algorithms are fundamentally important. A computational grid differs from traditional high-performance computing system in the heterogeneity of computing nodes, as well as the communication links that connect the different nodes together. In this paper, we propose a resource queue length based solution to the grid load balancing problem. The proposed algorithm will balance the load in the grid based on the queue length of each resource and transfer the job to the resource having minimum queue length. The simulation results show that our algorithm can achieve a better load balancing performance than its counterpart provided in simulation.

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Frequency analysis plays a vital role in the applications like cryptanalysis, steganalysis, system identification, controller tuning, speech recognition, noise filters, etc. Discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is a principal mathematical method for the frequency analysis. The way of splitting the DFT gives out various fast algorithms. In this paper, we present the implementation of two fast algorithms for the DFT for evaluating their performance. One of them is the popular radix-2 Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm and the other one is the Grigoryan FFT based on the splitting by the paired transform. We evaluate the performance of these algorithms by implementing them on the TMS320C5416 DSP and also on the Virtex-II FPGAs. Finally, we show that the paired-transform-based algorithm of the FFT is faster than the radix-2 FFT; consequently, it is useful for higher sampling rates. We also discuss the performances of TMS DSP and Xilinx FPGAs and tradeoffs.

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In any industry, the three top operating expenses are often found to be on energy, labor and materials. If one were to find out the potential cost savings in each of the components, energy would invariably emerge at the top, and thus energy management function constitutes a strategic area for cost reduction. This paper discusses the common aspects of electrical energy management in small- and medium-sized industries. It contains the findings and the analysis of the results obtained from the electrical energy audit program employed in an industrial unit, Isolloyds Engineering Technologies Ltd. (Baddi, Himachal Pradesh). The electrical energy audit was carried out under four major heads: (i) lighting audit, (ii) Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) audit, (iii) power load audit (motors, melter, etc.), and (iv) harmonic analysis. Readings were taken under these heads and analyzed to find the scope of energy conservation opportunities in the selected test case industrial unit.

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Six Sigma within small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is rapidly emerging as the new wave of change in Six Sigma. The methodology adopted is Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) of Six Sigma which had been mostly successful so far in large-scale industries. The methodology has been applied to reduce the rejection rate of the engine mounting bracket (EMB) by reducing defects inherent in the processes. The application of Six Sigma project recommendation brought up the process sigma level to 5.24 from 1.64 by reduction in EMB hole diameter variation in the process of machining after die casting. This increase in the sigma level is equivalent to a monitory saving of Rs. 0.260 million per annum which is a noteworthy figure for an industry of such level. This paper provides documented evidence of Six Sigma implementation in a die casting manufacturing unit which has been taken as a representative of a small- and medium-size industry.

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An inverted three-lobe pressure dam bearing which is produced by cutting a pressure dams on the upper lobe and two relief-tracks on the lower two lobes of an ordinary inverted three-lobe bearing is found to be more stable than an inverted three-lobe bearing. In this paper an inverted three-lobe pressure dam bearing supporting rigid and flexible rotors is analytically investigated to determine its performance when L/D ratio is varied in the range 0.8-1.5. The static and dynamic characteristics are studied at various L/D ratios. The results show that the stability of an inverted three-lobe pressure dam bearing increases with decrease in L/D ratios both for rigid as well as flexible rotors.

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A study was undertaken to analyze metal inert gas (MIG) welding of aluminum plates keeping in mind the potential capabilities of MIG welding process and selecting aluminum as base metal due to its increased demand in aerospace and automotive industries. Primary welding parameters, viz. welding current, arc voltage, welding speed, were identified and investigations were carried out to study their effect on the tensile strength and yield strength of the weldments by using 2 ³ factorial design. A brief introduction to MIG welding processes is included, along with the literature review of research in the field of MIG welding of aluminum.

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