A study of the local site effects on the ground response for the city of Eskişehir,Turkey

Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment - Local soil characteristics play a key role in determining soil-structure interaction and reliability of the superstructure behavior under...     

Unusual swelling behavior of polymer-clay nanocomposite hydrogels

The swelling behavior and the elastic properties of nanocomposite hydrogels have been investigated. The hydrogels were prepared by free-radical polymerization of the monomers acrylamide (AAm), N,N-dimethylacrylamide (DMA), and N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA) in aqueous clay suspensions at 21 °C. Laponite with a radius of gyration in distilled water of 20 nm was used as clay particles in the hydrogel preparation. The reactions with AAm monomer were carried out in the presence of the chemical crosslinker N,N′-methylenebis(acrylamide) (BAAm). It was found that the volume of nanocomposite hydrogels immersed in water rapidly increases and attains a maximum value after about one day. Surprisingly, further increase in the swelling time results in the deswelling of the gels until they reach a limiting swelling ratio after about 5 days. This unusual swelling behavior is observable only when the clay concentration in the hydrogel is above the overlap threshold c^∗. Swelling measurements combined with the elasticity tests show that the effective crosslink density first decreases, but then increases with increasing time of swelling of the hydrogels. The results were explained in terms of the rearrangements of the highly entangled polymer chains and clay particles during the gel volume change.     

Graphene oxide-containing isocyanate-based polyimide foams: Enhanced thermal stability and flame retardancy

Isocyanate-based graphene oxide-containing polyimide foams were synthesized by a semi-prepolymer method. In this method, while the first solution containing pre-polymer was derived from pyromellitic dianhydride and excess polymethylene polyphenylene isocyanate (PM200), the second solution contains dianhydride derivatives, water, catalysts, surfactants, and graphene oxide. PIFs were prepared with 0%, 0.25%, 0.50%, 0.75%, and 1% graphene oxide by weight, respectively. PIFs exhibited a minimum side reaction and urea generation was not seen for all PIFs instead of imide bonding. The addition of graphene oxide (GO) leads to a more close-packed structure. Therefore, crosslinking density and thermal stability of graphene oxide-containing polyimide foams increased. Upon the addition of 1% GO, almost seven times higher compression strength was obtained compared to neat PIFs. Also, LOI values supported the theory that thermally stable and flame retardant PIFs can be synthesized via the isocyanate-based process with GO.     

An Analytical Approach to the Concept of Counter-UA Operations (CUAOPS)

Unmanned Aircraft (UA) have become an integral part of the present-day joint air operations. UA have potential to be employed across the full spectrum of Air Force functions. On the other hand, UA technology could be a subject of an asymmetric use by state actors in high or low density conflict, and/or by non-state actors in many ways including terrorism, drug smuggling, and limited attack with unconventional payloads i.e. biological or chemical agents. Therefore countering the threat associated with the hostile UA use could be necessary in the future. First part of the research revealed that UA can be a threat in the future. In the second part of the research, the SWOT (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) analysis supplemented with the Tree analysis (SWOT+Tree) provided a broader look for investigating the factors related to hostile UA use analytically. In literature, there is little information about the concepts for CUAOPS. The final goal of the paper is to find possible solutions and means for a better understanding of the nature of CUAOPS.     

Selective separation of cobalt and nickel by flat sheet supported liquid membrane using Alamine 300 as carrier

Cobalt and nickel are among the most important nonferrous metals. The using of flat sheet supported liquid membranes (FSSLMs) to remove metals from wastewaters has been used actively by the scientific and industrial communities. In this study, the selective separation of cobalt from thiocyanate solutions containing cobalt and nickel by FSSLM was examined using tri-n-octylamine (Alamine 300) as carrier. The FSSLM was consisted of extractant, flat sheet support and organic solvent. The various parameters were studied to determine the optimum extraction and striping conditions of cobalt and nickel. These parameters were stirring speeds of phases, NH₄SCN concentration, pH, diluent type, extractant concentration, stripping reagent concentration and modifier concentration. Concentration of cobalt and nickel were determined by Shimadzu AA-6701GF spectrophotometer. In the optimum conditions, selective separation of cobalt was achieved with an efficiency of 98.4% within 8 h, for equimolar feed mixtures, 400 mg/L Co + 400 mg/L Ni, and the separation factor of Co(II) over Ni(II) was 234.4. In addition, for nonequimolar feed mixtures, 500 mg/L Co + 1000 mg/L Ni, Ni in excess, selective separation of cobalt was 99.9%, and the separation factor of Co was 506 in the same time.     

Estimating crown diameters in urban forests with Unmanned Aerial System-based photogrammetric point clouds

Field measurements are the main source of information when determining stand parameters, which are essential to produce an effective forest management plan. However, conducting terrestrial measurements is neither time- nor cost-efficient in most cases. In recent years, the advent of sophisticated remote sensing technologies has enabled the extraction of accurate and robust information about the physical characteristics of trees. Crown diameter is one of the most important stand parameters that should be measured or estimated. This study proposes a Polynomial Fitting Based (PFB) methodology to estimate crown diameters of urban trees with Unmanned Aerial System (UAS)-based data. Crown diameters estimated with the PFB methodology were compared not only to a reference data but also to those estimated based on five widely used image segmentation algorithms, which were the Mean Shift Segmentation (MSS), Morphological Profiles Based Segmentation (MPBS), Multiresolution Segmentation (MRS), Seeded Region Growing Segmentation (SRGS) and Watershed Segmentation (WS). Quantitative investigations revealed that the PFB approach outperformed the other segmentation-based approaches. The PFB approach estimated the crown diameters with root-mean-square errors (RMSE) ranging from 0.69 m to 0.92 m. The PFB methodology was found to be a practical and robust approach for the estimation of crown diameters, which plays a very significant role in effective forest management.     

Design and analysis of an aging‐aware energy management system for islanded grids using mixed‐integer quadratic programming

The rapid increase of renewable energy sources made coordinated control of the distributed and intermittent generation units a more demanded task. Matching demand and supply is particularly challenging in islanded microgrids. In this study, we have demonstrated a mixed‐integer quadratic programming (MIQP) method to achieve efficient use of sources within an islanded microgrid. A unique objective function involving fuel consumption of diesel generator, degradation in a lithium‐ion battery energy storage system, carbon emissions, load shifting, and curtailment of the renewable sources is constructed, and an optimal operating point is pursued using the MIQP approach. A systematic and extensive methodology for building the objective function is given in a sequential and explicit manner with an emphasis on a novel model‐based battery aging formulation. Performance of the designed system and a sensitivity analysis of resulting battery dispatch, diesel generator usage, and storage aging against a range of optimization parameters are presented by considering real‐world specifications of the Semakau Island, an island in the vicinity of Singapore.