Fire Safety Analysis of a Railway Compartment using Computational Fluid Dynamics

Trains are considered to be the safest on-land transportation means for both passengers and cargo. Train accidents have been mainly disastrous, especially in case of fire, where the consequences are extensive loss of life and goods. The fire would generate smoke and heat which would spread quickly inside the railway compartments. Both heat and smoke are the primary reasons of casualties in a train. This study has been carried out to perform numerical analysis of fire characteristics in a railway compartment using commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics code ANSYS. Non-premixed combustion model has been used to simulate a fire scenario within a railway compartment, while Shear Stress Transport k-ω turbulence model has been used to accurately predict the hot air turbulence parameters within the compartment. The walls of the compartment have been modelled as no-slip stationary adiabatic walls, as is observed in real life conditions. Carbon dioxide concentration (CO2), temperature distribution and air flow velocity within the railway compartment has been monitored. It has been observed that the smoke above the fire source flows to both sides of the compartment. The highest temperature zone is located downstream the fire source, and gradually decreases with the increase in the distance from the fire source. It can be seen that CFD can be used as an effective tool in order to analyse the evolution of fire in railway compartments with reasonable accuracy. The paper also briefly discusses the topical reliability issues

GrOVe: Ownership Verification of Graph Neural Networks using Embeddings

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have emerged as a state-of-the-art approach to model and draw inferences from large scale graph-structured data in various application settings such as social networking. The primary goal of a GNN is to learn an embedding for each graph node in a dataset that encodes both the node features and the local graph structure around the node. Embeddings generated by a GNN for a graph node are unique to that GNN. Prior work has shown that GNNs are prone to model extraction attacks. Model extraction attacks and defenses have been explored extensively in other non-graph settings. While detecting or preventing model extraction appears to be difficult, deterring them via effective ownership verification techniques offer a potential defense. In non-graph settings, fingerprinting models, or the data used to build them, have shown to be a promising approach toward ownership verification. We present GrOVe, a state-of-the-art GNN model fingerprinting scheme that, given a target model and a suspect model, can reliably determine if the suspect model was trained independently of the target model or if it is a surrogate of the target model obtained via model extraction. We show that GrOVe can distinguish between surrogate and independent models even when the independent model uses the same training dataset and architecture as the original target model. Using six benchmark datasets and three model architectures, we show that consistently achieves low false-positive and false-negative rates. We demonstrate that is robust against known fingerprint evasion techniques while remaining computationally efficient.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

A Mechanism for Securing IoT-enabled Applications at the Fog Layer

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging paradigm branded by heterogeneous technologies composed of smart ubiquitous objects that are seamlessly connected to the Internet. These objects are deployed as Low power and Lossy Networks (LLN) to provide innovative services in various application domains, such as smart cities, smart health, smart communities. The LLN is a form of a network where the interconnected devices are highly resource-constrained (i.e., power, memory, and processing) and characterized by high loss rates, low data rates and instability in the communication links. Additionally, IoT devices produce a massive amount of confidential and security-sensitive data. Various cryptographic-based techniques exist that can effectively cope with security attacks, but are not suitable for IoT as they incur high consumption of resources (i.e., memory, storage and processing). One way to address this problem is by offloading the additional security-related operations to a more resourceful entity such as a fog-based node. Generally, fog computing enables security and analysis of latency-sensitive data directly at the network’s edge. This paper proposes a novel Fog Security Service (FSS) to provide end-to-end security at fog layer for IoT devices, using two well-established cryptographic schemes, identity-based encryption and identity-based signature. The FSS provides security services, such as authentication, confidentiality, and non-repudiation. The proposed architecture is implemented and evaluated in OPNET simulator using a single network topology with different traffic loads. The FSS performed better when compared with the APaaS and the legacy method

The Effect of Animal Bone Ash on the Mechanical Properties of Asphalt Concrete

For the sake of enhancing the mechanical properties and durability of asphalt concrete, many studies suggest adding different admixtures, such as waste materials in the form of filler. These admixtures have a significant influence on the performance of asphalt concrete by plying a roll in filling the voids between particles and sometimes as a cementitious material. This study aims to improve the strength of asphalt concrete by adding crushed animal bone to the mix after carbonization at a temperature of 800 Co. Seven different percentages (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 100%) of animal bone ash as a replacement for the filler percentage were added to the optimum asphalt concrete mix. A number of tests were conducted on asphalt concrete specimens to measure Marshall stability (MS), Marshall flow value (MF), voids filled with asphalt percentages (VFA), air void percentages (VA), voids in mineral aggregate percentages (VMA), and maximum theoretical specific gravity (GMM). From the results, the maximum stability of 14.85 KN was reached when using animal bone ash of 20% as a partial replacement for the conventionally used filler (limestone). In general, there are some improvements in the physical properties of asphalt concrete with animal bone ash, which can be related to the increase in the bond between the particles of aggregates and the bitumen material. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091757 Full Text: PD

Electron charge transport in non-peripherally substituted copper phthalocyanine

Bottom-gate, bottom-contact organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) were fabricated using solvent soluble copper-1,4,8,11,15,18,22,25-octakis(hexyl)phthalocyanine as the active semiconductor layer. The compound was deposited as 70 nm thick spin-coated films onto gold source-drain electrodes supported on octadecyltrichlorosilane treated 250 nm thick SiO2 gate insulator. The analysis of experimental results showed the n-type field effect behaviour. Devices annealed at 100 oC under vacuum were found to exhibit the field-effect mobility of 0.0989 cm2 V-1 s-1, with an on/off current modulation ratio of ∼106, a reduced threshold voltage of 0.7 V and a sub-threshold swing of 2.12 V decade-1. The variations in surface morphology of the devices are found reflected considerably in the electrical measurements. The device contact resistance was found to be decreased as the gate bias increased and also with the annealing

An Unusual Case of Gastrointestinal Bleeding

A 10-year-old boy presented with a 3-day history of worsening abdominal pain, fever, emesis and melena. Abdominal ultrasound revealed a right upper quadrant mass that was confirmed by computed tomography angiogram (CTA), which showed an 8 cm well-defined retroperitoneal vascular mass. 123Iodine metaiodobenzylguanidine (123MIBG) scan indicated uptake only in the abdominal mass. Subsequent biopsy revealed a paraganglioma that was treated with chemotherapy. This case represents an unusual presentation of a paraganglioma associated with gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding and highlights the utility of CTA and 123MIBG in evaluation and treatment

Hybrid phthalocyanine/lead sulphide nanocomposite for bistable memory switches

Asimple, one-step method is employed to produce, at room temperature, a single layer of an organicinorganic nanocomposite containing non-aggregated lead sulphide (PbS) quantum dots (QDs) embedded in a 130 nmthick solution processed film of the organic semiconductor 6PcH2 (metal-free, non-peripherally substituted octahexyl phthalocyanine) on indium tin oxide. The mean size of PbS QDs is found from x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy techniques to be much smaller than the Bohr radius. Further evidence of the quantum confinement effect is provided by a blue shift in the absorption spectrum and the increased band gap of 1.95 eV with respect to bulk PbS. The current–voltage characteristics of the hybrid and pristine 6PcH2 films, both in a sandwich configuration with the aluminium top electrode, exhibit bistable switching type hysteresis. The on-off ratio of the nanocomposite device is at least three orders of magnitude higher than that for 6PcH2 organic films, while both devices operate at a very low bias voltage of 0.5 V. The inclusion of the PbS QDs into the 6PcH2 film enhances the conductivity by nearly two orders of magnitude over that of a comparable pristine 6PcH2 film due to the formation of a charge transfer complex with PbS QDs and 6PcH2 acting as acceptors and donors of electrons, respectively

Stability of viscous lubricated thin film down an inclined plane beneath ambient lighter non miscible static liquid.

This paper considers the stability of a thin film propagating beneath a large quantity of ambient static non miscible lighter liquid and over a sloping plane. Such configuration that has never been considered earlier can model the spill of a heavy hydrocarbon into the ocean by a tanker. Equations of conservation of the mass and the momentum were appropriately made non dimensional and a similar solution is proposed in this paper. In this way, an analytical expression of the hydrodynamic field, say velocity field and pressure field is provided. Then, the equation governing the spatiotemporal evolution of the water-oil interface was built and solved by a perturbation method. Also, the time evolution of the wave front position along the inclined plane was built. Finally, the effect of the control parameters on the linear stability of the flow was investigated