Laser Cutting Machine: Justification of initial costs

The Industrial Laser is firmly established in metalcutting as the tool of choice for many applications. The elevator division of Montgomery KONE Inc., in an effort to move towards quality, ontime, complete deliveries and 100% customer satisfaction, decided to invest in new equipment to improve manufacturing processes. A huge investment is proposed for a laser-cutting machine. It is the responsibility of Manufacturing Engineering to direct the management by justifying its benefits, which includes payback time and financial gains. Factors such as common line cutting, automated material handling system and cutting time were involved in justification of the initial cost of a laser-cutting machine. Comparative statistics on appropriate factors accurately determine and justify the initial cost of a laser-cutting machine

Coastal Sediment Dynamics Around Netravati – Gurpur River Mouth Through Integrated Approach

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Beach Morphological Characteristics and Coastal Processes Along Dakshina Kannada Coast, West Coast of India

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Impacts of land use and land cover change on surface runoff, discharge and low flows: evidence from East Africa

Region: East Africa. Focus: A review of catchment studies (n=37) conducted in East Africa evaluating the impacts of Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULCC) on discharge, surface runoff, and low flows. New hydrological insights: Forest cover loss is accompanied by increased stream discharges and surface runoff. No significant difference in stream discharge is observed between bamboo and pine plantation catchments, and between cultivated and tea plantation catchments. Trend analyses show that despite forest cover loss, 63% of the watersheds show non-significant changes in annual discharges while 31% show increasing trends. Half of the watersheds show non-significant trends in wet season flows and low flows while 35% reveal decreasing trends in low flows. Modeling studies estimate that forest cover loss increases annual discharges and surface runoff by 16 ± 5.5% and 45 ± 14%, respectively. Peak flows increased by a mean of 10 ± 2.8% while low flows decreased by a mean of 7 ± 5.3%. Increased forest cover decreases annual discharges and surface runoff by 13 ± 1.9% and 25 ± 5%, respectively. Weak correlations between forest cover and runoff (r=0.42, p < 0.05), mean discharge (r=0.63, p < 0.05) and peak discharge (r=0.67, p < 0.05) indicate that forest cover alone is not an accurate predictor of hydrological fluxes in East African catchments. The variability in these results supports the need for long-term field monitoring to better understand catchment responses and to improve the calibration of currently used simulation models

Application of soft computing techniques in coastal study – A review

Coastal zone is the triple interface of air, water and land and it is so dynamic in nature which requires expeditious management for its protection. Impulsive change in shoreline and submergence of low lying areas due to sea level rise are the solemn issues that need to be addressed. Indian coastline of about 7516km is under threat due to global warming and related human interventions. Remote sensing data products provide synoptic and repetitive view of the earth in various spatial, spectral, temporal and radiometric resolutions. Hence, it can be used in monitoring coastal areas on a temporal scale. Critical Erosion hotspots have to be given proper protection measures to avoid further damages. Satellite images serve in delineating shoreline and extracting the hotspots to plan the mitigation works. Coastal inundation maps can be created using remote sensing and geospatial technologies by assuming different sea level rises. Those maps can serve as a base for planning management activities. Soft computing techniques like Fuzzy Logic, Artificial Neural Network, Genetic Algorithm and Support Vector Machine are upcoming soft computing algorithms that find its application in classification, regression, pattern recognition, etc., across multi-disciplinary sciences. They can be used in classifying remote sensing images which in turn can be used for studying the coastal vulnerability. The present paper reviews the works carried out for coastal study using conventional remote sensing techniques and the pertinency of soft computing techniques for the same

Land use/Land cover changes around Rameshwaram Island, east coast of India

1183-1186Land-use/land cover changes are studied using the Indian Remote Sensing satellite (IRS-1C, IRS-P6) Linear Image Self-scan Sensor (LISS) III data of 1998 and 2010. Coastal land use categories such as sand, vegetation, coral reef and water have been identified using interpretation keys. Results of land-use/land cover assessment based on visual interpretation are presented. The study indicates water body of 178 and 177 km2, sand features of 32 and 32 km2, vegetation of 28 and 35 km2 and coral reef of 5 and 6 km2 respectively.</span

A Comparative Analysis of Histogram Equalization based Techniques for Contrast Enhancement and Brightness Preserving

Histogram Equalization (HE) is a simple and effective image enhancement technique.But, it tends to change the mean brightness of the image to the middle level of the permitted range, and hence is not a very suitable for consumer product. While preserving the original brightness is essential to avoid annoying artefacts. To preserve brightness and to enhance contrast of images, numerous methods are introduced, but many of them present unwanted artefacts such as intensity saturation, over-enhancement and noise amplification. In the present paper, available histogram equalization based methods are reviewed and compared with image quality measurement (IQM)tools such as Absolute Mean Brightness Error (AMBE) to assess brightness preserving and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) to evaluate contrast enhancement