Conceptual Development of non-conventional steam turbine

The quest of searching for new sources of energy has been motivated by both economic and political reasons. This made the industry look into resources that were overlooked before. Steam engines show a promising future of generating electricity off the gird. However, the conventional steam turbine’s power conversion efficiency of is 20% to 38%. A conventional steam turbine that has conversion efficiency over 60% does not exist. 2/3 of the energy is wasted in the conversion cycle. Most of the wasted energy comes out as low pressure steam at the outlet of the turbine. Therefore in this research a new concept steam engine will be designed to convert the low pressure steam into useful mechanical energy or work. This project aims to create a CATIA simulation model of the new conceptual design of the green steam engine. These types of engines are more efficient than the ancient steam engines, because simply the Flex Rod mechanism and the "Z" drive replaces the standard bell crank which leads to straight line, intermittent movement that eliminates side forces. Those side forces has a great contribution in the friction force during the operation of the conventional steam engines After creating the model, an excel sheet was made to determine the power output of the engine with the ability to simulate using different these parameters

Photon Management for Thin-Film Quantum Dot Solar Cells

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Stress Concentration Factor at Two Adjacent Nozzles in a Cylindrical Pressure Vessel

Basic stress analysis calculations assume that the components are smooth, have a uniform section and no irregularities. In practice virtually all engineering components have to have changes in section and/or shape. Any discontinuity changes the stress distribution in the vicinity of the discontinuity, so that the basic stress analysis equations no longer apply. Such ‘discontinuities’ or ‘stress raisers’ cause local increase of stress referred to as ‘stress concentration’. This project covers the stress concentration factors at two adjacent nozzles in a thin-walled cylindrical pressure vessel. Cylindrical pressure vessels are commonly used in industry to serve as tanks or boilers and it is important to know the stress concentration factor in order to design a cylindrical pressure vessel that can sustain the load. This project provides the data necessary for stress concentration factor at two adjacent nozzles in a cylindrical pressure vessel that is very useful to designers. The objective of this project is to investigate the stress concentration factor, K, at two adjacent nozzles in a cylindrical pressure vessel by using ANSYS which is a finite element analysis software. Stress concentration factor, K, is investigated by varying center to center distance of the nozzles, L, normalized with the diameter of nozzles, dn , for different nozzles thickness, tn , to nozzles radius ,rn ratios. Based on the simulation results the maximum stress occurs at the junction of pressure vessel-nozzles. This project has achieved the objective which is to investigate the stress distribution at two adjacent nozzles in a cylindrical pressure vessel

D3S: A Framework for Enabling Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as a Service

In this paper, we consider the use of UAVs to provide wireless connectivity services, for example after failures of wireless network components or to simply provide additional bandwidth on demand, and introduce the concept of UAVs as a service (UaaS). To facilitate UaaS, we introduce a novel framework, dubbed D3S, which consists of four phases: demand, decision, deployment, and service. The main objective of this framework is to develop efficient and realistic solutions to implement these four phases. The technical problems include determining the type and number of UAVs to be deployed, and also their final locations (e.g., hovering or on-ground), which is important for serving certain applications. These questions will be part of the decision phase. They also include trajectory planning of UAVs when they have to travel between charging stations and deployment locations and may have to do this several times. These questions will be part of the deployment phase. The service phase includes the implementation of the backbone communication and data routing between UAVs and between UAVs and ground control stations

The effect of financial inclusion on Banks\u27 credit risk: perspective from MENA region

Financial inclusion is aimed at introducing the undeserved segment of the community to the official financial institutions. It is without doubt that financial inclusion is one of the sustainable development goals to raise the poor\u27s living standards by availing banking services that are not limited to loan acquisition. In this respect, this study aims at testing the relationship between the most used financial inclusion indicators and the ratio of the provision for loan losses to net loan as a proxy for credit risk. Using the Least Square Dummy Variables (LSDV) as estimation equation for non-linear model, it is found that borrowing from financial institutions or through credit card in labour force affects credit risk negatively. Meanwhile debit card ownership affects credit risk positively. Applying these results on the MENA region as the thesis\u27s geographic scope, the countries the most affected by credit risk as a result of financial inclusion programs are Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, and Yemen. Moreover, post the addition of the longevity effect to the regression equation, these countries need to accumulate enough reserve for loan losses for at least three years. In the light of having two opposing teams in the literature, the thesis is more inclined towards the team supporting financial inclusion as having a positive effect on banks\u27 stability but on the long term

A case study of syntactic patterns of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic-English code-switching

The present study investigated the structural patterns of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA)-English code-switching in the domains of classroom and interviews at the American University in Cairo (AUC) by applying Pieter Muysken\u27s typology of code-mixing and relating it to the work of Poplack (1980) and Myers-Scotton (1993). It also aimed to stand on the nature of inflectional derivational and close-classed morphemes affixed to code-switched lexical items. The nature of the study was descriptive exploratory in which textual linguistic analysis was employed to analyze audio-recorded verbal data. The data was collected by observing four undergraduate classrooms held by the Department of English Language Instruction at AUC and conducting three focus group interviews with AUC graduate students. The results indicated that insertion pattern was more frequent in both domains, followed by alternation and congruent lexicalization (CL), which occurred more frequently in the interview domain. The results also showed that ECA definite article il- was utilized with English nouns in the insertion and CL patterns in both domains. While verb inflections were affixed to ECA verbs in classroom domain and to English verbs in the interview domain. The results indicated the use of English as the matrix language in classroom domain and the variation of the matrix language between ECA and English in the interview domain

Evaluation of Double Mesh Modification of Chevrel’s Technique in Management of Midline Incisional Hernia

Background: Chevrel’s technique provides tensionfree repair of midline incisional hernia, but wide skin and subcutaneous dissection increases rate of complications. Here, we evaluate the double mesh modification of Chevrel’s technique in midline incisional hernia repair. Methods: 22 patients with midline incisional hernia underwent double mesh modification of Chevrel’s technique. After excision of hernial sac with minimal dissection of the skin and subcutaneous tissue, the anterior rectus sheath is incised on both sides to create medial flaps that are sutured toeach other. Both recti abdominis muscles were dissected off the posterior rectus sheath, opening the retrorectus space. Prolene mesh was fixed in the retrorectus space with prolene sutures, and tailored to cover the bare area of anterior surface of both recti muscles and fixed to the lateral flaps of the anterior rectus sheath with interrupted prolene sutures. Results: We observed no recurrences, no skin necrosis, two cases of seroma, one case of superficial wound infection and one case of temporarychronic pain. Conclusion: Double mesh modification of Chevrel technique is an efficient method for treatment of midline incisional hernia, with minimal surgical site occurrences. Keywords: Chevrel technique, Double mesh technique, Midline incisional herni