Wind tunnel modeling of the atmospheric boundary layer

The importance of simulating atmospheric flows in wind tunnels has been well established. Experiments were conducted in the Modified Aerodynamic Wind Tunnel to determine the suitability of this wind tunnel for simulating atmospheric flows and the degree to which various aspects of modeling could be fulfilled. A temperature profile to simulate the inversion aloft was generated inside the test section, and then an appropriate velocity profile was built in by means of screen mesh arrangements. The turbulence characteristics of the flow were measured. The validity of the temperature, velocity and turbulence fields were examined. It was found that while the temperature and velocity profiles were quite valid, the turbulence generated by the screen mesh arrangement was too high. The test section being short, turbulence could not be damped out to the required level. A model smoke stack was introduced into the test section to observe the effect of the modeled inversion on the plume. The smoke velocity could not be effectively controlled, and the plume could only be observed a very short distance downstream. Therefore, the plume path was not very realistic. Other smoke tests in the test section showed maximum turbulence at the surface and no significant change when the temperature profile was introduced --Abstract, page ii

Interview with Orlando Redekopp

Length: 88 minutes Oral history interview of Orlando Redekopp by Balin Pagadal

Design of Synthetic Jet Actuator for Flight Control of Small UAV

The main idea of this project is to develop a prototype SJA - Synthetic Jet Actuator to embed into a small UAV with modified Glauert wing cross-section for Active Flow Control. Apart from lift enhancement, drag reduction, or separation control, etc; LCO suppression might be possible by modifying the boundary layer through the use of these actuators. For initial investigation, a wing section with span of 12.4 cm and chord of 14 cm was fabricated and tests were conducted in the subsonic wind tunnel at the free stream velocities of 5 and 10 m / s. From these experiments, lift curves for two different cases (with and without the actuator) were compared. Two models of actuators, one with circular orifice and the other with rectangular slot, were developed using Gallas LEM tool. Effect of orifice shapes on the performance of the actuator is also investigated. Numerical analysis of 3D model was done in Ansys Fluent with k-E turbulence model. Hot Wire Anemometer experiments were conducted to obtain frequency response plots to be validated with the similar plots obtained from the LEM tool. Due to the time consuming nature of CFD simulations, high accuracy reduced order models play a prominent role in quickly understanding the performance parameters that affect the jet. Further research is recommended for building or improving the current mathematical model and numerical tool to allow more sophisticated design configurations and optimization procedures

Plagiarism Checker

The Turnitin Plagiarism Checker App is a program that helps users to check their written content for plagiarism. This project is important because plagiarism is a major issue in academia and other fields, where it can lead to academic misconduct, professional repercussions, and legal issues. This application is designed to solve the problem of plagiarism by making it easier for users to check their work for originality before submitting it. The app uses Selenium and Beautiful Soup to automate the process of uploading files and retrieving plagiarism reports from the Turnitin website. The application is an enhancement of an existing service provided by Turnitin, a popular plagiarism detection service used by many educational institutions. The application uses a Python script to automate the process of submitting written content to the Turnitin website, retrieving the plagiarism report, and saving the report to a local file. The application can handle multiple files and provides an average plagiarism score for the submitted content. The application is applicable to anyone who needs to submit written work, including students, academics, and professionals. It is particularly useful for educational institutions that need to check large volumes of written work for plagiarism. The application is compatible with various file formats, including DOCX, PDF, and TXT. The application is released under an open-source license, meaning it is freely available to anyone who wishes to use it

Portable implementation of computer aided design environment for composite structures

Composite materials are widely used due to their low weight, long durability and the ability to tailor their properties to specific design requirements. Their wide range of applications requires a solid understanding of their behavior under different load conditions. The calculations needed for efficient and accurate design of composites could be exhaustive and time consuming. Therefore an efficient computer program which would facilitate effective design becomes a key factor to supporting commercial use of composite materials.;A portable software tool was developed in Java programming environment for design analysis of composite materials. This software tool is superior to its predecessor, the Computer Aided Design Environment for Composite software (CADEC). The Java software is an exact replica of the CADEC software, which is written in Toolbook. The only major difference is that the new program is rewritten in a portable language. The software imposes no restrictions on the accessibility or the usability of this tool. The software can be accessed via internet and it can be run on any operation system as long as a Java enabled browser is available. The software tool has been evaluated using the example problems taken from the text book Introduction to Composite Materials Design written by Dr. Ever J. Barbero. The results obtained by using the new tool are sufficiently close to the text book results

Cyclic Triaxial Testing on 3-D Geogrids for Roadway Improvement

Geogrids have been used to improve performance in both paved and unpaved roadway construction for decades. Although the current state of practice differentiates between the design methodology when incorporating geogrids in paved and unpaved roadways, the true improvement contribution of geogrids is to the base layer, the layer that is placed directly on top of it. To quantify the role played by geogrids in improving highway performance, 27 cyclic triaxial (CT) tests will be conducted on control and reinforced samples. Each sample will measure 150 mm in diameter, and 300 mm in height. The lower part of the sample will contain a mix of clay and sand materials, which represents subgrade. The upper layer will consist of an aggregate material representing base course. A geogrid layer will be placed in between these two layers. To determine the Reinforcement Improvement Ratio (RIR) which is calculated as the ratio between the numbers of load cycles of the reinforced section divided by the number of cycles of the control section at the same level of displacement. The subgrade strength will be tested at a CBR of 1%, 2% and 4% starting with 2% for a comparison with existing data at this CBR. The base thickness will be tested at 2 in, 4 in and 8 in, the remainder of the 12 in height of the sample will be the subgrade clay and sand. For each combination of the subgrade CBR and base course thickness, a control section, a reinforced section with 3D Grid 1, and a reinforced section 3D Grid 2 will be tested, which will bring the total to 27 tests. The main outcomes of the CT testing will be the reinforced improvement ratio (RIR) and the resilient modulus (MR) of the control and composite (reinforced) sections. These two outcomes will be used in fine-tuning the Layer Co-efficient Ratio (LCR) for paved road design, and for modifying the unpaved roadway design methodolog

A Self-Supervised Approach for Cluster Assessment of High-Dimensional Data

Estimating the number of clusters and underlying cluster structure in a dataset is a crucial task. Real-world data are often unlabeled, complex and high-dimensional, which makes it difficult for traditional clustering algorithms to perform well. In recent years, a matrix reordering based algorithm, called "visual assessment of tendency" (VAT), and its variants have attracted many researchers from various domains to estimate the number of clusters and inherent cluster structure present in the data. However, these algorithms fail when applied to high-dimensional data due to the curse of dimensionality, as they rely heavily on the notions of closeness and farness between data points. To address this issue, we propose a deep-learning based framework for cluster structure assessment in complex, image datasets. First, our framework generates representative embeddings for complex data using a self-supervised deep neural network, and then, these low-dimensional embeddings are fed to VAT/iVAT algorithms to estimate the underlying cluster structure. In this process, we ensured not to use any prior knowledge for the number of clusters (i.e k). We present our results on four real-life image datasets, and our findings indicate that our framework outperforms state-of-the-art VAT/iVAT algorithms in terms of clustering accuracy and normalized mutual information (NMI).Comment: Submitted to IEEE SMC 202

In silico strategies on prion pathogenic conversion and inhibition from PrPC -PrPSc

Published ArticleTo date, various therapeutic strategies identified numerous anti-prion compounds and antibodies that stabilize PrPC, block the conversion of PrPC-PrPSc and increased effect on PrPSc clearance. However, no suitable drug has been identified clinically so far due to the poor oral absorption, low blood-brain-barrier [BBB] penetration, and high toxicity. Although some of the drugs were proven to be effective in prion-infected cell culture and whole animal models, none of them increased the rate of survival compared to placebo. Areas covered: In this review, the authors highlight the importance of in silico approaches like molecular docking, virtual screening, pharmacophore analysis, molecular dynamics, QSAR, CoMFA and CoMSIA applied to detect molecular mechanisms of prion inhibition and conversion from PrPC-PrPSc. Expert opinion: Several in silico approaches combined with experimental studies have provided many structural and functional clues on the stability and physiological activity of prion mutants. Further, various studies of in silico and in vivo approaches were also shown to identify several new small organic anti-scrapie compounds to decrease the accumulation of PrPres in cell culture, inhibit the aggregation of a PrPC peptide, and possess pharmacokinetic characteristics that confirm the drug-likeness of these compounds

A Survey on Topology based Reactive Routing Protocols in Vanets

VANETS comes under the shadow of MANETS. It provides a prominent approach to the intelligent transport system. In this paper, we have explained the different number of topology-based reactive routing protocols for the smart transport system. Vanets provides many applications with its infrastructure less topology like traffic information, vehicle safety etc. Designing a new and efficient routing protocol for all the applications of vanets is very difficult so we have compared all the protocols with a detailed analysis so that we may find the best among them after that we may improve the routing process by considering the different types of parameters. At first, we will discuss about the basics of vanets and its characteristics later we will discuss the categories of routing protocols and their comparative analysis

Software for molecular docking: a review

Publshed ArticleMolecular docking methodology explores the behavior of small molecules in the binding site of a target protein. As more protein structures are determined experimentally using X-ray crystallography or nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, molecular docking is increasingly used as a tool in drug discovery. Docking against homologymodeled targets also becomes possible for proteins whose structures are not known. With the docking strategies, the druggability of the compounds and their specificity against a particular target can be calculated for further lead optimization processes. Molecular docking programs perform a search algorithm in which the conformation of the ligand is evaluated recursively until the convergence to the minimum energy is reached. Finally, an affinity scoring function, ΔG [U total in kcal/mol], is employed to rank the candidate poses as the sum of the electrostatic and van der Waals energies. The driving forces for these specific interactions in biological systems aim toward complementarities between the shape and electrostatics of the binding site surfaces and the ligand or substrate