ENERGY

Wind turbine blade design depends on several factors, such as turbine profile used, blade number, power factor, and tip speed ratio. The key to designing a wind turbine is to assess the optimal tip speed ratio (TSR). This will directly affect the power generated and, in turn, the effectiveness of the investment made. TSR is suggested to be taken between 7 and 8 and in practice generally taken as 7 for a 3-blade network-connected wind turbine. However, the optimal TSR is dependent upon the profile type used and the blade number and could fall out of the boundaries suggested. Therefore, it has to be assessed accordingly. In this study, the optimal TSR and the power factor of a wind turbine are predicted using artificial neural networks (ANN) based on the parameters involved for NACA 4415 and LS-1 profile types with 3 and 4 blades. The ANN structure built is found to be more successful than the conventional approach in estimating the TSR and power factor. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

WATER RESOURCES ENGINEERING 98, VOLS 1 AND 2

An economic water-resources planning model has been developed which includes environmental considerations. This is basically a screening model which selects the least-cost plan for matching resources to needs having regard to the environmental impacts of each sources and link. The model has been applied to the whole of England and Wales to demonstrate its ability. In this particular case, it was found that some pound 28 million(in NPV 1991 terms) more investment would be required if the plan incorporating environmental concerns were preferred

CONSTRUCTION AND BUILDING MATERIALS

In this study, usability of wastes produced in phosphoric acid plants in structural brick manufacture has been investigated. There are several parameters involved in using these wastes in brick production namely the rate of added waste, firing speed and firing temperature. The performance of these parameters can be measured by several criteria such as natural drying shortening, water absorption and weight loss. Therefore, so many experiments are needed to investigate the effects of these parameters on the bricks produced with these wastes. The result of a series of experiments were utilized to achieve this end. The results have shown that the industrial wastes considered improve the performance of the bricks in terms of the criteria mentioned above. However, the results have also shown that further investigations are needed to explore the effects of interim values on the performance of the bricks. To achieve that end, a neural experimental study is adopted. For this purpose, the results of the experiments conducted were used to construct an artificial neural network. The trained and tested network was then used to check the effects of 280 different combinations for each type of material mixtures mentioned. The outcome of these artificial tests have provided the optimal values for the waste addition rate, firing speed and firing temperature based on the four criteria mentioned previously. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

In this paper, the traditional problem of matching supplies to competing demands, referred to as water resources planning (WRP), is re-visited. With the pressure of continuing growth in the world's population, efficient development and management of available water resources are of greater importance than ever before. It is equally important in today's world that the environmental implications of any activity should be minimised. The aim of this research is to develop a methodology for including environmental considerations in the WRP process. This is achieved by weighting the costs of the various water resource options (both constructional and operating) to reflect their environmental impacts, prior to their inclusion in an economic planning model. The effect of such a weighting procedure is to encourage the selection of environmentally-friendly schemes at the expense of environmentally-damaging ones. The objective function of the combined methodology is to minimise the total environmentally-adjusted costs, discounted to a base year. A comprehensive planning tool named ENRES has been developed to carry out this task. The model allows the environmental impact assessment of all development options, either source components or transfer structures, to be undertaken prior to running the allocation procedure which is carried out by means of an optimisation technique. With the help of all the facilities provided, the model can be used in a planning exercise both with and without environmental considerations. In this way, it is possible to quantify the cost of environmental impacts in the planning process

WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

In this paper, domestic water saving potential in the case of Manisa, Turkey has been investigated. Firstly, domestic water use forms are analyzed in an attempt to estimate how much water is used by a particular use in total domestic use. Then, the water conservation measures for each water practice are examined and some easy-to-apply measures proposed. Finally, an experimental study was conducted to determine if the domestic water conservation measures proposed were applicable for the city considered. For this purpose, a questionnaire was developed and 200 respondents were asked to fill it in. The respondents were chosen from different people based on education level, financial status and size of the family to represent the society living in the city. Based on the results of the study, it is shown that the measures proposed are quite applicable and around 27% saving is manageable if the proposed measures are publicized adequately and applied effectively

SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGIES

In this study, usability of wastes produced in phosphoric acid plants in structural brick manufacture has been investigated. A series of experiments for three different material combinations namely original waste plus normal brick clay, washed waste plus normal brick clay and normal brick clay with no additive were carried out to achieve this end. The results have shown that the industrial wastes considered improve the performance of the bricks. However, the results have also shown that further investigations are needed to explore the effects of interim or outer values on the performance of the bricks. To active that end, a neural experimental study is adopted. The outcome of these artificial tests have provided the appropriate values for the waste addition rate, firing speed and firing temperature

PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS-WATER MANAGEMENT

In this study, applicability of feed-forward and radial-basis neural networks for monthly water consumption prediction from several socio-economic and climatic factors affecting water use is investigated. A data set including a total of 108 data records is divided into two subsets: training and testing. Firstly, the models based on a single input variable are trained and tested by feed-forward and radial methods and feed-forward and radial performances of the models are compared. Then, the models based on multiple input variables are constructed according to performances of the models based on a single input variable. The performances of feed-forward and radial models in training and testing phases are compared with the observations and the best-fit model is identified. For this purpose, several criteria such as normalised root mean square error, efficiency and correlation coefficient are calculated for all models. Subsequently, the best-fit models are also trained and tested by multiple linear regression for comparison. The results indicated that feed-forward and radial methods can be applied successfully for monthly water consumption prediction

JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY

In this study. an adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) is used to forecast monthly water use from several socio-economic and climatic factors including average monthly water bill, population, number of households. gross national product, monthly average temperature observed, monthly total rainfall, monthly average humidity observed and inflation rate. Water consumption modeling in this way will be more consistent than doing it using a single variable as more effective parameter could be incorporated. The ANFIS system is applied to modeling monthly water consumptions of Izmir, Turkey. The results indicated that ANFIS can be successfully applied for monthly water consumption modeling. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

SADHANA-ACADEMY PROCEEDINGS IN ENGINEERING SCIENCES

The quality of river water or other surface waters is detrimentally affected by the contaminants carried by the rainfall runoff in urban areas. The control of pollution moved by rainfall runoff is achieved by installing outlets and small retention basins in stormwater collection systems, thereby allowing only a certain amount of rainfall water to overflow and leading the remaining to treatment plants. This study analyses the effect of concentration time on surface water pollution caused by rainfall runoff. For this purpose, a linear S-curve is assumed for the flow hydrograph arising from the collection system, based on parameters of rainfall considered and the catchment area. An independent code is developed to analyse such a system and this is applied to an urban area using. nine-year single-discrete rainfall records of Izmir Station, Turkey. The system is capable of tackling situations where there is only a basin or a basin with outlet