The Mediating Effect of Innovation on The Relationship between Strategic Management Dimensions and Construction Project Development: A Conceptual Framework

Innovation becomes a crucial factor to the project development; a factor which is ignored by the previous strategic management models that focused more on the physical resources of the project. This paper aims to investigate the improvement of the linkage in between the competitive advantages’ roots and the projects’ development. A comprehensive review has been done wherein several previous strategic management models are discussed. The reviews found out that there are some pillars of strategies that contribute to the project development. Even more, this review focuses on how to strengthen the direct relationship between the competitive advantages’ roots and the project development. This paper is significantly important because it adds innovation factor as a mediator between the competitive advantages and the project’s development. Hence, this paper provides an effective project development model linkage for the project’s strategic plan.Keywords—Competitive advantages; resources; value; capability; innovation; project developmen

Reconfigurable multi-legs robot for pipe inspection: Design and gait movement

1132-1144This paper focuses on studies on reconfigurable multi-legs robotic system. The aim of this paper is to identify and acquire findings on how multi-legs robot can walk, climb vertical pipe and walk along the horizontal pipe after climbing. Three degrees of freedom (3DOF) multi-legs robot is designed and built to replace human involvement either at hazardous pipeline or to check on vertical and horizontal pipes. The robot system is tested to climb the vertical pipe and then move along horizontal pipe for inspection or other purposes. This can reduce the cost and percentage of human risk exposure during inspection on outer pipe. This multi-legs robot has more movement gaits compared to wheeled robot, but in terms of speed, wheeled robot possesses greater advantages. Therefore, this system design has combination of both wheel and multiple legs ensure that the to system has higher stability, more gait movement, and higher speed manoeuvrability. The gaits analysis for the system movement includes angle of the legs to move and selection of certain legs to perform a given operation, either walking, climbing or hanging. The target result is the system able to climb 500 mm height with 85 mm radius pipe. The potential applications for the system are: (i) to move along either on surface or underwater pipe and (ii) to be equipped with ultrasonic sensor to inspect the pipe.</em

Comprehensive review on controller for leader-follower robotic system

985-1007This paper presents a comprehensive review of the leader-follower robotics system. The aim of this paper is to find and elaborate on the current trends in the swarm robotic system, leader-follower, and multi-agent system. Another part of this review will focus on finding the trend of controller utilized by previous researchers in the leader-follower system. The controller that is commonly applied by the researchers is mostly adaptive and non-linear controllers. The paper also explores the subject of study or system used during the research which normally employs multi-robot, multi-agent, space flying, reconfigurable system, multi-legs system or unmanned system. Another aspect of this paper concentrates on the topology employed by the researchers when they conducted simulation or experimental studies

Study of Palm Oil Mill Effluents Treatment Using Bio Engineered Structure Biomedia

Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) is waste produced by the palm oil processing mills in Malaysia and also generates large quantities of liquid waste. This research is aim to remove high content of suspended solids and oil in POME by using Bio Engineered Structure (BES) bio media. Besides that, it also to investigate condition of BES biomedia for POME treatment in bioreactor system and also the main factors affecting BES biomedia performance in POME treatment. The BES biomedia for POME wastewater treatment system is a compact biological purification system and enhanced the conditions for the microbiology to breakdown the pollution. The nutrient broth mixed with Pseudomonas putida (P. putida) was injected to BES biomedia tank with the ratio of 1:9 P. putida to POME. The growth of P. putida was compared between in shake flask and BES biomedia reactor. In shake flask, the P. putida take a shorter time to encounter with the environment while in BES biomedia reactor it take more period to encounter with a new environment. From the aeration rate, it shows that at rate of one L/min have the highest removal efficiency of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), 46.73%, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), 99.03% and Total Suspended Solids (TSS), 71.88%. As conclusion, BES biomedia is potentially to be a good method to treat POME that will reduce the uncontrolled waste and environmental pollution to our country.

Prestressed fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) laminates for the strengthening of reinforced concrete structures

Recent development in the field of strengthening has seen the application of prestressing of FRP laminate prior to bonding in order to exploit its high tensile strength. The method of prestressing the laminate induces an initial tensile strain in the concrete beams upmost fibre, thus reducing the deflection of the beam throughout the design loads. This alteration of the beams structural characteristics provides advantages in beam serviceability requirements. Structurally the beam can withstand greater ultimate loads, while yielding of internal reinforcement and cracking moments are delayed substantially, compared to unlaminated beams. Extensive experimental investigations have been undertaken by many researchers with variables ranging from anchorage type, number of laminates applied to beam, tensile reinforcement ratio and the initial prestress level of laminates before bonding. Despite the large amount of experimental data in the field, current analytical models generally employ elementary procedures in predicting beam behaviour and as a result the analytical results exhibit poor correlation with the experimental results. This implies the necessity for the development of a generic model that can accurately predict beam behaviour that will be the basis of the present study. The focus of this paper is the development of a new analytical model that can accurately predict the behaviour of an RC beam strengthened with an externally bonded (EB) prestressed fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) laminate. The model will be critically compared to an experimental database for calibration purposes then applied in a parametric study

Flow modelling and noise generation of interacting prisms

AIAA 2014-3287Noise generation is a signi cant issue for High-Speed Trains, HSTs, and as speeds in- crease aerodynamically generated noise becomes the dominant noise source. In this article, the e ect of nose shape, carriage separation and yaw angle on the aerodynamics and noise generation are analysed using two prisms, representing a HST model. The aerodynamics are modelled using Computation Fluid Dynamics, CFD, and the ow velocity and turbu- lence intensity in various positions in the wake are compared with experimental hotwire data measured in the Anechoic Wind Tunnel, AWT, at The University of Adelaide, with good agreement. Finally, acoustic beamforming images of the noise generated by the in- teracting prisms measured in the AWT are presented. The acoustic results show that a blunt nose tends to increase noise at lower frequencies signi cantly, while increasing prism separation tends to increase noise over most frequencies, but most signi cantly at mid- frequencies, and increasing yaw angle increases noise across all frequencies. Beamforming results show that at lower frequencies, this noise tends to be generated at the leading and trailing edges, while at higher frequencies the noise tends to be generated in the carriage gap.Zebb Prime, Danielle J. Moreauy and Con J. Doola

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Finite element analysis of prestressed bridge decks using ultra high performance concrete

This paper presents a comprehensive numerical investigation using finite element analysis to assess the load carrying capacity of prestressed skewed bridges using Ultra-High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) subjected to Australian bridge load configurations. A preliminary study is performed on different types of prestressing modelling techniques to find a suitable mechanism for accurately representing the prestressing force in the bridge structure models. To ensure the accuracy of the modelling methods, the results obtained from this analysis are validated with experimental results. A parametric study is also carried out to investigate the effect of skew angle, UHPFRC strength and the ratio of span width to normal length. It is concluded that UHPFRC material can be fully or partially incorporated into a bridge structure resulting in slender sections thus saving in the concrete quantity, reinforcement and achieving longer spans that are not feasible using the normal concrete.S.J. Fatemi, M.S. Mohamed Ali, A.H. Sheikh and Z. We

Bis {-N-[1-(2-oxidophenyl) ethylidene] benzohydrazido} bis [(dimethylsulfoxide) zinc (II)]

The title compound, [Zn2(C15H12N2O2)2(C2H6OS)2], is a centrosymmetric dimer via a Zn-O bridge of 2.0038 (13) Å, with a Zn...Zn separation of 3.1370 (13) Å. The geometry of the five-coordinate environment of the Zn atoms is close to trigonal bipyramidal