most of the analyses and modeling concerning the mountain physical and human environmental changes have been based on theoretical speculation rather than scientific field observations. lack of standard observations and measurements in scattered and case specific monitoring programs offer only partially useful results for planning and management. all propositions and conclusions are hence mingle...

Model driven software engineering (MDSE) has shown to provide mark improvement in productivity and quality of software products. UML is a standard modeling language that is widely used in the industry to support MDSE. To provide tool support for MDSE, a large number of UML modeling tools are available, ranging from open-source tools to commercial tools with high price tag. A common decision fac...

This study presents a subject-specific method of determining the zero-load lengths of the cruciate and collateral ligaments in computational knee modeling. Three cadaver knees were tested in a dynamic knee simulator. The cadaver knees also underwent manual envelope of motion testing to find their passive range of motion in order to determine the zero-load lengths for each ligament bundle. Compu...

The human knee joint has a three dimensional geometry with multiple body articulations that produce complex mechanical responses under loads that occur in everyday life and sports activities. To produce the necessary joint compliance and stability for optimal daily function various menisci and ligaments are present while muscle forces are used to this effect. Therefore, knowledge of the complex...

suspended sediment resulted from distributed soil erosions facilitates nutrient transportation and influences soil depletion. phosphorus (p) is one of the major limiting nutrients controlling eutrophication of surface water. irregular p load pulsed by heavy rainfall may damage the ecological quality of downstream waters. p transport study during rainfall events is important in both predicting a...

Load balancing involves assigning to each processor work proportional to its performance, thereby minimizing the execution time of a program. Although static load balancing can solve many problems (e.g., those caused by processor heterogeneity and nonuniform loops) for most regular applications, the transient external load due to multiple users on a network of workstations necessitates a dynami...

Since the emergence of power market, the target of power generating utilities has mainly switched from cost minimization to revenue maximization. They dispatch their power energy generation units in the uncertain environment of power market. As a result, multi-stage stochastic programming has been applied widely by many power generating agents as a suitable tool for dealing with self-scheduling...

During extremely hot summer days, air conditioning systems are known as major electricity consumers in residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Moreover, high energy requirement of multiple-chiller plants may cause an interconnected power grid be faced with annual on-peak electrical demand, load-generation mismatch, voltage collapse and catastrophic wide area blackout. Therefore, this pa...

in the current engineering practices, buildings are commonly designed for an effective lifetime of 50 years. this lifetime can increase the cost of buildings with short lifetimes and can reduce the safety level of buildings with large lifetimes. in this paper, a “service-life factor” has been defined. applying this factor into the nominal values of live, earthquake, wind, and snow loads, the ef...

This paper presents findings of a railroad ballast Discrete Element Modeling (DEM) research study focused on investigating ballast settlement under repeated wheel loading. In this approach, the ballast layer is modeled as an assembly of aggregate particles, AREMA No. 24 ballast gradation with different shapes and angularities and rough surface textures. The study matrix considered three differe...