• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.548-553
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• 2015

The conventional ejector-diffuser system makes use of high pressure primary stream to propel the secondary stream through pure shear action for the purposes of transport or compression of fluid. It has been widely used in many industrial applications such as seawater desalination, solar refrigeration, marine engineering, etc. The present study is performed numerically to study the performance of a two-stage ejector-diffuser system. The detailed flow phenomenon of the ejector-diffuser system has been critically predicted by means of the numerical approach using compressible Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. The axi-symmetric supersonic ejector-diffuser flow has been solved by a fully implicit finite volume scheme with a two-equation k-omega turbulence model. The numerical results are validated with existing experimental data. Detailed flow physics and their contributions on ejector performance are detected to compare both single-stage and two-stage ejectors. The performance improvement on the ejector-diffuser system is discussed in terms of the mass flux ratio and the coefficient of power.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.228-236
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• 2004

Two varieties of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L cv. Pioneer and Beaver) and timothy (Phleum pratense L cv. Climax and Joliette), grown at different locations in Saskatchewan (Canada), were cut at three stages [1=one week before commercial cut (early bud for alfalfa; joint for timothy); 2=at commercial cut (late bud for alfalfa; pre-bloom head for timothy); 3=one week after commercial cut (early bloom for alfalfa; full head for timothy)]. The energy values of forages were determined using three approaches, including chemical (NRC 2001 formula) and biological approaches (standard in vitro and in situ assay). The objectives of this study were to determine the effects of forage variety and stage of maturity on energy values under the climate conditions of western Canada, and to investigate relationship between chemical (NRC 2001 formula) approach and biological approaches (in vitro and in situ assay) on prediction of energy values. The results showed that, in general, forage species (alfalfa vs. timothy) and cutting stage had profound impacts, but the varieties within each species (Pioneer vs. Beaver in alfalfa; Climax vs. Joliette in timothy) had minimal effects on energy values. As forage maturity increased, the energy contents behaved in a quadratic fashion, increasing at stage 2 and then significantly decreasing at stage 3. However, the prediction methods-chemical approach (NRC 2001 formula) and biological approaches (in vitro and in situ assay) had great influences on energy values. The highest predicted energy values were found by using the in situ approach, the lowest prediction value by using the NRC 2001 formula, and the intermediate values by the in vitro approach. The in situ results may be most accurate because it is closest to simulate animal condition. The energy values measured by biological approaches are not predictable by the chemical approach in this study, indicating that a refinement is needed in accurately predicting energy values.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.69-86
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• 2013

An efficient methodology using static test data and changes in natural frequencies is proposed to identify the damages in structural systems. The methodology consists of two main stages. In the first stage, the Damage Signal Match (DSM) technique is employed to quickly identify the most potentially damaged elements so as to reduce the number of the solution space (solution parameters). In the second stage, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach is presented to accurately determine the actual damage extents using the first stage results. One numerical case study by using a planar truss and one experimental case study by using a full-scale steel truss structure are used to verify the proposed hybrid method. The identification results show that the proposed methodology can identify the location and severity of damage with a reasonable level of accuracy, even when practical considerations limit the number of measurements to only a few for a complex structure.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.60-67
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• 2018

As the lack of specific aggregation intensifies, the development of alternative resources is urgent. Construction waste is increasing every year, but recycled aggregate is used as a low value added material. Various studies are currently underway at the national level. In this paper, the mechanical performance of the concrete according to the concrete mixing method and the replacement amount of the circulating coarse aggregate was compared and evaluated. Concrete mixing method was normal mixing approach(NMA) method, two-stage mixing approach1 (TSMA1) method, two-stage mixing approach2 (TSMA2) method. Fresh concrete was tested for air content, slump test, and unit volume weight. Compressive strength and flexural strength were tested in hardened concrete. According to the TSMA method, the mechanical performance difference of concrete is shown, and the strength is decreased according to the circulating coarse aggregate replacement amount.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.197-203
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• 2016

Background The aim of unilateral breast reconstruction after mastectomy is to craft a natural-looking breast with symmetry. The latissimus dorsi (LD) flap with implant is an established technique for this purpose. However, it is challenging to obtain adequate volume and satisfactory aesthetic results using a one-stage operation when considering factors such as muscle atrophy, wound dehiscence and excessive scarring. The two-stage reconstruction addresses these difficulties by using a tissue expander to gradually enlarge the skin pocket which eventually holds an appropriately sized implant. Methods We analyzed nine patients who underwent unilateral two-stage LD reconstruction. In the first stage, an expander was placed along with the LD flap to reconstruct the mastectomy defect, followed by gradual tissue expansion to achieve overexpansion of the skin pocket. The final implant volume was determined by measuring the residual expander volume after aspirating the excess saline. Finally, the expander was replaced with the chosen implant. Results The average volume of tissue expansion was 460 mL. The resultant expansion allowed an implant ranging in volume from 255 to 420 mL to be placed alongside the LD muscle. Seven patients scored less than six on the relative breast retraction assessment formula for breast symmetry, indicating excellent breast symmetry. The remaining two patients scored between six and eight, indicating good symmetry. Conclusions This approach allows the size of the eventual implant to be estimated after the skin pocket has healed completely and the LD muscle has undergone natural atrophy. Optimal reconstruction results were achieved using this approach.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.287-296
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• 2022

Analyzing the typhoon wind hazards is crucial to determine the extreme wind load on engineering structures in the typhoon prone region. In essence, the typhoon hazard analysis is a high-dimensional problem with randomness arising from the typhoon genesis, environmental variables and the boundary layer wind field. This study suggests a dimension reduction approach by decoupling the original typhoon hazard analysis into two stages. At the first stage, the randomness of the typhoon genesis and environmental variables are propagated through the typhoon track model and intensity model into the randomness of the key typhoon parameters. At the second stage, the probability distribution information of the key typhoon parameters, combined with the randomness of the boundary layer wind field, could be used to estimate the extreme wind hazard. The Chinese southeast coastline is taken as an example to demonstrate the adequacy and efficiency of the suggested decoupling approach.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.801-809
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• 2010

This paper presents a statistical model-based noise suppression approach for voice recognition in a car environment. In order to alleviate the spectral whitening and signal distortion problem in the traditional decision-directed Wiener filter, we combine a decision-directed method with an original spectrum reconstruction method and develop a new two-stage noise reduction filter estimation scheme. When a tradeoff between the performance and computational efficiency under resource-constrained automotive devices is considered, ETSI standard advance distributed speech recognition font-end (ETSI-AFE) can be an effective solution, and ETSI-AFE is also based on the decision-directed Wiener filter. Thus, a series of voice recognition and computational complexity tests are conducted by comparing the proposed approach with ETSI-AFE. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is superior to the conventional method in terms of speech recognition accuracy, while the computational cost and frame latency are significantly reduced.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.121-128
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• 2005

This paper proposes the heuristic approach for the generalized GT(Group Technology) problem to consider the restrictions which are given the number of cell, maximum number of machines and minimum number of machines. This approach is classified into two stages. In the first stage, we use the similarity coefficient method which is proposed and calculate the similarity values about each pair of all machines and align these values in descending order. If two machines which is selected is possible to link the each other on the edge of machine cell and they don't have zero similarity value, then we assign the machines to the machine cell. In the second stage, it is the course to form part families using proposed grouping efficacy. Finally, machine-part incidence matrix is realigned to block diagonal structure. The results of using the proposed approach are compared to the Modified p-median model.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.97-117
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• 1993

This paper considers inspection station location problem for a flexible assembly line that consists of multiple stages. By considering the trade-off between locating an station at an "early" stage and at a "late" stage, we have developed some dominance relations on a graph. Based on the dominance relations, we then present an algorithm that finds an optimal inspection plan and a heuristic approach that finds a near-optimal inspection plan. The effectiveness of these two algorithms is demonstrated by two numerical examples. numerical examples.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1996.07b
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• pp.871-874
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• 1996

It is practically very important in multi-criteria long-tenn IRP process to develop the set of candidate resource plans that meet following two conditions. First, the number of resource plans should not be too large for computer job. Second, the unknown best plan should exist among the set of candidate plans. In this paper, several novel procedures are developed. The main idea of the procedures is the two-stage approach. The first stage is to find the set of feasible resource capacity mixes in given target year(s). And, the second stage is to find the set of alternative paths of resource options for each resource mix determined in the first stage.