Archives-J 

Alpha track detectors has been used for soil radon gas measurements at some faulted areas in Accra, Ghana aiming to advice the public on indoor radon gas. This was performed on forty two (42) sample pits within a 70 m X 100 m spaced grid at Dome-Kwabenya, District and fifteen (15) sample pits within a 300 m X 200 m spaced grid at Dunkonah, Weija district. Comparison method for determining uranium concentration with track-etch detectors was used for uranium levels at study areas. Soil radon gas which gets to the surfaces was estimated by monitoring radon gas 1 meter above sample pits. In the Districts, soil radon concentrations varied from 10.21 ± 0.46 kBq/m3 to 22.67 ± 0.68 kBq/m3 and 6.46 ± 0.36 kBq/m3 to 27.54 ± 0.75 kBq/m3 respectively. The estimated ambient radon gas concentration also varied from 575.97 to 1256.40 Bq/m3 and from 376.47 to 1470.80 Bq/m3. The ambient levels yielded an estimated annual absorbed dose varying from 10.90 to 23.77 mSv/y and from 7.12 to 28.34 mSv/y. The estimated effective dose was from 26.16 to 57.06 mSv/y and from 17.10 to 68.02 mSv/y.

It has been found that the solar tree produces more energy than a conventional flat rooftop arrangement of solar PV system or modules. The solar energy converts the sunlight energy directly into electrical energy by making use of photo -voltaic or concentrated solar power. The energy demand is increasing with each period, as a result the grid electric supply unit prices are also increasing day by day. For example, with the supply of oil the quantity of oil is decreasing and the prices are increasing. Similarly in case of coal which is abundantly for the production of electricity is available for few more hundred years. So in order to fulfill the increasing demand of energy we must have some alternative sources of nonconventional sources of energy. The energy from the sun is the best alternative among all the renewable sources of energies. It is available free of cost, inexhaustible, non-polluting, eco-friendly and continuously. The main drawback of solar panels is the land requirement for the installation of solar panels. The developed solar artifact requires only 1% of the land compared to the flat rooftop to produce same amount of energy. A single converting cell or more generally known as a photo voltaic cell, but a combination of cells in series or parallel designed to increase the power output is called solar module or solar array. In this article the load capacity or energy requirement of a small house in India is estimated to 1.74kWhr/day [6]. All the calculations are done considering solar radiation data at Durgapur, West Bengal. As per experimentation it is found that tracking system can be easily employed in solar artifact, hence its performance will be better than flat solar PV system. The solar cells are mounted in a phyllotaxy pattern to avoid any obstruction from the others. Keywords: Solar artifact, phyllotaxy pattern, PV system, Solar module, manual tracking.

The present work deals with the study of mechanical properties of epoxy filled with coconut shell powder and egg shell powder. Epoxy with coconut spell powder and egg shell powder composite was prepared with different filler concentration using hand lay-up technique. Specimens were cut according to the ASTM standards for different experiments, such as flexural test, vickers hardness test and water absorption test. It is observed that at 10 wt% of filler content, coconut shell powder gives the best results for Vickers hardness, flexural strength and flexural modulus. In water absorption test 20% C.S.P absorbs more water compared to other samples.

The need for eco friendly alternatives to conventional cutting fluids arises because usage of conventional cutting fluids poses threat to ecology and health of workers. The present work focuses on performance of nano solid lubricant suspensions in vegetable oils in turning of AISI1040 steel in minimum quantity lubrication(MQL). Soyabean, canola and coconut oils are taken as base lubricants with suspensions of 100nm sized boric acid particles. These particles are characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and particle size analyzer to confirm their purity and particle size. Variation of basic properties like thermal conductivity, specific heat and heat transfer coefficient are evaluated from empirical relations, to check the viability of nano lubricants in machining. Variation of cutting tool temperatures, average tool flank wear and surface roughness of the machined surface with cutting speed and feed are studied with the prepared nano lubricants. Results are encouraging and coconut oil seems to be more advantageous compared to other vegetable oils.

This paper presents the failure analysis of the turbine blade of a gas turbine engine 9E GE type, installed in a certain type of simple systems consisting of the gas turbine driving an electrical power generator. A non-linear finite element method was utilised to determine the stress state of the blade segment under operating conditions. High stress zones were found at the region of the lower fir-tree slot, where the failure occurred. A computation was also performed with excessive rotational speed. Attention of this study is devoted to the mechanisms of damage of the turbine blade and also the critical high stress areas.

This paper examined some features of informal land market especially in the provision of services in Janruwa. The head of households served as the sample of the study. Simple random sampling technique was used in administering the questionnaires, while in analyzing the data obtained from the respondents descriptive statistics is employed. Most of the information gathered was from the residents of the study area. Informal interviews were also held with some staff of state Urban Development Board and Ministry of Lands and environment. It was found that, since the market operated outside any regulatory framework of the government, transactions in the markets were unrecorded; land purchases were exclusively funded through personal savings; plots were subdivided which were below official standards set for even the low density residential areas; proliferation of informal settlements and there are little or even non provision of basic services. A machinery for recording transaction in the market for the purpose of creating a cadastral data base for the area was recommended; activities of the informal land market should be regulated by government to check the dubious activities of land agents, formal lending institutions should be encouraged to fund the market, Bauchi State Urban Development Board should re-enforce planning and building regulations in Janruwa and Bauchi metropolis in general. Bauchi state government should also provide basic services in the study area.

This paper presents a digital method to develop the three phase voltage source inverter control unit using field programmable gate array (FPGA) based digital Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation (SVPWM) algorithm. In this paper the complicate equations of SVPWM algorithm are simplified to effortless instructions such as shift, addition and subtraction operands in the proposed digital design. Furthermore low power digital circuit to make FPGA based SVPWM control is implemented. The achieved dynamic power consumption is about 63 mW in FPGA clock frequency of 100 MHz. The proposed digital SVPWM was synthesized and implemented using Xilinx ISE and Virtex IV FPGA, with target device XC4VFX100. Also power is analyzed using XPower analyzer. The simulation results demonstrate that proposed method has reduced power consumption.

FUSARIUM WILT is a common disease exploded in the Eastern region , central region and western region of forests of Nepal as well as in the Himalayan and Sub Himalayan region of India and other Asian countries . 6-8 % loss is estimated in the previously reported, MISHRA (2016) especially eastern zone of Nepal and adjoining area of Bihar, while PAVITRA et. al (2018) reported molecular investigation of genes expression analysis in to contrasting genotypes of banana during FUSARIUM WILT ( Foc1) infection .

Graft copolymerization of acrylamide (AAm) on Gum Karaya GK using diode laser (532 nm) was investigated. The results showed that, the optimum conditions to achieve efficient graft copolymerization were: 60 minutes laser irradiation time and 0.5 gm of GK, 0.142 gm of acrylamide (monomer). The percentage of graft efficiency and percentage of graft yield were 28.00%, and 98.59%, respectively. The graft copolymers were characterized using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) which proved a successful production of GK-g-AAm. Thus, Laser irradiation was found to be effective and clean method for producing GK-g-AAm.

Glass fiber reinforced polymer composites are finding its increased applications in variety of engineering applications such as aerospace, automobile, electronics and other industries. The main objective of this study is to optimize the process parameters with multiple machinability characteristics. The performance characteristics considered were surface roughness (Ra), Cutting force (Fz) and cutting power (P). Optimal combination of process parameters can then be determined by Taguchi method using the grey relational grade as performance index. The process parameters considered were cutting speed, feed, depth of cut and fiber orientation angle (work piece). Experiments are planned according to Taguchi’s L25 orthogonal array in the design of experiments and were carried out on an all geared lathe using carbide (K20) cutting tool insert. The experimental results reveal that the feed is the most significant process parameter on the multiple machinability characteristics, this proposed method can be effectively used to improve the machining characteristics of GFRP composites.