The effects of gating system and pattern geometry on the metal flow in the lost foam casting (LFC) process have been investigated using glass covered mold and video recording system. Unlike convectional casting process, the type of the gating system showed little effect on fillability in lost foam, but pattern thickness had large effect on mold filling. The mold filling behavior seems to be controlled by the combined influences of heat and mass transfer. The flow rate increased with increasing pattern thickness.

In the integrated electrical systems, frequency control service considering the electric vehicle (EV) aggregators could lead to time-varying delay in load frequency control (LFC) schemes. These delays influence the LFC system efficiency, and in some situations, the lack of a clear choice of a control strategy considering the time-varying delays causes power system instability. Thus, this paper illustrates different time-varying delays based on the stability of an LFC system in the EV aggregators presence. The LFC's delay-dependent stability study is executed for finding the stability region and, stability criteria is suggested using the linear matrix inequality (LMI) method and Lyapunov-Krasovskii theory. Also, Wirtinger-based improved inequality and bounding lemma are applied to compute the greatest allowable delay in the LFC system, including the EV aggregators.

The effects of gating systems, number of runner, and their locations, in the Lost Foam Casting (LFC) of Aluminum alloy (A.413.0) were investigated. Six different gating systems, with one or two running systems were designed. X-ray radiography and the three axis-bending tests have been employed to evaluate the casting soundness and quality. The results revealed that gating systems have a major effect on the formation of the casting defects, i.e. the bottom gated produced the lowest porosity and folded, in comparison with the side and the top gated systems respectively. The number of runners, which is the melt filling entrance to the mold, can either eliminate or reduce the casting defects, whilst the increased number of runners with the reduced surface area can increase the formation of the defects.

In this study, the high temperature flexural strengths of lightweight foamed concrete (LFC) containing fly ash (FA) and polypropylene fiber (PF) was investigated experimentally and statistically. The variables included were temperature (in the range 20 to 600oC), LFC densities of 600, 800, 1000, 1200 and 1400 kg/m3 and additive content. Two mixes were made by replacing 15% and 30% of cement mass with FA.In another two series 0.2vol% and 0.4vol% of PF was added to LFC mix, and finally, one controlled mixture without additives was produced. After being subjected to high temperatures, the flexural strengths of LFC were investigated. The reduction of LFC flexural strength at high temperature may be principally due to the formation of micro cracks at temperatures above 93oC, since the flexural strength is adversely influenced by cracks so that a severe strength loss was observed at 600oC and the flexural strength was only about 40% of its original value. Flexural strength of LFC with higher density achieved a higher value regardless to temperature. LFC flexural strength exposed to high temperature increased by contribution of FA and PF and this relative improvement for all series was the most pronounced for LFC with higher density and higher additive content. In addition, the applicability of some suggested models for normal concrete was examined for the flexural strength prediction of LFC incorporating different percentages of FA and PF at high temperature and the most reliable model was recommended for future researches.

This experimental work is about the study of drying shrinkage followed by strength testing of lightweight foamed concrete (LFC) specimens with the confinement of woven fiberglass mesh (FGM) at three different densities. The LFC specimens were wrapped with 1-layer to 3-layer(s) of FGM for cube and cylinder specimens and in beam specimen, it was centrally spread along the longitudinal axis. The specimens were cured under air storage conditions and the drying shrinkage test was carried following ASTM C157/C 157M specification on three prism-shaped ‘75mmx75mmx285mm’ specimens. NORAITE PA-1 foaming agent was used to produce the desired density of LFC. All of 324 specimens were tested for mechanical properties of LFC. The cast specimens were put to test at 7days, 28days and 56 days. In compression strength test, cube dimensions of 100mm side following BS EN 12390-3:2009 were adopted. The flexural strength was conducted on  ‘100mmx100mmx500mm’ beam specimens following BS ISO 1920-8:2009. The specimens ‘100mm in diameter and 200mm in height’ were tested for split tensile strength considering ASTM C496/ C496M-04e1 specifications. The result showed that confinement with 160g/m2 (GSM) of FGM significantly restricts the drying shrinkage of LFC specimens compared to control specimens and it decreases with the increases in layer(s) from l-layer to 3-layer(s) and density of LFC. The testing of the mechanical properties of LFC showed a direct proportionality between strength and LFC density and confinement layer(s). The failure pattern observed in all specimens was either by debonding or splitting of fibers of  FGM. Thus,  LFC at 1600kg/m3 density confined/reinforced with 3-layers of  FGM conquers the good performance in drying shrinkage and strength properties while the poor performance was shown by the unconfined LFC at 600kg/m3 density.

The EVs battery has the ability to enhance the balance between the load demand and power generation units. The EV aggregators to manage the random behaviour of EV owners and increasing EVs participation in the ancillary services market are employed. The presence of aggregators could lead to time-varying delay in load frequency control (LFC) schemes. The effects of these delays must be considered in the LFC controller design. Due to the dependency of controller effectiveness on its parameters, these parameters should be designed in such a way that the LFC system has desired performance in the presence of time-varying delay. Therefore, a Sine Cosine Algorithm (SCA) is utilized to adjust the fractional-order PID (FOPID) controller coefficients. Also, some evaluations are performed about the proposed LFC performance by integral absolute error (IAE) indicator. Simulations are carried out in both single and two area LFC system containing EV aggregators with time-varying delay. According to results, the proposed controller has fewer frequency variations in contrast to other controllers presented in the case studies. The obtained output could be considered as a solution to evaluate the proposed controller performance for damping the frequency oscillations in the delayed LFC system.

Background: Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is increasing worldwide due to the metabolic syndrome epidemy. According to the current evidence, a higher cardiovascular disease risk (CVDR) is observed in NASH individuals than the general population. Objective: The relationship between liver fat content (LFC) and CVDR in a cohort of NASH patients was evaluated in this research. Methods: Consecutively selected patients with increased aminotransferase levels and fatty change in liver ultrasonography were enrolled in the study. Those with known causes of viral hepatitis, any hepatotoxic medications or alcohol consumption, autoimmune hepatitis, cigarette smoking, and ischemic heart disease were excluded from the project. The remaining was presumed to have NASH. The Framingham risk score (FRS) and LFC were calculated by means of an online calculator and a valid formula, respectively. The correlation between LFC and independent variables was measured using the Pearson correlation test. The P-value of less than 0. 05 was considered significant. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS program version 18. Results: Finally, two hundred NASH patients were included in the study. Considering diabetes mellitus as a confounder, there was a fair relationship between LFC and FRS (R=0. 26 and 0. 23, respectively, p<0. 05) in the second and third visits. Even after adjustment for known cardiovascular risk factors, LFC was associated with increased CVDR (OR=9. 181; 95% CI: 2. 00-42. 14, p=0. 01). The cutoff value of 9. 1% for LFC had a sensitivity of 92% and a specificity of 87% for discrimination of the FRS >20% and <20%. Conclusion: LFC might independently be correlated with CVDR in NASH patients. If further research confirmed this relationship, the inclusion of LFC into the FRS formula would provide an appropriate CVDR estimation tool in NASH.

A new Multi-Stage Fuzzy (MSF) controller based on Multi-objective Harmony Search Algorithm (MOHSA) is proposed in this paper to solve the Load Frequency Control (LFC) problem of power systems in deregulated environment. LFC problem are caused by load perturbations, which continuously disturb the normal operation of power system. The objectives of LFC are to mini small size the transient deviations in these variables (area frequency and tie-line power interchange) and to ensure their steady state errors to be zero. In the proposed controller, the signal is tuned online using the knowledge base and fuzzy inference. Also, to reduce the design effort and optimize the fuzzy control system, membership functions are designed automatically by the proposed MOHSA method. Obtained results from the proposed controller are compared with the results of several other LFC controllers. These comparisons demonstrate the superiority and robustness of the proposed strategy.