A safety assessment methodology applied to CNS/ATM-based air traffic control system

In the last decades, the air traffic system has been changing to adapt itself to new social demands, mainly the safe growth of worldwide traffic capacity. Those changes are ruled by the Communication, Navigation, Surveillance/Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) paradigm, based on digital communication technologies (mainly satellites) as a way of improving communication, surveillance, navigation and air traffic management services. However, CNS/ATM poses new challenges and needs, mainly related to the safety assessment process. In face of these new challenges, and considering the main characteristics of the CNS/ATM, a methodology is proposed at this work by combining ""absolute"" and ""relative"" safety assessment methods adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in ICAO Doc.9689 [14], using Fluid Stochastic Petri Nets (FSPN) as the modeling formalism, and compares the safety metrics estimated from the simulation of both the proposed (in analysis) and the legacy system models. To demonstrate its usefulness, the proposed methodology was applied to the ""Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcasting"" (ADS-B) based air traffic control system. As conclusions, the proposed methodology assured to assess CNS/ATM system safety properties, in which FSPN formalism provides important modeling capabilities, and discrete event simulation allowing the estimation of the desired safety metric. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The impact of Six Sigma in the performance of a Pollution Prevention program

The diffusion of Pollution Prevention faces organizational barriers as for instance resistance to change, insufficient support from decision-makers, unclear project leadership, insufficient employee accountability and inflexible organizational structures. To understand how to overcome such barriers, the performance of a Pollution Prevention program of a multinational corporation is analyzed. The quantitative analyses of 2096 Pollution Prevention projects conducted between 1995 and 2007 support the conclusion that the performance of the Pollution Prevention program increased after the implementation of the Six Sigma program. Moreover, the analyses of 1906 Pollution Prevention projects and 31,133 Six Sigma projects for cost reduction in 27 countries indicate that in countries where the implementation of Six Sigma is more expressive, pollution is prevented more than in countries with less expressive Six Sigma implementation. In fact, the Six Sigma implementation improved the organizational capability for data based project management. Therefore, comparing six years before and six years after the Six Sigma implementation, the total number of Pollution Prevention projects recognized increased 6.9 times and the total amount of pollution prevented increased by 62%. The qualitative analysis describes how the Six Sigma program interacts with the Pollution Prevention program in the studied company. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Knowledge and information flows in supply chains: A study on pharmaceutical companies

A great deal of attention in the supply chain management literature is devoted to study material and demand information flows and their coordination. But in many situations, supply chains may convey information from different nature, they may be an important channel companies have to deliver knowledge, or specifically, technical information to the market. This paper studies the technical flow and highlights its particular requirements. Drawing upon a qualitative field research, it studies pharmaceutical companies, since those companies face a very specific challenge: consumers do not have discretion over their choices, ethical drugs must be prescribed by physicians to be bought and used by final consumers. Technical information flow is rich, and must be redundant and early delivered at multiple points. Thus, apart from the regular material channel where products and order information flow, those companies build a specialized information channel, developed to communicate to those who need it to create demand. Conclusions can be extended to supply chains where products and services are complex and decision makers must be clearly informed about technology-related information. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A study of actinic cheilitis treatment by two low-morbidity CO(2) laser vaporization one-pass protocols

Therapeutic approaches to chronic actinic cheilitis focus on the removal or destruction of diseased epithelium. The CO(2) laser has become an important therapeutic alternative, achieving clinical resolution in around 90% of patients. Although many laser physical parameters have been reported, some are known for their low potential for scar induction without compromising the success of the results. The aim of this clinicohistological study was to compare the therapeutic responses to two low-morbidity protocols involving a single laser pass. A total of 40 patients with chronic multicentric and microscopically proven disease were randomly submitted to two conservative CO(2) laser protocols using a bilateral comparative model. The degree of histological atypia of the epithelium was determined in 26 patients both pre- and postoperatively for both protocols. Other histological phenomena were assessed in addition to this central analysis parameter. Clinical recurrence occurred in 12.5% of patients for each protocol, together with a significant reduction in the degree of epithelial atypia (p < 0.001), which was occasionally complete. However, no difference was found between the protocols (p > 0.05). Using these morphological parameters it was not possible to determine whether postoperative epithelial atypias in part of the sample were reactive or residual in nature. A few patients may show minor postoperative lesions. Due to their potential to achieve clinical and importantly microscopic resolution, the studied protocols may be used for mild through moderate dysplastic epithelium and clinically diffuse disease.

Elementary Petri net inside RFID distributed database (PNRD)

Usually, a Petri net is applied as an RFID model tool. This paper, otherwise, presents another approach to the Petri net concerning RFID systems. This approach, called elementary Petri net inside an RFID distributed database, or PNRD, is the first step to improve RFID and control systems integration, based on a formal data structure to identify and update the product state in real-time process execution, allowing automatic discovery of unexpected events during tag data capture. There are two main features in this approach: to use RFID tags as the object process expected database and last product state identification; and to apply Petri net analysis to automatically update the last product state registry during reader data capture. RFID reader data capture can be viewed, in Petri nets, as a direct analysis of locality for a specific transition that holds in a specific workflow. Following this direction, RFID readers storage Petri net control vector list related to each tag id is expected to be perceived. This paper presents PNRD cornerstones and a PNRD implementation example in software called DEMIS Distributed Environment in Manufacturing Information Systems.

Two dimensional analysis of inflatable structures by the positional FEM

This paper presents a, simple two dimensional frame formulation to deal with structures undergoing large motions due to dynamic actions including very thin inflatable structures, balloons. The proposed methodology is based on the minimum potential energy theorem written regarding nodal positions. Velocity, acceleration and strain are achieved directly from positions, not. displacements, characterizing the novelty of the proposed technique. A non-dimensional space is created and the deformation function (change of configuration) is written following two independent mappings from which the strain energy function is written. The classical New-mark equations are used to integrate time. Dumping and non-conservative forces are introduced into the mechanical system by a rheonomic energy function. The final formulation has the advantage of being simple and easy to teach, when compared to classical Counterparts. The behavior of a bench-mark problem (spin-up maneuver) is solved to prove the formulation regarding high circumferential speed applications. Other examples are dedicated to inflatable and very thin structures, in order to test the formulation for further analysis of three dimensional balloons.

Risk optimization of a steel frame communications tower subject to tornado winds

The structural engineering community in Brazil faces new challenges with the recent occurrence of high intensity tornados. Satellite surveillance data shows that the area covering the south-east of Brazil, Uruguay and some of Argentina is one of the world most tornado-prone areas, second only to the infamous tornado alley in central United States. The design of structures subject to tornado winds is a typical example of decision making in the presence of uncertainty. Structural design involves finding a good balance between the competing goals of safety and economy. This paper presents a methodology to find the optimum balance between these goals in the presence of uncertainty. In this paper, reliability-based risk optimization is used to find the optimal safety coefficient that minimizes the total expected cost of a steel frame communications tower, subject to extreme storm and tornado wind loads. The technique is not new, but it is applied to a practical problem of increasing interest to Brazilian structural engineers. The problem is formulated in the partial safety factor format used in current design codes, with all additional partial factor introduced to serve as optimization variable. The expected cost of failure (or risk) is defined as the product of a. limit state exceedance probability by a limit state exceedance cost. These costs include costs of repairing, rebuilding, and paying compensation for injury and loss of life. The total expected failure cost is the sum of individual expected costs over all failure modes. The steel frame communications, tower subject of this study has become very common in Brazil due to increasing mobile phone coverage. The study shows that optimum reliability is strongly dependent on the cost (or consequences) of failure. Since failure consequences depend oil actual tower location, it turn,,; out that different optimum designs should be used in different locations. Failure consequences are also different for the different parties involved in the design, construction and operation of the tower. Hence, it is important that risk is well understood by the parties involved, so that proper contracts call be made. The investigation shows that when non-structural terms dominate design costs (e.g, in residential or office buildings) it is not too costly to over-design; this observation is in agreement with the observed practice for non-optimized structural systems. In this situation, is much easier to loose money by under-design. When by under-design. When structural material cost is a significant part of design cost (e.g. concrete dam or bridge), one is likely to lose significantmoney by over-design. In this situation, a cost-risk-benefit optimization analysis is highly recommended. Finally, the study also shows that under time-varying loads like tornados, the optimum reliability is strongly dependent on the selected design life.

A positional FEM Formulation for geometrical non-linear analysis of shells

This work presents a fully non-linear finite element formulation for shell analysis comprising linear strain variation along the thickness of the shell and geometrically exact description for curved triangular elements. The developed formulation assumes positions and generalized unconstrained vectors as the variables of the problem, not displacements and finite rotations. The full 3D Saint-Venant-Kirchhoff constitutive relation is adopted and, to avoid locking, the rate of thickness variation enhancement is introduced. As a consequence, the second Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor and the Green strain measure are employed to derive the specific strain energy potential. Curved triangular elements with cubic approximation are adopted using simple notation. Selected numerical simulations illustrate and confirm the objectivity, accuracy, path independence and applicability of the proposed technique.

Importance of considering a material micro-failure criterion in the numerical modelling of the shot peening process applied to parabolic leaf springs

Shot peening is a cold-working mechanical process in which a shot stream is propelled against a component surface. Its purpose is to introduce compressive residual stresses on component surfaces for increasing the fatigue resistance. This process is widely applied in springs due to the cyclical loads requirements. This paper presents a numerical modelling of shot peening process using the finite element method. The results are compared with experimental measurements of the residual stresses, obtained by the X-rays diffraction technique, in leaf springs submitted to this process. Furthermore, the results are compared with empirical and numerical correlations developed by other authors.

Power Secant Method applied to natural frequency extraction of Timoshenko beam structures

This work deals with an improved plane frame formulation whose exact dynamic stiffness matrix (DSM) presents, uniquely, null determinant for the natural frequencies. In comparison with the classical DSM, the formulation herein presented has some major advantages: local mode shapes are preserved in the formulation so that, for any positive frequency, the DSM will never be ill-conditioned; in the absence of poles, it is possible to employ the secant method in order to have a more computationally efficient eigenvalue extraction procedure. Applying the procedure to the more general case of Timoshenko beams, we introduce a new technique, named ""power deflation"", that makes the secant method suitable for the transcendental nonlinear eigenvalue problems based on the improved DSM. In order to avoid overflow occurrences that can hinder the secant method iterations, limiting frequencies are formulated, with scaling also applied to the eigenvalue problem. Comparisons with results available in the literature demonstrate the strength of the proposed method. Computational efficiency is compared with solutions obtained both by FEM and by the Wittrick-Williams algorithm.

A simple procedure for reliability assessment of thin composite plates against buckling

In some circumstances ice floes may be modeled as beams. In general this modeling supposes constant thickness, which contradicts field observations. Action of currents, wind and the sequence of contacts, causes thickness to vary. Here this effect is taken into consideration on the modeling of the behavior of ice hitting inclined walls of offshore platforms. For this purpose, the boundary value problem is first equated. The set of equations so obtained is then transformed into a system of equations, that is then solved numerically. For this sake an implicit solution is developed, using a shooting method, with the accompanying Jacobian. In-plane coupling and the dependency of the boundary terms on deformation, make the problem non-linear and the development particular. Deformation and internal resultants are then computed for harmonic forms of beam profile. Forms of giving some additional generality to the problem are discussed.

Proposal of a test specimen to evaluate the shear strength of vertical interfaces of running bond masonry walls

There is no normalized test to assess the shear strength of vertical interfaces of interconnected masonry walls. The approach used to evaluate this strength is normally indirect and often unreliable. The aim of this study is to propose a new test specimen to eliminate this deficiency. The main features of the proposed specimen are failure caused by shear stress on the vertical interface and a small number of units (blocks). The paper presents a numerical analysis based on the finite element method, with the purpose of showing the theoretical performance of the designed specimen, in terms of its geometry, boundary conditions, and loading scheme, and describes an experimental program using the specimen built with full- and third-scale clay blocks. The main conclusions are that the proposed specimen is easy to build and is appropriate to evaluate the sheaf strength of vertical interfaces of masonry walls.

An upflow fixed-bed anaerobic-aerobic reactor for removal of organic matter and nitrogen from L-lysine plant wastewater

This paper reports on the design of a new reactor configuration - an upflow fixed-bed combined anaerobic-aerobic reactor - can operate as a single treatment unit for the removal of nitrogen (approximate to 150 mg N/L) and organic matter (approximate to 1300 mg COD/L) from Lysine plant wastewater. L-Lysine, an essential amino acid for animal nutrition, is produced by fermentation from natural raw materials of agricultural origin, thus generating wastewater with high contents of organic matter and nitrogen. The best operational condition of the reactor was obtained with a hydraulic retention time of 35 h (21 h in the anaerobic zone and 14 h in the aerobic zone) and a recycling ratio (R) of 3.5. In this condition, the COD, total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), and total nitrogen (TN) removal efficiencies were 97%, 96%, and 77%, respectively, with average effluent concentrations of 10 +/- 36 mg COD/L, 2 +/- 1 mg NH(4)(+)-N/L, 8 +/- 3 mg Org-N/L, 1 +/- 1 mg NH(2)(-)-N/L, and 26 +/- 23 mg NH(3)(-)-N/L.

Lifecycle assessment of fuel ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil

This paper presents the lifecycle assessment (LCA) of fuel ethanol, as 100% of the vehicle fuel, from sugarcane in Brazil. The functional unit is 10,000 km run in an urban area by a car with a 1,600-cm(3) engine running on fuel hydrated ethanol, and the resulting reference flow is 1,000 kg of ethanol. The product system includes agricultural and industrial activities, distribution, cogeneration of electricity and steam, ethanol use during car driving, and industrial by-products recycling to irrigate sugarcane fields. The use of sugarcane by the ethanol agribusiness is one of the foremost financial resources for the economy of the Brazilian rural area, which occupies extensive areas and provides far-reaching potentials for renewable fuel production. But, there are environmental impacts during the fuel ethanol lifecycle, which this paper intents to analyze, including addressing the main activities responsible for such impacts and indicating some suggestions to minimize the impacts. This study is classified as an applied quantitative research, and the technical procedure to achieve the exploratory goal is based on bibliographic revision, documental research, primary data collection, and study cases at sugarcane farms and fuel ethanol industries in the northeast of SA o pound Paulo State, Brazil. The methodological structure for this LCA study is in agreement with the International Standardization Organization, and the method used is the Environmental Design of Industrial Products. The lifecycle impact assessment (LCIA) covers the following emission-related impact categories: global warming, ozone formation, acidification, nutrient enrichment, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity. The results of the fuel ethanol LCI demonstrate that even though alcohol is considered a renewable fuel because it comes from biomass (sugarcane), it uses a high quantity and diversity of nonrenewable resources over its lifecycle. The input of renewable resources is also high mainly because of the water consumption in the industrial phases, due to the sugarcane washing process. During the lifecycle of alcohol, there is a surplus of electric energy due to the cogeneration activity. Another focus point is the quantity of emissions to the atmosphere and the diversity of the substances emitted. Harvesting is the unit process that contributes most to global warming. For photochemical ozone formation, harvesting is also the activity with the strongest contributions due to the burning in harvesting and the emissions from using diesel fuel. The acidification impact potential is mostly due to the NOx emitted by the combustion of ethanol during use, on account of the sulfuric acid use in the industrial process and because of the NOx emitted by the burning in harvesting. The main consequence of the intensive use of fertilizers to the field is the high nutrient enrichment impact potential associated with this activity. The main contributions to the ecotoxicity impact potential come from chemical applications during crop growth. The activity that presents the highest impact potential for human toxicity (HT) via air and via soil is harvesting. Via water, HT potential is high in harvesting due to lubricant use on the machines. The normalization results indicate that nutrient enrichment, acidification, and human toxicity via air and via water are the most significant impact potentials for the lifecycle of fuel ethanol. The fuel ethanol lifecycle contributes negatively to all the impact potentials analyzed: global warming, ozone formation, acidification, nutrient enrichment, ecotoxicity, and human toxicity. Concerning energy consumption, it consumes less energy than its own production largely because of the electricity cogeneration system, but this process is highly dependent on water. The main causes for the biggest impact potential indicated by the normalization is the nutrient application, the burning in harvesting and the use of diesel fuel. The recommendations for the ethanol lifecycle are: harvesting the sugarcane without burning; more environmentally benign agricultural practices; renewable fuel rather than diesel; not washing sugarcane and implementing water recycling systems during the industrial processing; and improving the system of gases emissions control during the use of ethanol in cars, mainly for NOx. Other studies on the fuel ethanol from sugarcane may analyze in more details the social aspects, the biodiversity, and the land use impact.

Analysis of PVC pipe-wall viscoelasticity during water hammer

This research work focuses on the analysis of hydraulic transients in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipes, which are characterized by a viscoelastic rheological behavior. Transient pressure data were collected in a pipe rig consisting of a set of PVC pipes. The creep function of the PVC pipes was determined by using an inverse transient model based on collected transient pressure data and compared with that obtained by carrying out mechanical tensile tests of PVC pipe specimens. The numerical results obtained from the transient solver have shown that the attenuation, dispersion, and shape of transient pressures were well described. The incorporation of the viscoelastic mechanical behavior in the hydraulic transient model has provided an excellent fitting between numerical results and observed data. Calibrated creep function based on inverse analysis fit the one determined by mechanical tests well, which emphasized the importance of pipe-wall viscoelasticity in hydraulic transients in PVC pipes.