Proposta de algoritmo para detecção de vazamentos em oleodutos utilizando análise freqüencial de sinais de pressão

Pipeline leak detection is a matter of great interest for companies who transport petroleum and its derivatives, in face of rising exigencies of environmental policies in industrialized and industrializing countries. However, existing technologies are not yet fully consolidated and many studies have been accomplished in order to achieve better levels of sensitivity and reliability for pipeline leak detection in a wide range of flowing conditions. In this sense, this study presents the results obtained from frequency spectrum analysis of pressure signals from pipelines in several flowing conditions like normal flowing, leakages, pump switching, etc. The results show that is possible to distinguish between the frequency spectra of those different flowing conditions, allowing recognition and announce of liquid pipeline leakages from pressure monitoring. Based upon these results, a pipeline leak detection algorithm employing frequency analysis of pressure signals is proposed, along with a methodology for its tuning and calibration. The proposed algorithm and its tuning methodology are evaluated with data obtained from real leakages accomplished in pipelines transferring crude oil and water, in order to evaluate its sensitivity, reliability and applicability to different flowing conditions

Albedo e estimativas do saldo de radiação em feijão-vagem sob cobertura de plástico e ambiente externo

Este trabalho objetivou determinar o albedo (r) no espectro solar e estimar o saldo de radiação, em ambientes cultivados com feijão-vagem (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), em condições de campo e em casa de vegetação com cobertura de polietileno, em Botucatu, SP, (22º 54' S; 48º 27' W; 850 m). A irradiância solar global (Rg) e a radiação solar refletida (Rr) foram utilizadas na determinação do albedo através da razão entre Rr e Rg. Curvas diurnas de r foram traçadas para dias com céu parcialmente nublado e claro, em fases fenológicas da cultura. Os valores do albedo diurno, obtidos através dos totais de radiações, foram utilizados para analisar a variação desse índice durante o ciclo da cultura, nos dois ambientes. O albedo variou com a elevação solar, o ambiente e as fases fenológicas da cultura. A variação de nebulosidade praticamente não influiu sobre o albedo, para totais diurnos. As estimativas do saldo de radiação nas fases vegetativa, reprodutiva e no ciclo da cultura, foram realizadas por meio de regressões lineares simples, tendo como variáveis independentes a irradiância solar global (Rg) e o saldo de radiação de ondas curtas (Rc). Todas as estimativas de radiações apresentaram um melhor ajustamento para fases fenológicas que para o ciclo como um todo. O saldo de radiação (Rn), em condições de campo, ficou bem estimado pela irradiância solar global e o saldo de ondas curtas. O saldo de radiação interno (RnI) à casa de vegetação mostrou-se satisfatoriamente estimado pela irradiância global externa (RgE).

Depósitos de calda obtidos com a aplicação aérea de defensivos na cultura da banana

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Predicao de campo em comunicacao sem fio

Even living in the XXI century are still some difficulties in access to broadband Internet in several Brazilian cities, due to the purchasing power of people and lack of government investment. But even with these difficulties, we seek to encourage the use of wireless technology, which is based on the IEEE 802.11b protocol - also known as Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) Wireless Fidelity Communications, having wide range of commercial applications in the world market, nationally and internationally. In Brazil, this technology is in full operation in major cities and has proved attractive in relation to the access point to multipoint and point-to-point. This paper is a comparative analysis of prediction field, using models based on the prediction of propagation loss. To validate the techniques used here, the Okumura-Hata models, modified Okumura-Hata, Walfisch-Ikegami model, were applied to a wireless computer network, located in the neighborhood of Cajupiranga in the city of Melbourn, in Rio Grande do Norte . They are used for networking wireless 802.11b, using the Mobile Radio to measure signal levels, beyond the heights of the antennas and distances from the transmitter. The performance data versus distance are added to the graphs generated and compared with results obtained through calculations of propagation models

Classificação Automática de Modulação Digital com uso de Correntropia para Ambientes de Rádio Cognitivo

Modern wireless systems employ adaptive techniques to provide high throughput while observing desired coverage, Quality of Service (QoS) and capacity. An alternative to further enhance data rate is to apply cognitive radio concepts, where a system is able to exploit unused spectrum on existing licensed bands by sensing the spectrum and opportunistically access unused portions. Techniques like Automatic Modulation Classification (AMC) could help or be vital for such scenarios. Usually, AMC implementations rely on some form of signal pre-processing, which may introduce a high computational cost or make assumptions about the received signal which may not hold (e.g. Gaussianity of noise). This work proposes a new method to perform AMC which uses a similarity measure from the Information Theoretic Learning (ITL) framework, known as correntropy coefficient. It is capable of extracting similarity measurements over a pair of random processes using higher order statistics, yielding in better similarity estimations than by using e.g. correlation coefficient. Experiments carried out by means of computer simulation show that the technique proposed in this paper presents a high rate success in classification of digital modulation, even in the presence of additive white gaussian noise (AWGN)

Estudo de Superfícies Seletivas de Frequência com o Uso de Inteligência Computacional

The main objective of this work is to optimize the performance of frequency selective surfaces (FSS) composed of crossed dipole conducting patches. The optimization process is performed by determining proper values for the width of the crossed dipoles and for the FSS array periodicity, while the length of the crossed dipoles is kept constant. Particularly, the objective is to determine values that provide wide bandwidth using a search algorithm with representation in bioinspired real numbers. Typically FSS structures composed of patch elements are used for band rejection filtering applications. The FSS structures primarily act like filters depending on the type of element chosen. The region of the electromagnetic spectrum chosen for this study is the one that goes from 7 GHz to 12 GHz, which includes mostly the X-band. This frequency band was chosen to allow the use of two X-band horn antennas, in the FSS measurement setup. The design of the FSS using the developed genetic algorithm allowed increasing the structure bandwidth

Arquiteturas eficientes para sensoriamento espectral e classificação automática de modulações usando características cicloestacionárias

The increasing demand for high performance wireless communication systems has shown the inefficiency of the current model of fixed allocation of the radio spectrum. In this context, cognitive radio appears as a more efficient alternative, by providing opportunistic spectrum access, with the maximum bandwidth possible. To ensure these requirements, it is necessary that the transmitter identify opportunities for transmission and the receiver recognizes the parameters defined for the communication signal. The techniques that use cyclostationary analysis can be applied to problems in either spectrum sensing and modulation classification, even in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments. However, despite the robustness, one of the main disadvantages of cyclostationarity is the high computational cost for calculating its functions. This work proposes efficient architectures for obtaining cyclostationary features to be employed in either spectrum sensing and automatic modulation classification (AMC). In the context of spectrum sensing, a parallelized algorithm for extracting cyclostationary features of communication signals is presented. The performance of this features extractor parallelization is evaluated by speedup and parallel eficiency metrics. The architecture for spectrum sensing is analyzed for several configuration of false alarm probability, SNR levels and observation time for BPSK and QPSK modulations. In the context of AMC, the reduced alpha-profile is proposed as as a cyclostationary signature calculated for a reduced cyclic frequencies set. This signature is validated by a modulation classification architecture based on pattern matching. The architecture for AMC is investigated for correct classification rates of AM, BPSK, QPSK, MSK and FSK modulations, considering several scenarios of observation length and SNR levels. The numerical results of performance obtained in this work show the eficiency of the proposed architectures

Resistance of squash cultivars to Aphis gossypii

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Deposição de calda de pulverização sobre plantas de salvínia em função de pontas de pulverização e arranjos populacionais entre plantas de Aguapé e Alface-D'Água

Este trabalho teve como objetivo avaliar o depósito de calda pulverizada por dois tipos de pontas de pulverização sobre plantas de Salvinia auriculata dispostas em diferentes arranjos populacionais com plantas de Eichhornia crassipes e Pistia stratiotes. Um experimento foi conduzido em condições de caixas-d'água em delineamento inteiramente casualizado, com quatro repetições. Os tratamentos foram dispostos em esquema fatorial 2 x 8, sendo dois tipos de pontas de pulverização (ConeJet TXVK-8 e TeeJet DG 11002 VS) e oito proporções entre as plantas aquáticas, a saber: dominância total da área de cobertura da caixa-d'água pelas plantas de salvínia (100%); e as proporções entre plantas de salvínia e de aguapé ou alface-d'água a 75%:25%, 50%:50% e 25%:75%. Também foi utilizada uma densidade tripla, na qual as três espécies estiveram igualmente dispostas na proporção de 33%. Soluções dos corantes Amarelo Tartrasina FDC-5 a 3.500 ppm e Azul Brilhante FDC-1 a 1.000 ppm foram utilizadas como traçadores para as pontas TXVK-8 e DG 11002VS, respectivamente. A pulverização das soluções foi efetuada na mesma unidade experimental, com intervalo de 30 minutos entre si, com auxílio de um pulverizador costal pressurizado com CO2, calibrado de modo que proporcionasse volume de aplicação aproximado de 200 L ha-1. Não foram observadas diferenças estatísticas entre os tipos de pontas de pulverização nas diferentes proporções estudadas, exceto para depósitos totais de calda de pulverização nas plantas na condição de dominância total da salvínia, uma vez que a ponta ConeJet TXVK-8 foi superior à TeeJet DG 11002 VS. Os valores dos depósitos diminuíram com o aumento da proporção de plantas de aguapé na associação e foram na condição em que 25% de plantas de salvínia estiveram associadas a 75% de plantas de aguapé. A presença da espécie alface-d'água não influenciou a deposição de gotas sobre as folhas de salvínia.

Construção de células solares de corantes fotoexcitáveis utilizando flavonóides da capsicum frutescens, pimenta malagueta

The conversion of solar energy in electric with photo-voltaic cells has been carried through exclusively with devices of semiconducting junction. To put this situation comes moving for better in them last years, thanks to a new technology of production of known solar cells as Dye Solar Cell. This proposal aims at to develop a DSC having as dye lavonoides of the Capsicum frutescens (malagueta pepper). Front is considered to evaluate the photo-voltaic parameters varies it regions of the visible specter, as well as a good efficiency of conversion

Spray deposition on weeds of common bean crops

A.C.P. Rodrigues-Costa, D. Martins, N.V. Costa, and M.R.R. Pereira. 2011. Spray deposition on weeds of common bean crops. Cien. Inv. Agr. 38(3): 357-365. Weed control failure in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) production may be related to inappropriate herbicide application techniques. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to evaluate the amount of spray solution deposition that occurred on the weeds, Bidens pilosa L. and Brachiaria plantaginea (Link) Hitch., both within and between rows of common beans. The research was arranged in a randomized block design with four replications. The following 6 spray nozzles were used: flat fan nozzles XR 110015 VS (150 L ha(-1)) and XR 11002 VS (200 L ha(-1)); cone nozzles TX VK 6 (150 L ha(-1)) and TX VK 8 (200 L ha(-1)); and twin flat fan nozzles TJ60 11002 VS (150 L ha(-1)) and TJ60 11002 VS (200 L ha-1). The results showed that the loss of the spray solution on the soil occurred mainly within the bean rows and with a high intensity when using a nozzle spraying 200 L ha(-1). At 30 days after sowing, the TX (150 L ha(-1)) nozzle was the only nozzle that promoted deposits of less than 210.0 mu L g(-1) of dry mass. The spray nozzles showed a good performance in the deposition of the spray solution on the weeds that occurred both within and between the rows. However, for both species there was great variation in individual deposits depending on their location in relationship to the plants.

Análise da influência de superfícies refletivas nas perdas de calor de sistema térmicos

The use of reflective surfaces functioning as thermal insulator has grown significantly over the years. Reflective thermal insulator are materials that have several characteristics such as low emissivity, low absorptivity and high reflectivity in the infrared spectrum. The use of these materials has grown a lot lately, since it contains several important radioactive properties that minimize the heat loss of thermal systems and cooling systems that are used to block the heat on the roof of buildings. A system made of three surfaces of 316 stainless steel mirror was built to analyze the influence of reflective surfaces as a way to reduce the heat loss and thereby conserve the energy of a thermal system. The system was analyzed both with and without the presence of vacuum, and then compared with a system that contained glass wool between the stainless steel mirror walls, since this isolator is considered resistive and also broadly used around the world in thermal systems. The reflectivity and emissivity of the surfaces used were also measured in this experiment. A type K thermocouple was fixed on the wall of the system to obtain the temperature of the stainless steel mirror surfaces and to analyze the thermal behavior of each configuration used. The results showed an efficiency of 13% when the reflective surfaces were used to minimize the heat loss of the thermal system. However, the system with vacuum had the best outcome, a 60% efficiency. Both of these were compared to the system made of glass wool as a thermal insulator

Estudo numérico de escoamento turbulento em padrão anular gás-líquido em dutos verticais

Multiphase flows in ducts can adopt several morphologies depending on the mass fluxes and the fluids properties. Annular flow is one of the most frequently encountered flow patterns in industrial applications. For gas liquid systems, it consists of a liquid film flowing adjacent to the wall and a gas core flowing in the center of the duct. This work presents a numerical study of this flow pattern in gas liquid systems in vertical ducts. For this, a solution algorithm was developed and implemented in FORTRAN 90 to numerically solve the governing transport equations. The mass and momentum conservation equations are solved simultaneously from the wall to the center of the duct, using the Finite Volumes Technique. Momentum conservation in the gas liquid interface is enforced using an equivalent effective viscosity, which also allows for the solution of both velocity fields in a single system of equations. In this way, the velocity distributions across the gas core and the liquid film are obtained iteratively, together with the global pressure gradient and the liquid film thickness. Convergence criteria are based upon satisfaction of mass balance within the liquid film and the gas core. For system closure, two different approaches are presented for the calculation of the radial turbulent viscosity distribution within the liquid film and the gas core. The first one combines a k- Ɛ one-equation model and a low Reynolds k-Ɛ model. The second one uses a low Reynolds k- Ɛ model to compute the eddy viscosity profile from the center of the duct right to the wall. Appropriate interfacial values for k e Ɛ are proposed, based on concepts and ideas previously used, with success, in stratified gas liquid flow. The proposed approaches are compared with an algebraic model found in the literature, specifically devised for annular gas liquid flow, using available experimental results. This also serves as a validation of the solution algorithm

Modelagem numérica de escoamento em padrão anular com transferência de calor e massa

Annular flow is the prevailing pattern in transport and energy conversion systems and therefore, one of the most important patterns in multiphase flow in ducts. The correct prediction of the pressure gradient and heat transfer coefficient is essential for optimizing the system s capacity. The objective of this work is to develop and implement a numerical algorithm capable of predicting hydrodynamic and thermal characteristics for upflow, vertical, annular flow. The numerical algorithm is then complemented with the physical modeling of phenomena that occurs in this flow pattern. These are, turbulence, entrainment and deposition and phase change. For the development of the numerical model, axial diffusion of heat and momentum is neglected. In this way the time-averaged equations are solved in their parabolic form obtaining the velocity and temperature profiles for each axial step at a time, together with the global parameters, namely, pressure gradient, mean film thickness and heat transfer coefficient, as well as their variation in the axial direction. The model is validated for the following conditions: fully-developed laminar flow with no entrainment; fully developed laminar flow with heat transfer, fully-developed turbulent flow with entrained drops, developing turbulent annular flow with entrained drops, and turbulent flow with heat transfer and phase change

Diagnóstico de plasma de cátodo oco: análise da ação de plasma de argônio e Ar-H2 para a deposição de filmes finos de titânio em pós-descarga

Plasma DC hollow cathode has been used for film deposition by sputtering with release of neutral atoms from the cathode. The DC Plasma Ar-H2 hollow cathode currently used in the industry has proven to be effective in cleaning surfaces and thin film deposition when compared to argon plasma. When we wish to avoid the effects of ion bombardment on the substrate discharge, it uses the post-discharge region. Were generated by discharge plasma of argon and hydrogen hollow cathode deposition of thin films of titanium on glass substrate. The optical emission spectroscopy was used for the post-discharge diagnosis. The films formed were analyzed by mechanical profilometry technique. It was observed that in the spectrum of the excitation lines of argon occurred species. There are variations in the rate of deposition of titanium on the glass substrate for different process parameters such as deposition time, distance and discharge working gases. It was noted an increase in intensity of the lines of argon compared with the lines of titanium. Deposition with argon and hydrogen in glass sample observed a higher rate deposition of titanium as more closer the sample was in the discharge