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Applied Sciences, Volume 8, Issue 9

2018 September - 294 articles

Cover Story: Halloysite nanotubes were used to selectively incorporate anionic surfactant micelles and an organic solvent to generate a cleaning system to be applied in Cultural Heritage restoration. The application of this prepared emulsion for the controlled cleaning of a marble artifact is demonstrated. This work represents a further step toward the opportunity to extend the use of emulsions for cleaning protocols for stone-based artifacts. View this paper.
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Articles (294)

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
5,346 Views
18 Pages

Electrokinetic Characterization of Natural Stones Coated with Nanocomposites for the Protection of Cultural Heritage

  • Marco Roveri,
  • Simona Raneri,
  • Sabrina Bianchi,
  • Francesca Gherardi,
  • Valter Castelvetro and
  • Lucia Toniolo

19 September 2018

Protective coatings, in recent years also from nanocomposite formulations, are commonly applied onto architectural stone and stone artefacts, mainly to prevent absorption of condensed water and dissolved atmospheric pollutants into the porous stone s...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanoclays for Technological Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
19 Citations
5,470 Views
14 Pages

19 September 2018

One of the main topics of Smart Home (SH) research is the recognition of activities performed by its inhabitants, which is considered to be one of the bases to foster new technological solutions inside the home, including services to prolong independ...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Body Area Networks)
  • Feature Paper
  • Review
  • Open Access
410 Citations
29,350 Views
29 Pages

A Review of the Synthesis and Applications of Polymer–Nanoclay Composites

  • Feng Guo,
  • Saman Aryana,
  • Yinghui Han and
  • Yunpeng Jiao

19 September 2018

Recent advancements in material technologies have promoted the development of various preparation strategies and applications of novel polymer–nanoclay composites. Innovative synthesis pathways have resulted in novel polymer–nanoclay comp...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanoclays for Technological Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
31 Citations
6,326 Views
12 Pages

Structure and Photoelectrical Properties of Natural Photoactive Dyes for Solar Cells

  • Qian Liu,
  • Nan Gao,
  • Dejiang Liu,
  • Jinglin Liu and
  • Yuanzuo Li

19 September 2018

A series of natural photoactive dyes, named as D1–D6 were successfully extracted from six kinds of plant leaves for solar cells. The photoelectrical properties of dyes were measured via UV-Vis absorption spectra, cyclic voltammetry as well as p...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dyes for Use in Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and Dye Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSCs))
  • Article
  • Open Access
28 Citations
8,381 Views
23 Pages

19 September 2018

Undesirable outputs, such as carbon emissions and loss of property due to traffic accidents, hold great significance for the sustainable development of the transport industry. In this study, we applied a super-efficiency data envelopment analysis mod...

(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sciences)
  • Article
  • Open Access
18 Citations
8,174 Views
18 Pages

19 September 2018

We present an analytical model of a flapping-wing actuator, including its electrical, aerodynamic, and mechanical systems, for estimating the lift force from the input electrical power. The actuator is modeled as a two-degree-of-freedom kinematic sys...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Piezoelectric Actuators)
  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
6,381 Views
17 Pages

19 September 2018

As a clean and renewable energy source, wave energy is of great significance in solving primary energy shortages and environmental pollution. Direct-drive wave power systems consisting of linear generators have attracted the attention of researchers...

(This article belongs to the Section Energy Science and Technology)
  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
9,114 Views
24 Pages

19 September 2018

The weld form of intersecting joints in a steel tubular truss structure changes with the various intersecting curves. As the key role of joints in energy dissipation and seismic resistance, the weld is easy to damage, as a result the constitutive beh...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Construction Materials and Sustainable Infrastructure)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
7,320 Views
19 Pages

19 September 2018

Office employees are exposed to acoustic noise, especially in an open office environment. Passive or active headsets sufficiently reduce the level of noise, but their long-time wear is uncomfortable. The paper presents an active headrest system built...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Active and Passive Noise Control)
  • Article
  • Open Access
20 Citations
20,020 Views
20 Pages

19 September 2018

Alternative low-cost sources (e.g., balloons, gun fires) are used for impulse response measurements when a dodecahedron speaker is not available. This study sets to explore the applicability of a method utilizing a common directional loudspeaker as a...

(This article belongs to the Section Acoustics and Vibrations)
  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
6,614 Views
11 Pages

Creative Chord Sequence Generation for Electronic Dance Music

  • Darrell Conklin,
  • Martin Gasser and
  • Stefan Oertl

19 September 2018

This paper describes the theory and implementation of a digital audio workstation plug-in for chord sequence generation. The plug-in is intended to encourage and inspire a composer of electronic dance music to explore loops through chord sequence pat...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Audio and Image Processing with Focus on Music Research)
  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
6,918 Views
15 Pages

19 September 2018

Long-term durability of the vacuum edge seal plays a significant part in retrofitting triple vacuum glazing (TVG) to existing buildings in achieving progress towards a zero-energy building (ZEB) target. Vacuum pressure decrement with respect to time...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Zero-Energy Buildings)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
4,181 Views
19 Pages

Nonlocal Damage Mechanics for Quantification of Health for Piezoelectric Sensor

  • A. Habib,
  • A. Shelke,
  • U. Amjad,
  • U. Pietsch and
  • S. Banerjee

18 September 2018

In this paper, a novel method to quantify the incubation of damage on piezoelectric crystal is presented. An intrinsic length scale parameter obtained from nonlocal field theory is used as a novel measure for quantification of damage precursor. Featu...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
4,986 Views
16 Pages

18 September 2018

Occasionally, wind curtailments may be required to avoid an oversupply when wind power, together with the minimum conventional generation, exceed load. By curtailing wind power, the forecast uncertainty and short-term variations in wind power can be...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Developing and Implementing Smart Grids: Novel Technologies, Techniques and Models)
  • Article
  • Open Access
22 Citations
6,351 Views
14 Pages

Fluctuations of 1/f Noise in Damaging Structures Analyzed by Acoustic Emission

  • Alberto Carpinteri,
  • Giuseppe Lacidogna and
  • Federico Accornero

18 September 2018

It is well known in literature that frequency fluctuations of different physical quantities clearly show 1/f noise power spectra. In the present work, the authors observe that in some brittle materials, such as concrete, masonry, and mortar, Acoustic...

(This article belongs to the Section Acoustics and Vibrations)
  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
5,136 Views
17 Pages

Study on Structural Robustness of Isolated Structure Based on Seismic Response

  • Wenwei Yang,
  • Chao Bao,
  • Xiaotong Ma and
  • Shangrong Zhang

18 September 2018

The qualitative analysis for structural robustness study subjected to severe earthquakes is unable to meet engineering requirements, and a quantitative analysis method for structural robustness is needed to be proposed. The existing analysis methods,...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Construction Materials and Sustainable Infrastructure)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
6,933 Views
13 Pages

18 September 2018

The article describes the effect of a magnetic field applied to a ferrofluid–lubricated hydrodynamic journal bearing–rotor system. A rotor with a single journal bearing in one end was built to be the test rig. The experimental results sho...

(This article belongs to the Section Mechanical Engineering)
  • Review
  • Open Access
351 Citations
68,429 Views
46 Pages

Frequency Selective Surfaces: A Review

  • Rana Sadaf Anwar,
  • Lingfeng Mao and
  • Huansheng Ning

18 September 2018

The intent of this paper is to provide an overview of basic concepts, types, techniques, and experimental studies of the current state-of-the-art Frequency Selective Surfaces (FSSs). FSS is a periodic surface with identical two-dimensional arrays of...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
4,959 Views
12 Pages

18 September 2018

Image adjustment methods are one of the most widely used post-processing techniques for enhancing image quality and improving the visual preference of the human visual system (HVS). However, the assessment of the adjusted images has been mainly depen...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent Imaging and Analysis)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
6,493 Views
12 Pages

18 September 2018

An excimer laser three-dimensional (3D) micromachining system is proposed based on a mask image projection method and the optical diffraction effect. The effects of optical diffraction on the laser machining rate are evaluated using a hole-arrayed ma...

(This article belongs to the Section Optics and Lasers)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
4,787 Views
11 Pages

18 September 2018

Over recent years, much attention has been paid to the performance evaluation of industrial-type burners. The ignition and stable combustion process are of great significance in assessing the quality of burner. The planar laser-induced fluorescence (...

(This article belongs to the Section Optics and Lasers)
  • Article
  • Open Access
35 Citations
8,286 Views
10 Pages

Post-Sputtering Heat Treatments of Molybdenum on Silicon Wafer

  • Xuguang Jia,
  • Ziyun Lin,
  • Terry Chien-Jen Yang,
  • Binesh Puthen-Veettil,
  • Lingfeng Wu,
  • Gavin Conibeer and
  • Ivan Perez-Wurfl

18 September 2018

This paper investigated the property evolutions of Mo thin films that were subjected to post-sputtering heat treatments from 700 °C to 1100 °C. It was found that, after annealing, the use of Si wafers eliminated crack formations found in prev...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Next Generation Photovoltaic Solar Cells)
  • Article
  • Open Access
19 Citations
7,331 Views
24 Pages

18 September 2018

In recent years, healthcare has attracted much attention, which is looking for more and more data analytics in healthcare to relieve medical problems in medical staff shortage, ageing population, people living alone, and quality of life. Data mining,...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Data Analytics in Smart Healthcare)
  • Article
  • Open Access
342 Citations
21,574 Views
17 Pages

Research on a Surface Defect Detection Algorithm Based on MobileNet-SSD

  • Yiting Li,
  • Haisong Huang,
  • Qingsheng Xie,
  • Liguo Yao and
  • Qipeng Chen

17 September 2018

This paper aims to achieve real-time and accurate detection of surface defects by using a deep learning method. For this purpose, the Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) network was adopted as the meta structure and combined with the base convolution...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances on Signal Processing and Deep Learning for Public Security Applications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
7,080 Views
12 Pages

Combined Mie Resonance Metasurface for Wideband Terahertz Absorber

  • Jie Hu,
  • Tingting Lang,
  • Changyu Shen and
  • Liyang Shao

17 September 2018

In this paper, we propose a combined metasurface consisting of an aluminum substrate and an array of TiO2 blocks to achieve a wideband terahertz absorber. We incorporated several similar dielectric blocks with different side length into each unit cel...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Nanoantennas)
  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
5,462 Views
18 Pages

17 September 2018

Dynamic optimization has wide applications in scientific and industrial researches. Multiresolution techniques provide an efficient way to solve dynamic optimization problems but have some disadvantages. An improved multiresolution technique is devel...

(This article belongs to the Section Chemical and Molecular Sciences)
  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
5,498 Views
10 Pages

17 September 2018

Neural style transfer, which has attracted great attention in both academic research and industrial engineering and demonstrated very exciting and remarkable results, is the technique of migrating the semantic content of one image to different artist...

  • Article
  • Open Access
31 Citations
6,470 Views
14 Pages

17 September 2018

The extended Kalman filter (EKF) as a primary integration scheme has been applied in the Global Positioning System (GPS) and inertial navigation system (INS) integrated system. Nevertheless, the inherent drawbacks of EKF contain not only instability...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Signal Processing for Satellite Positioning Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
4,918 Views
11 Pages

Multiple-Penalty-Weighted Regularization Inversion for Dynamic Light Scattering

  • Wengang Chen,
  • Wenzheng Xiu,
  • Jin Shen,
  • Wenwen Zhang,
  • Min Xu,
  • Lijun Cao and
  • Lixiu Ma

16 September 2018

By using different weights to deal with the autocorrelation function data of every delay time period, the information utilization of dynamic light scattering can be obviously enhanced in the information-weighted constrained regularization inversion,...

(This article belongs to the Section Optics and Lasers)
  • Article
  • Open Access
91 Citations
19,356 Views
23 Pages

16 September 2018

The Johnson–Holmquist-II(JH-2) model is introduced as the constitutive model for rock materials in tunnel smooth blasting. However, complicated and/or high-cost experiments need to be carried out to obtain the parameters of the JH-2 constitutiv...

(This article belongs to the Section Mechanical Engineering)
  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
5,903 Views
21 Pages

Associative Memories to Accelerate Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search

  • Vincent Gripon,
  • Matthias Löwe and
  • Franck Vermet

16 September 2018

Nearest neighbor search is a very active field in machine learning. It appears in many application cases, including classification and object retrieval. In its naive implementation, the complexity of the search is linear in the product of the dimensi...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Intelligent Imaging Technology)
  • Article
  • Open Access
63 Citations
9,032 Views
11 Pages

16 September 2018

The stator inter-turn short circuit fault is one of the most common and key faults in permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). This paper introduces a time–frequency method for inter-turn fault detection in stator winding of PMSM using improv...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fault Detection and Diagnosis in Mechatronics Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
67 Citations
5,957 Views
22 Pages

An Optimized Protection Coordination Scheme for the Optimal Coordination of Overcurrent Relays Using a Nature-Inspired Root Tree Algorithm

  • Abdul Wadood,
  • Saeid Gholami Farkoush,
  • Tahir Khurshaid,
  • Chang-Hwan Kim,
  • Jiangtao Yu,
  • Zong Woo Geem and
  • Sang-Bong Rhee

15 September 2018

In electrical engineering problems, bio- and nature-inspired optimization techniques are valuable ways to minimize or maximize an objective function. We use the root tree algorithm (RTO), inspired by the random movement of roots, to search for the gl...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State-of-the-Art Renewable Energy in Korea)
  • Article
  • Open Access
87 Citations
8,039 Views
15 Pages

Rheological Performance of Bio-Char Modified Asphalt with Different Particle Sizes

  • Ran Zhang,
  • Qingli Dai,
  • Zhanping You,
  • Hainian Wang and
  • Chao Peng

15 September 2018

To improve the performance of petroleum asphalt, bio-char was used as a modifier for a petroleum asphalt binder, in this study. The rheological properties of bio-char modified asphalt binders were compared with different particle sizes and contents,...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Achievements and Prospects of Functional Pavement: Materials and Structures)
  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
6,793 Views
21 Pages

15 September 2018

Piezoelectric actuators are widely utilized to convert electrical energy into mechanical strain with considerable potential in micro mobile robot applications. However, the use of Pb-based Lanthanumdoped Zirconate Titanates (PZTs) leads to two diffic...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Mobile Robotics)
  • Article
  • Open Access
23 Citations
12,703 Views
14 Pages

Sensitivity Analysis for Ship-to-Shore Container Crane Design

  • Quang Huy Tran,
  • Jungwon Huh,
  • Van Bac Nguyen,
  • Choonghyun Kang,
  • Jin-Hee Ahn and
  • Inn-Joon Park

15 September 2018

Ship-to-shore (STS) container cranes are important pieces of equipment in container terminals for container handling, so they need to be properly designed to avoid damage or collapse due to natural hazards (i.e., storms or earthquakes). However, the...

(This article belongs to the Section Mechanical Engineering)
  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
5,806 Views
18 Pages

Impact of Economic Indicators on the Integrated Design of Wind Turbine Systems

  • Jianghai Wu,
  • Tongguang Wang,
  • Long Wang and
  • Ning Zhao

15 September 2018

This article presents a framework to integrate and optimize the design of large-scale wind turbines. Annual energy production, load analysis, the structural design of components and the wind farm operation model are coupled to perform a system-level...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wind Turbine Aerodynamics)
  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
3,589 Views
8 Pages

Design and Experiment of Wideband Filters Based on Double-Layered Square-Loop Arrays in the F-Band

  • Jun Yang,
  • Yang Yang,
  • Peng Wang,
  • Guangsheng Deng,
  • Fei Cai,
  • Hongbo Lu and
  • Zhiping Yin

15 September 2018

We present a wideband metamaterial (MM) filter based on a metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) structure. The proposed structure consists of a quartz dielectric substrate and two metallic square-loop arrays, which were deposited on both surfaces of the subst...

  • Article
  • Open Access
30 Citations
9,844 Views
17 Pages

15 September 2018

Sintered metal porous media are widely used in a broad range of industrial equipment. Generally, the flow properties in porous media are represented by an incompressible Darcy‒Forchheimer regime. This study uses a modified Forchheimer equation to rep...

(This article belongs to the Section Chemical and Molecular Sciences)
  • Article
  • Open Access
56 Citations
7,620 Views
33 Pages

Severely Damaged Reinforced Concrete Circular Columns Repaired by Turned Steel Rebar and High-Performance Concrete Jacketing with Steel or Polymer Fibers

  • Junqing Xue,
  • Davide Lavorato,
  • Alessandro V. Bergami,
  • Camillo Nuti,
  • Bruno Briseghella,
  • Giuseppe C. Marano,
  • Tao Ji,
  • Ivo Vanzi,
  • Angelo M. Tarantino and
  • Silvia Santini

15 September 2018

A new strategy that repairs severely damaged reinforced concrete (RC) columns after an earthquake is proposed as a simpler and quicker solution with respect to the strategies currently available in the literature. The external concrete parts are remo...

(This article belongs to the Section Materials Science and Engineering)
  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
4,136 Views
15 Pages

15 September 2018

The effect of sediment on the hydraulics of jet energy dissipation is an urgent issue for high dams built on sediment-laden rivers. Accordingly, flume experiments were conducted using a ski-jump type energy dissipator in flows of four sediment concen...

(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sciences)
  • Article
  • Open Access
55 Citations
5,089 Views
22 Pages

15 September 2018

Decomposition-based multi-objective evolutionary algorithms provide a good framework for static multi-objective optimization. Nevertheless, there are few studies on their use in dynamic optimization. To solve dynamic multi-objective optimization prob...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applied Sciences Based on and Related to Computer and Control)
  • Brief Report
  • Open Access
82 Citations
23,145 Views
10 Pages

14 September 2018

The purpose of the current investigation was two-fold: (i) to describe the development of 3D printed prostheses using antibacterial filaments and (ii) to verify the antibacterial properties of the 3D printed prostheses. Three-dimensional printed fing...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biocompatible Materials)
  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
5,452 Views
12 Pages

Optical Transmitters without Driver Amplifiers—Optimal Operation Conditions

  • Arne Josten,
  • Benedikt Baeuerle,
  • Romain Bonjour,
  • Wolfgang Heni and
  • Juerg Leuthold

14 September 2018

An important challenge in optical communications is the generation of highest-quality waveforms with a Mach–Zehnder modulator with a limited electrical swing (Vpp). For this, we discuss, under limited Vpp, the influence of the waveform design o...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced DSP Techniques for High-Capacity and Energy-Efficient Optical Fiber Communications)
  • Article
  • Open Access
32 Citations
5,612 Views
24 Pages

14 September 2018

In this article, the Grade Correspondence Analysis (GCA) with posterior clustering and visualization is introduced and applied to extract important features to reveal households’ characteristics based on electricity usage data. The main goal of...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent Energy Management of Electrical Power Systems)
  • Article
  • Open Access
38 Citations
6,275 Views
9 Pages

14 September 2018

Aspergillus flavus and A. parsiticus produce aflatoxins that are highly toxic to mammals and birds. In this study, the inhibitory effects of 1,8-cineole and t-cinnamaldehyde were examined on the growth of Aspergillus flavus ATCC 22546 and aflatoxin p...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Pesticide and Emerging Organic Pollutant Analyses and their Ecotoxicological Evaluation in Soil and Aquatic Environments)
  • Article
  • Open Access
25 Citations
3,534 Views
19 Pages

14 September 2018

In recent years, concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) bridges have been widely used in bridge construction. However, interface disengaging is one of the bridges’ most common defects. It affects not only the confinement of the steel tube to the...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
4,405 Views
8 Pages

14 September 2018

We have demonstrated sum-frequency generation of a compact continuous-wave orange laser in a step-chirped magnesium oxide doped periodically poled lithium niobate in single-pass mode. A 974 nm laser diode was mixed with a C-band amplified spontaneous...

(This article belongs to the Section Optics and Lasers)
  • Article
  • Open Access
55 Citations
7,631 Views
13 Pages

14 September 2018

We propose a new deep learning network capable of successfully segmenting intervertebral discs and their complex boundaries from magnetic resonance (MR) spine images. The existing U-network (U-net) is known to perform well in various segmentation tas...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent Imaging and Analysis)
  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
6,330 Views
13 Pages

14 September 2018

For diminishing welding defects such as incomplete penetration, which may easily occur during the twin wire Double Pulsed Metal Inert Gas (DP-MIG) high-speed welding, a novel method using additional shielding gas is introduced in this paper. A branch...

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Welding of Steels)

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Appl. Sci. - ISSN 2076-3417