Currently, the whole world is facing energy shortage and water crisis. Management of water and energy usage in irrigation is essential to overcome the current crisis. This research introduces a techno-economic study to achieve simultaneous optimization of cost, active power loss and water quantity without violating the crop water requirement. Four scenarios are proposed incorporating energy demand-side management, PV panels integration and modification of the irrigation schedule and irrigation methodology for comparison against the existing scenario of pump-based irrigation system in Karot line, Assiut, Egypt. The grid-connected PV panels scenario achieves minimum system cost as well as minimum total system active-power loss and water quantity when compared with the other scenarios. Grid-connected PV panels with surface irrigation reduce the total system cost by 93% when compared with that of the Karot line. On the other hand, grid-connected PV panels with drip irrigation give a much more saving in water quantity and a further reduction in the total system active-power loss by 48.1 and 25.13%, respectively, when compared with those of the Karot line case.

Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) has been becoming a widely used additive layer-by-layer manufacturing process, is used to produce complex geometries in a short period without tooling or human involvement. One of the challenging problems of FDM products is the surface roughness. In this article, a slurry was applied to the surface of FDM Polylactic Acid (PLA) products to enhance the surface roughness. The developed technique lessens the asperities of the surface and makes it softer. The controllable factors are layer thickness, building orientation, and slurry impact angle. Experimentally, a test rig was utilized to investigate the effect of the three factors on surface roughness. Numerically, an Adaptive Neuro-fuzzy Interference System (ANFIS) was developed to map roughness with the contributing factors. The results showed that the effect of slurry gave a good surface quality and the surface roughness …

In this research, we utilize image processing to analyze surfaces acquired from slurry-erosion tests carried out on AISI 5117 steel at various velocities and impact angles of 30 deg and 90 deg. The fractal and wavelet decomposition transform are two analysis tools that are particularly promising in this regard. These can be used to extract metrics that characterize slurry erosion in the same way that erosion rate is characterized. The study found that for a higher velocity of 15 m/s and a 30-deg impact angle, the fractal value was larger, irrespective of magnification. The fractal value is also in a positive linear regression with magnification. The extracted features of wavelet analysis were not distinctive for slurry-erosion behavior. The role of impact velocity in creating erosion damage is related to the variety of erosion mechanisms that are dependent on the particles’ kinetic energy. Microscopic examinations of …

This paper introduces a case study methodology to decrease variability in quality measures and optimise control parameters in a cement-bags company. A lack of supervision is observed in the company which gives a negative impact on quality by increasing the number of defective bags with time without taking any action. The statistical process control (SPC) techniques, process capability measures, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) are used to reduce the high variability in production and the defective bag ratio. Moreover, an approach is developed to find and eliminate the resulted causes of variation in the production process. Multiple linear regression analysis is conducted for each variable characteristic to determine the best working conditions by which the production process improves.