This paper presents a numerical analysis of free vibration of thin circular and annular plate using finite element method. The first five natural frequencies are presented for uniform annular plates of various inner-to-outer radius ratios, with nine possible combinations of free, clamped and simply supported boundary conditions at the inner and outer edges of plates. The accuracy of the method is established by comparing the results available in the literature. Results show that natural frequency parameter increases as the inner-to-outer radius ratio increases except in case of free boundary condition, for which it decreases with the inner-to-outer radius ratio. This result provides benchmark values that can be used to validate result obtained by other approximate approaches such as finite difference method, differential quadrature method and boundary element method.

Force measurement is very vital in various scientific applications and its precise measurement is very necessary for reliability of the measurement process. There are several types of simple shaped force transducers, which may range from ring shaped force transducers to cantilever type or beam type force transducers. Ring shaped force transducers are one of most commonly used type of force transducers are developed on the basis of theory of thin rings. Till today, some of the modifications of ring shaped force transducers have been reported, the present investigation discusses the development of elliptical shaped force transducer as a modification of ring shaped force transducers and its preliminary investigation on metrological characterization based on the calibration procedures according to standards ISO 376-2011. The force transducer has been developed for the nominal capacity of 20 kN and strain gauges have been applied over the optimum locations to minimize cross sensitivity. The force transducer is developed exclusively for static force measurement related applications to serve as a link in providing the traceability to the user industries and calibration laboratories or serve as force transfer standard. The force transducer has been evaluated for suitability as a precision force transducer with the help of the 50 kN Dead Weight force machine traceable to national standard of force. The elliptical shape force transducers are found to have comparable metrological characteristics as compared to other ring shape force transducers.

The rapid expansion of Dubai and the United Arab United infrastructure in the Middle East over the past twenty years has resulted in a large accumulation of concrete waste in landfills and dumping sites. The subsequent hasty increase in the construction and demolition of the infrastructure has outstripped effective waste management facilities, posing a serious natural challenge. This concrete waste greatly endangers human health, property, and biological systems when buried. To find effective solutions to this issue, different waste management methods were researched and compared to find the most effective. This paper aims to differentiate the most appropriate waste management strategies and determine their impact on the environment. These methods included reducing the waste, reusing those wastes that can be reused, recycling, and disposal in landfills and government dumping sites. This paper opens the door for future studies to determine the impact indicators and specific waste management methods that substantially influence the environment and the cost of damage. In addition, a Life Cycle Cost Assessment (LCA) may be carried out to supplement this research and determine the financial benefits of the various specific waste management options and the cost of damages. The study predominantly assesses the different construction and demolition waste management strategies. It primarily adds valuable knowledge concerning these waste recycling management techniques and their environmental effect. This study also suggests directions for future exploration, such as identifying key impact indicators and management strategies that have a significant impact on the environment. Alternatively, LCA can complement the results by assessing the financial benefits of different physical waste management options. To sum up, the exponential growth of infrastructure in Dubai has led to a considerable challenge regarding concrete waste. The LCA-based comparison between landfill and recycling methods highlights the urgency of adopting sustainable waste management practices. This study not only broadens the understanding of damage cost models but also provides a comprehensive assessment of practical waste management options, contributing to informed decision-making to minimize environmental impact.

Electrical Energy is an essential commodity which significantly contributes to the economic development of any country. Many non-linear factors contribute to the final output of electrical energy demand. In order to efficiently predict electrical energy demand, many time-series analysis and multivariate techniques have been suggested. In order for these methods to accurately work, an enormous quantity of historical dataset is essential which sometimes are not available, inadequate and inaccurate. To overcome some of these challenges, this paper presents an Artificial Neural Network based method for Electrical Energy Demand Forecasting using a case study of Lagos state, Nigeria. The predicted values are compared with actual values to estimate the performance of the proposed technique.

This paper considers the economic order quantity (EOQ) model over a finite horizon, in which demand rate follows a two-parameter Weibull time-dependent, shortages are allowed and completely backlogged. Mathematical formulations are derived under two different circumstances i.e. case I: The permissible delay is less than or equal time to finish positive inventory for settling the account, and case II: The permissible delay period is greater than time to finish positive inventory for settling the account. Based on the optimal solutions some important results are derived and numerical examples are provided to validate the proposed model. Finally, sensitivity analysis is provided to analyze the effect of changes with the variation in one parameter at a time on the optimal solution.

The increased role of wind turbine systems makes it important for its operational states to be con-tinuously monitored and optimized. This goal can be achieved using existing methods, which re-lies on closed-form expressions. The use of these methods, however, becomes challenging when interacting parameters cannot be fully presented with closed form expressions. In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) based algorithm is proposed as a solution to this problem. This algorithm is used to estimate wind turbine systems operational state and reliability. The proposed method is able to provide a more holistic approach to manage a wind turbine system with respect to the problem mentioned above. Simulation results show that the developed ANN can predict the average number of failures per year, distribution of failure and average downtime per failure with good accuracy. This was achieved using an ANN model with 5-15-3 architecture. The model generates mean square errors of 4.6 × 10^-3, 4.2 ×10-3, and 4.0 × 10^-3 at the training, validation, and testing stages, respectively. The study is beneficial to wind turbine practitioners and manufacturers as its findings can provide in-depth understandings of reliability issues of the system.

Supply chain management in oil and gas industry plays an important role for the success of these companies in most countries. A reliable supply chain helps on time delivery of goods and services and leads to better performance of the firms and yields higher profitability. This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the relative efficiency of different oil distribution companies in Iran. The proposed study uses a five-stage Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) technique to measure the relative efficiencies of 40 distribution oil companies. The study designs a questionnaire based on four balanced scorecard perspectives and distributes it among various experts who were familiar with supply chain issues. The results indicate that the network performed relatively efficient since the study did not detect any unit with low performance and most of them maintained relatively high scores.

In this paper, an exploration investigation is presented to determine entrepreneurial marketing factors influencing on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which are active in Iranian food industry. The study designs a questionnaire consists of 27 questions in Likert scale and distributes it among 249 experts who were involved in in food industry. KMO Bartlett test Sphericity and Cronbach alpha are 0.811 and 0.892, respectively. Using structural equation modeling, the study has determined five factors including innovative approach, flexible marketing, customer, product strategy and resources, which are influencing the most on entrepreneurial marketing factors.

Supply chain provides continual turbulence with unpredictable disruptions potential for enterprises with complex network infrastructure. Supply chain in enterprises needs to be resilient and sustain-able to provide effective response, removing vulnerabilities and minimizing the impact of negative disturbances. This review article is based on evaluating the role of supply chain management in automobile sector of India. The overall findings derived from review of refined articles state that, in countries like India, automobile industry needs to have appropriate management commitment for sustainability and resilience of supply chain rather than rules and regulations of government. The review article examined 914 articles related to evaluating supply chain management practices in automobile sector of India. Through the analysis of the collected articles, it is evident that DEMATEL is effective technique for providing inter-relationship in automobile industry in India. Rather than economic influence in automobile sector, managerial activity is a major concern for effective sustainable and resilience practices in automobile industry of India.

In this paper, a supply chain inventory model is developed in inflationary environment by incorporating some realistic features such as ramp type demand, deterioration, partial backlogging, inflation, and trade credit. Here, rate of deterioration is linear and partial backlogging rate is variable and dependent on the waiting time for the next replenishment. Depending on the trade credit period, three different situations arise. For each model the optimal replenishment policy is determined. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the proposed inventory model and sensitivity analyses of optimal solutions are given for each case of trapezoidal demand function.