ERU - 2007

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://192.248.9.226/handle/123/14684

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item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Advance oxidation of high strength wastewaters as a suppleme~tary treatment option for enhanced biological treatment
(2007) Raamshangar, K; Wijeyekoon, SLJ; Rathnasiri, PG
High organic strength wastewaters from food industry, distilleries, breweries etc. are conventionally treated by anaerobic digestion due to low sludge production, derivation of biogas and low operating costs. However anaerobic process is extremely slow and hence requires large space and therefore capital cost intensive. On the other hand, aerobic treatment is rapid, efficient with stable end products yet the considerable sludge formation is a major disadvantage. Chemical oxidation is extremely rapid, easy to control and able to oxidize non bio degradable substances but its widespread application is restricted primarily due to cost consideration. Therefore an integrated approach to high strength wastewater treatment by taking advantage of the merits of anaerobic, aerobic and chemical oxidation is an attractive option to develop a sustainable, efficient, intensive and rapid treatment technology for the treatment of high strength industrial effluents.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Air drying alkyd resins from seed oil of kara wi la MC43
(2007) Prashantha, MAB; Prernachandra, JK; Amarasinghe, ADUS
Alkyd resins are a special family of polyesters which are mainly limited in application of surface coatings. The popularity of alkyd resins in surface coating industry throughout the world is due to cost effectiveness and versatility. Synthesis process of alkyd resins needs basically three different types of chemical constituents. One type of constituent is polyol with hydroxyl functionality greater than 2 and second constituent is polybasic acid or acid anhydride. Usually most of conventional alkyd recipes contain glycerol and pthalic anhydride. Fatty oils having considerable amount of unsaturated fatty acids are the third type of raw material for air drying alkyd resins.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
A and E distributions in random variables and stochastic processes
(2007) Jayatilake, UC
Here the author shows how to remove the inconsistencies in Random Variable theory by introducing the i1 and E distributions. The i1 distribution is proposed for random variables representing definitely occurring events. The E distribution is introduced to describe impossible events. This distribution is used for defining Stochastic Processes. The theory which is explained for continuous random variables can be easily adapted for discrete random variables.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Anlysis and forecasting of multiple seasonal time series models
(2007) Cooray, TMJA
Time series may contain multiple seasonal cycles of different lengths. There are several notable features in Figure 1, reference to the hourly electricity demand in Sri Lanka, data are given in the Table lFirst, we observe that the daily cycles are not all the same, although it may reasonably be claimed that the cycles for Monday through Sunday are similar. A second feature of the data is that the underlying levels of the daily cycles may change from one week to the next, yet be highly correlated with the levels for the days immediately preceding. Thus, an effective time series model must be sufficiently flexible to capture these principal features without imposing too heavy computational or inferential burdens. The goal of this paper is to introduce a new procedure that uses innovation ARIMA models to forecast time series with multiple seasonal patterns.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Application of alkaline steeping method and enzymatic method in rice starch isolation
(2007) Pathiraja, PTN; Ismail, FM; Gunawardena, SHP
In Sri Lanka, farmers get a very good yield in some rice growing seasons, and as a result there is excess rice in the country causing storage problems. Rice starch production is a way of adding value to this excess rice, there by reducing post harvest losses. There are many useful applications of rice starch in the food industries such as noodles, rice bread, baby foods and it is also used as dairy alternatives. In addition, it is being used as a dusting powder and as a filler in the pharmaceutical industry and as a laundry stiffening agent in the textile industry (Burrell, 2003). Currently there is no rice starch production in Sri Lanka and the total local requirement is met by imported starches. Hence it will be beneficial to produce rice starch locally to meet the demand for starch in Sri Lanka. Most important part of the production of rice starch is to remove rice protein and the separation of small starch granules by using an appropriate method. The removal of rice protein is important as the surface activity of protein can lead to foaming in starch processing, reduction of starch yield by endoamylolytic activity of some surface-bound enzymes and formation of Maillard products during hydrolysis of starch. Rice protein consists of glutelin (80%), albumin (5%), globulin (12%) and prolamin (3%) which is dissolved in alkali, water, salt and ethanol respectively (Juliano, 1985). Chemical, physical and biological methods are used in rice starch manufacturing process.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Approach for grass-root stakeholder consultations: case of maoya river
(2007) Thoradeniya, B; Ranasmghe, M; Wijesekera, NTS
Most development projects/activities in river basins are planned and implemented independently by the relevant agencies based on sectoral interests (e.g. water for irrigation, mining of clay on river banks) for economic or political benefits. Generally the agency which develops the project assumes total control of the project's resources and its assets, and expects others agencies and stakeholders to adjust to the changes in the availability of the resources (Helmi and Ifdal , 2003).
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
"BTsentinel" mobile phones based security system
(2007) Fernando, S; Kumara, MDBJB; Sandakalunr, HKLS; Darshana, SAT; Awantha, SAT
BTSentinel is a security system which has advanced authentication capabilities as well as location identification of each user using a Bluetooth [1] enabled mobile phone. User's mobile phone connects to a Bluetooth dongle which has assigned a specific location. Bluetooth address of the phone and a manually entered password by the user are used as username and password for the authentication. User's location is identified by analyzing the currently connected dongle. Working in the domain is most common in today community and therefore BTSentinel provide extended domain authentication as well. All the communications are done using standard encrypting and decrypting mechanisms[5]. That prevents the threat of disclosure of confidential information. Therefore this solution has overcome the pervious drawbacks and provides strong mechanism comparatively other existing solutions.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
CO-alignment between technology management and total quality management practices
(2007) Kuruppuarachchi, D; Perera, HSC
The emergence of TQM has been one of the major developments in management practice in the last two decades. The recognition of TQM as a source of competitive advantage has been widely promoted around the world, especially in Western countries, and today very few (especially manufacturing) companies can afford to ignore the term (Prajogo, 2005). On the other hand, effective application of technology is a key source of competitive advantage for modem industry. However, the co-alignment between Technology Management systems into established business processes represents a continuing challenge to many firms. It will be valuable for manufacturing organizations to identify this co-alignment and integration between TQM and Technology Management to set successful competitive strategies. Recent research justifies that TQM affects directly as well as indirectly on inventory, quality and financial performance of the organizations (Kaynak, 2003). The integrative effect of marketing and TQM on organizational performance (motivation, marketing, productivity and societal) is also found to be significant. Another research done based on Australian organizations (Prajogo and Sohal, 2006) justifies that TQM and technologylR&D practices moderately co-aligned with each other and this leads to enhance organizational quality and innovative performance.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Consolidation properties of soft organic soils in Sri Lanka
(2007) Thilakasiri, HS
Most of the new coming highways in Sri Lanka are run through low-lying areas mainly to minimize the damages to the existing structures and to the livelihood of the people living in the buildup areas. The shallow subsurface of these low-lying areas consists mainly of very soft highly compressible organic soils or soft alluvial deposits. Due to the high flood levels above the existing ground surface in the low-lying areas, high embankments are needed to avoid flooding of the highway. As a result, geotechnical engineers are faced with a tremendous challenge of construction of high embankments over thick very soft highly compressible soil deposits. Due to shear failure and large settlement of the soft soil deposits under the embankment loading, these soft soil deposits must be improved before the placing of the embankment fill or during placing the fill. There are different types of treatment methods used in Sri Lanka such as preloading, preloading with vertical drains, sand columns, stone columns, piled embankment, vacuum consolidation etc. The actual method of treatment depends mainly on the thickness of the soft deposit, consolidation and shear strength properties of the soft deposit, height of the embankment etc. Therefore, it is essential that the properties of the soft soil are determined during the initial stage of the design to decide the type of the soft ground treatment method as well as during the design stage. Determination of the strength and compressibility properties of commonly found soft soil deposits using undisturbed samples is a no easy task due to the inability to recover undisturbed samples and difficulties associated with preparation of test samples and testing.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Cortex - access control via face recognition
(2007) Fernando, S; De Silva, C; Perera, D; Priyankara, T; Silva, M; Paskarasundaram, V
There are several access control systems available in the market, which uses different mechanisms to authenticate the users. Passwords, cards with barcode, card with magnetic systems and signature are the traditional mechanisms used in access control systems. Also there are lots of modem techniques used for recognizing people in existing systems. Some of them are finger prints, retina recognition, ear recognition, voice recognition, hand geometry recognition etc ... In all those systems there are some drawbacks. In finger print recognition, finger print can be copied & can be misused, retina recognition requires expensive high quality camera, ear recognition is difficult to implement.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Critical success factors and critical uncertainties in enterprise resource planning implementations in Sri Lanka
(2007) Gunawardena, KPVKK; Wickramasinghe, VM
An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is an integrated computing system designed to automate the flow of material, information, and resources across all functions in an enterprise, with a central database". An ERP system is used as a magic formula by organizations aiming to centralize and streamline their organization's processes for better performance. However many have displayed serious doubts about the success of such attempts owing to the insignificant return on the massive investments.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Current status of relative motion detection and segmentation of moving objects for navigation using optical flow
(2007) Fernando, WSP; Udawatte, L; Pathirana, P
Motion Control is one of the most important research topics in computer vision. It is the base for many other problems such as visual tracking, structure from motion. A major interests of motion analysis is to estimate 3D motion.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Damage mechanism of Hikkaduwa due to December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
(2007) Welhena, T; Samarawickrama, SP; Hettiarachchi, SSL
More than two thirds of the Sri Lankan coastline got affected from the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Field surveys conducted clearly indicate that some of the cities in the western coast of Sri Lanka in the shadow of the incident tsunami experienced significantly high damage similar to that of the eastern coast which was directly facing the incident tsunami. Destruction caused by the tsunami in the western coast was patchy and the cities like Galle and Hikkaduwa could be identified as the worst affected. In the case of Galle, the Bay and Headland combination would have increased the height and speed of the Tsunami wave and the damages accordingly. Even without such prominent coastal features Hikkaduwa experienced a similar scale of damages. This led to the investigations in identifying the damage mechanisms of Hikkaduwa where inundation and wave heights were as much as 5-10 times of the surrounding areas of the south west coast. Such complex mechanism of damages can be interpreted via results of Numerical Modeling and analysis of the existing coastal features in Hikkaduwa.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Design of a low cost hand operated yarn trimming device for conventional lock stitch machines
(2007) Gopura, RARC; Attanayake, N; Arumapperuma, C; Aravinthan, V
Yarn trimming is' carried out by using a pair of scissors in conventional lock stitch machines. Three steps should be followed to trim the yarn. First, the presser foot is lifted by using the knee lifter (hand lifter in some household old lock stitch machines). Then the fabric is moved out and ultimately the yarn is trimmed using a pair of scissors. When the pair of scissor is used, it should be taken to hand and then trimming is done, which is a time consuming task.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Design of an effective heat exchanger for cinnamon oil extraction
(2007) Silva, MD; Amarasinghe, ADUS
Lack of knowledge in heat exchanger design and fabrication is the major hindrance for improving the cinnamon oil extraction process in Sri Lanka. Most of the extraction plants use submerged coils in still water where the temperature approach is not sufficient enough to have efficient heat transfer resulting in using of large heat transfer areas unnecessarily. Further due to poor heat transfer efficiencies, most of the highly volatile compounds in the essential oils escape to atmosphere without been condensed.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Determination of one dimensional earth resistivity profile in multilayer soil
(2007) Dharmadasa, IT; Lucas, JR; Udawatta, L; Wijayapala, WDAS
Main intention of Geophysical resistrvity surveying is to interpret the subsurface conditions for engineering applications. The earth exhibits a far from uniform structure and therefore the surface resistivity varies from location to location as well as on seasonal basis. Often, the structure will have resistivity layers related to the physical layers such as topsoil, sub-soil, and bedrock. Clearly these layers or divisions in soil structure will have a considerable impact on both soil resistivity and earth resistance/impedance. This anisotropy found in platy structures will result in an apparent resistivity which with wide variations.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Development of design criteria for an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor applicable to high strength industrl al wastewater
(2007) Ratnayake, N; Gunawardana, WB; Champika, EK
Wastewaters from industrial sources, having Chemical Oxygen Demand greater than 1500 mg/l are generally categorized as 'high strength industrial wastewaters'. In anaerobic digestion, the complex organic compounds present in industrial wastewaters are transformed into simpler compounds such as volatile fatty acids, CH4, CO2, in an environment free of molecular oxygen. Up flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor is a type of high rate suspended growth system. Development of highly settleable granulated sludge in a VASB promotes higher flow rates, which produces high organic removal in relatively small capacity reactors. Biogas production is an added advantage, which provides a means of energy recovery from the wastewater.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
The effect of infill on shear behaviour of idealised joints under constant normal stiffness conditions (CNS)
(2007) Welideniya, HS
The shear behaviour rock joints infilled with graphite, bentonite and clayey sand under eNS conditions were studied through a comprehensive laboratory testing programme to assess its influence on rock mass stability. A range of infill thicknesses such as 1.5, 3, 6 and 9mm, initial normal stresses (O'no) of 0.56, 1.1 and 2.43 MPa and two idealized joint types with 9.5° (Type 1) and 18.5° (Type 2) asperity angles were used in testing (Indraratna, Welideniya and Brown. 2005). This paper describes analysis of test results leading to better understand the effect of mobilised and apparent friction angles on shear strength envelope.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
The effect of scaling on frictional losses in pipes
(2007) Wijesekera, NTS; Ratnasooriya, AHR
The ability to predict the hydraulic performance of a pipe network during its working life plays an important role in the planning and design of water supply schemes. The nominal diameter and the friction factor of pipes are two essential parameters in the analysis of pipe networks. The values of these parameters are usually known for commercially used new pipes. With aging, corrosion and scaling in pipes may cause a reduction of diameter and an increase in surface roughness, leading to a reduction of carrying capacity. In this experimental study, attention is focused on the effect of scaling on frictional losses of commercially used pve pipes.
item: Conference-Extended-Abstract
Estimation of the ultimate carrying capacity of bored piles using the static load settlement curve
(2007) Thilakasiri, HS
Testing of bored piles is carried out to investigate the load-settlement behavior of the tested pile. The pile is loaded upto about l.5 times the working load to establish the loadsettlement behavior. The termination of the load testing at 1.5 times the working load is mainly due to the cost associated with providing the reaction load required to load the pile. If the pile doesn't reach the ultimate failure before the final test load, the ultimate carrying capacity of the pile cannot be obtained directly from static load testing. Therefore, it is not possible to obtain the Factor of Safety (FoS) of the pile against the shear failure of the soil surrounding the pile.

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