In this paper, first and second order sliding mode controllers are designed for a single link robotic arm actuated by two Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAMs). A new mathematical model for the arm has been developed based on the model of large scale pneumatic muscle actuator model. Uncertainty in parameters has been presented and tested for the two controllers. The simulation results of the second-order sliding mode controller proves to have a low tracking error and chattering effect as compared to the first order one. The verification has been done by using MATLAB and Simulink software.

Position control of servo motor systems is a challenging task because of inevitable factors such as uncertainties, nonlinearities, parametric variations, and external perturbations. In this article, to alleviate the above issues, a practical adaptive fast terminal sliding mode control (PAFTSMC) is proposed for better tracking performance of the servo motor system by using a state observer and bidirectional adaptive law. First, a smooth-tangent-hyperbolic-function-based practical fast terminal sliding mode control (PFTSM) surface is designed to ensure not only fast finite time tracking error convergence but also chattering reduction. Second, the PAFTSMC is proposed for the servo motor, in which a two-way adaptive law is designed to further s

The aims of this study are to measure the defect rate and analyze the problems of production of ready concrete mixture plant by using Six Sigma methodology which is a business strategy for operations improvement depending basically on the application of its sub-methodology DMAIC improvement cycle and the basic statistical tools where the process sigma level of concrete production in the case study was 2.41 σ.

Simple and sensitive batch and Flow-injection spectrophotometric methods for the determination of Procaine HCl in pure form and in injections were proposed. These methods were based on a diazotization reaction of procaine HCl with sodium nitrite and hydrochloric acid to form diazonium salt, which is coupled with chromatropic acid in alkaline medium to form an intense pink water-soluble dye that is stable and has a maximum absorption at 508 nm. A graphs of absorbance versus concentration show that Beer’s law is obeyed over the concentration range of 1-40 and 5-400 µg.ml-1 of Procaine HCl, with detection limits of 0.874 and 3.75 µg.ml-1 of Procaine HCl for batch and FIA methods respectively. The FIA average sample throughput was 70 h-1. A

The avoidance strategy of prey to predation and the predation strategy for predators are important topics in evolutionary biology. Both prey and predators adjust their behaviors in order to obtain the maximal benefits and to raise their biomass for each. Therefore, this paper is aimed at studying the impact of prey’s fear and group defense against predation on the dynamics of the food-web model. Consequently, in this paper, a mathematical model that describes a tritrophic Leslie-Gower food-web system is formulated. Sokol-Howell type of function response is adapted to describe the predation process due to the prey’s group defensive capability. The effects of fear due to the predation process are considered in the first two levels