Simultaneous measurements with the Two-Color emission and Laser-Induced-Incandescence techniques on a diffusion laminar LPG bunsen flame were performed. The acquired images were filtered, perspective corrected and processed via an on purpose made procedure in order to reduce the measuring error. For quantitative measurements of the soot volume fraction and temperature a tungsten lamp calibration method of LII and TC techniques was used. To correct the self-absorption and the laser attenuation through the flame, a correction method was developed by means of the laser extinction technique. Flame temperature distribution measured with the two-color method was validated with the corrected temperature measured with a fast thermocouple along the flame axis. Soot volume fraction were calculated with the two-color emission and LII and a good agreement was found. For quantitative measurements the influence of self-absorption and laser attenuation were found to be not negligible and an error of 12% was found as sum of the self-absorption and laser attenuation along the optical path.

Two dimensions primary soot diameter calculation in a laminar diffusion LPG flame by means of Laser Induced Incandescence (LII) is presented in present paper. LII is a high sensitive technique in which a high energy Nd-YAG laser sheet heats soot particles to a temperature of about 4000 K but without exceeding the sublimation temperature. Radiation from exited soot particles is acquired by means of an intensified CCD camera (low gate opening time of 10ns) synchronized with the laser pulse. By delaying the acquisition time with respect to laser pulse, LII signal decay as function of time has been reconstructed. Performing acquisition at two different wavelengths by means of two interferometric filters (Two color LII) a soot temperature behaviour (related to particles primary diameter) has been calculated. Using a self calibration method for optics and laser fluence and selfabsorption corrections for LII signal, bi dimensional quantitative measurements can be achieved for soot dimensions and distribution. Thanks to a center- of-mass alignment of flame within corrected images at different time steps, it is possible to achieve the soot decay curve for each pixel of images, thus obtaining two dimensional soot primary particles visualization.

The main purpose of this work is to present a new method to control the quantity of water used in irrigation. The challenge today is to create an automated irrigation system which in the same time can reduce the water’s waste and is cost effective. Different parameters are important to measure in order to calculate the efficient quantity of water needed by plant. In this work, the proposed solution is the use of less power consumption and cheaper devices but still efficient enough for the system. The system is composed of three nodes to be used together; each node is composed from the TelosB mote and adequate sensors. The soil node will be used to detect the level of moisture and temperature in soil, the weather node to prevent the climatic changes and the last one is connected to an actuator so you can control the opening of the irrigation valve if necessary.

Coastal erosion is a serious problem affecting a growing number of sites worldwide. Frequently, the erosion is caused by long-shore drift currents induced by sea waves in the surf zone. Many formulas have been proposed by researchers in order to estimate the mean rate of sediments moved annually alongshore by waves. In the present paper, the authors describe a revised model for predicting the long-shore drift current. The model is based on directional wave analysis by means of measurements of the instantaneous sea surface elevation operated simultaneously by three altimeters closed each othe in a non-colinear configuration. Such information is used to characterize the waves forming a sea state. Time series measurements of water surface elevation are analysed. So directional wave spectrum is computed in order to predict the mean angle of advance of waves. The model has been improved and optimized by considering the effect of measurement uncertainty in the wave direction estimation. As a consequence, the wave propagation direction is accurately evaluated so to produce a reliable prediction of the long-shore current.

Recently, an innovative system based on time domain reflectometry (TDR) for the individuation of leaks in underground pipes has been proposed and validated. Starting from the results obtained so far, the present works aims at further investigating the practical applicability of the aforementioned system. In particular, the goal of this work is to assess the system in the detection of two close leaks (i.e. leakages that may occur on the same length of pipe). To this purpose, an experimental setup was arranged: two “leakage conditions” were imposed, and the position of the leaks were considered as unknown and calculated through the dedicated developed algorithm. Results show that, differently from traditional leak detection methods (in which the presence of a leak may “mask” the presence of other leaks), the TDR-based system successfully individuates and correctly localizes the presence of two leaks.