In this paper, a system for measuring the zone temperature profile of a horizontal tube furnace is proposed. This system consists of an ultrasonic transducer, quartz tube, resistive horizontal tube furnace, Arduino micro-controller and relevance vector machine (RVM) based regression model. The ultrasonic transducer is placed in such a way that the acoustic wave is transmitted and then reflected back from the resistive horizontal tube furnace. The variations in the temperature values inside the tube furnace may affect the receiving voltage of the ultrasonic transducer. The RVM model is employed to predict the temperature using the inputs as the ultrasonic transducer voltage and the distance of the propagating path of the ultrasonic wave. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system is effective to measure the temperature inside a horizontal furnace and it shows a correlation coefficient value of 0.9695 with the K-type thermocouple readings. Such a system can be employed in an industrial furnace to measure the temperature with a higher accuracy.

Review of the cutting edge technologies for weed control in field crops

Numerous imaging applications and analyses demand human perception, and color space transformation of device-dependent tri-band color interpretation (RGB) to device-independent CIE color space standards needs human intervention. The imaging acquisition environment, theoretical conversion errors, viewing geometry, well-defined illumination uniformity, and calibration protocols limit their precision and applicability. It is unfortunate that in most image processing applications, the spectral data are either unavailable or immeasurable. This study is based on developing a novel integrating sphere imaging system and experimentation with textiles’ controlled variation of texture and color. It proposes a simple calibration technique and describes how unique digital color signatures can be derived from calibrated RGB derivatives to extract the best features for color and texture. Additionally, an alter-ego of reflectance function, missing in the imaging domain, is suggested that could be helpful for visualization, identification, and application for qualitative and quantitative color-texture analysis. Our further investigation revealed promising colorimetric results while validating color characterization and different color combinations over three textures.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the growth and characterization of the two different compound semiconductors, namely, n-zinc oxide (ZnO) and p-gallium antimonide (GaSb). In this paper, fabrication and characterization of n-ZnO/p-GaSb heterojunction diode is analyzed. Design/methodology/approach: Thermo vertical direction solidification (TVDS) method was used to synthesize undoped GaSb ingot from high purity Ga (5N) and Sb (4N) host materials. Thermal evaporation technique is used to prepare a film of GaSb on glass substrate from the pre-synthesized bulk material by TVDS method. Undoped ZnO film was grown on GaSb film by sol–gel method by using chemical wet and dry (CWD) technique to fabricate n-ZnO/p-GaSb heterojunction diode. Findings: The formation of crystalline structure and surface morphological analysis of both the GaSb bulk and film have been carried out by x-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and scanning electron microscopy analysis. From the XRD studies, the structural characterization and phase identification of ZnO/GaSb interface. The current–voltage characteristic of the n-ZnO/p-GaSb heterostructure is found to be rectifying in nature. Originality/value: GaSb film growth on any substrate by thermal evaporation method taking a small piece of the sample from the pre-synthesized GaSb bulk ingot has not been reported yet. Semiconductor device with heterojunction diode by using two different semiconductors such as ZnO/GaSb was used by this group for the first time.