Electrical and Computer Engineering Commons^™

Nyiso – Selected Topics, Dejan Sobajic

Modeling, Simulation, And Optimization for the 21st Century Electric Power Grid

No abstract provided.

Characterization And Testing Of A 5.8 Kv Sic Pin Diode For Electric Space Propulsion Applications, Alexandra Toftul

Electrical Engineering Theses and Dissertations

Inductive Pulsed Plasma Thrusters (IPPTs) are a type of in-space propulsion that has multiple advantages over conventional chemical propulsion for long-duration, deep space missions. Existing IPPT prototypes utilize spark gap switches, however these are subject to corrosion problems that make them unreliable for long-term use. Recent advances in solid state switching technology have opened up a variety of switching options that could provide greater reliability, controllability, and increased energy efficiency. Taking advantage of this, a novel thruster drive circuit topology containing a high-power silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) and series fast recovery diode (FRD) is proposed that is expected to increase ...

A Cfd Assisted Control System Design For Supercritical Water Cooled Reactor, Rohit V. Maitri

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this study, the methodology to construct a control system based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations is developed for supercritical water cooled reactor (SCWR). The CFD model using Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) and k-w SST model is validated with the experimental cases of steady state and vertically up flowing supercritical water in circular tubes for normal heat transfer and deteriorated heat transfer (DHT) cases. This model is extended to simulate the transient thermal-hydraulic behaviour of supercritical fluid flow and heat transfer, and the results are also compared with the 1-D numerical model, THRUST. The DHT phenomenon is investigated using ...

Preliminary Test Of A Real-Time, Interactive Silent Speech Interface Based On Electromagnetic Articulograph, Jun Wang, Ashok Samal, Jordan R. Green

CSE Conference and Workshop Papers

A silent speech interface (SSI) maps articulatory movement data to speech output. Although still in experimental stages, silent speech interfaces hold significant potential for facilitating oral communication in persons after laryngectomy or with other severe voice impairments. Despite the recent efforts on silent speech recognition algorithm development using offline data analysis, online test of SSIs have rarely been conducted. In this paper, we present a preliminary, online test of a real-time, interactive SSI based on electromagnetic motion tracking. The SSI played back synthesized speech sounds in response to the user’s tongue and lip movements. Three English talkers participated in ...

Calculated Vs. Experimental Values For Volume And Surface Resistivity In Various Polymer Compounds, Megan Webster

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee

Versatile due to their resistance to high stress environments including but not limited to extreme temperature, pressure, and stress, polymers additionally have many uses in electrical applications wherein antistatic or conductive properties are preferential, i.e. conductive seals, oil pipeline spheres, and gaskets, to name a few. Being a complex material, many factors may affect the electrical resistivity of a given polymer compound including type and amount of carbon black, type of rubber, cure time and temperature, and dispersion, amongst other factors. External conditions such as relative humidity and temperature also play key roles. This paper will analyze five different ...

Simulation Of A Smart Home Energy Management System With Dynamic Price Response, Jason Y. Chan, Qinran Hu

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee

With the continuing development of the smart grid combined with the fluctuating nature of the electricity market, the development of demand-side management with controllable loads have been greatly driven. With the amount of household loads in the residential sector, managing their energy usage has received lots of interest. This paper presents a simulation of a previously proposed hardware design of a smart home energy management system (SHEMS), focusing on the data collection and processing functions of the proposed design while implementing them onto standard household loads like an electric water heater and an electric vehicle charging station. It was found ...

Process Control & Automation Of A Batch Reactor, James Kelly

Dissertations

The development of a split range PID controller with SCADA screens to facilitate manual and automatic control of a pilot plant scale batch reactor is presented in this thesis. Since the characteristics of the system were unknown a step response was obtained from the system and from the experimental results a model of the system was developed and analysed. The PID controller for the system was implemented via an Allen Bradley MicroLogix 1100 Programmable Logic Controller with the human interface for the controller being a SCADA system that was developed using the software package LabVIEW a visual programming language. From ...

Achieving 1 Gbps Over Step-Index Plastic Optical Fiber By Controlling The Effective Numerical Aperture, Naji Albakay

Dissertations & Student Research in Computer Electronics & Engineering

In this work, we develop a relatively simple and reliable technique to mitigate the effect of modal dispersion of standard, 1 mm step-index plastic optical fiber (SI-POF). We focus on decreasing the modal dispersion by reducing the effective numerical aperture (NA) of the fiber link. The technique involves a spatial mode filter that is constructed by using a commercially available polycarbonate capillary tube having a refractive index of 1.59, with inner and outer diameters of 1 mm and 2 mm, respectively. The capillary tube holds two pieces of 1 mm SI-POF, one comes from the transmitter and the other ...

Protecting Personal Private Information In Collaborative Environments, David S. Allison

University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The ability to collaborate has always been vitally important to businesses and enterprises. With the availability of current networking and computing power, the creation of Collaborative Working Environments (CWEs) has allowed for this process to occur anytime over any geographical distance. Sharing information between individuals through collaborative environments creates new challenges in privacy protection for organizations and the members of organizations. This thesis confronts the problems when attempting to protect the personal private information of collaborating individuals.

In this thesis, a privacy-by-policy approach is taken to addressing the issue of protecting private information within collaborative environments. A privacy-by-policy approach to ...

The Application Of Boundary Layer Climatology And Urban Wind Power Potential In Smarter Electricity Networks, Keith Sunderland, Gerald Mills

Other resources

Smart electricity networks that address energy demand, efficiency and sustainability concerns are predicated on the ability to capture renewable energy in a controllable manner. Such networks will have a particular role in cities, where increasing demand is inevitable but this requires that primary (renewable) energy resources, including that of wind, is better understood. In this paper, the role of wind energy systems, as integral components of a smarter urban electricity network, is considered using a model of the urban wind resourcein Dublin, Ireland that is based on boundary layer theory and meteorological observations. This model is used in conjunction with ...

Fault Locating In Large Distribution Systems By Empirical Mode Decomposition And Core Vector Regression, Benyamin Khorramdel Mr., Hesamoddin Marzooghi Mr., Haidar Samet Dr., Meisam Pourahmadi-Nakhli Mr., Mahdi Raoofat Dr.

Hesamoddin Marzooghi

This paper proposes an intelligent fault locating method using a new signal analysis technique called Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) and Core Vector Regression (CVR) for large distribution systems. The conventional fault locators are based on the measurement of post-fault line impedance suffering from the factors such as path fault impedance, system configuration and line loading, so that they have low accuracy. On the other hand, because of the vast range of resistances, the negative impact of damping factors affects the performance of travelling wave-based fault locators in large distribution systems. To overcome these problems, this paper uses a minimum measuring ...

High-Speed Mobile Networks For Modern Farming And Agricultural Systems, Santos Najar

Master's Theses and Project Reports

ABSTRACT

High-Speed Mobile Networks for Modern Farming and Agricultural Systems

J.Santos Najar-Ramirez

High-speed mobile networks are necessary for agriculture to inventory individual plant health, maximize yield and minimize the resources applied. More specifically, real-time information on individual plant status is critical to decisions regarding the management of resources reserved and expended. This necessity can be met by the availability of environmental sensors (such as humidity, temperature, and pH) whose data is kept on storage servers connected to static and mobile local area networks. These static and mobile local area networks are connected to cellular, core and satellite networks. For ...

Phase Control And Fast Start-Up Of A Magnetron Using Modulation Of An Addressable Faceted Cathode, J. Browning, S. Fernandez-Gutierrez, M. C. Lin, D. N. Smithe, J. Watrous

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The use of an addressable, faceted cathode has been proposed as a method of modulating current injection in a magnetron to improve performance and control phase. To implement the controllable electron emission, five-sided and ten-sided faceted planar cathodes employing gated field emitters are considered as these emitters could be fabricated on flat substrates. For demonstration, the conformal finite-difference time-domain particle-in-cell simulation, as implemented in VORPAL, has been used to model a ten-cavity, rising sun magnetron using the modulated current sources and benchmarked against a typical continuous current source. For the modulated, ten-sided faceted cathode case, the electrons are injected from ...

Dual High-Voltage Power Supply For Use On Board A Cubesat, Nicholas Weiser

Master's Theses and Project Reports

Since their conception in 1999, CubeSats have come and gone a long way. The first few that went into space were more of a “proof of concept,” and were more focused on sending simple data and photographs back to Earth. Since then, vast improvements have been made by over 40 universities and private firms, and now CubeSats are beginning to look towards interplanetary travel. These small satellites could provide a cost effective means of exploring the galaxy, using off the shelf components and piggy-backing on other launch vehicles with more expensive payloads. However, CubeSats are traditionally launched into Low Earth ...

Improvements To A Bi-Directional Flyback Dc-Dc Converter For Battery System Of The Dc House Project, Michael Wu

Master's Theses and Project Reports

The DC House project relies primarily on renewable energy sources to provide DC power to the various loads of the house. However, not all renewable sources are capable of providing power at all times of the day. A back-up energy source in the form of a battery storage system must be available to meet the electrical needs of the house. A bi-directional flyback power converter was initially designed to allow a battery to charge from as well as discharge to the 48V bus line of the DC House. The design provided a 35W prototype to demonstrate the converter’s feasibility ...

Atrengine: An Orientation-Based Algorithm For Automatic Target Recognition, Justin Ting-Jeuan Kuo

Master's Theses and Project Reports

Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) is a subject involving the use of sensor data to develop an algorithm for identifying targets of significance. It is of particular interest in military applications such as unmanned aerial vehicles and missile tracking systems. This thesis develops an orientation-based classification approach from previous ATR algorithms for 2-D Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. Prior work in ATR includes Chessa Guilas’ Hausdorff Probabilistic Feature Analysis Approach in 2005 and Daniel Cary’s Optimal Rectangular Fit in 2007.

A system incorporating multiple modules performing different tasks is developed to streamline the data processing of previous algorithms. Using images ...

A Comparison Of Image Processing Techniques For Bird Detection, Elsa Reyes

Master's Theses and Project Reports

Orchard fruits and vegetable crops are vulnerable to wild birds and animals. These wild birds and animals can cause critical damage to the produce. Traditional methods of scaring away birds such as scarecrows are not long-term solutions but short-term solutions. This is a huge problem especially near areas like San Luis Obispo where there are vineyards. Bird damage can be as high as 50% for grapes being grown in vineyards. The total estimated revenue lost annually in the 10 counties in California due to bird and rodent damage to 22 selected crops ranged from $168 million to $504 million (in ...

Virtual Reality Engine Development, Varun Varahamurthy

Master's Theses and Project Reports

With the advent of modern graphics and computing hardware and cheaper sensor and display technologies, virtual reality is becoming increasingly popular in the fields of gaming, therapy, training and visualization. Earlier attempts at popularizing VR technology were plagued by issues of cost, portability and marketability to the general public. Modern screen technologies make it possible to produce cheap, light head-mounted displays (HMDs) like the Oculus Rift, and modern GPUs make it possible to create and deliver a seamless real-time 3D experience to the user. 3D sensing has found an application in virtual and augmented reality as well, allowing for a ...

Automated Foosball Table, Jim R. Stefani, Alex J. Herpy, Brett Gordon Jaeger, Kevin S. Haydon, Derek Alan Hamel

Mechanical Engineering

This project is the second iteration of an automated foosball table for Yaskawa America as a trade show display. The table is meant to provide an interactive experience which highlights the speed and precision of the Yaskawa hardware. The first iteration of the project was mainly focused on creating the physical hardware for the system and to begin the basic programming for the system. This phase of the project was focused on finalizing the physical hardware of the system, implementing the vision system and to continue the basic programing of the system AI. A third team will be assigned to ...

Mobile Solar Pv Trainer, Matthew Myers, Matthew Clause, Lawrence Smith

Mechanical Engineering

The aim of the Mobile Solar PV Trainer Project was to design, construct and test a versatile and robust laboratory training rig for the Cal Poly Electrical Engineering department. This project was inspired by the desire of one or more California Polytechnic State University electrical engineering professors to add laboratory components to two established upper division electrical engineering courses in photovoltaic panels and solar power. This report contains a detailed description of the trainer’s desired specifications, our ideation process, a thorough description of the selected trainer design including part drawings, assembly documentation and a bill of materials as well ...