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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Finite Element Analysis Simulations Of Micro And Nano-Electromechanical Sensors For Design Optimization, Nicholas Frank Deroller Dec 2014

Finite Element Analysis Simulations Of Micro And Nano-Electromechanical Sensors For Design Optimization, Nicholas Frank Deroller

Theses and Dissertations

Micro and Nano-electromechanical sensors (MEMS and NEMS) provide a means of actively sensing minute changes in the surrounding environment. Small changes in temperature, momentum, and strain may be sensed in passive modes while greater sensing possibilities exist in active modes. Theoretical femto-gram resolution mass detection and heated element sensing methods may be used while volatile organic compound (VOC) sensing may be achieved when combined with a functionalization layer or device heating. These devices offer a great reduction in cost and offer increased mobility by allowing a "lab-on-chip" solution for the prospective user while also greatly reducing the amount of energy …


Development And Integration Of Mems Based Inductive Sensors, Luyang Zhang Sep 2014

Development And Integration Of Mems Based Inductive Sensors, Luyang Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Inductive sensors are one of the most widely used sensors especially in automotive. However, with the current PCB manufacture process, the large size of the sensor limits its usage in different applications. In this thesis, a novel method of fabricating bi-layer copper micro inductive sensor is demonstrated to solve the size issue. The two coil layers were built by UV LIGA process respectively, and a polyimide insulation film sandwiched in between. At the beginning, seeding layer was deposited on the substrate as electrode, and then the copper coil layer was created through electroplating in the patterned micromold. The coil was …


Optimal Sizing And Power Management Strategies Of Islanded Microgrids For Remote Electrification Systems, Faruk A. Bhuiyan Sep 2014

Optimal Sizing And Power Management Strategies Of Islanded Microgrids For Remote Electrification Systems, Faruk A. Bhuiyan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Over the past few years, electrification of remote communities with an efficient utilization of on-site energy resources has entered a new phase of evolution. However, the planning tools and studies for the remote microgrids are considered inadequate. Moreover, the existing techniques have not taken into account the impact of reactive power on component sizes. Thus, this thesis concentrates on optimal sizing design of an islanded microgrid (IMG), which is composed of renewable energy resources (RERs), battery energy storage system (BESS), and diesel generation system (DGS), for the purpose of electrifying off-grid communities. Owing to the utilization of both BESS and …


Optimization Of Electrical Discharge Machining Parameters For Niti Shape Memory Alloy By Using The Taguchi Method, Saeed Daneshmand, Ehsan Farahmand Kahrizi, Ali Akbar Lotfineyestanak, Vahid Monfared Aug 2014

Optimization Of Electrical Discharge Machining Parameters For Niti Shape Memory Alloy By Using The Taguchi Method, Saeed Daneshmand, Ehsan Farahmand Kahrizi, Ali Akbar Lotfineyestanak, Vahid Monfared

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

Electrical discharge machining (EDM) is among the most essential nontraditional machining processes. Material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness are the two main parameters applied in this method. A desired surface roughness can be achieved at the maximal MRR by selecting the optimal input parameters. Because of the mechanical properties and hardness of shape-memory nickel titanium (NiTi) alloy, material can be removed using an EDM method. NiTi alloy is widely used in marine science and aerospace industries. Surface roughness is a critical parameter affecting the machining of this alloy. This study examined the effect the input parameters (pulse current, gap …


Make Or Buy Analysis Model Based On Tolerance Design To Minimize Manufacturing Cost And Quality Loss, Cucuk Nur Rosyidi, Reza Rizkichani Akbar, Wakhid Ahmad Jauhari Aug 2014

Make Or Buy Analysis Model Based On Tolerance Design To Minimize Manufacturing Cost And Quality Loss, Cucuk Nur Rosyidi, Reza Rizkichani Akbar, Wakhid Ahmad Jauhari

Makara Journal of Technology

In a manufacturing company, manufacturing costs, or component prices, and tolerance will affect the price and the quality of a product. Companies must produce high-quality products with low manufacturing costs in order to keep their products competitive in the market; however, it is difficult to produce a high-quality product with a low manufacturing cost. Companies have difficulties in determining the components to be produced using their own manufacturing facilities (make) or outsourced to their suppliers (buy). Hence, a make or buy analysis is needed to minimize the manufacturing costs and quality loss and to determine the optimum alternative regarding make …


Coupled Electromagnetic And Thermal Analysis And Design Optimization Of Synchronous Electric Machines, Yi Wang Aug 2014

Coupled Electromagnetic And Thermal Analysis And Design Optimization Of Synchronous Electric Machines, Yi Wang

Theses and Dissertations

A new technique for coupling the electromagnetic, thermal, and air-flow analysis is proposed for electronically controlled synchronous machines. A computationally efficient finite element analysis (CE-FEA) technique is employed for the electromagnetic field analysis. An equivalent circuit network is used for thermal and air-flow analysis. An iterative algorithm, which exploits the fact that the type of machines studied have very low rotor losses and also a relatively reduced dependency of core losses with temperature and load, has been developed. The overall computational time is significantly reduced in comparison with the conventional coupling method, such that the new technique is highly suitable …


Design And Development Of Magneto-Rheological Actuators With Application In Mobile Robotics, Wenjun Li May 2014

Design And Development Of Magneto-Rheological Actuators With Application In Mobile Robotics, Wenjun Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years, Magneto-Rheological (MR) fluids devices are widely studied and used for various purposes. Among these MR fluids devices, the MR actuator has attracted increasing attention for last two decades. An MR actuator is usually made of an active component (motor) and MR clutches. Compared with the regular actuators, the MR actuator features compliance due to the existence of MR fluids, which is commonly consider as benefits at the aspect of safety. On the other hand, the MR actuator has advantages on controllable bandwidth, torque-mass and torque-inertia ratios compared with the other compliant actuators.

In this study, a new …


Generation Scheduling For Power Systems With Demand Response And A High Penetration Of Wind Energy, Guodong Liu May 2014

Generation Scheduling For Power Systems With Demand Response And A High Penetration Of Wind Energy, Guodong Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

With renewable energy sources and demand response programs expanding in many power systems, traditional unit commitment and economic dispatch approaches are inadequate. The power system is changing to one where there is control with uncertainty for both generation and load. Alternative power system scheduling methods capable of aggregating the uncertainty of wind power and demand response, while maintaining reliable and economic performance are investigated in this work. The research addresses four aspects of these changes.

First, a probabilistic method is proposed to maintain uniform system reliability level in the hour-ahead economic dispatch by quantifying different levels of required spinning reserve. …


Resource Allocation For Wireless Relay Networks, Hanan Hassan Al-Tous May 2014

Resource Allocation For Wireless Relay Networks, Hanan Hassan Al-Tous

Dissertations

In this thesis, we propose several resource allocation strategies for relay networks in the context of joint power and bandwidth allocation and relay selection, and joint power allocation and subchannel assignment for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. Sharing the two best ordered relays with equal power between the two users over Rayleigh flat fading channels is proposed to establish full diversity order for both users. Closed form expressions for the outage probability, and bit error probability (BEP) performance measures for both amplify and forward (AF) and decode and forward (DF) cooperative communication …


Design And Implementation Of Position-Encoded Microfluidic Microsphere-Trap Arrays, Xiaoxiao Xu Apr 2014

Design And Implementation Of Position-Encoded Microfluidic Microsphere-Trap Arrays, Xiaoxiao Xu

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Microarray devices are useful for detecting and analyzing biological targets, such as DNAs, mRNAs, proteins, etc. Applications of microarrays range from fundamental research to clinical diagnostics and drug discovery. In this dissertation, we consider a microsphere array device with predetermined positions of the microspheres. The microspheres are conjugate on their surfaces with molecular probes to capture the targets, and the targets are identified by the microspheres' positions. We implement the microsphere arrays by employing microfluidic technology and a hydrodynamic trapping mechanism. We call our device microfluidic microsphere-trap arrays. To fully realize the potential of the device in biomedical applications, we …


Multidimensional Optimal Droop Control For Wind Resources In Dc Microgrids, Kaitlyn J. Bunker Jan 2014

Multidimensional Optimal Droop Control For Wind Resources In Dc Microgrids, Kaitlyn J. Bunker

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Two important and upcoming technologies, microgrids and electricity generation from wind resources, are increasingly being combined. Various control strategies can be implemented, and droop control provides a simple option without requiring communication between microgrid components. Eliminating the single source of potential failure around the communication system is especially important in remote, islanded microgrids, which are considered in this work. However, traditional droop control does not allow the microgrid to utilize much of the power available from the wind. This dissertation presents a novel droop control strategy, which implements a droop surface in higher dimension than the traditional strategy. The droop …


Oppositional Biogeography-Based Optimization, Mehmet Ergezer Jan 2014

Oppositional Biogeography-Based Optimization, Mehmet Ergezer

ETD Archive

This dissertation outlines a novel variation of biogeography-based optimization (BBO), which is an evolutionary algorithm (EA) developed for global optimization. The new algorithm employs opposition-based learning (OBL) alongside BBO migration to create oppositional BBO (OB BO). Additionally, a new opposition method named quasi-reflection is introduced. Quasireflection is based on opposite numbers theory and we mathematically prove that it has the highest expected probability of being closer to the problem solution among all OBL methods that we explore. Performance of quasi-opposition is validated by mathematical analysis for a single-dimensional problem and by simulations for higher dimensions. Experiments are performed on benchmark …


A Reduced Probabilistic Neural Network For The Classification Of Large Databases, Abdelhadi Lotfi, Abdelkader Benyettou Jan 2014

A Reduced Probabilistic Neural Network For The Classification Of Large Databases, Abdelhadi Lotfi, Abdelkader Benyettou

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The probabilistic neural network (PNN) is a special type of radial basis neural network used mainly for classification problems. Due to the size of the network after training, this type of network is usually used for problems with a small-sized training dataset. In this paper, a new training algorithm is presented for use with large training databases. Application to the handwritten digit database shows that the reduced PNN performs better than the standard PNN for all of the studied cases with a big gain in size and processing speed. This new type of neural network can be used easily for …


Optimization Of Job Shop Scheduling Problems Using Modified Clonal Selection Algorithm, Yilmaz Atay, Hali̇fe Kodaz Jan 2014

Optimization Of Job Shop Scheduling Problems Using Modified Clonal Selection Algorithm, Yilmaz Atay, Hali̇fe Kodaz

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Artificial immune systems (AISs) are one of the artificial intelligence techniques studied a lot in recent years. AISs are based on the principles and mechanisms of the natural immune system. In this study, the clonal selection algorithm, which is used commonly in AISs, is modified. This algorithm is applied to job shop scheduling problems, which are one of the most difficult optimization problems. For applying application results to the optimum solution, parameter values giving the optimum solution are determined by analyzing the parameters in the algorithm. The obtained results are given in detail in the tables and figures. The best …


A Static Voltage Security Region For Centralized Wind Power Integration-Part Ii: Applications, Tao Ding, Qinglai Guo, Rui Bo, Hongbin Sun, Boming Zhang, Tianen Huang Jan 2014

A Static Voltage Security Region For Centralized Wind Power Integration-Part Ii: Applications, Tao Ding, Qinglai Guo, Rui Bo, Hongbin Sun, Boming Zhang, Tianen Huang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In Part I of this work, a static voltage security region was introduced to guarantee the safety of wind farm reactive power outputs under both base conditions and N-1 contingency. In this paper, a mathematical representation of the approximate N-1 security region has further studied to provide better coordination among wind farms and help prevent cascading tripping following a single wind farm trip. Besides, the influence of active power on the security region is studied. The proposed methods are demonstrated for N-1 contingency cases in a nine-bus system. The simulations verify that the N-1 security region is a small subset …


Quantized Nonnegative Matrix Factorization, Ruairí De Fréin Jan 2014

Quantized Nonnegative Matrix Factorization, Ruairí De Fréin

Conference papers

Even though Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) in its original form performs rank reduction and signal compaction implicitly, it does not explicitly consider storage or transmission constraints. We propose a Frobenius-norm Quantized Nonnegative Matrix Factorization algorithm that is 1) almost as precise as traditional NMF for decomposition ranks of interest (with in 1-4dB), 2) admits to practical encoding techniques by learning a factorization which is simpler than NMF’s (by a factor of 20-70) and 3) exhibits a complexity which is comparable with state-of-the-art NMF methods. These properties are achieved by considering the quantization residual via an outer quantization optimization step, in …


Optimization In Microgrid Design And Energy Management, Tu Anh Nguyen Jan 2014

Optimization In Microgrid Design And Energy Management, Tu Anh Nguyen

Doctoral Dissertations

"The dissertation is composed of three papers, which cover microgrid systems performance characterization, optimal sizing for energy storage system and stochastic optimization of microgrid operation. In the first paper, a complete Photovoltaic-Vanadium Redox Battery (VRB) microgrid is characterized holistically. The analysis is based on a prototype system installation deployed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, USA. In the second paper, the optimal sizing of power and energy ratings for a VRB system in isolated and grid-connected microgrids is proposed. An analytical method is developed to solve the problem based on a per-day cost model in which the operating cost is obtained …