Engineering Commons^™

Digital Energy Networks: A Post Occupancy Evaluation And Appraisal Of An Intelligent Low Energy Lighting System, Anthony Colohan, Joseph Teehan, Keith Sunderland, Martin Barrett, James Preston

Conference Papers

The reduction in the electrical power requirements of LED lighting and the coinciding advancements in digital technology have now enabled luminaires to be powered and controlled exclusively over safety extra low voltage (SELV) wiring systems. The implementation of LED luminaires powered via a centralised 48 Volt DC low-latency communication network, with the capability to gather real-time data, has provided the potential to yield considerable electrical energy savings within a building. This paper will present an appraisal of this technology and will examine the technologies potential to make electrical energy savings, improve the quality of lighting and achieve cost savings on …

Cultural Change Through Bim: Driving Lean Transformation In Education, Avril Behan, Malachy Mathews, Kevin Furlong, Ciara Ahern, Una Beagon, Peter Brennan, Colin Conway, Lee Corcoran, Pierce Fahy, Alan Hore, Barry Mcauley, Trevor Woods

Conference papers

This paper presents a case study of how the adoption of BIM-based practices in the AECO industry is being reflected by cultural change in higher education in Ireland. The silo-mentality that has dominated the AECO sector for more than a century has, despite numerous reorganisations, been replicated in the structures of educational institutions, including in Dublin Institute of Technology since the inception of its founding colleges in the late 1800s. Most AECO programmes must include content that is external to the programme’s specific discipline. Through the School structures of the Institute, delivery of such content is known as "service teaching" …

Accelerated Aging Test On Multiple Xlpe Mv Cables Simultaneously To Induce Water Trees, Shane Conlan, Jane Courtney, Tom Looby

Conference papers

The objective of this paper is to develop an accelerated ageing test to induce water tree growth which is capable of testing up to ten 10 kV cable samples simultaneously. An existing accelerated ageing method was used as a basis for this project. This method uses a high frequency power supply (3 kHz) to achieve a test duration of 14 days. Modifications were made to this method to allow for multiple samples to be tested simultaneously. A specially designed variable inductor was utilised in a parallel RLC resonance circuit. This resonance circuit limits the current draw from a high frequency …

Wind Energy And Ireland: Could Forecasting Errors Lead To A Flawed Market?, Michael Mcdonald, Thomas Woolmington, Keith Sunderland

Conference papers

This paper explores wind energy forecasting consistency by considering the error benchmarks associated with the generation output of a small wind farm in comparison to the national forecasting as provided by Eirgrid, the Irish TSO. This percentage error analysis will contrast the predicted (Eirgrid) capacity and actual wind energy output observations (Wind farm) and postulations that consider alternative prediction metrics are discussed. The findings suggest that in monthly like for like comparisons over a twelve month period, total MWh percentage errors of -0.36% and 5.7% are observed respectively for the actual generation and the forecasted …

Perceived Adequacy Of Illumination, Spatial Brightness, Horizontal Illuminance And Mean Room Surface Exitance In A Small Office, James Duff, Kevin Kelly, Christopher Cuttle

Articles

This paper presents a pilot study that investigated the suitability of mean room surface exitance as a predictor of spatial brightness and perceived adequacy of illumination, and then compared these results with how horizontal illuminance predicted both items under the same conditions. The experiment included 26 participants. A small office was used for the study. It exposed participants to three levels of mean room surface exitance, each delivered with three different light distributions and across three different surface reflectances, resulting in a total of 27 light scenes. A clear relationship existed between mean room surface exitance and both perceived adequacy …

Design Method For Wideband Circularly Polarized Slot Antennas, Adam Narbudowicz, Matthias John, Vit Sipal, Xiulong Bao, Max Ammann

Articles

A compact ultrawideband (UWB) circularly polarized (CP) slot antenna is proposed with a methodology for automated reoptimization for packaging with proprietary devices. The slot structure employs a dual-feed with an integrated compact UWB phase shifter. The design process involves an advanced optimization algorithm and demonstrates the use of spline curves for generation of CP signals. These allow easy optimization, while preserving phase coherency across a wideband. The prototyped antennahas a CP bandwidth of 54% (from 3.2 to 6.1 GHz).

On The Calculation And Measurement Of Mean Room Surface Exitance, James Duff, G. Antonutto, S. Torres

Articles

Cuttle has proposed mean room surface exitance as a metric for use within interior lighting design. Two reported barriers to its use are: a lack of available software to calculate the metric and the tedious and cumbersome nature of recording its values in the field using current equipment and methodologies. This paper presents a method for facilitating the calculation of mean room surface exitance using readily available freeware, namely Radiance, and also presents a methodology that utilises high dynamic range imaging as a pragmatic alternative for field measurement.

Circularly Polarized Solar Antenna For Airborne Communication Nodes, Oisin O’Conchubhair, Adam Narbudowicz, Patrick Mcevoy, Max Ammann

Articles

A circularly polarized solar cell antenna consisting of four sequentially rotated printed inverted-F antennas is proposed. Four multicrystalline silicon solar cells act as the ground plane and the antenna is suitable for low power airborne communication nodes and wireless sensor networks. The antenna design was developed to allow 100% insolation of the cells when directly facing a light source. The low-profile antenna minimises shadowing of the solar cell for oblique angle insolation.

Secondary Re-Use Of Batteries From Electric Vehicles For Building Integrated Photo-Voltaic (Bipv) Applications, Fintan Mcloughlin, Michael Conlon

Reports

PV Crops is evaluating the use of battery technologies such as Vanadium Redox within Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) applications. However, their inclusion into BIPV systems will inevitably raise the overall costs of such systems. As a result, PV Crops is looking at other measures in parallel to help lower the costs associated with such systems. One particular area of interest is the potential secondary re-use of battery technology from Electric Vehicle (EV) market as a way of mitigating high costs of such systems as well as a means of encouraging battery recycling.

The global installed capacity for Photovoltaic’s (PV) connected …

Integration Of Antenna Array With Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cell, Oisin O'Conchubhair, Patrick Mcevoy, Max Ammann

Articles

The integration of a low-profile antenna array with a multicrystalline silicon solar cell capable of powering a low-power wireless sensor at 2.45 GHz is reported. Lattice bus bars on the cell are exploited to minimize antenna shadows from low-profile antennas and transmission lines for a higher output power. The dual inverted-F array improves gain, and beam switching enables the array to sweep a wider coverage angle with larger beamwidths compared to other solar integrated antennas.

Spatial Brightness, Horizontal Illuminance And Mean Room Surface Exitance In A Lighting Booth, James Duff, Kevin Kelly, C. Cuttle

Articles

This paper presents a pilot study that has investigated the suitability of mean room surface exitance as a predictor of spatial brightness and compared these results with how horizontal illuminance predicts spatial brightness under the same conditions. The experiment took a group of 26 participants and, using a scaled booth, exposed each participant to three levels of mean room surface exitance, each delivered with three different light distributions and three different surface reflectances, resulting in a total of 27 light scenes. Results demonstrated that, under the range of conditions to which participants were exposed, a systematic relationship existed between mean …

Optical Fiber Sensors For Smart Composite Materials And Structures, Manjusha Ramakrishnan, Yuliya Semenova, Gerald Farrell, Ginu Rajan

Books/Book chapters

Composite material structures are widely used in the aerospace, marine, aviation, transport, sport/leisure and civil engineering industries. Such composite material structures are frequently subjected to external perturbations and varying environmental conditions, which may cause the structures to suffer from fatique damage and/or failure, and thus require real-time structural health monitoring (SHM). Of necessity, the diagnosis process and condition monitoring of composite structures are usually carried out during their working life. The goal of such diagnosis is to detect, identify, locate, and assess the defects that my affect the safety or performance of a structure.

Lighting Design In Europe: Aligning The Demands For Lower Energy Usage With Better Quality., Kevin Kelly, James Duff

Articles

Lighting design is one of the fastest changing areas in building engineering. It has evolved significantly in recent years due to changing technology and demands for improved quality, better control, reduced energy and sustainability. This paper is an overview of what is happening in Europe and elsewhere and examines the literature to find that latest recommendations in the Code for Lighting issued by the SLL (Society of Light and Lighting) in the UK change previous demands for equal illuminance across a working plane to more specific and demanding criteria. There are recommendations for qualitative metrics and better distribution of light …

Enhanced Quality Of Experience Based On Enriched Network Centric And Access Control Mechanisms, Andreas Roos

Doctoral

In the digital world service provisioning in user satisfying quality has become the goal of any content or network provider. Besides having satisfied and therefore, loyal users, the creation of sustainable revenue streams is the most important issue for network operators [1], [2], [3]. The motivation of this work is to enhance the quality of experience of users when they connect to the Internet, request application services as well as to maintain full service when these users are on the move in WLAN based access networks. In this context, the aspect of additional revenue creation for network operators is considered …