Engineering Commons^™

Simulation-Based Optimisation Model For The Lean Assessment In Sme: A Case Study, Amr Arisha, Amr Mahfouz, John Shea

Conference papers

Due to their space limitation and small production scale, small and medium enterprises (SME) are vulner-able to rapid changes. Lean principles are considered as effective improvement approach to eliminate sys-tem’s waste and inefficiencies. Although much of the academic materials have addressed the lean practic-es into large, global companies, they can still be adjusted to SMEs. Risks are usually associated with lean implementation process due to the drastic required changes in business policies and operations. Simulation can be successfully used to predict the impact of the proposed changes ahead of the implementation which helps to mitigate risks. Integrating simulation with optimization …

Exploring The Barriers To Independent Study And Learning In First Year Undergraduate Engineering Students?, Robert Martin Morris

Conference papers

This mixed method case study was carried out in the Technological University Dublin, Ireland and was conducted with the co-operation of four experienced lecturers of engineering and three groups of first year undergraduate engineering students.

The main aim of the research was to identify factors which represent barriers to the independent study and learning of first year engineering students.

Many first year engineering students do not return to college for the second year of their programmes. Many reasons for this are identified in the research, including the failure of students to pass assessments and exams as a result of the …

Analysis Of Converter Connected Synchronous Wind Turbines To Grid Disturbances., Joseph Kearney, Michael Conlon, Eugene Coyle

Conference papers

This paper investigates the performance of synchronous generators to grid voltage unbalance and grid faults. A Model of a synchronous generator with a full converter is implemented in the SimPowerSystems toolbox in Matlab/Simulink. Methods to modify the converter control schemes to improve the synchronous generator systems response to grid voltage unbalance and grid faults are investigated. Grid faults including grid voltage unbalance, and line-to-ground faults are introduced into the model at specific times to analyse the performance of the wind generation system. Improvements in the performance of the synchronous generator WECS to the grid disturbances are illustrated.

Formative Assessment Practices In Built Environment Higher Education Programmes And The Enhancement Of The Student Learning Experience, Lloyd Scott, Chrisopher Fortune

Conference papers

It is widely accepted across Higher Education (HE) that assessment has a strong link with learning and a key factor in this link is formative assessment. Formative assessment is generally defined as an activity taking place during a programme or unit of learning with the express purpose of improving and enhancing student learning. However, there is still considerable disagreement over the roles of lecturers and students in this process. It is therefore very important to understand how lecturers in built environment (BE) undergraduate education perceive their own roles and the role of their students in using assessment strategy to deliver …

Successful Engineering And Technology Student Mobility: Key Student Perspectives And Quality Determinants Before, During And After Student Exchange Under The Atlantis Programme, Mike Murphy, Donal Mchale, Michael Dyrenfurth

Conference papers

In this paper, we describe the lessons learned, and determinants of quality, from two Atlantis programmes. Additionally our two student authors will share key student perspectives relevant to student mobility: (1) before they visited the partner university, (2) while they were studying at the partner university and (3) after they returned to their home university. Purdue University and the Technological University Dublin, together with the Hochschule Darmstadt and Pennsylvania State University, were successful in securing an Atlantis mobility grant [1] for four years to support student and staff mobility between the United States and Europe. The programme has just completed …

A Review Of Parallel Operation Of Active Power Filters In The Distributed Generation System, Shafiuzzaman Khan Khadem, Malabika Basu, Michael Conlon

Conference papers

In this paper a technical review of parallel operation of Active Power Filter (APF) for harmonic power compensation in distributed generation (DG) network has been presented. Controlling methods and connection topologies with their pros and cons are described. Recent improvements in controlling and future trends for the application of APFs in distributed mode are also identified.

Observations Of The Wind Resource Across The Dublin Urban Area, Keith Sunderland, Michael Conlon, Gerald Mills, Rowan Feely

Conference papers

This paper presents an investigation of wind observations made at three (of a network of ten) stations in Dublin. Two of the stations are located over different parts of the urbanized landscape and one is located at Dublin Airport, which exemplifies a typical meteorological station. The purpose of the analysis is to evaluate the nature of the wind resource in the urban area. The potential output of a range of commercially available micro wind turbines at one of the stations is considered. At this location, an anemometer is mounted in a similar manner to international examples of building mounted domestic …

Rail Freight In The Republic Of Ireland, Juan Carlos Carrasco Gimenez, Edward Sweeney, John Harvey

Conference papers

In a world where freight transport is increasing, efficiency is essential. Transport by rail is characterised by its low fuel consumption per tonne. This mode of transport became extremely important during the last century but unfortunately it has been losing its importance in the logistics sector with the passing of time. However, we are currently witnessing an important transformation in the railway sector throughout Europe. This has been promoted by the European Union, with a significant allocation of resources to this issue. With the objective of increasing the volume of goods transported by rail, European nations are conducting a transformation …

Does A Link Exist Between Examination Performance And Lecture Attendance For First Year Engineering Students ?, Aidan O'Dwyer

Conference papers

The objective of this study is to examine if a link exists between lecture attendance and examination performance of Level 7, Year 1, Electrical Engineering students at Dublin Institute of Technology in the Electrical Systems subject. Lecture attendance was monitored and analysed over four academic years (2007-8, 2008-9, 2009-10 and 2010-11). The average lecture attendance for students in the three academic years from 2007-10 was 55%, increasing noticeably in the 2009-10 academic year. A statistically significant weakly positive correlation between lecture attendance and examination performance was established. Each 10% increase in student attendance at lectures improved both Module 1 examination …

Upmixing From Mono : A Source Separation Approach, Derry Fitzgerald

Conference papers

We present a system for upmixing mono recordings to stereo through the use of sound source separation techniques. The use of sound source separation has the advantage of allowing sources to be placed at distinct points in the stereo field, resulting in more natural sounding upmixes. The system separates an input signal into a number of sources, which can then be imported into a digital audio workstation for upmixing to stereo. Considerations to be taken into account when upmixing are discussed, and a brief overview of the various sound source separation techniques used in the system are given. The effectiveness …

Measuring Design Metrics In Websites, Emilio Navarro, Ronan Fitzpatrick

Conference papers

The current state of the World Wide Web demands website designs that engage consumers in order to allow them to consume services or generate leads to maximize revenue. This paper describes a software quality factor to measure the success of websites by analyzing web design structure and not relying only on websites traffic data. It is also documents the requirements and architecture to build a software tool that measures criteria for determining Engagibility. A new set of social criteria to be measured for current website philosophy is also proposed.

Shifted Nmf Using An Efficient Constant-Q Transform For Monaural Sound Source Separation, Rajesh Jaiswal, Derry Fitzgerald, Eugene Coyle, Scott Rickard

Conference papers

Non-negative Matrix Factorisation (NMF) based algorithms have found application in monaural audio source separation due to their ability to factorize audio spectrogram into additive part-based basis functions, which typically corresponds to individual notes or chords in music. These separated basis functions are usually greater in number than the active sources, hence clustering is needed for individual source signal synthesis. Although, many attempts have been made to improve the clustering of the basis functions to sources, much research is still required in this area. Recently, Shifted NMF based methods have been proposed as a means to avoid clustering these pitched basis …

Qualitative Research In Engineering Education, Kevin Kelly, Brian Bowe

Conference papers

No abstract provided.

User Assisted Source Separation Using Non-Negative Matrix Factorisation, Derry Fitzgerald

Conference papers

Much research has been carried out on the use of non-negative matrix factorisation for the purpose of musical sound source separation. However, a notable shortcoming of non-negative matrix factorisation is that the recovered basis functions have to be clustered to sound sources for separation to take place. This has proved to be a difficult problem to solve. As a means of overcoming this problem, we introduce an extension to non-negative matrix factorisation which allows a user to guide the sepa- ration by singing, or playing along with, the source they want to separate. This is done through the use of …

Investigation Of Wave Farm Electrical Network Configurations, Fergus Sharkey, Michael Conlon, Kevin Gaughan

Conference papers

Wave Energy Converters (WECs) have been in development for a number of decades and some devices are now close to becoming a commercial reality. As such, pilot projects are being developed, particularly in the UK and Ireland, to deploy WECs on a pre-commercial array scale. There is little experience in the wave energy or utility industry of designing and installing electrical networks for WEC arrays with the closest comparison being offshore wind farms. There are some key features of WECs which will ultimately dictate thatthe electrical configuration differs from that of offshore wind farms.

This paper investigates the potential representative …

A Discussion Of Anti-Islanding Protection Schemes Incorporated In A Inverter Based Dg, Mohamed Moin Hanif, Malabika Basu, Kevin Gaughan

Conference papers

The discussion in this paper is about the local anti-islanding protection techniques that are incorporated in a inverter based DG. The most widely used passive and active techniques along with their suitability to reduce the Non-detection zone (NDZ) are explained here. The most recent work using wavelet transform which actually reduces the NDZ to zero is also introduced in the last section of the paper.

Touch2query Enabled Mobile Devices: A Case Study Using Openstreetmap And Iphone, Junjun Yin, James Carswell

Conference papers

This paper describes our mobile spatial interaction (MSI) prototype Touch2Query which presents the idea of using the touch screen on mobile devices to assist in performing ad-hoc spatial queries. This approach differs from conventional mobile LBS applications where the query shape (search space) is limited to either a bounding box or radius. Instead, we provide functionality that allows users to interactively draw any desired query shape overlaid on an area of interest directly on a mobile device with their finger by combining vector primitives such as circles, polygons, polylines, and points. With the help of location and orientation aware mobile …

Combining A Virtual Learning Tool And Onsite Study Visits Of Four Conservation Sites In Europe, Alain Chenaux, Maurice Murphy, Garrett Keenaghan, James Jenkins, Eugene Mcgovern, Sara Pavia

Conference papers

The design and evaluation of virtual learning environments for construction and surveying students is presented in this paper; by combining virtual learning environment and on-site student surveys to model and replicate practice in the architectural heritage sector. The Virtual Learning Environment is enhanced with real live survey projects whereby students collect the data to build virtual historic buildings from onsite surveys using advanced survey equipment. The survey data is modelled in HBIM; Historic Building Information Modelling (HBIM) is currently being developed as a virtual learning tool for construction and surveying students in the Technological University of Dublin. HBIM, is a …

A Parametric Study Of Pedestrian Vertical Force Models For Dynamic Analysis Of Footbridges, Paul Archbold, Joe Keogh, Colin C. Caprani, Paul Fanning

Conference papers

Footbridge vibration has received much attention in recent years. However, stochastic models for crowd loading are not common, and estimation of crowd-induced vibration is typically done through enhancement factors applied to single pedestrian loading models. This work compares two such models, a moving force model and a spring-mass-damper model (SMD). Typical ranges for various pedestrian parameters are examined, and it is found that the pacing frequency has by far the greatest influence on bridge vibration response. It is also found that the magnitude of the response for pacing frequencies near the bridge natural frequency is lower for the SMD model, …

Characteristic Vertical Response Of A Footbridge Due To Crowd Loading, Colin C, Caprani, Joe Keogh, Paul Archbold, Paul Fanning

Conference papers

The characteristic vertical vibration of a flexible footbridge subject to crowd loading is examined in this paper. Typically, bridge vibrations produced from a crowd of pedestrians are estimated by using an enhancement factor applied to the effect caused by a single pedestrian. In this paper, a single pedestrian model, represented by a spring mass damper, which incorporates variables such as pedestrian mass and body stiffness, is used to calibrate a computationally efficient moving force model. This calibrated moving force model is further used in Monte Carlo simulations of non-homogenous crowds to estimate characteristic vertical vibration levels. Enhancement factors, which could …

Modeling Extreme Traffic Loading On Bridges Using Kernel Density Estimators, Cathal Leahy, Eugene J. Obrien, Bernard Enright

Conference papers

Kernel density estimators are a non-parametric method of estimating the probability density function of sample data. In this paper, the method is applied to find characteristic maximum daily truck weights on highway bridges. The results are then compared with the conventional approach

Modelling Of Highway Bridge Traffic Loading: Some Recent Advances, Bernard Enright, Colin C. Caprani, Eugene J. Obrien

Conference papers

The accurate estimation of site-specific lifetime extreme traffic load effects is an important element in the cost-effective assessment of bridges. In recent years, the improved quality and increasing use of weigh-in-motion technology has meant that better quality and larger databases of vehicle weights are now available. This has enabled measurements of the regular occurrence of extremely heavy vehicles, with weights in excess of 100 t. The collected measurements have been used as the basis for building and calibrating a Monte Carlo simulation model for bridge loading. The computer programs written to implement this model generate simulated traffic in two lanes …

Advancing The Use Of Bim Through A Government Funded Construction Industry Competency Centre In Ireland, Alan V. Hore, Ken Thomas

Conference papers

The main aim of this paper is to develop the early case for a new Competence Centre dedicated to industry led research in the Irish construction industry. It incorporates the results of a survey carried out by the Construction IT Aliance (CITA) and also identifies similiar centres carrying out industry led research around the world. Results from the survey show a clear support for the establishment of such a centre in Ireland and, in particular, a strong interest in Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a immediate priority research area. BIM is having a profound effect worldwide on the construction industry. …

Obtaining Speech Assets For Judgement Analysis On Low-Pass Filtered Emotional Speech, John Snel, Charlie Cullen

Conference papers

Investigating the emotional content in speech from acoustic characteristics requires separating the semantic con- tent from the acoustic channel. For natural emotional speech, a widely used method to separate the two channels is the use of cue masking. Our objective is to investigate the use of cue masking in non-acted emotional speech by analyzing the extent to which filtering impacts the perception of emotional content of the modified speech material. However, obtaining a corpus of emotional speech can be quite difficult whereby verifying the emotional content is an issue thoroughly discussed. Currently, speech research is showing a tendency toward constructing …

Clustering Nmf Basis Functions Using Shifted Nmf For Monaural Sound Source Separation, Rajesh Jaiswal, Derry Fitzgerald, Dan Barry, Eugene Coyle, Scott Rickard

Conference papers

Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) has found use in single
channel separation of audio signals, as it gives a parts-based decom-
position of audio spectrograms where the parts typically correspond
to individual notes or chords. However, a notable shortcoming of
NMF is the need to cluster the basis functions to their sources af-
ter decomposition. Despite recent improvements in algorithms for
clustering the basis functions to sources, much work still remains to
further improve these algorithms. To this end we present a novel
clustering algorithm which overcomes some of the limitations of
previous clustering methods. This involves the use of Shifted …

On The Applications Of Deterministic Chaos For Encrypting Data On The Cloud, Jonathan Blackledge, Nikolai Ptitsyn

Conference papers

Cloud computing is expected to grow considerably in the future because it has so many advantages with regard to sale and cost, change management, next generation architectures, choice and agility. However, one of the principal concerns for users of the Cloud is lack of control and above all, data security. This paper considers an approach to encrypting information before it is ‘placed’ on the Cloud where each user has access to their own encryption algorithm, an algorithm that is based on a set of iterated function systems that outputs a chaotic number stream, designed to produce a cryptographically secure cipher. …

Weak Gradient Inverse Scattering Solutions, Jonathan Blackledge

Conference papers

The paper briefly reviews formal methods and associated conditions for solving the forward and inverse Schrodinger ¨ scattering problem for a three-dimensional elastic scattering potential. These methods are based on an application of the Green’s function and are conditional upon the properties of the scattering potential, e.g. that the scattering potential is a ‘weak scatterer’. In this paper, we explore an alternative route to solving the problem which depends on properties imposed on the scattered wavefield rather than the scattering potential. In particular, we explore the case when the gradient of the scattered wavefield is weak relative to its frequency. …

Magnetic Resonance Image Processing Using Levy, Jonathan Blackledge, Matthew D. Blackledge

Conference papers

We consider the physical nature of the self-diffusion of water molecules in tissue and explore how (Nuclear) Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging may be used as a means of measuring the rate of diffusion in vivo. A discussion is presented on how these techniques may be implemented as a non-invasive means of assessing the response of tumours to novel therapeutics including some of the basic advantages and disadvan- tages when compared to other methods. The physical basis and mathematical models for diffusion are considered together with models for the distribution of the diffusion co- efficient including a Lévy distributed model. Using …

Wind Turbine Power Quality Estimation Using A Lévy Model For Wind Velocity Data, Jonathan Blackledge, Eugene Coyle, Derek Joseph Kearney

Conference papers

The power quality of a wind turbine is determined by many factors but time-dependent variation in the wind velocity are arguably the most important. In this paper a non-Gaussian model for the wind velocity is introduced that is based on a Lévy distribution. It is shown how this distribution can be used to derive a stochastic fractional diffusion equation for the wind velocity as a function of time whose solution is characterised by the Lévy index. A numerical method for computing the L´evy index from wind velocity time series is introduced and applied to example wind velocity data for both …

A Quality Control System Using Texture Analysis In Metallurgy, Jonathan Blackledge, Dymitiy Dubovitskiy

Conference papers

Object detection, recognition and texture classification is an important aspect of many industrial quality control systems. In this paper, we report on a system designed for the inspection of surfaces which has a range of applications in the area of metallurgy. The approach considered is based on the application of Fractal Geometry and Fuzzy Logic for texture classification and, in this paper, focuses on the manufacture of rolled steel. The manufacture of high quality metals requires automatic surface inspection for the assessment of quality control. Quality control systems are required for several tasks such as screening defected products, monitoring the …