Engineering Commons^™

Energy Performance Certification: Misassessment Due To Assuming Default Heat Losses, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton

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Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued when dwellings are constructed, sold or leased in the EU. Where the cost of obtaining the required data is prohibitive, EPC assessors use nationally applicable default-values. To ensure that dwellings are not assigned a wrongly-higher EPC rating, a standardised thermal bridging transmittance coefficient (Y-value) is typically adopted for all existing dwellings while worst-case overall heat loss coefficients (U-values) are used. Default U-values are applied to a specific building element type (roof, wall, floor etc.) based on building codes and regulations applicable at time of construction. Due to significant building fabric upgrades, default U-values are …

A-Step 2030 – New Research Project Presents A Picture Of The Skills Needed For Engineers To Solve The Sustainable Development Goals (Sdgs)., Una Beagon

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Communication and Technical Skills will still be the most important attributes required of engineers in the future, according to a new study by the A-STEP 2030 Erasmus+ funded project. The project which is led by ENSTA Bretagne, France and has academic partners in TU Dublin, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland and Aalborg University in Denmark aims to develop innovative teaching approaches for engineering students which will attract a more diverse student body to the engineering profession.

Contextual Influences On Human Resources Development: Considerations And Evaluations On The Various External And Internal Factors That Shape And Influence Hrd In Organisations, Charles Alves De Castro

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This article aims to briefly understand and evaluate the main external and internal factors that impact directly on human resources development area within the organisations, mainly related to multinational companies. Also, it discusses the various aspects and influences on HRD-(Human Resources Development) such as societal, organisational/local, global, that impacts on costs, environment, regulations, policies, culture, beliefs, technology and values. This research was carried out by way of a literature review. This is important to demonstrate, explain and evaluate the current existent literature about this specific theme covered in this article. Furthermore, through this review we compared previous research on HRD. …

Experimental Investigation Of Flow Pulsation Waveforms In Rectangular Mesochannels For High Heat Flux Electronics Cooling, Jaakko Mcevoy, Sajad Alimohammadi, Tim Persoons

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The ever rising heat fluxes encountered in electronic devices present a challenging thermal engineering problem. Not only is heat transfer enhancement a goal but more recently control of the enhancement is desired, especially in large scale data facilities where the heated outlet coolant fluid may be of use. Flow pulsation is one of the most common active heat transfer enhancement methods studied across all heat sink sizes. While the effects of pulsation have been shown to increase heat transfer under certain conditions there is still disagreement upon its merit for practical applications, with the majority of previous research has been …

A Generalisable Bottom-Up Methodology For Deriving A Residential Stock Model From Large Empirical Databases, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton

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Specifying representative reference buildings as a prerequisite for calculating cost-optimal energy performance requirements for buildings and building elements. Appropriate characterisation is prerequisite data for an overall national building energy consumption model to produce valid outcomes. Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued in the EU, for dwellings whenever they are constructed, sold or leased. Where acquiring data for an EPC would be prohibitively costly, nationally applicable default-values are employed for the building envelope thermal transmittance coefficients. Significant levels of retrofits led to the default-values used now being higher than is typical in reality, leading to characterisations of reference dwellings based on …

Magnetic Field Sensor Based On A Tri-Microfiber Coupler Ring In Magnetic Fluid And A Fiber Bragg Grating, Fangfang Wei, Dejun Liu, Arun Mallik, Gerald Farrell, Qiang Wu, Gang-Ding Peng, Yuliya Semenova

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In this paper we propose and investigate a novel magnetic field sensor based on a Tri-microfiber coupler combined with magnetic fluid and a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) in a ring. A sensitivity of 1306 pm/mT was experimentally demonstrated in the range of magnetic fields from 0 to 15 mT. The reflection peak in the output spectrum associated with the FBG serves as a reference point allowing to avoid ambiguity in determining the spectral shift induced by the magnetic field. Due to its high sensitivity at low magnetic fields, the proposed structure could be of high interest in low field biosensing …

Thermal Energy Refurbishment Status Of The Irish Housing Stock, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton

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Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued for buildings constructed, sold or leased across the EU. Using a generalizable methodology this work exploits Ireland's EPC national dwelling stock database to determine the thermal refurbishment status of Ireland's housing stock. It is estimated in 2014 that; i) 58% of walls were insulated at a mean overall heat loss coefficient or U-value of 0.66 W/m²K, ii) 67% of roofs were insulated at a mean U-value 0.37 W/m²K, iii) 97% of windows were double-glazed, and iv) 53% of floors were insulated to a mean U-value of 0.59 W/m²K. …

Size Matters: The Impact Of Training Size In Taxonomically-Enriched Word Embeddings, Alfredo Maldonado, Filip Klubicka, John D. Kelleher

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Word embeddings trained on natural corpora (e.g., newspaper collections, Wikipedia or the Web) excel in capturing thematic similarity (“topical relatedness”) on word pairs such as ‘coffee’ and ‘cup’ or ’bus’ and ‘road’. However, they are less successful on pairs showing taxonomic similarity, like ‘cup’ and ‘mug’ (near synonyms) or ‘bus’ and ‘train’ (types of public transport). Moreover, purely taxonomy-based embeddings (e.g. those trained on a random-walk of WordNet’s structure) outperform natural-corpus embeddings in taxonomic similarity but underperform them in thematic similarity. Previous work suggests that performance gains in both types of similarity can be achieved by enriching natural-corpus embeddings with …

Thermal Refurbishment Status Of The Irish Housing Stock, Ciara Ahern, Brian Norton

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Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are issued for buildings constructed, sold or leased across the EU. Using a generalizable methodology this work exploits Ireland’s EPC national dwelling stock database to determine the thermal refurbishment status of Ireland’s housing stock. It is estimated in 2014 that; i) 58% of walls were insulated at a mean overall heat loss coefficient or U-value of 0.66 W/m 2 K, ii) 67% of roofs were insulated at a mean U-value 0.37 W/m 2 K, iii) 97% of windows were double-glazed, and iv) 53% of floors were insulated to a mean U-value of 0.59 W/m 2 K. …

Accelerated Capital Allowances: An Overview, Bernard Doherty, James Mc Mahon, William Coffey, Ger Nagle, Kevin Delaney

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ACA is based on the existing capital allowances tax structure or wear and tear allowance, for plants and machinery. Claiming the ACA is carried out the same way as for the standard capital allowances.

Organisations who invest in eligible energy-efficient capital equipment can deduct the full cost of the equipment from their profits in the year of purchase. This reduces the taxable profit in year one by the full cost of the equipment.

A Techno-Economic Analysis Of Current Cooling Techniques In Irish Data Centres, Lee Gibbons, Bryan Coyne, David Kennedy, Sajad Alimohammadi

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This research is part of a comprehensive study to determine reformative actions for cooling regimes within the Irish data centre market. To achieve this goal, preliminary Exergy, Entropy change and operational cost analyses are used. It is determined that there is no clear advantage for using one cooling method over another without knowing the data centres secondary function (e.g. district heating, energy generation). Air cooling technology is a good candidate for a highly reliable system due to the low exhaust temperatures of 30°C. Two-phase immersion is a possibility for economically viable data centres where operational costs are to be minimised, …

Optimizing The Valorization Of Industrial By-Products For The Induction Healing Of Asphalt Mixtures, Amir Tabakovic, Marta Vila-Cortavitarte, Daniel Jato-Espino, Daniel Castro-Fresno

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Self-healing within asphalt pavements is the process whereby road cracks can be repaired automatically when thermal and mechanical conditions are met. To accelerate and improve this healing process, metal particles are added to asphalt mixtures. However, thisapproach is costly both in economic and environmental terms due to the use of virgin metallic particles. So, even though the self-healing of asphalt mixtures has been widely addressed in experimental terms over the years, there is a lack of research aimed at modelling this phenomenon, especially with the purpose of optimizing the use of metal particles through the valorization of industrial by-products. As …

Multi-Objective Layout Optimization Of A Generic Hybrid-Cooled Data Centre Blade Server, Assel Sakanova, Sajad Alimohammadi, Jaakko Mcevody, Sara Battaglioli, Tim Persoons

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The rapid global increase in energy consumption by data centres requires new improved cooling solutions and techniques to be developed and implemented. In a typical data centre, approximately a third of the total power consumption is needed for the cooling infrastructure, resulting in high power usage effectiveness (PUE) values. The main culprits of raised PUE are legacy air-cooled data centres, exhausting only low grade waste heat for which capture and re-use is challenging. This study investigates numerically the potential for energy recuperation by a server-level internal layout optimization for a hybrid air/liquid-cooled server. The approach combines multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) …

Ka-Band Planar Vivaldi Antenna With A Core For High-Gain, Manh Ha Hoang, Kansheng Yang, Matthias John, Patrick Mcevoy, Max Ammann

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A planar Vivaldi antenna structure with a core element is proposed for high gain. Techniques to achieve a significant gain improvement over the full Ka (24-40 GHz) band are implemented; including a frequency-independent excitation method, the introduction of logarithmic ripple on the lateral edges and enclosing the antenna in a dielectric material.

Temperature-Compensated Magnetic Field Sensing With A Dual-Ring Structure Consisting Of Microfiber Coupler-Sagnac Loop And Fiber Bragg Grating - Assisted Resonant Cavity, Fangfang Wei, Dejun Liu, Arun Kumar Mallik, Gerald Farrell, Qiang Wu, Gang-Ding Peng, Yuliya Semenova

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A novel temperature-compensated magnetic field sensor based on a ring erbium-doped fiber laser combined with a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and a Sagnac loop containing a microfiber coupler (MFC) and magnetic fluid is proposed and investigated. Thanks to the dual-ring structure of the MFC-Sagnac loop and the FBG-assisted resonant cavity, the output of the structure has two distinct laser peaks. In addition to the magnetic field sensing capability, the proposed structure can simultaneously provide temperature information. The maximum experimentally demonstrated sensitivity to a magnetic field determined from the spectral shift of one laser peak is 102 pm/mT in the magnetic …

Microwave Self-Healing Technology As Airfield Porous Asphalt Friction Course Repair And Maintenance System, Amir Tabakovic, Declan O'Prey, Drew Mckenna, David Woodward

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A problem increasingly faced by airport authorities is the maintenance of runways. Due to their large aircraft loadings associated with take-off and landing operations, runways experience surface deterioration. Poor quality runway surfaces cannot be tolerated in such an environment. Maintenance issues must be carried out to maximise safety and minimise the risk of aircraft damage. A recent development has been the introduction of self-healing technologies such as rejuvenator encapsulation, induction and microwave heating to address these issues. This paper summarises a laboratory investigation to determine the effectiveness of microwave self-healing for crack repair of Porous Friction Course (PFC) used for …

The Influence Of Asphalt Ageing On Induction Healing Effect On Porous Asphalt Concrete, Shi Xu, Xueyan Liu, Amir Tabakovic, Erik Schlangen

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Induction healing is a proven technology which is able to improve the self‐healing capacity of asphalt concrete. Healing is achieved via electromagnetic current produced by passing induction machine, where steel asphalt constituents heat up which in turn soften the bitumen in the asphalt layer, allowing it to flow and close cracks, repairing the damage. This paper reports on the study which investigated the influence of ageing on the healing capacity of Porous Asphalt (PA) concrete. Porous Asphalt concrete mix was prepared first, then subjected to an accelerated (laboratory) ageing process using a ventilated oven. In order to further evaluate the …

Discussion: Effect Of Bentonite Slurry Pressure On Interface Friction Of Pipe Jacking, Ciaran Reilly, Trevor Orr

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Pipe jacking is a technique used to construct tunnels by pushing prefabricated pipes through the ground from an entrance shaft to an exit shaft. This technique is referred as microtunneling in U.S. terminology, therefore, in the rest of the text, pipejacking and microtunneling will be used as having the same meaning. Pipe jacking is a more economical alternative to segmental lined tunnels. However, the main limitation of pipe jacking is the jacking distance, which is directly dependent on the friction between the pipe and the soil. Therefore, reducing the friction between the pipe and soil is a critical issue in …

Level Of Service And The Transit Neighbourhood: Observations From Dublin City And Surburbs, David O'Connor, Brian Caulfield

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Few studies have looked at the impact Level-of-Service (LOS) might have on the distances people walk to public transport. The relationship, if any, has implications for transit-oriented-development and the viability of different transit modes serving suburban areas. This paper examines pedestrian catchment areas and LOS across a light rail, a metro rail and two bus corridors in Dublin. Public transport users have been surveyed at 17 stops around the city and their trip origin identified. Catchment areas for bus services with high levels of service were found to be comparable and often greater than those for LRT or metro …

Optimization Of The Calcium Alginate Capsules For Self-Healing Asphalt, Shi Xu, Amir Tabakovic, Xueyan Liu, Damian Palin, Erik Schlangen

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Featured Application: This self-healing technology for asphalt pavements has the potential to greatly disrupt asphalt production methods (which have been stable over the past 100 years).This paper presents a development process of ‘calcium-alginate microcapsules encapsulating an asphalt bitumen rejuvenator’. The encapsulated rejuvenator is released when required (on demand) which rejuvenates the aged binder. Once crack is initiated and starts propagating it encounters a microcapsule, energy at tip of the crack opens the microcapsule, releasing the rejuvenator (healing agent). The rejuvenator will infuse into the aged binder soften it, allowing to flow, two broken edges to get into a contact and …

A Deep Recurrent Q Network Towards Self-Adapting Distributed Microservices Architecture (In Press), Basel Magableh

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One desired aspect of microservices architecture is the ability to self-adapt its own architecture and behaviour in response to changes in the operational environment. To achieve the desired high levels of self-adaptability, this research implements the distributed microservices architectures model, as informed by the MAPE-K model. The proposed architecture employs a multi adaptation agents supported by a centralised controller, that can observe the environment and execute a suitable adaptation action. The adaptation planning is managed by a deep recurrent Q-network (DRQN). It is argued that such integration between DRQN and MDP agents in a MAPE-K model offers distributed microservice architecture …

A Framework For Evaluating Model-Driven Self-Adaptive Software Systems, Basel Magableh

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In the last few years, Model Driven Development (MDD), Component-based Software Development (CBSD), and context-oriented software have become interesting alternatives for the design and construction of self-adaptive software systems. In general, the ultimate goal of these technologies is to be able to reduce development costs and effort, while improving the modularity, flexibility, adaptability, and reliability of software systems. An analysis of these technologies shows them all to include the principle of the separation of concerns, and their further integration is a key factor to obtaining high-quality and self-adaptable software systems. Each technology identifies different concerns and deals with them separately …

Context Oriented Software Middleware, Basel Magableh

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This article proposes a new paradigm for building an adaptive middleware that supports software systems with self-adaptability and dependability. In this article, we wish to explore how far we can support the engineering of self- adaptive applications using a generic and platform-independent middleware architecture provided by non-specialised programming languages such as Context-Oriented Programming (COP), and Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP), and not limited to a specific platform or framework. This gives the software developers the flexibility to construct a self-adaptive application using a generic and reusable middleware components that employ popular design patterns, instead of forcing the software developers to use a …

Deep Q Learning For Self Adaptive Distributed Microservices Architecture (In Press), Basel Magableh

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One desired aspect of a self-adapting microservices architecture is the ability to continuously monitor the operational environment, detect and observe anomalous behavior, and provide a reasonable policy for self-scaling, self-healing, and self-tuning the computational resources in order to dynamically respond to a sudden change in its operational environment. The behaviour of a microservices architecture is continuously changing overtime, which makes it a challenging task to use a statistical model to identify both the normal and abnormal behaviour of the services running. The performance of the microservices cluster could fluctuate around the demand to accommodate scalability, orchestration and load balancing demands. …

The Effect Of Impact Location On Brain Strain, Stephen Tiernan, Gary Byrne Mr

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Objective: To determine the effect of impact direction on strains within the brain.

Research design: Laboratory drop tests of hybrid III head-form and finite element simulation of impacts.

Methods and procedures: A head-form instrumented with accelerometers and gyroscopes was dropped from 10 different heights in four orientations: front, rear, left and right hand side. Twelve impacts with constant impact energy were chosen to simulate, to determine the effect of impact location. A finite element head model was used to simulate these impacts, using 6 degrees of freedom. Following this a further set of simulations were performed, where the same acceleration …

Towards An Ontology For Soft Robots: What Is Soft?, Kevin Chubb, Damon Berry, Ted Burke

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The advent of soft robotics represents a profound change in the forms robots will take in the future. However, this revolutionary change has already yielded such a diverse collection of robots that attempts at defining this group do not reflect many existing ‘soft’ robots. This paper aims to address this issue by scrutinising a number of descriptions of soft robots arising from a literature review with the intention of determining a coherent meaning for soft. We also present a classification of existing soft robots to initiate the development of a soft robotic ontology. Finally, discrepancies in prescribed ranges of Young’s …

A Modified Langevin-Debye Model For Investigating The Electro-Optic Behaviour Of De Vries Smectic Liquid Crystals, Vigneshwaran Swaminathan, Vitaly Petrovich Panov, Sithara Pavithran Sreenilayam, Yuri Panarin, J. K. Vij

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An external electric field applied across a planar-aligned cell in Smectic A* phase of de Vries smectic liquid crystal induces director redistribution over a cone, resulting in a substantial increase in the birefringence and the apparent optical tilt angle. Such an electro-optic response is modelled by Shen et al. [Y. Shen et al., Phys. Rev. E 88, 062504 (2013)], who modified their previous hollow cone with a diffuse cone model by introducing the molecular distribution function limited over a range of tilt angles, that lie in between θmin and θmax. The limits in these two tilt …

The Study Of Grit In Engineering Education Research: A Systematic Literature Review, Shannon Chance, Inês Direito, Manish Malik

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Researchontheroleofgrit–definedasbothperseveranceandpassionfor long-termgoals–onhumanperformancehasbeenconductedforthepast decade. It has been suggested that this non-cognitive factor is a better predictor of students’ retention than traditional academic measures. These findings hold relevance for engineering education research but studies on this area are still scarce. This paper provides a systematic review of the current state of research on grit and its correlates in engineering higher education research. Publications were identified using three types of databases specific to engineering education; a final set of 31 relevant records was analysed by type of population, methods, research topics and main results. Most of the reviewed studies implemented quantitative methodologies to …

Guest Editorial Special Issue On Using Enquiry-And-Design-Based Learning To Spur Epistemological And Identity Development Of Engineering Students, Shannon Chance, Bill Williams, Tom Goldfinch, Robin S. Adams, Lorraine N. Fleming

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This Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Education focuses on using enquiry-based design projects to spur engineering students’ development, so as to increase understanding and application of the relevant theories, foster higher rates of student development and achieve this in healthy and productive ways.

Air Diffusion System Design In Large Assembly Halls. Case Study Of The Congress Of Deputies Parliament Building, Madrid, Spain, Paul G. O'Donohoe, Miguel A. Gálvez-Huerta, Tomas Gil-Lopez, Pedro M. Dieguez-Elizondo, Juan Castejon-Navas

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The paper describes and analyses the air distribution solution adopted in the refurbishment of the Spanish Congress of Deputies assembly hall. A new approach is proposed for the design of displacement ventilation systems. The system performance is methodically validated both with laboratory tests, computational fluid dynamics analysis and experimental field measurements related to the environmental performance of the built environment. In assembly halls, microclimate and displacement ventilation systems, which supply air by means of floor mounted outlets, have been shown to perform adequately. In this case study floor air supply is not feasible. The solution adapted uses parapet mounted diffusers, …