Engineering Commons^™

Investigation Into The Local Nature Of Change Of Frequency In Electrical Power Systems, Damien Doheny

Student Journal of Energy Research

Over the coming years it is expected that considerably more wind power will be connected to the Irish power system. This will result in a power system that at times of high wind power penetration will operate with very low inertia, making the system susceptible to large rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) events due to disturbances. These high RoCoF events could result in the cascade tripping of generators connected to the grid resulting in complete shutdown of the system. This paper investigates the differences between local RoCoFs seen at individual buses and system wide RoCoFs seen across the entire …

Ray Tracing Technique For The Optimal Design Of An Air Heater Concentrating Collector, Fernando Guerreiro

Student Journal of Energy Research

There is a wide range of micro and macro renewable and sustainable energy methods available for reducing the inefficient use of fossil fuels, minimising carbon emissions and maximising energy use in a clean and environment-friendly process. Solar energy plays an important role due to its abundance and ubiquity. Solar air heaters convert solar energy into hot air to be used for heating and drying of various products. The objective of this paper is to define and optimise the geometry of an inverted absorber compound parabolic concentrating (IACPC) collector for air heating. This optimisation was developed based on an optical analysis …

Short Term Demand Forecasting For The Integrated Electricity Market, Katie Kavanagh

Student Journal of Energy Research

This paper presents a means for the short term load forecasting (STLF) of electricity. The forthcoming Integrated-Single Electricity Market (I-SEM) diverges from the current market structure (the Single Electricity Market or SEM), with significant impacts on Irish supply companies, creating a need for these companies to be able to accurately forecast their customers’ load in the Day Ahead. Using a Double Seasonal Exponential Smoothing variation of the Holt-Winters method that factors in an error correction, data from the Irish market was trained and used to forecast a supply company’s demand resulting in an average daily MAPE (Mean Absolute Percentage Error) …

A Plan For Using Phenomenography To Explore Academic Conceptions Of Their Role In Developing Professional Skills In Engineering Students, Una Beagon, Brian Bowe

Other resources

This presentation presents a PhD study looking at academic conceptions of the approaches to teaching professional skills in engineering programmes in Ireland.

Teaching Professional Skills In Engineering Programmes: The Academic Perspective, Una Beagon

Other resources

Teaching Professional skills in Engineering Programmes: The Academic Perspective

A plan for using phenomenography to explore academic conceptions of their role in developing professional skills in engineering students

Two-Step Sequential Pretreatment For The Enhanced Enzymatic Hydrolysis Of Coffee Spent Waste, Rajeev Ravindran, Swarna Jaiswal, Nissreen Abu-Ghannam, Amit Jaiswal

Articles

In the present study, eight different pretreatments of varying nature (physical, chemical and physico-chemical) followed by a sequential, combinatorial pretreatment strategy was applied to spent coffee waste to attain maximum sugar yield. Pretreated samples were analysed for total reducing sugar, individual sugars and generation of inhibitory compounds such as furfural and hydroxymethyl furfural (HMF) which can hinder microbial growth and enzyme activity. Native spent coffee waste was high in hemicellulose content. Galactose was found to be the predominant sugar in spent coffee waste. Results showed that sequential pretreatment yielded 350.12mg of reducing sugar/g of substrate, which was 1.7-fold higher than …

Investigation Into The Application Of Personality Insights And Language Tone Analysis In Spam Classification, Colm Mcgetrick

Dissertations

Due to its persistence spam remains as one of the biggest problems facing users and suppliers of email communication services. Machine learning techniques have been very successful at preventing many spam mails from arriving in user mailboxes, however they still account for over 50% of all emails sent. Despite this relative success the economic cost of spam has been estimated as high as $50 billion in 2005 and more recently at $20 billion so spam can still be considered a considerable problem. In essence a spam email is a commercial communication trying to entice the receiver to take some positive …

A Framework For Post-Stroke Quality Of Life Prediction Using Structured Prediction, Andrew Hines, John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

This paper presents a conceptual model that relates Quality of Life to the established Quality of Experience formation process. It uses concepts developed by the Quality of Experience community to propose an adapted framework for developing predictive models for Quality of Life. A mapping of common factors that can be applied to health related quality of life is proposed and practical challenges for modelling and applications are presented and discussed. The process of identifying and categorising factors and features is illustrated using stroke patient treatment as an example use case.

Bs News May/June

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Objective Assessment Of Perceptual Audio Quality Using Visqolaudio, Colm Sloan, Damien Kelly, Naomi Harte, Anil C. Kokaram, Andrew Hines

Conference papers

Digital audio broadcasting services transmit substantial amounts of data that is encoded to minimize bandwidth whilst maximizing user quality of experience. Many large service providers continually alter codecs to improve the encoding process. Performing subjective tests to validate each codec alteration would be impractical, necessitating the use of objective perceptual audio quality models. This paper evaluates the quality scores from ViSQOLAudio, an objective perceptual audio quality model, against the quality scores of PEAQ, POLQA, and PEMO-Q on three datasets containing fullband audio encoded with a variety of codecs and bitrates. The results show that ViSQOLAudio was more accurate than all …

Propagating Degrees Of Truth On An Argumentation Framework: An Abstract Account Of Fuzzy Argumentation, Pierpaolo Dondio

Conference papers

This paper proposes a computational framework to reason with conflicting and gradual evidence. The framework is a synthesis of Dung’s seminal work in argumentation semantics with multi-valued logic. Abstract grounded semantics is used to identify the conditions under which a conclusion can be accepted, while multi-valued logic operators are used to quantify the degree of truth of such conditions. We propose a truth-compositional recursive computation based on the notion of irrelevant arguments, and we discuss examples using the major multi-valued logics: Godel’s, Zadeh’s and Łukasiewicz's logic.

5‐Minute Power Ouptut Data For A 1.72kwp Pv System With Weather Variables, Lacour Ayompe, Aidan Duffy, Kevin O'Farrell

Other resources

This dataset contains 5-minute power (AC and DC) power output date from a 1.72kWp PV system located in Dublin in 2009-10 together with input weather variables and system parameters. Details below.

Geographical site: FOCAS Institute building roof top, Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Situation: Latitude 53.4degN Longitude -6degE

Time zone GMT

Installation date: 4th April 2008

PV array orientation: Tilt 53deg Azimuth 0deg

Near shadings: No shadings

Building height: Approximately 12 m

PV array capacity: 1.72 kWp

Collection period: 4^th April 2009 – 3^rd April 2010

The data acquisition system consisted of a Sunny …

Irish Bim Study 2017, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Articles

The Construction IT Alliance (CitA) recently published its Global BIM Study as part of its BIM Innovation Capability Programme (BICP). The study sought to identify how BIM was being currently addressed in 27 countries across the globe. The study sought to identify the presence of three key ingredients in these countries:

1. Regulatory requirement for BIM

2. Champions driving BIM

3. Noteworthy publications

The report identified a number of recurring themes that would help to shape Ireland’s BIM programme. The report concluded that Ireland should adopt a programme of partnership between industry and the Irish Government in order to affect …

An Investigation Of The Correlation Between Mental Workload And Web User’S Interaction, Joaquim Filipe Romero

Dissertations

Mental Workload, a psychological concept, was identified as being linked with task’s and system’s performance. In the context of Human-Computer Interaction, recent research has identified Mental Workload as an important measure in the designing and evaluation of web interfaces, and as an additional and supplemental insight to typical usability evaluation methods. Simultaneously, web logs containing data related to web users’ interaction (e.g. scrolling; mouse clicks) have been proved useful in evaluating the usability of web sites by analysing the data tracked for hundreds of users. In order to study if the potential of logs of user interaction can be applied …

An Investigation Of The Correlation Between Mental Workload And Web User’S Interaction, Joaquim Filipe Romero

Dissertations

Mental Workload, a Psychology concept, was identified as being linked with task’s and system’s performance. In the context of Human-Computer Interaction, recent research has identified Mental Workload as an important measure in the designing and evaluation of web interfaces, and as an additional and supplemental insight to typical Usability evaluation methods. Simultaneously, web logs containing data related to web users’ interaction (e.g. scrolling; mouse clicks) have been proved useful in evaluating the Usability of web sites by levering the data tracked for hundreds of users. In order to study if the potential of logs of user interaction can be applied …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

On The Development Of A One-Time Pad Generator For Personalising Cloud Security, Paul Tobin, Lee Tobin, Michael Mckeever, Jonathan Blackledge

Conference papers

Cloud computing security issues are being reported in newspapers, television, and on the Internet, on a daily basis. Furthermore, in 2013, Edward Snowden alleged backdoors were placed in a number of encryption systems by the National Security Agency causing confidence in public encryption to drop even further. Our solution allows the end-user to add a layer of unbreakable security by encrypting the data locally with a random number generator prior to uploading data to the Cloud. The prototype one-time pad generator is impervious to cryptanalysis because it generates unbreakable random binary sequences from chaos sources initiated from a natural noise. …

Effect Of Sky Conditions On Light Transmission Through A Suspended Particle Device Switchable Glazing, Aritra Ghosh, Brian Norton, Aidan Duffy

Articles

A suspended particle device (SPD) switchable glazing changes its state from opaque to transparent in the presence of a power supply. SPD glazing's near normal transmission varies with incident angle and clearness index. Due to a lower diffuse component, higher glazing transmission ensues at higher clearness indices. Transmittance values for different azimuthal incident angle for a SPD glazing for its “transparent” and “opaque” states have been determined. In Dublin, below 0.5 clearness index, isotropic diffuse transmittance was prevailed while transmission of direct insolation was dominant above 0.5 clearness index. For south facing vertical plane SPD glazing transmittance in its transparent …

Bicp Global Bim Study - Lessons For Ireland’S Bim Programme, Barry Mcauley, Alan Hore, Roger West

Reports

The Construction IT Alliance (CitA) has been promoting the benefits of digitisation in the construction and engineering industry in Ireland since its formation back in 2002. Whilst the Alliance has always strived to ensure that its members are exposed to a wide spectrum of contemporary digital tools and processes, the concept of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has dominated the focus of its activities over the past five years.

BIM can be described as a digital tool that facilitates everybody to better understand a building or structure through the use of a digital model which draws on a range of data …

Design Of A Community-Supported Capable Microwave System For People With Intellectual And Physical Disabilities, Matteo Zallio, Damon Berry, Paula Kelly, Hicham Rifai, Modestas Jakuska

Conference papers

Product personalisation has become a central topic and expected part of every day life. Different people have different characteristics and abilities and every single user has different needs which means that products have to be tailored accordingly. Micro- wave ovens are one of the most commonly used home appliances. People use them to quickly heat or cook certain foods. Today, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statis- tics, more than 90% of U.S. households own a microwave oven [11]. This project seeks to enable people with intellectual disabilities and physical impairments to perform sim- ple cooking tasks. The target …

Stakeholder Outcomes In A Wind Turbine Investment; Is The Irish Energy Policy Effective In Reducing Ghg Emissions By Promoting Small-Scale Embedded Turbines In Sme's?, Tony Kealy

Articles

As a member state of the European Union (EU), Ireland has adopted an energy policy which includes promoting wind powered electricity generators as an economically viable, GHG-reducing, alternative to environmentally damaging fossil-fuel driven electrical generators. This longitudinal, inductive in-depth study investigates the outcomes for the government and other stakeholders involved in a wind turbine project investment by a Small-to-Medium-Enterprise (SME) based in rural Ireland. A case study research methodology is used to acquire and analyse quantitative numerical data from multiple sources including electrical power and energy meters, historical electricity bills and company sustainability reports. The study found that the installation …

A Review Of Approaches To Solving The Problem Of Bim Search: Towards Intelligence-Assisted Design, Hamed Khademi, Avril Behan

Conference papers

Due to the growing adoption of BIM and the rising popularity of cloud computing, BIM models are increasingly stored in central cloud repositories or Common Data Environments. Effective management and exploitation of these models creates the requirement for BIM retrieval systems. Thus far, the BIM industry has utilized general-purpose, text-based search techniques that operate on BIM metadata. This paper highlights the need for a domain-specific BIM search engine and reviews various approaches to address the problem of BIM search. Three main approaches were identified as context-, geometry-, and content-based BIM retrieval. For a comprehensive BIM retrieval system, all three approaches …

A Project-Based-Learning Approach To Teaching Second-Order Differential Equations To Engineers, Michael Carr, Eabhnat Ní Fhloinn

Conference papers

In an attempt to increase engagement in a third-year mechanical-engineering mathematics module, a series of group-work sessions were introduced on a single topic. Students were asked to use the solution of a second-order differential equation (previously introduced in lectures) to solve a problem in which they must design a simple spring-damper system for one of a lorry, digger, truck, tractor, car, motorbike or pogo stick. This project was worth 10% of the module and done in groups of four. The groups gave an oral presentation of their results and a written report was handed up for grading. A detailed description …

A Model For Anomalies Detection In Internet Of Things (Iot) Using Inverse Weight Clustering And Decision Tree, Ahod Alghuried

Dissertations

Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fast growing technologies today. It is a technology by which billions of smart objects or devices known as “Things” can use several types of sensors to collect various types of data about themselves and/or the surrounding environment. They can then share this with authorized parties to serve several purposes such as controlling and monitoring industrial facilities or improving business service or functions. There are currently 3 billion devices connected to the Internet. The number will increase to 20 billion by 2020. While these devices make our life easier, safer and healthier, they …

Mitigation And Control Of The Overcuring Effect In Mask Projection Micro-Stereolithography, Nigel Kent, Paul F. O'Neill, Dermot Brabazon

Conference Papers

Mask Projection micro-Stereolithography (MPμSL) is an additive manufacturing technique capable of producing solid parts with micron-scale resolution from a vat of photocurable liquid polymer resin. Although the physical mechanism remains the same, the process differs from traditional laser-galvanometer based stereolithography (SL) in its use of a dynamic mask UV projector, or digital light processor (DLP), which cures each location within each 3D layer at the same time. One area where MPµSL has garnered considerable attention is in the field of microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip, where complex multistep microfabrication techniques adopted from the semiconductor industry are still widely used, and where MPµSL …

Detection Of Trends In The 7-Day Sustained Low-Flow Time Series Of Irish Rivers, Ahmed Nasr, Michael Bruen

Articles

A combination of statistical hypothesis testing methods (Mann-Whitney, Mann-Kendall and Spearman’s rho) and visual exploratory analysis were used to investigate trends in Irish 7-day sustained low-flow (7SLF) series possibly driven by changes in summer rainfall patterns. River flow data from 33 gauging stations covering most major Irish rivers were analysed, after excluding catchments where low flows are influenced by significant human interventions. A statistically significant increasing trend in the 7SLF series was identified by all three tests at eight gauging stations; in contrast, a statistically significant decreasing trend was identified by all three tests at four stations. The stations with …

Mid-Infrared Self-Similar Compression Of Picosecond Pulse In An Inversely Tapered Silicon Ridge Waveguide, Jin-Hui Yuan, Jian Chen, Feng Li, Chao Mei, Zhe Kang, Xianting Zhang, Yin Xu, Binbin Yan, Xinzhu Sang, Qiang Wu, Xian Zhou, Kangping Zhong, Kuiru Wang, Chongxiu Yu, Gerald Farrell

Articles

On chip high quality and high degree pulse compression is desirable in the realization of integrated ultrashort pulse sources, which are important for nonlinear photonics and spectroscopy. In this paper, we design a simple inversely tapered silicon ridge waveguide with exponentially decreasing dispersion profile along the propagation direction, and numerically investigate self-similar pulse compression of the fundamental soliton within the mid-infrared spectral region. When higher-order dispersion (HOD), higher-order nonlinearity (HON), losses (α), and variation of the Kerr nonlinear coefficient γ(z) are considered in the extended nonlinear Schrödinger equation, a 1 ps input pulse at the wavelength of 2490 nm is …

The Effect Of The Local Field And Dipole-Dipole Interactions On The Absorption Spectra Of Noble Metals And The Plasmon Resonance Of Their Nanoparticles, I.I. Shaganov, T.S. Perova, Kevin Berwick

Articles

An analysis of the effect of free and bound electrons on the optical properties of noble metals and their nanoparticles is performed, based on the Drude-Lorentz model. It is shown that the shifts in the absorption bands of plasmons localized in spherical nanoparticles with respect to the zero frequency of free electrons in a bulk metal can be estimated using the theory of resonant dipole-dipole interactions. The calculation includes account for differences between the effective and average electromagnetic fields. It is established that the difference in oscillator strength for free electrons in the bulk metal, obtained using the Drude-Lorentz model, …

Bismuth-Doped Glass Microsphere Lasers, Zaijn Fang, Sile Nic Chormaic, Shanyu Wang, Xin Wang, Jibo Yu, Yuxuan Jiang, Jianrong Qiu, Pengfei Wang

Articles

In this work, a hybrid structure consisting of a multicomponent germanate glass microsphere containing bismuth as a gain medium is proposed and presented. The bismuth-doped germanate glass microspheres were fabricated from a glass fiber tip with no precipitation of the bismuth metal. Coupling with a fiber taper, the bismuth-doped microsphere single-mode laser was observed to lase at around 1305.8 nm using 808 nm excitation. The low threshold of absorbed pump power at 215 μWmakes this microlaser appealing for various applications, including tunable lasers for a range of purposes in telecommunication, biomedical, and optical information processing.

Durability Of Switching Behaviour After Outdoor Exposure For A Suspended Particle Device Switchable Glazing, Aritra Ghosh, Brian Norton

Articles

Adaptive suspended particle device (SPD) switchable glazing is promising for low energy building application. SPD glazing allows light passes through it in the presence of applied voltage and block light in the absence of power supply. In this work SPD glazing performance after 3 years of outdoor exposure was evaluated. It was found that contrast ratio of SPD glazing before and after exposures changed from 1:11 to 1:10. SPD glazing surface temperature for any transparency level varies between 13 and 40 °C under indoor and outdoor thermal exposure. SPD glazing's surface temperature variation occurs due to the incident radiation level, …