Project neptune: Improved operation of water distribution networks

Water service providers (WSPs) in the UK have statutory obligations to supply drinking water to all customers that complies with increasingly stringent water quality regulations and minimum flow and pressure criteria. At the same time, the industry is required by regulators and investors to demonstrate increasing operational efficiency and to meet a wide range of performance criteria that are expected to improve year-on-year. Most WSPs have an ideal for improving the operation of their water supply systems based on increased knowledge and understanding of their assets and a shift to proactive management followed by steadily increasing degrees of system monitoring, automation and optimisation. The fundamental mission is, however, to ensure security of supply, with no interruptions and water quality of the highest standard at the tap. Unfortunately, advanced technologies required to fully understand, manage and automate water supply system operation either do not yet exist, are only partially evolved, or have not yet been reliably proven for live water distribution systems. It is this deficiency that the project NEPTUNE seeks to address by carrying out research into 3 main areas; these are: data and knowledge management; pressure management (including energy management); and the associated complex decision support systems on which to base interventions. The 3-year project started in April of 2007 and has already resulted in a number of research findings under the three main research priority areas (RPA). The paper summarises in greater detail the overall project objectives, the RPA activities and the areas of research innovation that are being undertaken in this major, UK collaborative study. Copyright 2009 ASCE.

Porous materials for thermal management under extreme conditions

A brief analysis is presented of how heat transfer takes place in porous materials of various types. The emphasis is on materials able to withstand extremes of temperature, gas pressure, irradiation, etc., i.e. metals and ceramics, rather than polymers. A primary aim is commonly to maximize either the thermal resistance (i.e. provide insulation) or the rate of thermal equilibration between the material and a fluid passing through it (i.e. to facilitate heat exchange). The main structural characteristics concern porosity (void content), anisotropy, pore connectivity and scale. The effect of scale is complex, since the permeability decreases as the structure is refined, but the interfacial area for fluid-solid heat exchange is, thereby, raised. The durability of the pore structure may also be an issue, with a possible disadvantage of finer scale structures being poor microstructural stability under service conditions. Finally, good mechanical properties may be required, since the development of thermal gradients, high fluid fluxes, etc. can generate substantial levels of stress. There are, thus, some complex interplays between service conditions, pore architecture/scale, fluid permeation characteristics, convective heat flow, thermal conduction and radiative heat transfer. Such interplays are illustrated with reference to three examples: (i) a thermal barrier coating in a gas turbine engine; (ii) a Space Shuttle tile; and (iii) a Stirling engine heat exchanger. Highly porous, permeable materials are often made by bonding fibres together into a network structure and much of the analysis presented here is oriented towards such materials. © 2005 The Royal Society.

Improving turbomachinery design process management

It is widely acknowledged that a company's ability to aquire market share, and hence its profitability, is very closely linked to the speed with which it can produce a new design. Indeed, a study by the U.K. Department of Trade and Industry has shown that the critical factor which determines profitability is the timely delivery of the new product. Late entry to market or high production costs dramatically reduce profits whilst an overrun on development cost has little significant effect. This paper describes a method which aims to assist the designer in producing higher performance turbomachinery designs more quickly by accelerating the process by which they are produced. The adopted approach combines an enhanced version of the 'Signposting' design process management methodology with industry-standard analysis codes and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). It has been specifically configured to enable process-wide iteration, near instantaneous generation of guidance data for the designer and fully automatic data handling. A successful laboratory experiment based on the design of a large High Pressure Steam Turbine is described and this leads on to current work which incorporates the extension of the proven concept to a full industrial application for the design of Aeroengine Compressors with Rolls-Royce plc.

Top Management Involvement in New Product Development: A Review and Synthesis

Established literature on new product development (NPD) management recognizes top management involvement (TMI) as one of the most critical success factors. With increasing pressure to sustain competitive advantage and growth, NPD activities remain the focus of close interest from top management in many organizations. TMI in the NPD domain is receiving increasing academic attention. Despite its criticality, there is no systematic review of the existing literature to inform and stimulate researchers in the field for further investigation. This paper introduces the current state of literature on TMI in NPD, synthesizes important findings, and identifies the gaps and deficiencies in this research stream. The contents of the selected articles, which investigated TMI in NPD, are analyzed based on the type of the study, level of analysis, research methodology, operationalization of TMI, and main findings. Additionally, other studies, which did not directly investigate TMI and support in NPD, but were sufficiently related, are briefly summarized. As a result of this detailed literature review, it can be stated that both exploratory and relational studies provide rich evidence on the critical role of top management in NPD. However, the identified gaps and deficiencies in this research stream call for a better theoretical understanding and well-defined constructs of TMI in the NPD domain for different levels of analysis for future studies.

An experimental study on engine dynamics model based in-cylinder pressure estimation

The information provided by the in-cylinder pressure signal is of great importance for modern engine management systems. The obtained information is implemented to improve the control and diagnostics of the combustion process in order to meet the stringent emission regulations and to improve vehicle reliability and drivability. The work presented in this paper covers the experimental study and proposes a comprehensive and practical solution for the estimation of the in-cylinder pressure from the crankshaft speed fluctuation. Also, the paper emphasizes the feasibility and practicality aspects of the estimation techniques, for the real-time online application. In this study an engine dynamics model based estimation method is proposed. A discrete-time transformed form of a rigid-body crankshaft dynamics model is constructed based on the kinetic energy theorem, as the basis expression for total torque estimation. The major difficulties, including load torque estimation and separation of pressure profile from adjacent-firing cylinders, are addressed in this work and solutions to each problem are given respectively. The experimental results conducted on a multi-cylinder diesel engine have shown that the proposed method successfully estimate a more accurate cylinder pressure over a wider range of crankshaft angles. Copyright © 2012 SAE International.