Optimal design of piezolaminated structures using B-spline strip finite element models

A package of B-spline finite strip models is developed for the linear analysis of piezolaminated plates and shells. This package is associated to a global optimization technique in order to enhance the performance of these types of structures, subjected to various types of objective functions and/or constraints, with discrete and continuous design variables. The models considered are based on a higher-order displacement field and one can apply them to the static, free vibration and buckling analyses of laminated adaptive structures with arbitrary lay-ups, loading and boundary conditions. Genetic algorithms, with either binary or floating point encoding of design variables, were considered to find optimal locations of piezoelectric actuators as well as to determine the best voltages applied to them in order to obtain a desired structure shape. These models provide an overall economy of computing effort for static and vibration problems.

A Flexible Architecture for the Computation of Direct and Inverse Transforms in H.264/AVC Video Codecs

A new high throughput and scalable architecture for unified transform coding in H.264/AVC is proposed in this paper. Such flexible structure is capable of computing all the 4x4 and 2x2 transforms for Ultra High Definition Video (UHDV) applications (4320x7680@ 30fps) in real-time and with low hardware cost. These significantly high performance levels were proven with the implementation of several different configurations of the proposed structure using both FPGA and ASIC 90 nm technologies. In addition, such experimental evaluation also demonstrated the high area efficiency of theproposed architecture, which in terms of Data Throughput per Unit of Area (DTUA) is at least 1.5 times more efficient than its more prominent related designs(1).

Study on influence of the new CoDeSys V3.0 on the existing CoDeSys discipline of the Mind8 Engineering Center

CoDeSys "Controller Development Systems" is a development environment for programming in the area of automation controllers. It is an open source solution completely in line with the international industrial standard IEC 61131-3. All five programming languages for application programming as defined in IEC 61131-3 are available in the development environment. These features give professionals greater flexibility with regard to programming and allow control engineers have the ability to program for many different applications in the languages in which they feel most comfortable. Over 200 manufacturers of devices from different industrial sectors offer intelligent automation devices with a CoDeSys programming interface. In 2006, version 3 was released with new updates and tools. One of the great innovations of the new version of CoDeSys is object oriented programming. Object oriented programming (OOP) offers great advantages to the user for example when wanting to reuse existing parts of the application or when working on one application with several developers. For this reuse can be prepared a source code with several well known parts and this is automatically generated where necessary in a project, users can improve then the time/cost/quality management. Until now in version 2 it was necessary to have hardware interface called “Eni-Server” to have access to the generated XML code. Another of the novelties of the new version is a tool called Export PLCopenXML. This tool makes it possible to export the open XML code without the need of specific hardware. This type of code has own requisites to be able to comply with the standard described above. With XML code and with the knowledge how it works it is possible to do component-oriented development of machines with modular programming in an easy way. Eplan Engineering Center (EEC) is a software tool developed by Mind8 GmbH & Co. KG that allows configuring and generating automation projects. Therefore it uses modules of PLC code. The EEC already has a library to generate code for CoDeSys version 2. For version 3 and the constant innovation of drivers by manufacturers, it is necessary to implement a new library in this software. Therefore it is important to study the XML export to be then able to design any type of machine. The purpose of this master thesis is to study the new version of the CoDeSys XML taking into account all aspects and impact on the existing CoDeSys V2 models and libraries in the company Harro Höfliger Verpackungsmaschinen GmbH. For achieve this goal a small sample named “Traffic light” in CoDeSys version 2 will be done and then, using the tools of the new version it there will be a project with version 3 and also the EEC implementation for the automatically generated code.

Risk factors for metabolic bone disease in Crohn's disease patients

Background: The aim was to evaluate the presence of metabolic bone disease (MBD) in patients with Crohn’s disease (CD) and to identify potential etiologic factors. Methods: The case–control study included 99 patients with CD and 56 controls with a similar age and gender distribution. Both groups had dual-energy x-ray absorptionmetry and a nutritional evaluation. Single nucleotide polymorphisms at the IL1, TNF-a, LTa, and IL-6 genes were analyzed in patients only. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software. Results: The prevalence of MBD was significantly higher in patients (P ¼ 0.006). CD patients with osteoporosis were older (P < 0.005), small bowel involvement and surgical resections were more frequent (P < 0.005), they more often exhibited a penetrating or stricturing phenotype (P < 0.05), duration of disease over 15 years (P < 0.005), and body mass index (BMI) under 18.5 kg/m2 (P < 0.01) were more often found. No association was found with steroid use. Patients with a Z-score < 2.0 more frequently had chronic active disease (P < 0.05). With regard to diet, low vitamin K intake was more frequent (P ¼ 0.03) and intake of total, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fat was higher in patients with Z-score < 2.0 (P < 0.05). With respect to genetics, carriage of the polymorphic allele for LTa252 A/G was associated with a higher risk of osteoporosis (P ¼ 0.02). Regression analysis showed that age over 40 years, chronic active disease, and previous colonic resections were independently associated with the risk of developing MBD. Conclusions: The prevalence of MBD was significantly higher in CD patients. Besides the usual risk factors, we observed that factors related to chronic active and long-lasting disease increased the risk of MBD.

Comparison of inverse planning systems based on biological or physical factors: Pinnacle®, Corvus® and Monaco®

Radiotherapy (RT) is one of the most important approaches in the treatment of cancer and its performance can be improved in three different ways: through the optimization of the dose distribution, by the use of different irradiation techniques or through the study of radiobiological initiatives. The first is purely physical because is related to the physical dose distributiuon. The others are purely radiobiological because they increase the differential effect between the tumour and the health tissues. The Treatment Planning Systems (TPS) are used in RT to create dose distributions with the purpose to maximize the tumoral control and minimize the complications in the healthy tissues. The inverse planning uses dose optimization techniques that satisfy the criteria specified by the user, regarding the target and the organs at risk (OAR’s). The dose optimization is possible through the analysis of dose-volume histograms (DVH) and with the use of computed tomography, magnetic resonance and other digital image techniques.

A remote virtual experiment in mechanical engineering

Conferência: 2nd Experiment at International Conference (Exp at)- Univ Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal - Sep 18-20, 2013

Inverse dynamics based predictive control for unified power flow controllers without DC bus

This paper presents a new predictive digital control method applied to Matrix Converters (MC) operating as Unified Power Flow Controllers (UPFC). This control method, based on the inverse dynamics model equations of the MC operating as UPFC, just needs to compute the optimal control vector once in each control cycle, in contrast to direct dynamics predictive methods that needs 27 vector calculations. The theoretical principles of the inverse dynamics power flow predictive control of the MC based UPFC with input filter are established. The proposed inverse dynamics predictive power control method is tested using Matlab/Simulink Power Systems toolbox and the obtained results show that the designed power controllers guarantees decoupled active and reactive power control, zero error tracking, fast response times and an overall good dynamic and steady-state response.

A comprehensive high-throughput FTIR spectroscopy-based method for evaluating the transfection event: estimating the transfection efficiency and extracting associated metabolic responses

Reporter genes are routinely used in every laboratory for molecular and cellular biology for studying heterologous gene expression and general cellular biological mechanisms, such as transfection processes. Although well characterized and broadly implemented, reporter genes present serious limitations, either by involving time-consuming procedures or by presenting possible side effects on the expression of the heterologous gene or even in the general cellular metabolism. Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-MIR) spectroscopy was evaluated to simultaneously analyze in a rapid (minutes) and high-throughput mode (using 96-wells microplates), the transfection efficiency, and the effect of the transfection process on the host cell biochemical composition and metabolism. Semi-adherent HEK and adherent AGS cell lines, transfected with the plasmid pVAX-GFP using Lipofectamine, were used as model systems. Good partial least squares (PLS) models were built to estimate the transfection efficiency, either considering each cell line independently (R 2 ≥ 0.92; RMSECV ≤ 2 %) or simultaneously considering both cell lines (R 2 = 0.90; RMSECV = 2 %). Additionally, the effect of the transfection process on the HEK cell biochemical and metabolic features could be evaluated directly from the FT-IR spectra. Due to the high sensitivity of the technique, it was also possible to discriminate the effect of the transfection process from the transfection reagent on KEK cells, e.g., by the analysis of spectral biomarkers and biochemical and metabolic features. The present results are far beyond what any reporter gene assay or other specific probe can offer for these purposes.

The semigroup ring of a restriction semigroup with an inverse skeleton

In this paper we investigate some classes of semigroup rings with respect to (semi)primeness and (semi)primitivity. We do so by extending the techniques developed by Munn in (Proc R Soc Edinbur Sect A 107:175-196, 1987) and (Proc R Soc Edinbur Sect A 115:109-117, 1990) for the study of semigroup rings of inverse semigroups. Restriction, weakly ample and ample semigroups are considered.