Aspects on Process Engineering in the Finnish Pulp and Paper Industry : Thesis for the Degree of Licentiate in Science of Technology

Process development will be largely driven by the main equipment suppliers. The reason for this development is their ambition to supply complete plants or process systems instead of single pieces of equipment. The pulp and paper companies' interest lies in product development, as their main goal is to create winning brands and effective brand management. Design engineering companies will find their niche in detail engineering based on approved process solutions. Their development work will focus on increasing the efficiency of engineering work. Process design is a content-producing profession, which requires certain special characteristics: creativity, carefulness, the ability to work as a member of a design team according to time schedules and fluency in oral as well as written presentation. In the future, process engineers will increasingly need knowledge of chemistry as well as information and automation technology. Process engineering tools are developing rapidly. At the moment, these tools are good enough for static sizing and balancing, but dynamic simulation tools are not yet good enough for the complicated chemical reactions of pulp and paper chemistry. Dynamic simulation and virtual mill models are used as tools for training the operators. Computational fluid dynamics will certainlygain ground in process design.

Cam-tekniikan opetusohjelma

Tässä työssä keskitytään rakentamaan opetusohjelma, jonka avulla pyritään kehittämään tietokoneavusteisten valmistusjärjestelmien käyttöä puutuotteiden valmistuksessa. Tavoitteena on cam-teknologian opetustyön ja oppimistapahtuman selkeyttäminen sekä järjestelmän opetuksessa tarvittavan koulutusaineiston luominen. Suunnittelussa pyritään vastaamaan puutuoteteollisuuden tämän hetken tarpeisiin, jotta koulutettavat pystyisivät toimimaan nykyaikaisten cam-järjestelmien parissa. Opetusohjelma sisältää opetuskokonaisuuksia cam-järjestelmän rakenteesta, sen toteuttamisesta ja käytöstä. Lisäksi työssä sovelletaan toteutettua opetusohjelmaa erilaisten kohderyhmien opetussuunnitelmissa ja tutkitaan verkkopohjaisen oppimisympäristön luonnetta ja sen mahdollista käyttöä cam-tekniikan opetuksessa.

Monikappalesysteemin esikäsittelijä kaupallisessa ympäristössä

Työn tavoitteena oli tehdä monikappalesysteemin esikäsittelijä, joka toimii CAD-ohjelmiston yhteydessä. CAD-ohjelmistoksi valittiin SolidWorks-ohjelmisto. Esikäsittelijästä tehtiin yhteensopiva monikappaledynamiikan simulointi ohjelmiston kanssa, joka on kehitetty Lappeenrannan teknillisessä yliopistossa. Aikaansaadun esikäsittelijän avulla pystytään tuottamaan monikappaledynamiikan simuloinnissa tarvittavat lähtötiedot. Lähtötiedot esikäsittelijä laskee käyttäjän tekemästä kokoonpanokuvasta ja käyttäjän antamista tiedoista. Esikäsittelijän toiminta verifioitiin kaupallisin simulointiohjelmisto ADAMS:n avulla. Esikäsittelijän todettiin toimivan luotettavasti ja täyttävän sille asetetut vaatimukset. Lisäksi esikäsittelijän todettiin nopeuttavan huomattavasti simulointimallien tekoa.

Trolley R&D project for a small portal log yard crane

This master’s thesis was done for Andritz Inc. Atlanta Georgia. The purpose of the thesis was to develop a new trolley for a small portal log yard crane. In the beginning of the thesis the basic principles of the systematic design processes have been described, along which the design work of the trolley has proceeded. The second literature part consists of the design and dimensioning of the welded steel structures under fatigue loading. The design work of the trolley consists of the engineering and the selection of the mechanical components and the design of the load carrying structure for the trolley. The realization of the steel structure of the trolley is based on the fatigue and static dimensioning. The fatigue dimensioning is grounded in the life expectations estimated for the trolley and the static dimensioning is based on the CMAA guidelines. The computer aided element method was utilized in the design of the steel structure. The effective notch method and the hot spot method were used in the fatigue calculations. The trolley structure was carried out by using the sheet metal parts in order to manufacture the structure as effective and low cost way as possible. The corner stone of the dimensioning of the trolley structure was the utilization of the open profiles made of welded or cold formed sheet metals, which provide better weldability, weld inspection, access for repairs and corrosion protection. As a last part of the thesis a new trolley traveling system was developed. The distribution of the wheel loads of the trolley bogies on the main girder was also studied, which led to an innovative suspension arrangement between the trolley leg and the bogie. The new bogie solution increases the service life of the main girder of the crane and improves the stability of the bogies. The outcome of the thesis is an excellent trolley structure from the weight and the service life point of view.

Design and Analysis of Forward Error Control Coding and Signaling for Guaranteeing QoS in Wireless Broadcast Systems

Broadcasting systems are networks where the transmission is received by several terminals. Generally broadcast receivers are passive devices in the network, meaning that they do not interact with the transmitter. Providing a certain Quality of Service (QoS) for the receivers in heterogeneous reception environment with no feedback is not an easy task. Forward error control coding can be used for protection against transmission errors to enhance the QoS for broadcast services. For good performance in terrestrial wireless networks, diversity should be utilized. The diversity is utilized by application of interleaving together with the forward error correction codes. In this dissertation the design and analysis of forward error control and control signalling for providing QoS in wireless broadcasting systems are studied. Control signaling is used in broadcasting networks to give the receiver necessary information on how to connect to the network itself and how to receive the services that are being transmitted. Usually control signalling is considered to be transmitted through a dedicated path in the systems. Therefore, the relationship of the signaling and service data paths should be considered early in the design phase. Modeling and simulations are used in the case studies of this dissertation to study this relationship. This dissertation begins with a survey on the broadcasting environment and mechanisms for providing QoS therein. Then case studies present analysis and design of such mechanisms in real systems. The mechanisms for providing QoS considering signaling and service data paths and their relationship at the DVB-H link layer are analyzed as the first case study. In particular the performance of different service data decoding mechanisms and optimal signaling transmission parameter selection are presented. The second case study investigates the design of signaling and service data paths for the more modern DVB-T2 physical layer. Furthermore, by comparing the performances of the signaling and service data paths by simulations, configuration guidelines for the DVB-T2 physical layer signaling are given. The presented guidelines can prove useful when configuring DVB-T2 transmission networks. Finally, recommendations for the design of data and signalling paths are given based on findings from the case studies. The requirements for the signaling design should be derived from the requirements for the main services. Generally, these requirements for signaling should be more demanding as the signaling is the enabler for service reception.

Bayesian methods for estimation, optimization and experimental design

Mathematical models often contain parameters that need to be calibrated from measured data. The emergence of efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods has made the Bayesian approach a standard tool in quantifying the uncertainty in the parameters. With MCMC, the parameter estimation problem can be solved in a fully statistical manner, and the whole distribution of the parameters can be explored, instead of obtaining point estimates and using, e.g., Gaussian approximations. In this thesis, MCMC methods are applied to parameter estimation problems in chemical reaction engineering, population ecology, and climate modeling. Motivated by the climate model experiments, the methods are developed further to make them more suitable for problems where the model is computationally intensive. After the parameters are estimated, one can start to use the model for various tasks. Two such tasks are studied in this thesis: optimal design of experiments, where the task is to design the next measurements so that the parameter uncertainty is minimized, and model-based optimization, where a model-based quantity, such as the product yield in a chemical reaction model, is optimized. In this thesis, novel ways to perform these tasks are developed, based on the output of MCMC parameter estimation. A separate topic is dynamical state estimation, where the task is to estimate the dynamically changing model state, instead of static parameters. For example, in numerical weather prediction, an estimate of the state of the atmosphere must constantly be updated based on the recently obtained measurements. In this thesis, a novel hybrid state estimation method is developed, which combines elements from deterministic and random sampling methods.

Simulation of new p-type pixel strip detector with enhanced multiplication effect

This Master’s Thesis is dedicated to the simulation of new p-type pixel strip detector with enhanced multiplication effect. It is done for high-energy physics experiments upgrade such as Super Large Hadron Collider especially for Compact Muon Solenoid particle track silicon detectors. These detectors are used in very harsh radiation environment and should have good radiation hardness. The device engineering technology for developing more radiation hard particle detectors is used for minimizing the radiation degradation. New detector structure with enhanced multiplication effect is proposed in this work. There are studies of electric field and electric charge distribution of conventional and new p-type detector under reverse voltage bias and irradiation. Finally, the dependence of the anode current from the applied cathode reverse voltage bias under irradiation is obtained in this Thesis. For simulation Silvaco Technology Computer Aided Design software was used. Athena was used for creation of doping profiles and device structures and Atlas was used for getting electrical characteristics of the studied devices. The program codes for this software are represented in Appendixes.

Design and validation of stateful composite RESTful web services

A web service is a software system that provides a machine-processable interface to the other machines over the network using different Internet protocols. They are being increasingly used in the industry in order to automate different tasks and offer services to a wider audience. The REST architectural style aims at producing scalable and extensible web services using technologies that play well with the existing tools and infrastructure of the web. It provides a uniform set of operation that can be used to invoke a CRUD interface (create, retrieve, update and delete) of a web service. The stateless behavior of the service interface requires that every request to a resource is independent of the previous ones facilitating scalability. Automated systems, e.g., hotel reservation systems, provide advanced scenarios for stateful services that require a certain sequence of requests that must be followed in order to fulfill the service goals. Designing and developing such services for advanced scenarios with REST constraints require rigorous approaches that are capable of creating web services that can be trusted for their behavior. Systems that can be trusted for their behavior can be termed as dependable systems. This thesis presents an integrated design, analysis and validation approach that facilitates the service developer to create dependable and stateful REST web services. The main contribution of this thesis is that we provide a novel model-driven methodology to design behavioral REST web service interfaces and their compositions. The behavioral interfaces provide information on what methods can be invoked on a service and the pre- and post-conditions of these methods. The methodology uses Unified Modeling Language (UML), as the modeling language, which has a wide user base and has mature tools that are continuously evolving. We have used UML class diagram and UML state machine diagram with additional design constraints to provide resource and behavioral models, respectively, for designing REST web service interfaces. These service design models serve as a specification document and the information presented in them have manifold applications. The service design models also contain information about the time and domain requirements of the service that can help in requirement traceability which is an important part of our approach. Requirement traceability helps in capturing faults in the design models and other elements of software development environment by tracing back and forth the unfulfilled requirements of the service. The information about service actors is also included in the design models which is required for authenticating the service requests by authorized actors since not all types of users have access to all the resources. In addition, following our design approach, the service developer can ensure that the designed web service interfaces will be REST compliant. The second contribution of this thesis is consistency analysis of the behavioral REST interfaces. To overcome the inconsistency problem and design errors in our service models, we have used semantic technologies. The REST interfaces are represented in web ontology language, OWL2, that can be part of the semantic web. These interfaces are used with OWL 2 reasoners to check unsatisfiable concepts which result in implementations that fail. This work is fully automated thanks to the implemented translation tool and the existing OWL 2 reasoners. The third contribution of this thesis is the verification and validation of REST web services. We have used model checking techniques with UPPAAL model checker for this purpose. The timed automata of UML based service design models are generated with our transformation tool that are verified for their basic characteristics like deadlock freedom, liveness, reachability and safety. The implementation of a web service is tested using a black-box testing approach. Test cases are generated from the UPPAAL timed automata and using the online testing tool, UPPAAL TRON, the service implementation is validated at runtime against its specifications. Requirement traceability is also addressed in our validation approach with which we can see what service goals are met and trace back the unfulfilled service goals to detect the faults in the design models. A final contribution of the thesis is an implementation of behavioral REST interfaces and service monitors from the service design models. The partial code generation tool creates code skeletons of REST web services with method pre and post-conditions. The preconditions of methods constrain the user to invoke the stateful REST service under the right conditions and the post condition constraint the service developer to implement the right functionality. The details of the methods can be manually inserted by the developer as required. We do not target complete automation because we focus only on the interface aspects of the web service. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated with a pedagogical example of a hotel room booking service and a relatively complex worked example of holiday booking service taken from the industrial context. The former example presents a simple explanation of the approach and the later worked example shows how stateful and timed web services offering complex scenarios and involving other web services can be constructed using our approach.