Applying Active Front End To Multilevel Inverter

The aim of this work was to make an active front end from IGBTs for a multilevel inverter. The work was done for Mosart II, a long term still ongoing Vacon Oyj project. The purpose of the AFE is to balance the DC-voltage and to put the returning power back to the grid instead of the breaking chopper and the capacitor. With a diode rectifier the bridge only allows power to pass in one direction and the switching times are not controllable. That means the rectifier always takes the highest phase and the phases are always conducting the same 120◦. With an AFE it is possible to actively change the rectifiers switching pattern. A diode bridge also generates much greater losses than an IGBT bridge. With these arguments it is rational to start researching the possibility of an AFE in a multilevel inverter.

Handover aspects in Unlicensed Mobile Access Technology

Fixed Mobile Convergence is the recent buzz in the field of telecommunication technology. Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) technology is a realistic implementation of Fixed Mobile Convergence. UMA involves communication between different types of networks. Handover is a very important issue in UMA. The study is an analysis of theoretical handover mechanism and practical test results. It includes a new proposal for handover performance test in UMA. It also provides an overview of basic handover operation on different scenarios in UMA. The practical test involves an experiment on handover performance test using network analyzers. The new proposal provides a different approach for an experimental setting on handover performance test without using network analyzers. The approach is not be implemented because of some technical problem in a network equipment in UMA. The analysis of the test results reveals that time of handover between UMA and Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) network is similar to time of handover between inter base station controller (BSC) handover in GSM networks. The new approach is simple and provides measurement at the end point communicating entities. The study gives a general understanding of handover operation, an analysis of handover performance in UMA and specifically provides a new approach useful for further study of handover in different real world environments and scenarios.

DFM(A)- aspects for a fixed electrical attenuator design

The goal of this paper is to describe a complete and extensive prototype design of a fixed electrical attenuator. The paper starts by describing the function and by giving some basic information about the attenuators. After a comprehensive description of the component, the facts of reverse engineering are discussed. The method itself is applied to ease manufacturing and design stages of this component. Information about materials and applied manufacturing technologies are also included in this report. By applying some specified DFMA-aspects the final design turned out to be a potential prototype device to be manufactured and for further analyse.

DFM(A)- aspects for an sma connector design

In this research, manufacturability analysis is made for an SMA connector. Analysis and aspects of applying virtual prototyping for an SMA connector design and manufacturing are also investigated. Special questionnaires for the component and machining are made in order to enable necessary information to ensure DFM(A) –aspects of products. The aspects of easy manufacturing for machining the SMA connector are collected. Material selection is discussed, and manufacturing stages of prototype manufacturing are presented. The main focus of this research is on prototype manufacturing, but also aspects considering volume production are discussed. A special purpose SMA connector is designed for printed circuit board edge mounting.

Process intensification: From optimised flow patterns to microprocess technology

This thesis is focused on process intensification. Several significant problems and applications of this theme are covered. Process intensification is nowadays one of the most popular trends in chemical engineering and attempts have been made to develop a general, systematic methodology for intensification. This seems, however, to be very difficult, because intensified processes are often based on creativity and novel ideas. Monolith reactors and microreactors are successful examples of process intensification. They are usually multichannel devices in which a proper feed technique is important for creating even fluid distribution into the channels. Two different feed techniques were tested for monoliths. In the first technique a shower method was implemented by means of perforated plates. The second technique was a dispersion method using static mixers. Both techniques offered stable operation and uniform fluid distribution. The dispersion method enabled a wider operational range in terms of liquid superficial velocity. Using dispersion method, a volumetric gas-liquid mass transfer coefficient of 2 s-1 was reached. Flow patterns play a significant role in terms of the mixing performance of micromixers. Although the geometry of a T-mixer is simple, channel configurations and dimensions had a clear effect on mixing efficiency. The flow in the microchannel was laminar, but the formation of vortices promoted mixing in micro T-mixers. The generation of vortices was dependent on the channel dimensions, configurations and flow rate. Microreactors offer a high ratio of surface area to volume. Surface forces and interactions between fluids and surfaces are, therefore, often dominant factors. In certain cases, the interactions can be effectively utilised. Different wetting properties of solid materials (PTFE and stainless steel) were applied in the separation of immiscible liquid phases. A micro-scale plate coalescer with hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces was used for the continuous separation of organic and aqueous phases. Complete phase separation occurred in less than 20 seconds, whereas the separation time by settling exceeded 30 min. Fluid flows can be also intensified in suitable conditions. By adding certain additives into turbulent fluid flow, it was possible to reduce friction (drag) by 40 %. Drag reduction decreases frictional pressure drop in pipelines which leads to remarkable energy savings and decreases the size or number of pumping facilities required, e.g., in oil transport pipes. Process intensification enables operation often under more optimal conditions. The consequent cost savings from reduced use of raw materials and reduced waste lead to greater economic benefits in processing.

Older consumers adopting information and communication technology: Evaluating opportunities for health care applications

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse older consumers' adoption of information and communication technology innovations, assess the effect of aging related characteristic, and evaluate older consumers' willingness to apply these technologies in health care services. This topic is considered important, because the population in Finland (as in other welfare states) is aging and thus offers a possibility for marketers, but on the other hand threatens society with increasing costs for healthcare. Innovation adoption has been under research from several aspects in both organizational and consumer research. In the consumer behaviour, several theories have been developed to predict consumer responses to innovation. The present dissertation carefully reviews previous research and takes a closer look at the theory of planned behaviour, technology acceptance model and diffusion of innovations perspective. It is here suggested that there is a possibility that these theories can be combined and complemented to predict the adoption of ICT innovations among aging consumers, taking the aging related personal characteristics into account. In fact, there are very few studies that have concentrated on aging consumers in the innovation research, and thus there was a clear indent for the present research. ICT in the health care context has been studied mainly from the organizational point of view. If the technology is thus applied for the communication between the individual end-user and service provider, the end-user cannot be shrugged off. The present dissertation uses empirical evidence from a survey targeted to 55-79 year old people from one city in Southern-Carelia. The empirical analysis of the research model was mainly based on structural equation modelling that has been found very useful on estimating causal relationships. The tested models were targeted to predict the adoption stage of personal computers and mobile phones, and the adoption intention of future health services that apply these devices for communication. The present dissertation succeeded in modelling the adoption behaviour of mobile phones and PCs as well as adoption intentions of future services. Perceived health status and three components behind it (depression, functional ability, and cognitive ability) were found to influence perception of technology anxiety. Better health leads to less anxiety. The effect of age was assessed as a control variable, in order to evaluate its effect compared to health characteristics. Age influenced technology perceptions, but to lesser extent compared to health. The analyses suggest that the major determinant for current technology adoption is perceived behavioural control, and additionally technology anxiety that indirectly inhibit adoption through perceived control. When focusing on future service intentions, the key issue is perceived usefulness that needs to be highlighted when new services are launched. Besides usefulness, the perception of online service reliability is important and affects the intentions indirectly. To conclude older consumers' adoption behaviour is influenced by health status and age, but also by the perceptions of anxiety and behavioural control. On the other hand, launching new types of health services for aging consumers is possible after the service is perceived reliable and useful.

Technology roadmap for new sales support and management system for crane manufacturing company

Sales configurators are essential tools for companies that offer complicated case specifically crafted products for customers. Most sophisticated of them are able to design an entire end product on the fly according to given constraints, calculate price for the offer and move the order into production. This thesis covers a sales configurator acquisition project in a large industrial company that offers cranes for its customers. The study spans the preliminary stages of a large-scale software purchase project starting from the specification of problem domain and ending up presenting the most viable software solution that fulfils the requirements for the new system. The project consists of mapping usage environment, use cases, and collecting requirements that are expected from the new system. The collected requirements involve fitting the new sales system into enterprise application infrastructure, mitigating the risks involved in the project and specifying new features to the application whilst preserving all of the admired features of the old sales system currently used in the company. The collected requirements were presented to a number of different sales software vendors who were asked to provide solution suggestions that would fulfil all the demands. All of the received solution proposals were exposed to an evaluation to determine the most feasible solutions, and the construction of evaluation criteria itself was a part of the study. The final outcome of this study is a short-list of the most feasible sales configurator solutions together with a description of how software purchase process in large enterprises work, and which aspects should be paid attention in large projects of similar kind.

Acceptance and Use of Information Technology among Nurses in Psychiatric Hospitals

Hoitajien informaatioteknologian hyväksyntä ja käyttö psykiatrisissa sairaaloissa Informaatioteknologian (IT) käyttö ei ole ollut kovin merkittävässä roolissa psykiatrisessa hoitotyössä, vaikka IT sovellusten on todettu vaikuttaneen radikaalisti terveydenhuollon palveluihin ja hoitohenkilökunnan työprosesseihin viime vuosina. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena on kuvata psykiatrisessa hoitotyössä toimivan hoitohenkilökunnan informaatioteknologian hyväksyntää ja käyttöä ja luoda suositus, jonka avulla on mahdollista tukea näitä asioita psykiatrisissa sairaaloissa. Tutkimus koostuu viidestä osatutkimuksesta, joissa on hyödynnetty sekä tilastollisia että laadullisia tutkimusmetodeja. Tutkimusaineistot on kerätty yhdeksän akuuttipsykiatrian osaston hoitohenkilökunnan keskuudessa vuosien 2003-2006 aikana. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) –teoriaa on hyödynnetty jäsentämään tutkimusprosessia sekä syventämään ymmärrystä saaduista tutkimustuloksista. Tutkimus osoitti kahdeksan keskeistä tekijää, jotka saattavat tukea psykiatrisessa sairaalassa toimivien hoitajien tietoteknologiasovellusten hyväksyntää ja hyödyntämistä, kun nämä tekijät otetaan huomioon uusia sovelluksia käyttöönotettaessa. Tekijät jakautuivat kahteen ryhmään; ulkoiset tekijät (resurssien suuntaaminen, yhteistyö, tietokonetaidot, IT koulutus, sovelluksen käyttöön liittyvä harjoittelu, potilas-hoitaja suhde), sekä käytön helppous ja sovelluksen käytettävyys (käytön ohjeistus, käytettävyyden varmistaminen). TAM teoria todettiin käyttökelpoiseksi tulosten tulkinnassa. Kehitetty suositus sisältää ne toimenpiteet, joiden avulla on mahdollista tukea sekä organisaation johdon että hoitohenkilökunnan sitoutumista ja tätä kautta varmistaa uuden sovelluksen hyväksyntä ja käyttö hoitotyössä. Suositusta on mahdollista hyödyntää käytännössä kun uusia tietojärjestelmiä implementoidaan käyttöön psykiatrisissa sairaaloissa.

Creating Global Competitive Advantage by Global Product Technology Transfers

Globalization is the trend which is realized in all areas in today’s business world. Pressure for cost reduction, changes in market situation and available scale economies have changed business environment more global than ever. To respond to new situation, companies are establishing global strategies. In this thesis, available global competitive advantages in electrical machine industry are studied in context of gaining them by global technology transfers. In theory part, establishing global strategy and competitive advantage is considered with connection to global sourcing and supply chain management. Additionally, market development in 21st century and its impact on global strategies is studied. In practice, global manufacturing is enabled by technology transfer projects. Smooth and fast project implementation enables faster and more flexible production ramp up. By starting the production available competitive advantages can be realized. In this thesis the present situation of technology transfer projects and the risks and advantages related to global manufacturing are analyzed. The analysis of implemented technology transfer projects indicates that project implementation is in good level. For further development of project execution 10 minor suggestions could be presented with two major ones: higher level standardization and development of product information model to support better global manufacturing.

New Distance Transforms for Gray Level Image Compression

This thesis deals with distance transforms which are a fundamental issue in image processing and computer vision. In this thesis, two new distance transforms for gray level images are presented. As a new application for distance transforms, they are applied to gray level image compression. The new distance transforms are both new extensions of the well known distance transform algorithm developed by Rosenfeld, Pfaltz and Lay. With some modification their algorithm which calculates a distance transform on binary images with a chosen kernel has been made to calculate a chessboard like distance transform with integer numbers (DTOCS) and a real value distance transform (EDTOCS) on gray level images. Both distance transforms, the DTOCS and EDTOCS, require only two passes over the graylevel image and are extremely simple to implement. Only two image buffers are needed: The original gray level image and the binary image which defines the region(s) of calculation. No other image buffers are needed even if more than one iteration round is performed. For large neighborhoods and complicated images the two pass distance algorithm has to be applied to the image more than once, typically 3 10 times. Different types of kernels can be adopted. It is important to notice that no other existing transform calculates the same kind of distance map as the DTOCS. All the other gray weighted distance function, GRAYMAT etc. algorithms find the minimum path joining two points by the smallest sum of gray levels or weighting the distance values directly by the gray levels in some manner. The DTOCS does not weight them that way. The DTOCS gives a weighted version of the chessboard distance map. The weights are not constant, but gray value differences of the original image. The difference between the DTOCS map and other distance transforms for gray level images is shown. The difference between the DTOCS and EDTOCS is that the EDTOCS calculates these gray level differences in a different way. It propagates local Euclidean distances inside a kernel. Analytical derivations of some results concerning the DTOCS and the EDTOCS are presented. Commonly distance transforms are used for feature extraction in pattern recognition and learning. Their use in image compression is very rare. This thesis introduces a new application area for distance transforms. Three new image compression algorithms based on the DTOCS and one based on the EDTOCS are presented. Control points, i.e. points that are considered fundamental for the reconstruction of the image, are selected from the gray level image using the DTOCS and the EDTOCS. The first group of methods select the maximas of the distance image to new control points and the second group of methods compare the DTOCS distance to binary image chessboard distance. The effect of applying threshold masks of different sizes along the threshold boundaries is studied. The time complexity of the compression algorithms is analyzed both analytically and experimentally. It is shown that the time complexity of the algorithms is independent of the number of control points, i.e. the compression ratio. Also a new morphological image decompression scheme is presented, the 8 kernels' method. Several decompressed images are presented. The best results are obtained using the Delaunay triangulation. The obtained image quality equals that of the DCT images with a 4 x 4

Design Process of Packaging Laboratory at Lappeenranta University of Technology

The layout design process of the packaging laboratory at Lappeenranta University of Technology is documented in this thesis. Layout planning methods are discussed in general. The systematic layout planning procedure is presented in more detail as it is utilised in the case of layout planning of the packaging laboratory. General demands for research laboratory are discussed both from the machine and product perspectives. The possibilities for commercial food processing in the laboratory are discussed from the point of view of foodstuff processing regulations and hygiene demands. The layout planning process is documented and different layout possibilities are presented. Different layout drafts are evaluated and one layout draft is developed to be the final layout of the packaging laboratory. Guideline for technical planning and implementation based on the final layout is given

Sustainability of palm oil production and opportunities for Finnish technology and know-how transfer

The global demand for palm oil is growing, thus prompting an increase in the global production particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia. Such increasing demand for palm oil is due to palm oil’s relatively cheap price and versatile advantage both in edible and non-edible applications. Along with the increasing demand for palm oil, particularly for the production of biofuel, is a heated debate on its sustainability. Ecological degradation, climate change and social issues are among the main sustainability issues pressing the whole palm oil industry today. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects fulfilling the imperatives of the Kyoto Protocol are starting to gain momentum in Malaysia as reflected by the increasing registration of CDM projects in the palm oil mills. Most CDM projects in palm oil mills are on waste-to-energy, cocomposting, and methane recovery with the latter being the most common. The study on greenhouse gases (GHG) in the milling process points that biogas collection and energy utilisation has the greatest positive effect on GHG balance. On the other hand, empty fruit bunches (EFB) end-use as energy and high energy efficiency of the mill have the least effect on GHG balance of the mill. The range of direct GHG emissions from the palm oil mill is from 2.5 to 27 gCO2e/MJCPO, while the range of GHG emissions with all indirect and avoided emissions included is from -9 to 29 gCO2e/MJCPO. Comparing this GHG balance result with that of the EU RES-Directive suggests a further check on the values and emissions consideration of the latter.

On the effects of welding parameters on weld quality of plasma arc keyhole welding of structural steels

The possibility and the usefulness of applying plasma keyhole welding to structural steels with different compositions and material thicknesses, and in various welding positions has been examinated. Single pass butt welding with I groove in flat, horizontal vertical and vertical positions and root welding with V , Y and U grooves of thick plate material in flat position have been studied and the welds with high quality has been obtained. The technological conditions for successful welding are presented. The single and interactive effects of welding parameters on weld quality, especially on surface weld defects, geometrical form errors, internal defects and mechanical properties (strength, ductility, impact toughness, hardness and bendability) of weld joint, are presented. Welding parameter combinations providing the best quality welds are also presented.