Numerical Simulation of Two-Part Underwater Towing System

The motion instability is an important issue that occurs during the operation of towed underwater vehicles (TUV), which considerably affects the accuracy of high precision acoustic instrumentations housed inside the same. Out of the various parameters responsible for this, the disturbances from the tow-ship are the most significant one. The present study focus on the motion dynamics of an underwater towing system with ship induced disturbances as the input. The study focus on an innovative system called two-part towing. The methodology involves numerical modeling of the tow system, which consists of modeling of the tow-cables and vehicles formulation. Previous study in this direction used a segmental approach for the modeling of the cable. Even though, the model was successful in predicting the heave response of the tow-body, instabilities were observed in the numerical solution. The present study devises a simple approach called lumped mass spring model (LMSM) for the cable formulation. In this work, the traditional LMSM has been modified in two ways. First, by implementing advanced time integration procedures and secondly, use of a modified beam model which uses only translational degrees of freedoms for solving beam equation. A number of time integration procedures, such as Euler, Houbolt, Newmark and HHT-α were implemented in the traditional LMSM and the strength and weakness of each scheme were numerically estimated. In most of the previous studies, hydrodynamic forces acting on the tow-system such as drag and lift etc. are approximated as analytical expression of velocities. This approach restricts these models to use simple cylindrical shaped towed bodies and may not be applicable modern tow systems which are diversed in shape and complexity. Hence, this particular study, hydrodynamic parameters such as drag and lift of the tow-system are estimated using CFD techniques. To achieve this, a RANS based CFD code has been developed. Further, a new convection interpolation scheme for CFD simulation, called BNCUS, which is blend of cell based and node based formulation, was proposed in the study and numerically tested. To account for the fact that simulation takes considerable time in solving fluid dynamic equations, a dedicated parallel computing setup has been developed. Two types of computational parallelisms are explored in the current study, viz; the model for shared memory processors and distributed memory processors. In the present study, shared memory model was used for structural dynamic analysis of towing system, distributed memory one was devised in solving fluid dynamic equations.

k-NN based On-Line Handwritten Character recognition system

On-line handwriting recognition has been a frontier area of research for the last few decades under the purview of pattern recognition. Word processing turns to be a vexing experience even if it is with the assistance of an alphanumeric keyboard in Indian languages. A natural solution for this problem is offered through online character recognition. There is abundant literature on the handwriting recognition of western, Chinese and Japanese scripts, but there are very few related to the recognition of Indic script such as Malayalam. This paper presents an efficient Online Handwritten character Recognition System for Malayalam Characters (OHR-M) using K-NN algorithm. It would help in recognizing Malayalam text entered using pen-like devices. A novel feature extraction method, a combination of time domain features and dynamic representation of writing direction along with its curvature is used for recognizing Malayalam characters. This writer independent system gives an excellent accuracy of 98.125% with recognition time of 15-30 milliseconds

FEM based Virtual Prototyping and Design of Third Harmonic Excitation System for Low Voltage Brushless Alternators

Salient pole brushless alternators coupled to IC engines are extensively used as stand-by power supply units for meeting in- dustrial power demands. Design of such generators demands high power to weight ratio, high e ciency and low cost per KVA out- put. Moreover, the performance characteristics of such machines like voltage regulation and short circuit ratio (SCR) are critical when these machines are put into parallel operation and alterna- tors for critical applications like defence and aerospace demand very low harmonic content in the output voltage. While designing such alternators, accurate prediction of machine characteristics, including total harmonic distortion (THD) is essential to mini- mize development cost and time. Total harmonic distortion in the output voltage of alternators should be as low as possible especially when powering very sophis- ticated and critical applications. The output voltage waveform of a practical AC generator is replica of the space distribution of the ux density in the air gap and several factors such as shape of the rotor pole face, core saturation, slotting and style of coil disposition make the realization of a sinusoidal air gap ux wave impossible. These ux harmonics introduce undesirable e ects on the alternator performance like high neutral current due to triplen harmonics, voltage distortion, noise, vibration, excessive heating and also extra losses resulting in poor e ciency, which in turn necessitate de-rating of the machine especially when connected to non-linear loads. As an important control unit of brushless alternator, the excitation system and its dynamic performance has a direct impact on alternator's stability and reliability. The thesis explores design and implementation of an excitation i system utilizing third harmonic ux in the air gap of brushless al- ternators, using an additional auxiliary winding, wound for 1=3rd pole pitch, embedded into the stator slots and electrically iso- lated from the main winding. In the third harmonic excitation system, the combined e ect of two auxiliary windings, one with 2=3rd pitch and another third harmonic winding with 1=3rd pitch, are used to ensure good voltage regulation without an electronic automatic voltage regulator (AVR) and also reduces the total harmonic content in the output voltage, cost e ectively. The design of the third harmonic winding by analytic methods demands accurate calculation of third harmonic ux density in the air gap of the machine. However, precise estimation of the amplitude of third harmonic ux in the air gap of a machine by conventional design procedures is di cult due to complex geome- try of the machine and non-linear characteristics of the magnetic materials. As such, prediction of the eld parameters by conven- tional design methods is unreliable and hence virtual prototyping of the machine is done to enable accurate design of the third har- monic excitation system. In the design and development cycle of electrical machines, it is recognized that the use of analytical and experimental methods followed by expensive and in exible prototyping is time consum- ing and no longer cost e ective. Due to advancements in com- putational capabilities over recent years, nite element method (FEM) based virtual prototyping has become an attractive al- ternative to well established semi-analytical and empirical design methods as well as to the still popular trial and error approach followed by the costly and time consuming prototyping. Hence, by virtually prototyping the alternator using FEM, the important performance characteristics of the machine are predicted. Design of third harmonic excitation system is done with the help of results obtained from virtual prototype of the machine. Third harmonic excitation (THE) system is implemented in a 45 KVA ii experimental machine and experiments are conducted to validate the simulation results. Simulation and experimental results show that by utilizing third harmonic ux in the air gap of the ma- chine for excitation purposes during loaded conditions, triplen harmonic content in the output phase voltage is signi cantly re- duced. The prototype machine with third harmonic excitation system designed and developed based on FEM analysis proved to be economical due to its simplicity and has the added advan- tage of reduced harmonics in the output phase voltage.