Controle preditivo robusto baseado em desigualdades matriciais lineares aplicado a um sistema de tanques acoplados

This work deals with an on-line control strategy based on Robust Model Predictive Control (RMPC) technique applied in a real coupled tanks system. This process consists of two coupled tanks and a pump to feed the liquid to the system. The control objective (regulator problem) is to keep the tanks levels in the considered operation point even in the presence of disturbance. The RMPC is a technique that allows explicit incorporation of the plant uncertainty in the problem formulation. The goal is to design, at each time step, a state-feedback control law that minimizes a 'worst-case' infinite horizon objective function, subject to constraint in the control. The existence of a feedback control law satisfying the input constraints is reduced to a convex optimization over linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) problem. It is shown in this work that for the plant uncertainty described by the polytope, the feasible receding horizon state feedback control design is robustly stabilizing. The software implementation of the RMPC is made using Scilab, and its communication with Coupled Tanks Systems is done through the OLE for Process Control (OPC) industrial protocol

Controle feedback de nível baseado em sensor de imagem aplicado ao equipamento misturador-decantador à inversão de fases (MDIF®)

The treatment of wastewaters contaminated with oil is of great practical interest and it is fundamental in environmental issues. A relevant process, which has been studied on continuous treatment of contaminated water with oil, is the equipment denominated MDIF® (a mixer-settler based on phase inversion). An important variable during the operation of MDIF® is the water-solvent interface level in the separation section. The control of this level is essential both to avoid the dragging of the solvent during the water removal and improve the extraction efficiency of the oil by the solvent. The measurement of oil-water interface level (in line) is still a hard task. There are few sensors able to measure oil-water interface level in a reliable way. In the case of lab scale systems, there are no interface sensors with compatible dimensions. The objective of this work was to implement a level control system to the organic solvent/water interface level on the equipment MDIF®. The detection of the interface level is based on the acquisition and treatment of images obtained dynamically through a standard camera (webcam). The control strategy was developed to operate in feedback mode, where the level measure obtained by image detection is compared to the desired level and an action is taken on a control valve according to an implemented PID law. A control and data acquisition program was developed in Fortran to accomplish the following tasks: image acquisition; water-solvent interface identification; to perform decisions and send control signals; and to record data in files. Some experimental runs in open-loop were carried out using the MDIF® and random pulse disturbances were applied on the input variable (water outlet flow). The responses of interface level permitted the process identification by transfer models. From these models, the parameters for a PID controller were tuned by direct synthesis and tests in closed-loop were performed. Preliminary results for the feedback loop demonstrated that the sensor and the control strategy developed in this work were suitable for the control of organic solvent-water interface level

Sistema de conversão de energia eólica baseado no gerador de indução duplamente alimentado: análise e contribuição ao controle da máquina

The humanity reached a time of unprecedented technological development. Science has achieved and continues to achieve technologies that allowed increasingly to understand the universe and the laws which govern it, and also try to coexist without destroying the planet we live on. One of the main challenges of the XXI century is to seek and increase new sources of clean energy, renewable and able to sustain our growth and lifestyle. It is the duty of every researcher engage and contribute in this race of energy. In this context, wind power presents itself as one of the great promises for the future of electricity generation . Despite being a bit older than other sources of renewable energy, wind power still presents a wide field for improvement. The development of new techniques for control of the generator along with the development of research laboratories specializing in wind generation are one of the key points to improve the performance, efficiency and reliability of the system. Appropriate control of back-to-back converter scheme allows wind turbines based on the doubly-fed induction generator to operate in the variable-speed mode, whose benefits include maximum power extraction, reactive power injection and mechanical stress reduction. The generator-side converter provides control of active and reactive power injected into the grid, whereas the grid-side converter provides control of the DC link voltage and bi-directional power flow. The conventional control structure uses PI controllers with feed-forward compensation of cross-coupling dq terms. This control technique is sensitive to model uncertainties and the compensation of dynamic dq terms results on a competing control strategy. Therefore, to overcome these problems, it is proposed in this thesis a robust internal model based state-feedback control structure in order to eliminate the cross-coupling terms and thereby improve the generator drive as well as its dynamic behavior during sudden changes in wind speed. It is compared the conventional control approach with the proposed control technique for DFIG wind turbine control under both steady and gust wind conditions. Moreover, it is also proposed in this thesis an wind turbine emulator, which was developed to recreate in laboratory a realistic condition and to submit the generator to several wind speed conditions.

Controle de Manipulador Redundante Utilizando Realimentação Visual

In conventional robot manipulator control, the desired path is specified in cartesian space and converted to joint space through inverse kinematics mapping. The joint references generated by this mapping are utilized for dynamic control in joint space. Thus, the end-effector position is, in fact, controlled indirectly, in open-loop, and the accuracy of grip position control directly depends on the accuracy of the available kinematic model. In this report, a new scheme for redundant manipulator kinematic control, based on visual servoing is proposed. In the proposed system, a robot image acquired through a CCD camera is processed in order to compute the position and orientation of each link of the robot arm. The robot task is specified as a temporal sequence of reference images of the robot arm. Thus, both the measured pose and the reference pose are specified in the same image space, and its difference is utilized to generate a cartesian space error for kinematic control purposes. The proposed control scheme was applied in a four degree-of-freedom planar redundant robot arm, experimental results are shown

Uma abordagem dirigida por modelos para desenvolvimento de middlewares auto-adaptativos para transmissão de fluxo de dados baseado em restrições de QoS

The use of middleware technology in various types of systems, in order to abstract low-level details related to the distribution of application logic, is increasingly common. Among several systems that can be benefited from using these components, we highlight the distributed systems, where it is necessary to allow communications between software components located on different physical machines. An important issue related to the communication between distributed components is the provision of mechanisms for managing the quality of service. This work presents a metamodel for modeling middlewares based on components in order to provide to an application the abstraction of a communication between components involved in a data stream, regardless their location. Another feature of the metamodel is the possibility of self-adaptation related to the communication mechanism, either by updating the values of its configuration parameters, or by its replacement by another mechanism, in case of the restrictions of quality of service specified are not being guaranteed. In this respect, it is planned the monitoring of the communication state (application of techniques like feedback control loop), analyzing performance metrics related. The paradigm of Model Driven Development was used to generate the implementation of a middleware that will serve as proof of concept of the metamodel, and the configuration and reconfiguration policies related to the dynamic adaptation processes. In this sense was defined the metamodel associated to the process of a communication configuration. The MDD application also corresponds to the definition of the following transformations: the architectural model of the middleware in Java code, and the configuration model to XML

Avaliação das atividades farmacológicas de fucoidans obtidos do extrato bruto de fucoidan comercial de Fucus vesiculosus

Fucoidan is a term used to define heteropolysaccharides that are composed of less than 90% L-fucose. The exception to this rule is the homofucoidan obtained from the seaweed Fucus vesiculosus. This fucoidan can be purchased from SIGMA Co. and have been used in various research for evaluation of their pharmacological activities. However, it is not a pure molecule. In fact, it is a mix of several fucoidan molecules. In this work, were obtained, from acetone precipitation, and biochemically characterized, four fucoidan molecules from SIGMA-ALDRICH Co. fucoidan to evaluate their anticoagulant, antioxidant, antiadipogenic, immunomodulatory and antiurolithiatic activities. In anticoagulant activity, evaluated by aPTT assay, fucoidans F0.9, F1.1 and F2.0 increased eightfold the coagulation time, compared to the control, when a mass of 10 μg was used. To PT test, only fucoidan F0.9 was capable of increase the coagulation time, compared to control. In the total antioxidant capacity assay (TAC), the fucoidan F2.0 showed 400 ascorbic acid equivalents, while fucoidan F0.5, the lest effective, 38 equivalents. In respect to the effect on pre-adipocyte cell lines (3T3-L1) adipogenesis, was observed that fucoidan F1.1 and F2.0 reduced the adipogenesis and this effect was associated to the reduction in the expression of regulatoy proteins C/EBPα, C/EBPβ and PPARγ. On the other hand, fucoidans F0.5 and F0.9 induced increased expression of these regulatory proteins. Furthermore, fucoidan F2.0 induced hydrolysis of triglycerides present in the interior of adipocytes. The immunomodulatory effect was evaluated and observed that the presence of fucoidans F0.5 , F1.1 and F2.0 significantly reduced the production of nitric oxide by activated macrophages with LPS specially fucoidan F2.0 that in 100 μg/mL, reduced about 55% the effect caused by LPS. Relative to the effect upon the formation of calcium oxalate crystals, fucoidan F0.5 was more effective in reduce the aggregation of the crystals and this effect it was not significantly different regarding the effect caused by the crude. Besides, fucoidan F0.5 only promoted the formation of COD type crystals, while fucoidans F1.1 and F2.0 did not influence the formation of crystals compared with the control. The results described in this study indicate that the commercial crude fucoidan of Fucus vesiculosus it’s a mix of several fucoidan which, in turn, have different chemical compositions besides having different pharmacological activities. The use of these fucoidans it´s indicated according the pharmacological activity to be evaluated.

Avaliação das atividades farmacológicas de fucoidans obtidos do extrato bruto de fucoidan comercial de Fucus vesiculosus

Fucoidan is a term used to define heteropolysaccharides that are composed of less than 90% L-fucose. The exception to this rule is the homofucoidan obtained from the seaweed Fucus vesiculosus. This fucoidan can be purchased from SIGMA Co. and have been used in various research for evaluation of their pharmacological activities. However, it is not a pure molecule. In fact, it is a mix of several fucoidan molecules. In this work, were obtained, from acetone precipitation, and biochemically characterized, four fucoidan molecules from SIGMA-ALDRICH Co. fucoidan to evaluate their anticoagulant, antioxidant, antiadipogenic, immunomodulatory and antiurolithiatic activities. In anticoagulant activity, evaluated by aPTT assay, fucoidans F0.9, F1.1 and F2.0 increased eightfold the coagulation time, compared to the control, when a mass of 10 μg was used. To PT test, only fucoidan F0.9 was capable of increase the coagulation time, compared to control. In the total antioxidant capacity assay (TAC), the fucoidan F2.0 showed 400 ascorbic acid equivalents, while fucoidan F0.5, the lest effective, 38 equivalents. In respect to the effect on pre-adipocyte cell lines (3T3-L1) adipogenesis, was observed that fucoidan F1.1 and F2.0 reduced the adipogenesis and this effect was associated to the reduction in the expression of regulatoy proteins C/EBPα, C/EBPβ and PPARγ. On the other hand, fucoidans F0.5 and F0.9 induced increased expression of these regulatory proteins. Furthermore, fucoidan F2.0 induced hydrolysis of triglycerides present in the interior of adipocytes. The immunomodulatory effect was evaluated and observed that the presence of fucoidans F0.5 , F1.1 and F2.0 significantly reduced the production of nitric oxide by activated macrophages with LPS specially fucoidan F2.0 that in 100 μg/mL, reduced about 55% the effect caused by LPS. Relative to the effect upon the formation of calcium oxalate crystals, fucoidan F0.5 was more effective in reduce the aggregation of the crystals and this effect it was not significantly different regarding the effect caused by the crude. Besides, fucoidan F0.5 only promoted the formation of COD type crystals, while fucoidans F1.1 and F2.0 did not influence the formation of crystals compared with the control. The results described in this study indicate that the commercial crude fucoidan of Fucus vesiculosus it’s a mix of several fucoidan which, in turn, have different chemical compositions besides having different pharmacological activities. The use of these fucoidans it´s indicated according the pharmacological activity to be evaluated.