Development of transit coach bonded brake lining test equipment and test procedures. Progress report. Final report.

Urban Mass Transportation Administration, Washington, D.C.

Cooperative research and development agreement with Graseby/Nutech Corporation : monitoring equipment for volatile organic compounds.

Mode of access: Internet.

Monitoring equipment for hydrocarbon ozone precursors and for hazardous volatile organic compounds : cooperative research and development agreement with Perkin-Elmer Corporation.

Mode of access: Internet.

Harbours and docks : their physical features, history, construction, equipment, and maintenance, with statistics as to their commercial development, by Leveson Francis Vernon-Harcourt.

v. 1. Text.--v. 2. Plates.

Development of field research equipment and evaluation of methods of establishing forage crops /

Caption title.

The development of heat recovery equipment from conception to commercialisation

A comprehensive survey of industrial sites and heat recovery products revealed gaps between equipment that was required and that which was available. Two heat recovery products were developed to fill those gaps: a gas-to-gas modular heat recovery unit; a gas-to-liquid exhaust gas heat exchanger. The former provided an entire heat recovery system in one unit. It was specifically designed to overcome the problems associated with existing component system of large design commitment, extensive installation and incompatibility between parts. The unit was intended to recover heat from multiple waste gas sources and, in particular, from baking ovens. A survey of the baking industry defined typical waste gas temperatures and flow rates, around which the unit was designed. The second unit was designed to recover heat from the exhaust gases of small diesel engines. The developed unit differed from existing designs by having a negligible effect on engine performance. In marketing terms these products are conceptual opposites. The first, a 'product-push' product generated from site and product surveys, required marketing following design. The second, a 'market-pull' product, resulted from a specific user need; this had a captive market and did not require marketing. Here marketing was replaced by commercial aspects including the protection of ideas, contracting, tendering and insurance requirements. These two product development routes are compared and contrasted. As a general conclusion this work suggests that it can be beneficial for small companies (as was the sponsor of this project) to undertake projects of the market-pull type. Generally they have a higher probability of success and are less capital intensive than their product-push counterparts. Development revealed shortcomings in three other fields: British Standards governing heat exchangers; financial assessment of energy saving schemes; degree day procedure of calculating energy savings. Methods are proposed to overcome these shortcomings.

Development of pneumatic stowing equipment and a study of the principles involved

DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR CONSULTATION AT ASTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICES WITH PRIOR ARRANGEMENT

Development and characterization of cutting-edge equipment for EMC measurements and advanced power line filter design

This Doctoral Thesis aims at studying, developing, and characterizing cutting edge equipment for EMC measurements and proposing innovative and advanced power line filter design techniques. This document summarizes a three-year work, is strictly industry oriented and relies on EMC standards and regulations. It contains the main results, findings, and effort with the purpose of bringing innovative contributions at the scientific community. Conducted emissions interferences are usually suppressed with power line filters. These filters are composed by common mode chokes, X capacitors and Y capacitors in order to mitigate both the differential mode and common mode noise, which compose the overall conducted emissions. However, even at present days, available power line filter design techniques show several disadvantages. First of all, filters are designed to be implemented in ideal 50 Ω systems, condition which is far away from reality. Then, the attenuation introduced by the filter for common or differential mode noise is analyzed independently, without considering the possible mode conversion that can be produced by impedance mismatches, or asymmetries in either the power line filter itself or the equipment under test. Ultimately, the instrumentation used to perform conducted emissions measurement is, in most cases, not adequate. All these factors lead to an inaccurate design, contributing at increasing the size of the filter, making it more expensive and less performant than it should be.

Development of new rapid prototyping process

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the key elements of a new rapid prototyping process, which involves layer-by-layer deposition of liquid-state material and at the same time using an ultraviolet line source to cure the deposited material. This paper reports studies about the behaviour of filaments, deposition accuracy, filaments interaction and functional feasibility of system. Additionally, the author describes the process which has been proposed, the equipment that has been used for these studies and the material which was developed in this application. Design/methodology/approach - The research has been separated into three study areas in accordance with their goals. In the first, both the behaviour of filament and deposition accuracy was studied. The design of the experiment is described with focus on four response factors (bead width, filament quality, deposition accuracy and deposition continuity) along with function of three control factors (deposition height, deposition velocity and extrusion velocity). The author also studied the interaction between filaments as a function of bead centre distance. In addition, two test samples were prepared to serve as a proof of the methodology and to verify the functional feasibility of the process which has been studied. Findings - The results show that the proposed process is functionally feasible, and that it is possible to identify the main effects of control factors over response factors. That analysis is used to predict the condition of process as a function of the parameters which control the process. Also identified were distances of centre beads which result in a specific behaviour. The types of interaction between filaments were analysed and sorted into: union, separation and indeterminate. At the end, the functional feasibility of process was proved whereby two test parts could be built. Originality/value - This paper proposes a new rapid prototyping process and also presents test studies related to this proposition. The author has focused on the filament behaviour, deposition accuracy, interaction between filaments and studied the functional feasibility of process to provide new information about this process, which at the same time is useful to the development of other rapid prototyping processes.

Development of Control Systems for Safety Instrumented Systems

Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) are designed to prevent and / or mitigate accidents, avoiding undesirable high potential risk scenarios, assuring protection of people`s health, protecting the environment and saving costs of industrial equipment. The design of these systems require formal methods for ensuring the safety requirements, but according material published in this area, has not identified a consolidated procedure to match the task. This sense, this article introduces a formal method for diagnosis and treatment of critical faults based on Bayesian network (BN) and Petri net (PN). This approach considers diagnosis and treatment for each safety instrumented function (SIF) including hazard and operability (HAZOP) study in the equipment or system under control. It also uses BN and Behavioral Petri net (BPN) for diagnoses and decision-making and the PN for the synthesis, modeling and control to be implemented by Safety Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). An application example considering the diagnosis and treatment of critical faults is presented and illustrates the methodology proposed.

Flow rate sprinkler development for site-specific irrigation

Due to the rapid depletion of water resources, water must be used more efficiently in agriculture to maintain current levels of yield in irrigated areas. The efficiency of irrigation systems can be increased by adjusting the amount of water applied to specific conditions of soil and crop, which may vary in a field. Taking into account spatial and temporal variability, it is evident that an equipment capable of providing different irrigation levels is necessary to meet the water requirement of the soil. This work aims to develop and evaluate a flow rate sprinkler to be used in center pivots or linear moving irrigation systems, with potential for utilization in irrigation scheduling. A prototype was developed by duplicating its calibrations, and discharge coefficient adjustment was carried out in the laboratory. To predict the flow rate, a successful model that represented the operation of the flow rate sprinkler was established. The calibration of the flow rate sprinkler prototype showed satisfactory statistical and technical results. Automation of the prototype was achieved by driving a step motor using communication from the parallel port of a microcomputer, which was controlled by a software developed for this purpose. The results were satisfactory and technically feasible.

Growth regime map for liquid-bound granules: further development and experimental validation

An attempt was made to quantify the boundaries and validate the granule growth regime map for liquid-bound granules recently proposed by Iveson and Litster (AlChE J. 44 (1998) 1510). This regime map postulates that the type of granule growth behaviour is a function of only two dimensionless groups: the amount of granule deformation during collision (characterised by a Stokes deformation number, St(def)) and the maximum granule pore saturation, s(max). The results of experiments performed with a range of materials (glass ballotini, iron ore fines, copper chalcopyrite powder and a sodium sulphate and cellulose mixture) using both drum and high shear mixer granulators were examined. The drum granulation results gave good agreement with the proposed regime map. The boundary between crumb and steady growth occurs at St(def) of order 0.1 and the boundary between steady and induction growth occurs at St(def) of order 0.001. The nucleation only boundary occurs at pore saturations that increase from 70% to 80% with decreasing St(def). However, the high shear mixer results all had St(def) numbers which were too large. This is most likely to be because the chopper tip-speed is an over-estimate of the average impact velocity granules experience and possibly also due to the dynamic yield strength of the materials being significantly greater than the yield strengths measured at low strain rates. Hence, the map is only a useful tool for comparing the granulation behaviour of different materials in the same device. Until we have a better understanding of the flow patterns and impact velocities in granulators, it cannot be used to compare different types of equipment. Theoretical considerations also revealed that several of the regime boundaries are also functions of additional parameters not explicitly contained on the map, such as binder viscosity. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Development of a novel titration and off-gas analysis (TOGA) sensor for study of biological processes in wastewater treatment systems

The development of the new TOGA (titration and off-gas analysis) sensor for the detailed study of biological processes in wastewater treatment systems is outlined. The main innovation of the sensor is the amalgamation of titrimetric and off-gas measurement techniques. The resulting measured signals are: hydrogen ion production rate (HPR), oxygen transfer rate (OTR), nitrogen transfer rate (NTR), and carbon dioxide transfer rate (CTR). While OTR and NTR are applicable to aerobic and anoxic conditions, respectively, HPR and CTR are useful signals under all of the conditions found in biological wastewater treatment systems, namely, aerobic, anoxic and anaerobic. The sensor is therefore a powerful tool for studying the key biological processes under all these conditions. A major benefit from the integration of the titrimetric and off-gas analysis methods is that the acid/base buffering systems, in particular the bicarbonate system, are properly accounted for. Experimental data resulting from the TOGA sensor in aerobic, anoxic, and anaerobic conditions demonstrates the strength of the new sensor. In the aerobic environment, carbon oxidation (using acetate as an example carbon source) and nitrification are studied. Both the carbon and ammonia removal rates measured by the sensor compare very well with those obtained from off-line chemical analysis. Further, the aerobic acetate removal process is examined at a fundamental level using the metabolic pathway and stoichiometry established in the literature, whereby the rate of formation of storage products is identified. Under anoxic conditions, the denitrification process is monitored and, again, the measured rate of nitrogen gas transfer (NTR) matches well with the removal of the oxidised nitrogen compounds (measured chemically). In the anaerobic environment, the enhanced biological phosphorus process was investigated. In this case, the measured sensor signals (HPR and CTR) resulting from acetate uptake were used to determine the ratio of the rates of carbon dioxide production by competing groups of microorganisms, which consequently is a measure of the activity of these organisms. The sensor involves the use of expensive equipment such as a mass spectrometer and requires special gases to operate, thus incurring significant capital and operational costs. This makes the sensor more an advanced laboratory tool than an on-line sensor. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Development of a library for clients of ONVIF video cameras: challenges and solutions

The interoperability of IP video equipment is a critical problem for surveillance systems and other video application developers. ONVIF is one of the two specifications addressing the standardization of networked devices interface, and it is based on SOAP. This paper addresses the development of an ONVIF library to develop clients of video cameras. We address the choice of a web services toolkit, and how to use the selected toolkit to develop a basic library. From that, we discuss the implementation of features that ...

Development of autonomous maintenance in a furniture company

This article presents a work performed in the maintenance department of a furniture company in Portugal, in order to develop and implement autonomous maintenance. The main objective of the project was related to the objective to increase and make effective the autonomous maintenance tasks performed by production operators, and in this way avoiding unplanned downtime due to equipment failures. Although some autonomous maintenance tasks were already carried out within the company, a preliminary study revealed weaknesses in the application of this tool. In the initial phase of this pilot project, the main problems encountered at the level of autonomous maintenance were related to the lack of time to carry out these tasks, showing that the stipulated procedures were far from the real needs of the company. To solve these problems a pilot project was conducted, making several changes in the performance of autonomous maintenance tasks, making them standard and adapted to reality of each production line. There was a general improvement in the factory indicators, and essentially there was a behavioral change, since the operators felt that their opinions were taking into account and began to understand the importance of small tasks performed by them.