FPGA, physics-based modeling of IGBT and pin diode for hardware co-simulation of complex power electronic converters and systems

This paper presents the steps and the challenges for implementing analytical, physics-based models for the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) and the PIN diode in hardware and more specifically in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The models can be utilised in hardware co-simulation of complex power electronic converters and entire power systems in order to reduce the simulation time without compromising the accuracy of results. Such a co-simulation allows reliable prediction of the system's performance as well as accurate investigation of the power devices' behaviour during operation. Ultimately, this will allow application-specific optimisation of the devices' structure, circuit topologies as well as enhancement of the control and/or protection schemes.

Multi-Modal Image Retrieval from Construction Databases and Model-Based Systems

In the modern and dynamic construction environment it is important to access information in a fast and efficient manner in order to improve the decision making processes for construction managers. This capability is, in most cases, straightforward with today’s technologies for data types with an inherent structure that resides primarily on established database structures like estimating and scheduling software. However, previous research has demonstrated that a significant percentage of construction data is stored in semi-structured or unstructured data formats (text, images, etc.) and that manually locating and identifying such data is a very hard and time-consuming task. This paper focuses on construction site image data and presents a novel image retrieval model that interfaces with established construction data management structures. This model is designed to retrieve images from related objects in project models or construction databases using location, date, and material information (extracted from the image content with pattern recognition techniques).

A novel MPT noise prediction methodology for highly-integrated propulsion systems with inlet flow distortion

Embedded propulsion systems, such as for example used in advanced hybrid-wing body aircraft, can potentially offer major fuel burn and noise reduction benefits but introduce challenges in the aerodynamic and acoustic integration of the high-bypass ratio fan system. A novel approach is proposed to quantify the effects of non-uniform flow on the generation and propagation of multiple pure tone noise (MPTs). The new method is validated on a conventional inlet geometry first. The ultimate goal is to conduct a parametric study of S-duct inlets in order to quantify the effects of inlet design parameters on the acoustic signature. The key challenge is that the mechanism underlying the distortion transfer, noise source generation and propagation through the non-uniform flow field are inherently coupled such that a simultaneous computation of the aerodynamics and acoustics is required. The technical approach is based on a body force description of the fan blade row that is able to capture the distortion transfer and the MPT noise generation mechanisms while greatly reducing computational cost. A single, 3-D full-wheel unsteady CFD simulation, in which the Euler equations are solved to second-order spatial and temporal accuracy, simultaneously computes the MPT noise generation and its propagation in distorted mean flow. Several numerical tools were developed to enable the implementation of this new approach. Parametric studies were conducted to determine appropriate grid and time step sizes for the propagation of acoustic waves. The Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings integral method is used to propagate the noise to far field receivers. Non-reflecting boundary conditions are implemented through the use of acoustic buffer zones. The body force modeling approach is validated and proof-of-concept studies demonstrate the generation of disturbances at both blade-passing and shaft-order frequencies using the perturbed body force method. The full methodology is currently being validated using NASA's Source Diagnostic Test (SDT) fan and inlet geometry. Copyright © 2009 by Jeff Defoe, Alex Narkaj & Zoltan Spakovszky.

The vibro-acoustic analysis of built-up systems using a hybrid method with parametric and non-parametric uncertainties

An existing hybrid finite element (FE)/statistical energy analysis (SEA) approach to the analysis of the mid- and high frequency vibrations of a complex built-up system is extended here to a wider class of uncertainty modeling. In the original approach, the constituent parts of the system are considered to be either deterministic, and modeled using FE, or highly random, and modeled using SEA. A non-parametric model of randomness is employed in the SEA components, based on diffuse wave theory and the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble (GOE), and this enables the mean and variance of second order quantities such as vibrational energy and response cross-spectra to be predicted. In the present work the assumption that the FE components are deterministic is relaxed by the introduction of a parametric model of uncertainty in these components. The parametric uncertainty may be modeled either probabilistically, or by using a non-probabilistic approach such as interval analysis, and it is shown how these descriptions can be combined with the non-parametric uncertainty in the SEA subsystems to yield an overall assessment of the performance of the system. The method is illustrated by application to an example built-up plate system which has random properties, and benchmark comparisons are made with full Monte Carlo simulations. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Slow peaking and low-gain designs for global stabilization of nonlinear systems

This paper presents an analysis of the slow-peaking phenomenon, a pitfall of low-gain designs that imposes basic limitations to large regions of attraction in nonlinear control systems. The phenomenon is best understood on a chain of integrators perturbed by a vector field up(x, u) that satisfies p(x, 0) = 0. Because small controls (or low-gain designs) are sufficient to stabilize the unperturbed chain of integrators, it may seem that smaller controls, which attenuate the perturbation up(x, u) in a large compact set, can be employed to achieve larger regions of attraction. This intuition is false, however, and peaking may cause a loss of global controllability unless severe growth restrictions are imposed on p(x, u). These growth restrictions are expressed as a higher order condition with respect to a particular weighted dilation related to the peaking exponents of the nominal system. When this higher order condition is satisfied, an explicit control law is derived that achieves global asymptotic stability of x = 0. This stabilization result is extended to more general cascade nonlinear systems in which the perturbation p(x, v) v, v = (ξ, u) T, contains the state ξ and the control u of a stabilizable subsystem ξ = a(ξ, u). As an illustration, a control law is derived that achieves global stabilization of the frictionless ball-and-beam model.

Low-order modelling of the response of ducted flames in annular geometries

The adoption of lean premixed prevaporised combustion systems can reduce NOx emissions from gas turbines, but unfortunately also increases their susceptibility to thermoacoustic instabilities. Initially, acoustic waves can produce heat release fluctuations by a variety of mechanisms, often by perturbing the equivalence ratio. If correctly phased, heat release fluctuations can subsequently generate more acoustic waves, which at high amplitude can result in significant structural damage to the combustor. The prediction of this phenomenon is of great industrial interest. In previous work, we have coupled a physics based, kinematic model of the flame with a network model to provide the planar acoustic response necessary to close the feedback loop and predict the onset and amplitude of thermoacoustic instabilities in a lab-scale, axisymmetric single burner combustor. The advantage of a time domain approach is that the modal interaction, the influence of harmonics, and flame saturation can be investigated. This paper extends this approach to more realistic, annular geometries, where both planar and circumferential modes must be considered. In lean premixed prevaporised combustors, fluctuations in equivalence ratio have been shown to be a dominant cause of unsteady combustion. These can occur, for example, due to velocity perturbations in the premix ducts, which can lead to equivalence ratio fluctuations at the fuel injectors, which are subsequently convected downstream to the flame surfaces. Here, they can perturb the heat release by locally altering the flame speed, enthalpy of combustion, and, indirectly, the flame surface area. In many gas turbine designs, particularly aeroengines, the geometries are composed of a ring of premix ducts linking a plenum and an annular combustor. The most unstable modes are often circumferential modes. The network model is used to characterise the flow response of the geometry to heat fluctuations at an appropriate location, such as the fuel injectors. The heat release at each flame holder is determined in the time domain using the kinematic flame model derived, as a function of the flow perturbations in the premix duct. This approach is demonstrated for an annular ring of burners on a in a simple geometry. The approach is then extended to an industrial type gas turbine combustor, and used to predict the limit cycle amplitudes. Copyright © 2012 by ASME.

An approach to multi-fidelity optimization of aeroengine compression systems

The aerodynamic design of turbomachinery presents the design optimisation community with a number of exquisite challenges. Chief among these are the size of the design space and the extent of discontinuity therein. This discontinuity can serve to limit the full exploitation of high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD): such codes require detailed geometric information often available only sometime after the basic configuration of the machine has been set by other means. The premise of this paper is that it should be possible to produce higher performing designs in less time by exploiting multi-fidelity techniques to effectively harness CFD earlier in the design process, specifically by facilitating its participation in configuration selection. The adopted strategy of local multi-fidelity correction, generated on demand, combined with a global search algorithm via an adaptive trust region is first tested on a modest, smooth external aerodynamic problem. Speed-up of an order of magnitude is demonstrated, comparable to established techniques applied to smooth problems. A number of enhancements aimed principally at effectively evaluating a wide range of configurations quickly is then applied to the basic strategy, and the emerging technique is tested on a generic aeroengine core compression system. A similar order of magnitude speed-up is achieved on this relatively large and highly discontinuous problem. A five-fold increase in the number of configurations assessed with CFD is observed. As the technique places constraints neither on the underlying physical modelling of the constituent analysis codes nor on first-order agreement between those codes, it has potential applicability to a range of multidisciplinary design challenges. © 2012 by Jerome Jarrett and Tiziano Ghisu.

Evaluation of the functionality of biodegradable polymeric platforms for drug delivery systems

We present the development of a drug-loaded triple-layer platform consisting of thin film biodegradable polymers, in a properly designed form for the desired gradual degradation. Poly(dl-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA (65:35), PLGA (75:25)) and polycaprolactone (PCL) were grown by spin coating technique, to synthesize the platforms with the order PCL/PLGA (75:25)/PLGA (65:35) that determine their degradation rates. The outer PLGA (65:35) layer was loaded with dipyridamole, an antiplatelet drug. Spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) in the Vis-far UV range was used to determine the nanostructure, as well as the content of the incorporated drug in the as-grown platforms. In situ and real-time SE measurements were carried out using a liquid cell for the dynamic evaluation of the fibrinogen and albumin protein adsorption processes. Atomic force microscopy studies justified the SE results concerning the nanopores formation in the polymeric platforms, and the dominant adsorption mechanisms of the proteins, which were defined by the drug incorporation in the platforms. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Application and validation of a new biotic index using data from several water systems

Protozoans of Lake Donghu were collected from five stations using the PFU method. The sampling was conducted for one year and two times a month. The aim of this research was to test the applicability of a new protozoa biotic index, species pollution value (SPV) and community pollution value (CPV), established by the authors using data from the River Hanjiang. Each station's CPV was calculated from the SPV and the correlation analysis between the CPV and the comprehensive chemical index of stations I, II, III showed a significant correlation between them. The pollution status of the five stations was correctly evaluated by the CPV. These results suggested that the biotic index could be applied in water systems other than the River Hanjiang. The SPV of some protozoa species in Lake Donghu, not observed in the River Hanjiang were established. In order to further test the applicability of the biotic index, protozoan and chemistry data from the Rivers Torrente Stirone and Parma of Italy were used. The results showed that the CPV for the two rivers had a close relationship with the chemical water quality, which indicated that the biotic index could be applied in other parts of the world for the monitoring and estimating of water quality. Since the results of testing and verifying the biotic index in some other water systems in China were also satisfactory, this indicated that the biotic index has an extensive suitability for freshwater ecosystems. As long as more than 50% of the species in a sample have a SPV, the CPV calculated from the SPV is reliable for monitoring and evaluating water quality.

Quantum master-equation approach to quantum transport through mesoscopic systems

For quantum transport through mesoscopic systems, a quantum master-equation approach is developed in terms of compact expressions for the transport current and the reduced density matrix of the system. The present work is an extension of Gurvitz's approach for quantum transport and quantum measurement, namely, to finite temperature and arbitrary bias voltage. Our derivation starts from a second-order cumulant expansion of the tunneling Hamiltonian; then follows the conditional average over the electrode reservoir states. As a consequence, in the usual weak-tunneling regime, the established formalism is applicable for a wide range of transport problems. The validity of the formalism and its convenience in application are well illustrated by a number of examples.

Effect of the electrostatic interactions of chromophores on the macroscopic second-order nonlinear optical properties of the polymer films

The polyetherketone (PEK-c) guest-host system thin films doped with 3-(1,1-dicyanothenyl)-1-phenyl-4,5-dihydro-1H-pryazole (DCNP) were prepared. Their second-order nonlinear optical (NLO) coefficients chi(33)((2)) were measured by using Maker fringe method for the polymer films doped with different weight percents of DCNP. Experimental results indicate that the second-order NLO properties of the poled polymer films could decrease with the chromophore loading increasing when the chromophore loading reaches a fairly high level. In this paper, the relationship between the macroscopic second-order NLO coefficient and the chromophore number density was modified under considering the role of the electrostatic interactions of chromophores in the polymer film. According to the modified relationship, the macroscopic second-order NLO coefficient is no longer in direct proportion with the chromophore number density in the polymer film. The effect of the electrostatic interactions of chromophores on second-order NLO properties was discussed. The attenuation of the macroscopic second-order NLO activity can be demonstrated by the role of the chromophore electrostatic interactions at high loading of chromophore in the polymer systems.

AN EFFICIENT ITERATIVE DFT-BASED CHANNEL ESTIMATION FOR MIMO-OFDM SYSTEMS ON MULTIPATH CHANNELS

In this paper, an efficient iterative discrete Fourier transform (DFT) -based channel estimator with good performance for multiple-input and multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems such as IEEE 802.11n which retain some sub-carriers as null sub-carriers (or virtual carriers) is proposed. In order to eliminate the mean-square error (MSE) floor effect existed in conventional DFT-based channel estimators, we proposed a low-complexity method to detect the significant channel impulse response (CIR) taps, which neither need any statistical channel information nor a predetermined threshold value. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed method has much better performance than conventional DFT-based channel estimators and without MSE floor effect.

Dynamics of Multi-Stage Bladed Disks Systems

This paper presents a new and original method for dynamical analysis of multistage cyclic structures such as turbomachinery compressors or turbines. Each stage is modeled cyclically by its elementary sector and the interstage coupling is achieved through a cyclic recombination of the interface degrees of freedom. This method is quite simple to set up; it allows us to handle the finite element models of each stage's sector directly and, as in classical cyclic symmetry analysis, to study the nodal diameter problems separately. The method is first validated on a simple case study which shows good agreements with a complete 360 deg reference calculation. An industrial example involving two HP compressor stages is then presented. Then the forced response application is presented in which synchronous engine order type excitations are considered.

Two-photon asymmetric color-locking second-order stochastic correlation of attosecond polarization beats

Based on the phase-conjugation polarization interference between two two-photon processes, we theoretically investigated the attosecond scale asymmetry sum-frequency polarization beat in four-level system (FASPB). The field correlation has weak influence on the FASPB signal when the laser has narrow bandwidth. Conversely, when the laser has broadband linewidth, the FASPB signal shows resonance-nonresonance cross correlation. The two-photon signal exhibits hybrid radiation-matter detuning terahertz; damping oscillation, i.e., when the laser frequency is off resonance from the two-photon transition, the signal exhibits damping oscillation and the profile of the two-photon self-correlation signal also exhibits zero time-delay asymmetry of the maxima. We have also investigated the asymmetry of attosecond polarization beat caused by the shift of the two-photon self-correlation zero time-delay phenomenon, in which the maxima of the two two-photon signals are shifted from zero time-delay point to opposite directions. As an attosecond ultrafast modulation process, FASPB can be intrinsically extended to any level-summation systems of two dipolar forbidden excited states.

2-DELTA-FUNCTION GENERALIZED PLASMA POLE MODEL FOR 1ST PRINCIPLE CALCULATIONS OF QUASI-PARTICLE ENERGIES IN MANY-ELECTRON SYSTEMS

To evaluate the dynamical effects of the screened interaction in the calculations of quasiparticle energies in many-electron systems a two-delta-function generalized plasma pole model (GPP) is introduced to simulate the dynamical dielectric function. The usual single delta-function GPP model has the drawback of over simplifications and for the crystals without the center of symmetry is inappropriate to describe the finite frequency behavior for dielectric function matrices. The discrete frequency summation method requires too much computation to achieve converged results since ab initio calculations of dielectric function matrices are to be carried out for many different frequencies. The two-delta GPP model is an optimization of the two approaches. We analyze the two-delta GPP model and propose a method to determine from the first principle calculations the amplitudes and effective frequencies of these delta-functions. Analytical solutions are found for the second order equations for the parameter matrices entering the model. This enables realistic applications of the method to the first principle quasiparticle calculations and makes the calculations truly adjustable parameter free.