Apparatus and method for heat-run test on high-power PWM converters with low energy expenditure

Before installation, a voltage source converter is usually subjected to heat-run test to verify its thermal design and performance under load. For heat-run test, the converter needs to be operated at rated voltage and rated current for a substantial length of time. Hence, such tests consume huge amount of energy in case of high-power converters. Also, the capacities of the source and loads available in the research and development (R&D) centre or the production facility could be inadequate to conduct such tests. This paper proposes a method to conduct heat-run tests on high-power, pulse width modulated (PWM) converters with low energy consumption. The experimental set-up consists of the converter under test and another converter (of similar or higher rating), both connected in parallel on the ac side and open on the dc side. Vector-control or synchronous reference frame control is employed to control the converters such that one draws certain amount of reactive power and the other supplies the same; only the system losses are drawn from the mains. The performance of the controller is validated through simulation and experiments. Experimental results, pertaining to heat-run tests on a high-power PWM converter, are presented at power levels of 25 kVA to 150 kVA.

Numerical analysis of geocell reinforced ballast overlying soft clay subgrade

Geotextiles and geogrids have been in use for several decades in variety of geo-structure applications including foundation of embankments, retaining walls, pavements. Geocells is one such variant in geosynthetic reinforcement of recent years, which provides a three dimensional confinement to the infill material. Although extensive research has been carried on geocell reinforced sand, clay and layered soil subgrades, limited research has been reported on the aggregates/ballast reinforced with geocells. This paper presents the behavior of a railway sleeper subjected to monotonic loading on geocell reinforced aggregates, of size ranging from 20 to 75 mm, overlying soft clay subgrades. Series of tests were conducted in a steel test tank of dimensions 700 mm x 300 mm x 700 mm. In addition to the laboratory model tests, numerical simulations were performed using a finite difference code to predict the behavior of geocell reinforced ballast. The results from numerical simulations were compared with the experimental data. The numerical and experimental results manifested the importance that the geocell reinforcement has a significant effect on the ballast behaviour. The results depicted that the stiffness of underlying soft clay subgrade has a significant influence on the behavior of the geocell-aggregate composite material in redistributing the loading system.

AIPE-active green phosphorescent iridium(III) complex impregnated test strips for the vapor-phase detection of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT)

Detection of explosives, especially trinitrotoluene (TNT), is of utmost importance due to its highly explosive nature and environmental hazard. Therefore, detection of TNT has been a matter of great concern to the scientific community worldwide. Herein, a new aggregation-induced phosphorescent emission (AIPE)-active iridium(III) bis(2-(2,4-difluorophenyl)pyridinato-NC2') (2-(2-pyridyl)benzimidazolato-N,N') complex FIrPyBiz] has been developed and serves as a molecular probe for the detection of TNT in the vapor phase, solid phase, and aqueous media. In addition, phosphorescent test strips have been constructed by impregnating Whatman filter paper with aggregates of FIrPyBiz for trace detection of TNT in contact mode, with detection limits in nanograms, by taking advantage of the excited state interaction of AIPE-active phosphorescent iridium(III) complex with that of TNT and the associated photophysical properties.

Effect of Layered MoS2 Nanoparticles on the Frictional Behavior and Microstructure of Lubricating Greases

Lithium stearate soap and layered MoS2 nanoparticles encapsulated in lithium stearate soap are prepared in the laboratory, and their lubricating properties are compared with respect to the particle and particle concentration. The tribotracks after friction test was investigated with Raman Spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and 3D optical profilometry to understand the action mechanism. The status of the soap particles on a tribotrack changes with time, contact pressure and sliding speed. At low pressure and speed, individual solid undeformed soap particle stand proud of the surface and the topography shows marginal difference with sliding time. In these conditions, no frictional difference between the performance of grease with and without the nanoparticles is observed. Increasing the contact pressure and temperature (low speed and high speed) has a dramatic effect as the soap particles melt and the liquid soap flows over the track releasing the hitherto encapsulated nanoparticles. Consequently, the soap smears the track like a liquid, and the nanoparticles now come directly into the interface and are sheared to generate a low-friction tribofilm. At high particle concentration, the sliding time required for melting of the soap and release of MoS2 is reduced, and the tribofilm is more substantial and uniform consisting of smeared MoS2 and carboxylate soap as observed by SEM and 3D optical profilometry. A change in the Raman Spectra is observed with particle concentration, and this is related to morphology and microstructure of the tribofilm generated.

Delineating Ecological Boundaries of Hanuman Langur Species Complex in Peninsular India Using MaxEnt Modeling Approach

Hanuman langur is one of the widely distributed and extensively studied non-human diurnal primates in India. Until recently it was believed to be a single species - Semnopithecus entellus. Recent molecular and morphological studies suggest that the Hanuman langurs consists of at least three species S. entellus, S. hypoleucos and S. priam. Furthermore, morphological studies suggested that both S. hypoleucos and S. priam have at least three subspecies in each. We explored the use of ecological niche modeling (ENM) to confirm the validity of these seven taxa and an additional taxon S. johnii belonging to the same genus. MaxEnt modeling tool was used with 19 bioclimatic, 12 vegetation and 6 hydrological environmental layers. We reduced total environmental variables to 14 layers after testing for collinearity and an independent test for model prediction was done using ENMTools. A total of 196 non-overlapping data points from primary and secondary sources were used as inputs for ENM. Results showed eight distinct ecological boundaries, corroborating the eight taxa mentioned above thereby confirming validity of these eight taxa. The study, for the first time provided ecological variables that determined the ecological requirements and distribution of members of the Hanuman langur species complex in the Indian peninsula.

Time-Based All-Digital Technique for Analog Built-in Self-Test

A scheme for built-in self-test of analog signals with minimal area overhead for measuring on-chip voltages in an all-digital manner is presented. The method is well suited for a distributed architecture, where the routing of analog signals over long paths is minimized. A clock is routed serially to the sampling heads placed at the nodes of analog test voltages. This sampling head present at each test node, which consists of a pair of delay cells and a pair of flip-flops, locally converts the test voltage to a skew between a pair of subsampled signals, thus giving rise to as many subsampled signal pairs as the number of nodes. To measure a certain analog voltage, the corresponding subsampled signal pair is fed to a delay measurement unit to measure the skew between this pair. The concept is validated by designing a test chip in a UMC 130-nm CMOS process. Sub-millivolt accuracy for static signals is demonstrated for a measurement time of a few seconds, and an effective number of bits of 5.29 is demonstrated for low-bandwidth signals in the absence of sample-and-hold circuitry.

Prediction of the stiffness of nanoclay-polypropylene composites using a monte carlo finite element analysis approach

The present work deals with the prediction of stiffness of an Indian nanoclay-reinforced polypropylene composite (that can be termed as a nanocomposite) using a Monte Carlo finite element analysis (FEA) technique. Nanocomposite samples are at first prepared in the laboratory using a torque rheometer for achieving desirable dispersion of nanoclay during master batch preparation followed up with extrusion for the fabrication of tensile test dog-bone specimens. It has been observed through SEM (scanning electron microscopy) images of the prepared nanocomposite containing a given percentage (3–9% by weight) of the considered nanoclay that nanoclay platelets tend to remain in clusters. By ascertaining the average size of these nanoclay clusters from the images mentioned, a planar finite element model is created in which nanoclay groups and polymer matrix are modeled as separate entities assuming a given homogeneous distribution of the nanoclay clusters. Using a Monte Carlo simulation procedure, the distribution of nanoclay is varied randomly in an automated manner in a commercial FEA code, and virtual tensile tests are performed for computing the linear stiffness for each case. Values of computed stiffness modulus of highest frequency for nanocomposites with different nanoclay contents correspond well with the experimentally obtained measures of stiffness establishing the effectiveness of the present approach for further applications.

Analytical test functions for free vibration analysis of rotating non-homogeneous Timoshenko beams

In this paper, the governing equations for free vibration of a non-homogeneous rotating Timoshenko beam, having uniform cross-section, is studied using an inverse problem approach, for both cantilever and pinned-free boundary conditions. The bending displacement and the rotation due to bending are assumed to be simple polynomials which satisfy all four boundary conditions. It is found that for certain polynomial variations of the material mass density, elastic modulus and shear modulus, along the length of the beam, the assumed polynomials serve as simple closed form solutions to the coupled second order governing differential equations with variable coefficients. It is found that there are an infinite number of analytical polynomial functions possible for material mass density, shear modulus and elastic modulus distributions, which share the same frequency and mode shape for a particular mode. The derived results are intended to serve as benchmark solutions for testing approximate or numerical methods used for the vibration analysis of rotating non-homogeneous Timoshenko beams.

Laboratory Studies on Stabilization of an Expansive Soil by Lime Precipitation Technique

Lime stabilization prevails to be the most widely adopted in situ stabilization method for controlling the swell-shrink potentials of expansive soils despite construction difficulties and its ineffectiveness in certain conditions. In addition to the in situ stabilization methods presently practiced, it is theoretically possible to facilitate in situ precipitation of lime in soil by successive permeation of calcium chloride (CaCl2 ) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solutions into the expansive soil. In this laboratory investigation, an attempt is made to study the precipitation of lime in soil by successive mixing of CaCl2 and NaOH solutions with the expansive soil in two different sequences.Experimental results indicated that in situ precipitation of lime in soil by sequential mixing of CaCl2 and NaOH solutions with expansive soil developed strong lime-modification and soil-lime pozzolanic reactions. The lime-modification reactions together with the poorly de- veloped cementation products controlled the swelling potential, reduced the plasticity index, and increased the unconfined compressive strength of the expansive clay cured for 24 h. Comparatively, both lime-modification reactions and well-developed crystalline cementation products (formed by lime-soil pozzolanic reactions) contributed to the marked increase in the unconfined compressive strength of the ex-pansive soil that was cured for 7–21 days. Results also show that the sequential mixing of expansive soil with CaCl2 solution followed by NaOH solution is more effective than mixing expansive soil with NaOH solution followed by CaCl2 solution. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)MT .1943-5533.0000483. © 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.

STAT-1 expression is regulated by IGFBP-3 in malignant glioma cells and is a strong predictor of poor survival in patients with glioblastoma Laboratory investigation

Object. Insulin-like growth factor binding proteins (IGEBPs) have been implicated in the pathogenesis of glioma. In a previous study the authors demonstrated that IGFBP-3 is a novel glioblastoma biomarker associated with poor survival. Since signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT-1) has been shown to be regulated by IGFBP-3 during chondrogenesis and is a prosurvival and radioresistant molecule in different tumors, the aim in the present study was to explore the functional significance of IGFBP-3 in malignant glioma cells, to determine if STAT-1 is indeed regulated by IGFBP-3, and to study the potential of STAT-1 as a biomarker in glioblastoma. Methods. The functional significance of IGFBP-3 was investigated using the short hairpin (sh)RNA gene knockdown approach on U251MG cells. STAT-1 regulation by IGFBP-3 was tested on U251MG and U87MG cells by shRNA gene knockdown and exogenous treatment with recombinant IGFBP-3 protein. Subsequently, the expression of STAT-1 was analyzed with real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) in glioblastoma and control brain tissues. Survival analyses were done on a uniformly treated prospective cohort of adults with newly diagnosed glioblastoma (136 patients) using Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression models. Results. IGFBP-3 knockdown significantly impaired proliferation, motility, migration, and invasive capacity of U251MG cells in vitro (p < 0.005). Exogenous overexpression of IGFBP-3 in U251MG and U87MG cells demonstrated STAT-1 regulation. The mean transcript levels (by real-time RT-PCR) and the mean labeling index of STAT-1 (by IHC) were significantly higher in glioblastoma than in control brain tissues (p = 0.0239 and p < 0.001, respectively). Multivariate survival analysis revealed that STAT-1 protein expression (HR 1.015, p = 0.033, 95% CI 1.001-1.029) along with patient age (HR 1.025, p = 0.005, 95% CI 1.008-1.042) were significant predictors of shorter survival in patients with glioblastoma. Conclusions. IGFBP-3 influences tumor cell proliferation, migration, and invasion and regulates STAT-1 expression in malignant glioma cells. STAT-1 is overexpressed in human glioblastoma tissues and emerges as a novel prognostic biomarker.

Dynamic Site Characterization and Correlation of Shear Wave Velocity with Standard Penetration Test `N' Values for the City of Agartala, Tripura State, India

Seismic site characterization is the basic requirement for seismic microzonation and site response studies of an area. Site characterization helps to gauge the average dynamic properties of soil deposits and thus helps to evaluate the surface level response. This paper presents a seismic site characterization of Agartala city, the capital of Tripura state, in the northeast of India. Seismically, Agartala city is situated in the Bengal Basin zone which is classified as a highly active seismic zone, assigned by Indian seismic code BIS-1893, Indian Standard Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design of Structures, Part-1 General Provisions and Buildings. According to the Bureau of Indian Standards, New Delhi (2002), it is the highest seismic level (zone-V) in the country. The city is very close to the Sylhet fault (Bangladesh) where two major earthquakes (M (w) > 7) have occurred in the past and affected severely this city and the whole of northeast India. In order to perform site response evaluation, a series of geophysical tests at 27 locations were conducted using the multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) technique, which is an advanced method for obtaining shear wave velocity (V (s)) profiles from in situ measurements. Similarly, standard penetration test (SPT-N) bore log data sets have been obtained from the Urban Development Department, Govt. of Tripura. In the collected data sets, out of 50 bore logs, 27 were selected which are close to the MASW test locations and used for further study. Both the data sets (V (s) profiles with depth and SPT-N bore log profiles) have been used to calculate the average shear wave velocity (V (s)30) and average SPT-N values for the upper 30 m depth of the subsurface soil profiles. These were used for site classification of the study area recommended by the National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program (NEHRP) manual. The average V (s)30 and SPT-N classified the study area as seismic site class D and E categories, indicating that the city is susceptible to site effects and liquefaction. Further, the different data set combinations between V (s) and SPT-N (corrected and uncorrected) values have been used to develop site-specific correlation equations by statistical regression, as `V (s)' is a function of SPT-N value (corrected and uncorrected), considered with or without depth. However, after considering the data set pairs, a probabilistic approach has also been presented to develop a correlation using a quantile-quantile (Q-Q) plot. A comparison has also been made with the well known published correlations (for all soils) available in the literature. The present correlations closely agree with the other equations, but, comparatively, the correlation of shear wave velocity with the variation of depth and uncorrected SPT-N values provides a more suitable predicting model. Also the Q-Q plot agrees with all the other equations. In the absence of in situ measurements, the present correlations could be used to measure V (s) profiles of the study area for site response studies.

Appraisal of observational method for consolidation analysis

Two of the aims of laboratory one-dimensional consolidation tests are prediction of the end of primary settlement, and determination of the coefficient of consolidation of soils required for the time rate of consolidation analysis from time-compression data. Of the many methods documented in the literature to achieve these aims, Asaoka's method is a simple and useful tool, and yet the most neglected one since its inception in the geotechnical engineering literature more than three decades ago. This paper appraises Asaoka's method, originally proposed for the field prediction of ultimate settlement, from the perspective of laboratory consolidation analysis along with recent developments. It is shown through experimental illustrations that Asaoka's method is simpler than the conventional and popular methods, and makes a satisfactory prediction of both the end of primary compression and the coefficient of consolidation from laboratory one-dimensional consolidation test data.

Multithreaded Test Synthesis for Deadlock Detection

Designing and implementing thread-safe multithreaded libraries can be a daunting task as developers of these libraries need to ensure that their implementations are free from concurrency bugs, including deadlocks. The usual practice involves employing software testing and/or dynamic analysis to detect. deadlocks. Their effectiveness is dependent on well-designed multithreaded test cases. Unsurprisingly, developing multithreaded tests is significantly harder than developing sequential tests for obvious reasons. In this paper, we address the problem of automatically synthesizing multithreaded tests that can induce deadlocks. The key insight to our approach is that a subset of the properties observed when a deadlock manifests in a concurrent execution can also be observed in a single threaded execution. We design a novel, automatic, scalable and directed approach that identifies these properties and synthesizes a deadlock revealing multithreaded test. The input to our approach is the library implementation under consideration and the output is a set of deadlock revealing multithreaded tests. We have implemented our approach as part of a tool, named OMEN1. OMEN is able to synthesize multithreaded tests on many multithreaded Java libraries. Applying a dynamic deadlock detector on the execution of the synthesized tests results in the detection of a number of deadlocks, including 35 real deadlocks in classes documented as thread-safe. Moreover, our experimental results show that dynamic analysis on multithreaded tests that are either synthesized randomly or developed by third-party programmers are ineffective in detecting the deadlocks.

Maximum likelihood analysis of multi-stress accelerated life test data of series systems with competing log-normal causes of failure

This article presents frequentist inference of accelerated life test data of series systems with independent log-normal component lifetimes. The means of the component log-lifetimes are assumed to depend on the stress variables through a linear stress translation function that can accommodate the standard stress translation functions in the literature. An expectation-maximization algorithm is developed to obtain the maximum likelihood estimates of model parameters. The maximum likelihood estimates are then further refined by bootstrap, which is also used to infer about the component and system reliability metrics at usage stresses. The developed methodology is illustrated by analyzing a real as well as a simulated dataset. A simulation study is also carried out to judge the effectiveness of the bootstrap. It is found that in this model, application of bootstrap results in significant improvement over the simple maximum likelihood estimates.

Shear strength characteristics of mechanically biologically treated municipal solid waste (MBT-MSW) from Bangalore

Strength and stiffness properties of municipal solid waste (MSW) are important in landfill design. This paper presents the results of comprehensive testing of shear strength properties of mechanically biologically treated municipal solid waste (MBT-MSW) in laboratory. Changes in shear strength of MSW as a function of unit weight and particle size were investigated by performing laboratory studies on the MSW collected from Mavallipura landfill site in Bangalore. Direct shear tests, small scale and large scale consolidated undrained and drained triaxial tests were conducted on reconstituted compost reject MSW samples. The triaxial test results showed that the MSW samples exhibited a strain-hardening behaviour and the strength of MSW increased with increase in unit weight. Consolidated drained tests showed that the mobilized shear strength of the MSW increased by 40% for a unit weight increase from 7.3 kN/m(3) to 10.3 kN/m(3) at 20% strain levels. The mobilized cohesion and friction angle ranged from 5 to 9 kPa and 8 degrees to 33 degrees corresponding to a strain level of 20%. The consolidated undrained tests exhibited reduced friction angle values compared to the consolidated drained tests. The friction angle increased with increase in the unit weight from 8 degrees to 55 degrees in the consolidated undrained tests. Minor variations were found in the cohesion values. Relationships for strength and stiffness of MSW in terms of strength and stiffness ratios are developed and discussed. The stiffness ratio and the strength ratio of MSW were found to be 10 and 0.43. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.