Licensing Model Development for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) - Focusing on the Finnish Regulatory Framework

Recently, Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) have attracted increased public discussion. While large nuclear power plant new build projects are facing challenges, the focus of attention is turning to small modular reactors. One particular project challenge arises in the area of nuclear licensing, which plays a significant role in new build projects affecting their quality as well as costs and schedules. This dissertation - positioned in the field of nuclear engineering but also with a significant section in the field of systems engineering - examines the nuclear licensing processes and their suitability for the characteristics of SMRs. The study investigates the licensing processes in selected countries, as well as other safety critical industry fields. Viewing the licensing processes and their separate licensing steps in terms of SMRs, the study adopts two different analysis theories for review and comparison. The primary data consists of a literature review, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaire responses concerning licensing processes and practices. The result of the study is a recommendation for a new, optimized licensing process for SMRs. The most important SMR-specific feature, in terms of licensing, is the modularity of the design. Here the modularity indicates multi-module SMR designs, which creates new challenges in the licensing process. As this study focuses on Finland, the main features of the new licensing process are adapted to the current Finnish licensing process, aiming to achieve the main benefits with minimal modifications to the current process. The application of the new licensing process is developed using Systems Engineering, Requirements Management, and Project Management practices and tools. Nuclear licensing includes a large amount of data and documentation which needs to be managed in a suitable manner throughout the new build project and then during the whole life cycle of the nuclear power plant. To enable a smooth licensing process and therefore ensure the success of the new build nuclear power plant project, management processes and practices play a significant role. This study contributes to the theoretical understanding of how licensing processes are structured and how they are put into action in practice. The findings clarify the suitability of different licensing processes and their selected licensing steps for SMR licensing. The results combine the most suitable licensing steps into a new licensing process for SMRs. The results are also extended to the concept of licensing management practices and tools.

Design and synthesis of efficient mac architectures for high speed decimal processor

Most of the commercial and financial data are stored in decimal fonn. Recently, support for decimal arithmetic has received increased attention due to the growing importance in financial analysis, banking, tax calculation, currency conversion, insurance, telephone billing and accounting. Performing decimal arithmetic with systems that do not support decimal computations may give a result with representation error, conversion error, and/or rounding error. In this world of precision, such errors are no more tolerable. The errors can be eliminated and better accuracy can be achieved if decimal computations are done using Decimal Floating Point (DFP) units. But the floating-point arithmetic units in today's general-purpose microprocessors are based on the binary number system, and the decimal computations are done using binary arithmetic. Only few common decimal numbers can be exactly represented in Binary Floating Point (BF P). ln many; cases, the law requires that results generated from financial calculations performed on a computer should exactly match with manual calculations. Currently many applications involving fractional decimal data perform decimal computations either in software or with a combination of software and hardware. The performance can be dramatically improved by complete hardware DFP units and this leads to the design of processors that include DF P hardware.VLSI implementations using same modular building blocks can decrease system design and manufacturing cost. A multiplexer realization is a natural choice from the viewpoint of cost and speed.This thesis focuses on the design and synthesis of efficient decimal MAC (Multiply ACeumulate) architecture for high speed decimal processors based on IEEE Standard for Floating-point Arithmetic (IEEE 754-2008). The research goal is to design and synthesize deeimal'MAC architectures to achieve higher performance.Efficient design methods and architectures are developed for a high performance DFP MAC unit as part of this research.

Design and Control of an Anthropomorphic Robotic Finger with Multi-point Tactile Sensation

The goal of this research is to develop the prototype of a tactile sensing platform for anthropomorphic manipulation research. We investigate this problem through the fabrication and simple control of a planar 2-DOF robotic finger inspired by anatomic consistency, self-containment, and adaptability. The robot is equipped with a tactile sensor array based on optical transducer technology whereby localized changes in light intensity within an illuminated foam substrate correspond to the distribution and magnitude of forces applied to the sensor surface plane. The integration of tactile perception is a key component in realizing robotic systems which organically interact with the world. Such natural behavior is characterized by compliant performance that can initiate internal, and respond to external, force application in a dynamic environment. However, most of the current manipulators that support some form of haptic feedback either solely derive proprioceptive sensation or only limit tactile sensors to the mechanical fingertips. These constraints are due to the technological challenges involved in high resolution, multi-point tactile perception. In this work, however, we take the opposite approach, emphasizing the role of full-finger tactile feedback in the refinement of manual capabilities. To this end, we propose and implement a control framework for sensorimotor coordination analogous to infant-level grasping and fixturing reflexes. This thesis details the mechanisms used to achieve these sensory, actuation, and control objectives, along with the design philosophies and biological influences behind them. The results of behavioral experiments with a simple tactilely-modulated control scheme are also described. The hope is to integrate the modular finger into an %engineered analog of the human hand with a complete haptic system.

Intelligence by Design: Principles of Modularity and Coordination for Engineerin

All intelligence relies on search --- for example, the search for an intelligent agent's next action. Search is only likely to succeed in resource-bounded agents if they have already been biased towards finding the right answer. In artificial agents, the primary source of bias is engineering. This dissertation describes an approach, Behavior-Oriented Design (BOD) for engineering complex agents. A complex agent is one that must arbitrate between potentially conflicting goals or behaviors. Behavior-oriented design builds on work in behavior-based and hybrid architectures for agents, and the object oriented approach to software engineering. The primary contributions of this dissertation are: 1.The BOD architecture: a modular architecture with each module providing specialized representations to facilitate learning. This includes one pre-specified module and representation for action selection or behavior arbitration. The specialized representation underlying BOD action selection is Parallel-rooted, Ordered, Slip-stack Hierarchical (POSH) reactive plans. 2.The BOD development process: an iterative process that alternately scales the agent's capabilities then optimizes the agent for simplicity, exploiting tradeoffs between the component representations. This ongoing process for controlling complexity not only provides bias for the behaving agent, but also facilitates its maintenance and extendibility. The secondary contributions of this dissertation include two implementations of POSH action selection, a procedure for identifying useful idioms in agent architectures and using them to distribute knowledge across agent paradigms, several examples of applying BOD idioms to established architectures, an analysis and comparison of the attributes and design trends of a large number of agent architectures, a comparison of biological (particularly mammalian) intelligence to artificial agent architectures, a novel model of primate transitive inference, and many other examples of BOD agents and BOD development.

Conceptual design of wastewater treatment plants using multiple objectives

La implementació de la Directiva Europea 91/271/CEE referent a tractament d'aigües residuals urbanes va promoure la construcció de noves instal·lacions al mateix temps que la introducció de noves tecnologies per tractar nutrients en àrees designades com a sensibles. Tant el disseny d'aquestes noves infraestructures com el redisseny de les ja existents es va portar a terme a partir d'aproximacions basades fonamentalment en objectius econòmics degut a la necessitat d'acabar les obres en un període de temps relativament curt. Aquests estudis estaven basats en coneixement heurístic o correlacions numèriques provinents de models determinístics simplificats. Així doncs, moltes de les estacions depuradores d'aigües residuals (EDARs) resultants van estar caracteritzades per una manca de robustesa i flexibilitat, poca controlabilitat, amb freqüents problemes microbiològics de separació de sòlids en el decantador secundari, elevats costos d'operació i eliminació parcial de nutrients allunyant-les de l'òptim de funcionament. Molts d'aquestes problemes van sorgir degut a un disseny inadequat, de manera que la comunitat científica es va adonar de la importància de les etapes inicials de disseny conceptual. Precisament per aquesta raó, els mètodes tradicionals de disseny han d'evolucionar cap a sistemes d'avaluació mes complexos, que tinguin en compte múltiples objectius, assegurant així un millor funcionament de la planta. Tot i la importància del disseny conceptual tenint en compte múltiples objectius, encara hi ha un buit important en la literatura científica tractant aquest camp d'investigació. L'objectiu que persegueix aquesta tesi és el de desenvolupar un mètode de disseny conceptual d'EDARs considerant múltiples objectius, de manera que serveixi d'eina de suport a la presa de decisions al seleccionar la millor alternativa entre diferents opcions de disseny. Aquest treball de recerca contribueix amb un mètode de disseny modular i evolutiu que combina diferent tècniques com: el procés de decisió jeràrquic, anàlisi multicriteri, optimació preliminar multiobjectiu basada en anàlisi de sensibilitat, tècniques d'extracció de coneixement i mineria de dades, anàlisi multivariant i anàlisi d'incertesa a partir de simulacions de Monte Carlo. Això s'ha aconseguit subdividint el mètode de disseny desenvolupat en aquesta tesis en quatre blocs principals: (1) generació jeràrquica i anàlisi multicriteri d'alternatives, (2) anàlisi de decisions crítiques, (3) anàlisi multivariant i (4) anàlisi d'incertesa. El primer dels blocs combina un procés de decisió jeràrquic amb anàlisi multicriteri. El procés de decisió jeràrquic subdivideix el disseny conceptual en una sèrie de qüestions mes fàcilment analitzables i avaluables mentre que l'anàlisi multicriteri permet la consideració de diferent objectius al mateix temps. D'aquesta manera es redueix el nombre d'alternatives a avaluar i fa que el futur disseny i operació de la planta estigui influenciat per aspectes ambientals, econòmics, tècnics i legals. Finalment aquest bloc inclou una anàlisi de sensibilitat dels pesos que proporciona informació de com varien les diferents alternatives al mateix temps que canvia la importància relativa del objectius de disseny. El segon bloc engloba tècniques d'anàlisi de sensibilitat, optimització preliminar multiobjectiu i extracció de coneixement per donar suport al disseny conceptual d'EDAR, seleccionant la millor alternativa un cop s'han identificat decisions crítiques. Les decisions crítiques són aquelles en les que s'ha de seleccionar entre alternatives que compleixen de forma similar els objectius de disseny però amb diferents implicacions pel que respecte a la futura estructura i operació de la planta. Aquest tipus d'anàlisi proporciona una visió més àmplia de l'espai de disseny i permet identificar direccions desitjables (o indesitjables) cap on el procés de disseny pot derivar. El tercer bloc de la tesi proporciona l'anàlisi multivariant de les matrius multicriteri obtingudes durant l'avaluació de les alternatives de disseny. Específicament, les tècniques utilitzades en aquest treball de recerca engloben: 1) anàlisi de conglomerats, 2) anàlisi de components principals/anàlisi factorial i 3) anàlisi discriminant. Com a resultat és possible un millor accés a les dades per realitzar la selecció de les alternatives, proporcionant més informació per a una avaluació mes efectiva, i finalment incrementant el coneixement del procés d'avaluació de les alternatives de disseny generades. En el quart i últim bloc desenvolupat en aquesta tesi, les diferents alternatives de disseny són avaluades amb incertesa. L'objectiu d'aquest bloc és el d'estudiar el canvi en la presa de decisions quan una alternativa és avaluada incloent o no incertesa en els paràmetres dels models que descriuen el seu comportament. La incertesa en el paràmetres del model s'introdueix a partir de funcions de probabilitat. Desprès es porten a terme simulacions Monte Carlo, on d'aquestes distribucions se n'extrauen números aleatoris que es subsisteixen pels paràmetres del model i permeten estudiar com la incertesa es propaga a través del model. Així és possible analitzar la variació en l'acompliment global dels objectius de disseny per a cada una de les alternatives, quines són les contribucions en aquesta variació que hi tenen els aspectes ambientals, legals, econòmics i tècnics, i finalment el canvi en la selecció d'alternatives quan hi ha una variació de la importància relativa dels objectius de disseny. En comparació amb les aproximacions tradicionals de disseny, el mètode desenvolupat en aquesta tesi adreça problemes de disseny/redisseny tenint en compte múltiples objectius i múltiples criteris. Al mateix temps, el procés de presa de decisions mostra de forma objectiva, transparent i sistemàtica el perquè una alternativa és seleccionada en front de les altres, proporcionant l'opció que més bé acompleix els objectius marcats, mostrant els punts forts i febles, les principals correlacions entre objectius i alternatives, i finalment tenint en compte la possible incertesa inherent en els paràmetres del model que es fan servir durant les anàlisis. Les possibilitats del mètode desenvolupat es demostren en aquesta tesi a partir de diferents casos d'estudi: selecció del tipus d'eliminació biològica de nitrogen (cas d'estudi # 1), optimització d'una estratègia de control (cas d'estudi # 2), redisseny d'una planta per aconseguir eliminació simultània de carboni, nitrogen i fòsfor (cas d'estudi # 3) i finalment anàlisi d'estratègies control a nivell de planta (casos d'estudi # 4 i # 5).

Empirical impact of cache effects for vision system design

Computer vision applications generally split their problem into multiple simpler tasks. Likewise research often combines algorithms into systems for evaluation purposes. Frameworks for modular vision provide interfaces and mechanisms for algorithm combination and network transparency. However, these don’t provide interfaces efficiently utilising the slow memory in modern PCs. We investigate quantitatively how system performance varies with different patterns of memory usage by the framework for an example vision system.

A modular head/eye platform for real-time reactive vision

This paper describes the design, implementation and testing of a high speed controlled stereo “head/eye” platform which facilitates the rapid redirection of gaze in response to visual input. It details the mechanical device, which is based around geared DC motors, and describes hardware aspects of the controller and vision system, which are implemented on a reconfigurable network of general purpose parallel processors. The servo-controller is described in detail and higher level gaze and vision constructs outlined. The paper gives performance figures gained both from mechanical tests on the platform alone, and from closed loop tests on the entire system using visual feedback from a feature detector.

Proceedings from the 2nd seminar on Development of Modular Products : December 13-14, 2004, Campus Framtidsdalen, Dalarna University, Sweden

Companies are focusing on efforts increasing the overall efficiency at the same time as the ability to meet customer needs becomes even more important. There is a need to improve the organisation and the product design at the same time through the visualisation of how a product family design should be performed in order to adapt to customers, company internal issues, and long-term strategy. Therefore, there is a need for qualified personnel in today’s companies with the knowledge of product development and modularity. The graduate course Development of Modular Products at Högskolan Dalarna has the objective to provide such knowledge. As a part of the course, each student will individually perform extensive research within a chosen area with respect to Product Development and Modularity. This proceeding is the result of the students own work and was presented during a two day seminar at Dalarna University. The contents of the papers cover many areas, from the identification of customer needs to cost effective manufacturing, and benefits of modularisation. The reader of this proceeding will not only benefit from many areas within Product Development and Modularity but also from the colour of many cultures. In this proceeding, students from nine countries are represented (Bangladesh, China, Costa Rica, Germany, Holland, India, Luxembourg Nigeria, and Sweden). Enjoy the reading.

Module property verification : A method to plan and perform quality verifications in modular architectures

Modular product architectures have generated numerous benefits for companies in terms of cost, lead-time and quality. The defined interfaces and the module’s properties decrease the effort to develop new product variants, and provide an opportunity to perform parallel tasks in design, manufacturing and assembly. The background of this thesis is that companies perform verifications (tests, inspections and controls) of products late, when most of the parts have been assembled. This extends the lead-time to delivery and ruins benefits from a modular product architecture; specifically when the verifications are extensive and the frequency of detected defects is high. Due to the number of product variants obtained from the modular product architecture, verifications must handle a wide range of equipment, instructions and goal values to ensure that high quality products can be delivered. As a result, the total benefits from a modular product architecture are difficult to achieve. This thesis describes a method for planning and performing verifications within a modular product architecture. The method supports companies by utilizing the defined modules for verifications already at module level, so called MPV (Module Property Verification). With MPV, defects are detected at an earlier point, compared to verification of a complete product, and the number of verifications is decreased. The MPV method is built up of three phases. In Phase A, candidate modules are evaluated on the basis of costs and lead-time of the verifications and the repair of defects. An MPV-index is obtained which quantifies the module and indicates if the module should be verified at product level or by MPV. In Phase B, the interface interaction between the modules is evaluated, as well as the distribution of properties among the modules. The purpose is to evaluate the extent to which supplementary verifications at product level is needed. Phase C supports a selection of the final verification strategy. The cost and lead-time for the supplementary verifications are considered together with the results from Phase A and B. The MPV method is based on a set of qualitative and quantitative measures and tools which provide an overview and support the achievement of cost and time efficient company specific verifications. A practical application in industry shows how the MPV method can be used, and the subsequent benefits

A Modular and digitally programmable interface based on band-pass sigma-delta modulator for mixed-signal systems-on-chip

The focus of this thesis is to discuss the development and modeling of an interface architecture to be employed for interfacing analog signals in mixed-signal SOC. We claim that the approach that is going to be presented is able to achieve wide frequency range, and covers a large range of applications with constant performance, allied to digital configuration compatibility. Our primary assumptions are to use a fixed analog block and to promote application configurability in the digital domain, which leads to a mixed-signal interface. The use of a fixed analog block avoids the performance loss common to configurable analog blocks. The usage of configurability on the digital domain makes possible the use of all existing tools for high level design, simulation and synthesis to implement the target application, with very good performance prediction. The proposed approach utilizes the concept of frequency translation (mixing) of the input signal followed by its conversion to the ΣΔ domain, which makes possible the use of a fairly constant analog block, and also, a uniform treatment of input signal from DC to high frequencies. The programmability is performed in the ΣΔ digital domain where performance can be closely achieved according to application specification. The interface performance theoretical and simulation model are developed for design space exploration and for physical design support. Two prototypes are built and characterized to validate the proposed model and to implement some application examples. The usage of this interface as a multi-band parametric ADC and as a two channels analog multiplier and adder are shown. The multi-channel analog interface architecture is also presented. The characterization measurements support the main advantages of the approach proposed.

Analysis an development of a prototype based on media wiki and semantic media wiki integrated with a design modeling that allows modeling of organizations based on demo

In a world where organizations are ever more complex the need for the knowledge of the organizational self is a growing necessity. The DEMO methodology sets a goal in achieving the specification of the organizational self capturing the essence of the organization in way independent of its implementation and also coherent, consistent, complete, modular and objective. But having such organization self notion is of little meaning if this notion is not shared by the organization actors. To achieve this goal in a society that has grown attached to technology and where time is of utmost importance, using a tool such as a semantic Wikipedia may be the perfect way of making the information accessible. However, to establish DEMO methodology in such platform there is a need to create bridges between its modeling components and semantic Wikipedia. It’s in that aspect that our thesis focuses, trying to establish and implement, using a study case, the principles of a way of transforming the DEMO methodology diagrams in comprehensive pages on semantic Wikipedia but keeping them as abstract as possible to allow expansibility and generalization to all diagrams without losing any valuable information so that, if that is the wish, those diagrams may be recreated from the semantic pages and make this process a full cycle.

Analytical method for the design of a machine with aligned and skewed permanent magnets

This work aims to present the design and the evaluation of a standard multi-pole machine with permanent magnets inserted in the rotor by two different geometrical forms: aligned and skewed magnets. The design (new analytical method) was based on a standard 250 W three phase 12-pole induction motor (squirrel cage rotor type), beginning with the original stator constructive data to calculate the magnetic flux density to determine the permanent magnets. In the development of the work, a simple and modular rotor was built reusing the original 12-pole stator (concentrated windings). The machine was evaluated in a laboratory for the purpose of checking the quantity and quality of energy produced with the machine operating as a generator and its start, torque, and performance working as a motor. In conclusion, the modular skewed magnet is an option for electrical machines, for the generation of a reasonable quality, in the context of decentralized generation and a motor with high torque and low energetic consumption.

Design de superfície: por uma visão projetual geométrica e tridimensional

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Assento adaptável para pessoas com paralisia cerebral e seqüela de escoliose: aplicando ergonomia por meio do design - num estudo de caso

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Optimized design of substrate-integrated hollow waveguides for mid-infrared gas analyzers

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)