Spectral Element Approach to Wave Propagation in Uncertain Composite Beam Structures

This paper presents a study of the wave propagation responses in composite structures in an uncertain environment. Here, the main aim of the work is to quantify the effect of uncertainty in the wave propagation responses at high frequencies. The material properties are considered uncertain and the analysis is performed using Neumann expansion blended with Monte Carlo simulation under the environment of spectral finite element method. The material randomness is included in the conventional wave propagation analysis by different distributions (namely, the normal and the Weibul distribution) and their effect on wave propagation in a composite beam is analyzed. The numerical results presented investigates the effect of material uncertainties on different parameters, namely, wavenumber and group speed, which are relevant in the wave propagation analysis. The effect of the parameters, such as fiber orientation, lay-up sequence, number of layers, and the layer thickness on the uncertain responses due to dynamic impulse load, is thoroughly analyzed. Significant changes are observed in the high frequency responses with the variation in the above parameters, even for a small coefficient of variation. High frequency impact loads are applied and a number of interesting results are presented, which brings out the true effects of uncertainty in the high frequency responses. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4003945]

Minimization of the effects of harmonics and voltage dip caused by electric arc furnace

This study examines the thermal efficiency of the operation of arc furnace and the effects of harmonics and voltage dips of a factory located near Bangkok. It also attempts to find ways to improve the performance of the arc furnace operation and minimize the effects of both harmonics and voltage dips. A dynamic model of the arc furnace has been developed incorporating both electrical and thermal characteristics. The model can be used to identify potential areas for improvement of the furnace and its operation. Snapshots of waveforms and measurement of RMS values of voltage, current and power at the furnace, at other feeders and at the point of common coupling were recorded. Harmonic simulation program and electromagnetic transient simulation program were used in the study to model the effects of harmonics and voltage dips and to identify appropriate static and dynamic filters to minimize their effects within the factory. The effects of harmonics and voltage dips were identified in records taken at the point of common coupling of another factory supplied by another feeder of the same substation. Simulation studies were made to examine the results on the second feeder when dynamic filters were used in the factory which operated the arc furnace. The methodology used and the mitigation strategy identified in the study are applicable to general situation in a power distribution system where an arc furnace is a part of the load of a customer

Optimal placement of Distributed Generation for a projected load increase using Relative Electrical Distance approach

There is a lot of pressure on all the developed and second world countries to produce low emission power and distributed generation (DG) is found to be one of the most viable ways to achieve this. DG generally makes use of renewable energy sources like wind, micro turbines, photovoltaic, etc., which produce power with minimum green house gas emissions. While installing a DG it is important to define its size and optimal location enabling minimum network expansion and line losses. In this paper, a methodology to locate the optimal site for a DG installation, with the objective to minimize the net transmission losses, is presented. The methodology is based on the concept of relative electrical distance (RED) between the DG and the load points. This approach will help to identify the new DG location(s), without the necessity to conduct repeated power flows. To validate this methodology case studies are carried out on a 20 node, 66kV system, a part of Karnataka Transco and results are presented.

Microelectromechanical torsional varactors with low parasitic capacitances and high dynamic range

This work focuses on the design of torsional microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) varactors to achieve highdynamic range of capacitances. MEMS varactors fabricated through the polyMUMPS process are characterized at low and high frequencies for their capacitance-voltage characteristics and electrical parasitics. The effect of parasitic capacitances on tuning ratio is studied and an equivalent circuit is developed. Two variants of torsional varactors that help to improve the dynamic range of torsional varactors despite the parasitics are proposed and characterized. A tuning ratio of 1:8, which is the highest reported in literature, has been obtained. We also demonstrate through simulations that much higher tuning ratios can be obtained with the designs proposed. The designs and experimental results presented are relevant to CMOS fabrication processes that use low resistivity substrate. (C) 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). DOI: 10.1117/1.JMM.11.1.013006]

Gel Sculpture: Moldable, Load-Bearing and Self-Healing Non-Polymeric Supramolecular Gel Derived from a Simple Organic Salt

An easy access to a library of simple organic salts derived from tert-butoxycarbonyl (Boc)-protected L-amino acids and two secondary amines (dicyclohexyl- and dibenzyl amine) are synthesized following a supramolecular synthon rationale to generate a new series of low molecular weight gelators (LMWGs). Out of the 12 salts that we prepared, the nitrobenzene gel of dicyclohexylammonium Boc-glycinate (GLY.1) displayed remarkable load-bearing, moldable and self-healing properties. These remarkable properties displayed by GLY.1 and the inability to display such properties by its dibenzylammonium counterpart (GLY.2) were explained using microscopic and rheological data. Single crystal structures of eight salts displayed the presence of a 1D hydrogen-bonded network (HBN) that is believed to be important in gelation. Powder X-ray diffraction in combination with the single crystal X-ray structure of GLY.1 clearly established the presence of a 1D hydrogen-bonded network in the xerogel of the nitrobenzene gel of GLY.1. The fact that such remarkable properties arising from an easily accessible (salt formation) small molecule are due to supramolecular (non-covalent) interactions is quite intriguing and such easily synthesizable materials may be useful in stress-bearing and other applications.

Criticality guided energy aware speculation for speculative multithreaded processors

Unending quest for performance improvement coupled with the advancements in integrated circuit technology have led to the development of new architectural paradigm. Speculative multithreaded architecture (SpMT) philosophy relies on aggressive speculative execution for improved performance. However, aggressive speculative execution comes with a mixed flavor of improving performance, when successful, and adversely affecting the energy consumption (and performance) because of useless computation in the event of mis-speculation. Dynamic instruction criticality information can be usefully applied to control and guide such an aggressive speculative execution. In this paper, we present a model of micro-execution for SpMT architecture that we have developed to determine the dynamic instruction criticality. We have also developed two novel techniques utilizing the criticality information namely delaying the non-critical loads and the criticality based thread-prediction for reducing useless computations and energy consumption. Experimental results showing break-up of critical instructions and effectiveness of proposed techniques in reducing energy consumption are presented in the context of multiscalar processor that implements SpMT architecture. Our experiments show 17.7% and 11.6% reduction in dynamic energy for criticality based thread prediction and criticality based delayed load scheme respectively while the improvement in dynamic energy delay product is 13.9% and 5.5%, respectively. (c) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.

A Linear S-N Curve with Load Dependent Variance and Explicit Failure Probability

We reconsider standard uniaxial fatigue test data obtained from handbooks. Many S-N curve fits to such data represent the median life and exclude load-dependent variance in life. Presently available approaches for incorporating probabilistic aspects explicitly within the S-N curves have some shortcomings, which we discuss. We propose a new linear S-N fit with a prespecified failure probability, load-dependent variance, and reasonable behavior at extreme loads. We fit our parameters using maximum likelihood, show the reasonableness of the fit using Q-Q plots, and obtain standard error estimates via Monte Carlo simulations. The proposed fitting method may be used for obtaining S-N curves from the same data as already available, with the same mathematical form, but in cases in which the failure probability is smaller, say, 10 % instead of 50 %, and in which the fitted line is not parallel to the 50 % (median) line.

Nonlinear dynamic state estimation in instrumented structures with conditionally linear Gaussian substructures

Many problems of state estimation in structural dynamics permit a partitioning of system states into nonlinear and conditionally linear substructures. This enables a part of the problem to be solved exactly, using the Kalman filter, and the remainder using Monte Carlo simulations. The present study develops an algorithm that combines sequential importance sampling based particle filtering with Kalman filtering to a fairly general form of process equations and demonstrates the application of a substructuring scheme to problems of hidden state estimation in structures with local nonlinearities, response sensitivity model updating in nonlinear systems, and characterization of residual displacements in instrumented inelastic structures. The paper also theoretically demonstrates that the sampling variance associated with the substructuring scheme used does not exceed the sampling variance corresponding to the Monte Carlo filtering without substructuring. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effective contrast recovery in rapid dynamic near-infrared diffuse optical tomography using l(1)-norm-based linear image reconstruction method

Traditional image reconstruction methods in rapid dynamic diffuse optical tomography employ l(2)-norm-based regularization, which is known to remove the high-frequency components in the reconstructed images and make them appear smooth. The contrast recovery in these type of methods is typically dependent on the iterative nature of method employed, where the nonlinear iterative technique is known to perform better in comparison to linear techniques (noniterative) with a caveat that nonlinear techniques are computationally complex. Assuming that there is a linear dependency of solution between successive frames resulted in a linear inverse problem. This new framework with the combination of l(1)-norm based regularization can provide better robustness to noise and provide better contrast recovery compared to conventional l(2)-based techniques. Moreover, it is shown that the proposed l(1)-based technique is computationally efficient compared to its counterpart (l(2)-based one). The proposed framework requires a reasonably close estimate of the actual solution for the initial frame, and any suboptimal estimate leads to erroneous reconstruction results for the subsequent frames.

Evaluation of dynamic voltage and frequency scaling for stream programs

Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) offers a huge potential for designing trade-offs involving energy, power, temperature and performance of computing systems. In this paper, we evaluate three different DVFS schemes - our enhancement of a Petri net performance model based DVFS method for sequential programs to stream programs, a simple profile based Linear Scaling method, and an existing hardware based DVFS method for multithreaded applications - using multithreaded stream applications, in a full system Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) simulator. From our evaluation, we find that the software based methods achieve significant Energy/Throughput2(ET−2) improvements. The hardware based scheme degrades performance heavily and suffers ET−2 loss. Our results indicate that the simple profile based scheme achieves the benefits of the complex Petri net based scheme for stream programs, and present a strong case for the need for independent voltage/frequency control for different cores of CMPs, which is lacking in most of the state-of-the-art CMPs. This is in contrast to the conclusions of a recent evaluation of per-core DVFS schemes for multithreaded applications for CMPs.

Dynamic mechanism design for markets with strategic resources

The assignment of tasks to multiple resources becomes an interesting game theoretic problem, when both the task owner and the resources are strategic. In the classical, nonstrategic setting, where the states of the tasks and resources are observable by the controller, this problem is that of finding an optimal policy for a Markov decision process (MDP). When the states are held by strategic agents, the problem of an efficient task allocation extends beyond that of solving an MDP and becomes that of designing a mechanism. Motivated by this fact, we propose a general mechanism which decides on an allocation rule for the tasks and resources and a payment rule to incentivize agents' participation and truthful reports. In contrast to related dynamic strategic control problems studied in recent literature, the problem studied here has interdependent values: the benefit of an allocation to the task owner is not simply a function of the characteristics of the task itself and the allocation, but also of the state of the resources. We introduce a dynamic extension of Mezzetti's two phase mechanism for interdependent valuations. In this changed setting, the proposed dynamic mechanism is efficient, within period ex-post incentive compatible, and within period ex-post individually rational.