A Robust Extended Complex Kalman Filter and Sliding-mode Control Based Shunt Active Power Filter

Abstract—This article presents the design of a new shunt active power filter that employs a modified robust extended complex Kalman filter approach with an exponential robust term embedded for reference current estimation together with a current controller based on the sliding-mode control concept. The robust extended complex Kalman filter exploits a new weighted exponential function to handle these grid perturbations to estimate the reference signal in shunt active power filter system. The current controller in the proposed shunt active power filter has been designed using a sliding-mode control strategy because of its ability to handle parameter uncertainties and ease in implementation. To test the effectiveness of the proposed shunt active power filter, extensive simulations were performed using MATLAB/Simulink (The MathWorks, Natick, Massachusetts, USA), and real-time studies were made using OPAL-RT (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). Results obtained from the above studies using the proposed shunt active power filter together with the different variants of Kalman filter (Kalman filter, extended Kalman filter, extended complex Kalman filter) are analyzed, and it is observed that the proposed robust extended complex Kalman filter-sliding-mode control based shunt active power filter provides accurate and improved harmonics mitigation and reactive power compensation.     

Stress-Strain Curve Analysis of Cheddar Cheese under Uniaxial Compression

Samples were subjected to uniaxial compression at six deformation rates until fracture occurred. Fracture strain, stress and work, deform-ability modulus, and biaxial extensional viscosity were determined. No significant effect of surface lubrication was observed on magnitudes of the selected mechanical properties. Irrespective of deformation rate Cheddar cheese fractured at a strain of 55.5% when aspect ratio was 0.65, and at a strain of 59.7% when aspect ratio was 1.0. The fracture stress ranged from 34 to 107 kPa and fracture work from 22 to 63 kJ/m³. Mean deformability modulus of Cheddar cheese was 240 kPa. Biaxial extensional viscosity was a decreasing function of strain rate.     

Direct method of overmodulation with integrated closed loop stator flux vector control

Overmodulation achieves full utilization of installed dc link voltage, by modifying the magnitude and the phase of reference voltage vector. Due to the nonlinear behavior in this region, closed loop vector control becomes difficult. A simple method of overmodulation with closed loop control of stator flux vector is proposed in this paper. Instead of modifying the voltage reference by nonlinear equations or look up table, we propose a direct method to generate the switching times. In so doing, the average angular velocity of the stator flux vector is controlled linearly throughout the modulation range. The proposed method shows lower harmonic distortion compared with existing methods. It greatly reduces the complexity and cost of achieving overmodulation over existing schemes.     

Purification and crystallization of complexes modeling the active state of the fragile histidine triad protein

Fragile histidine triad protein (Fhit) is a diadenosine triphosphate (ApppA) hydrolase encoded at the human chromosome 3 fragile site which is frequently disrupted in tumors. Reintroduction of FHIT coding sequences to cancer cell lines with FHIT deletions suppressed the ability of these cell lines to form tumors in nude mice even when the reintroduced FHIT gene had been mutated to allow ApppA binding but not hydrolysis. Because this suggested that the tumor suppressor activity of Fhit protein depends on substrate-dependent signaling rather than ApppA catabolism, we prepared two crystalline forms of Fhit protein that are expected to model its biologically active, substrate-bound state. Wild-type and the His96Asn forms of Fhit were overexpressed in Escherichia coli, purified to homogeneity and crystallized in the presence and absence of ApppA and an ApppA analog. Single crystals obtained by vapor diffusion against ammonium sulfate diffracted X-rays to beyond 2.75 A resolution. High quality native synchrotron X-ray data were collected for an orthorhombic and a hexagonal crystal form.      

Differential immunological aberrations in patients with primary and secondary Sj?gren''s syndrome

PURPOSE: To evaluate the dependence of fine particle dose charge (FPD charge) generated from powder inhalers on physico-chemical properties of the inhalation powder, inhaler type, deaggregation mechanism, dose number and/or retained powder. METHODS: Electrostatic charges were determined on micronized powders and aerosolized fine particle doses withdrawn from two, high efficiency, multidose powder inhalers, Turbohaler and prototype Dryhaler. The behavior of terbutaline sulfate, budesonide, albuterol (sulfate and base), beclomethasone dipropionate and lactose was assessed before and after aerosolization. RESULTS: Both inhalers conferred triboelectric FPD charges during aerosolization in the range -400 pC through +200 pC. Specific charges (charge/unit mass) on the fine particle doses of budesonide from Dryhaler were significantly less than those from Turbohaler (p < 0.01). Electrostatic charges on the potentially respirable cloud of terbutaline sulfate generated by Bricanyl Turbohaler were positive and/or negative and unpredictable. With Pulmicort Turbohaler, FPD charges on budesonide were always positive. Dryhaler was used to determine the chemical dependence of fine particle triboelectrification during the aerosolization of pure materials. A triboelectric series was constructed from the Dryhaler results ranking the powders from positive to negative as budesonide > lactose > albuterol sulfate > terbutaline sulfate > or = albuterol > or = beclomethasone dipropionate. CONCLUSIONS: While there was no evidence of FPD charge dependence upon dose number with either inhaler, FPD charges were dependent upon the powder under investigation, as well as the construction and deaggregation mechanism of the inhaler. The specific charge on the fine particle dose of budesonide from Turbohaler corresponded to approximately 200 electronic charges per particle, a value which is known to affect both total and regional aerosol deposition in the human lung. Electrostatic charge effects may be important determinants of aerosol behavior and should not be neglected.