Non-iterative nodal solution for transient simulation of nonlinear and time-varying elements

A non-iterative algorithm based on nodal equation formulation is proposed for transient simulation of nonlinear and time-varying elements. Terminal equations of inductors and capacitors are transformed into algebraic equations using the trapezoidal rule of integration by treating all nonlinear elements as linear and nodal equations are formulated as a set of algebraic equations. LU factorization is used for the solution of nodal equations. Variation of system elements is represented by renewing the nodal conductance matrix at each time step of the solution accordingly. In the first illustrative example, a nonlinear oscillator circuit is considered. In the second, the transient response of a transmission line with a surge arrester is computed by including the corona effects and in the third, a time-dependent primary arc model of a faulty transmission line is examined. Obtained results are compared with those obtained using EMTP and state-space method. Change of simulation time with respect to the step length of the numerical integration is also investigated.     

Comparative investigation of diagnosis media for induction machine mechanical unbalance fault

For an induction machine, we suggest a theoretical development of the mechanical unbalance effect on the analytical expressions of radial vibration and stator current. Related spectra are described and characteristic defect frequencies are determined. Moreover, the stray flux expressions are developed for both axial and radial sensor coil positions and a substitute diagnosis technique is proposed. In addition, the load torque effect on the detection efficiency of these diagnosis media is discussed and a comparative investigation is performed. The decisive factor of comparison is the fault sensitivity. Experimental results show that spectral analysis of the axial stray flux can be an alternative solution to cover effectiveness limitation of the traditional stator current technique and to substitute the classical vibration practice.     

Association of Ligamentum Flavum Hypertrophy with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis Progression—Comparative Microarray Gene Expression Analysis

The role of the ligamentum flavum (LF) in the pathogenesis of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is not well understood. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we investigated the degrees of LF hypertrophy in 18 patients without scoliosis and on the convex and concave sides of the apex of the curvature in 22 patients with AIS. Next, gene expression was compared among neutral vertebral LF and LF on the convex and concave sides of the apex of the curvature in patients with AIS. Histological and microarray analyses of the LF were compared among neutral vertebrae (control) and the LF on the apex of the curvatures. The mean area of LF in the without scoliosis, apical concave, and convex with scoliosis groups was 10.5, 13.5, and 20.3 mm², respectively. There were significant differences among the three groups (p < 0.05). Histological analysis showed that the ratio of fibers (Collagen/Elastic) was significantly increased on the convex side compared to the concave side (p < 0.05). Microarray analysis showed that ERC2 and MAFB showed significantly increased gene expression on the convex side compared with those of the concave side and the neutral vertebral LF cells. These genes were significantly associated with increased expression of collagen by LF cells (p < 0.05). LF hypertrophy was identified in scoliosis patients, and the convex side was significantly more hypertrophic than that of the concave side. ERC2 and MAFB genes were associated with LF hypertrophy in patients with AIS. These phenomena are likely to be associated with the progression of scoliosis.     

Numerical simulation of UV LEDs with GaN and BGaN single quantum well

The objective of this work is to simulate a single quantum well ultraviolet light emitting diode (LED) based on AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN and AlGaN/BGaN/AlGaN, by using TCAD Silvaco simulator. The first structure has a GaN quantum well taken between two layers, of n-AlGaN and p-AlGaN. The second one has a BGaN quantum well instead of GaN. We fix the concentration of the boron in BGaN to only 1% and we vary the thickness of GaN and BGaN quantum well layer from 7 to 20 nm, for the two structures. As results, we obtain respectively for GaN-LED and BGaN-LED, a maximum current of 0.52 and 0.27 mA, a maximum power spectral density of 1.935 and 6.7 W cm⁻¹ eV⁻¹, a maximum spontaneous emission of 3.34 × 10²⁸ and 3.43 × 10²⁸ s⁻¹ cm⁻³ eV⁻¹, and a maximum Light output power of 0.56 and 0.89 mW.     

Analysis of the Dynamic Behavior of Magnetorheological Elastomer Composite: Elaboration and Identification of Rheological Properties

Silicon - The present work is devoted to experimental analysis of the magnetorheological elastomer composite behavior under dynamic loading. The elastomer is charged to 40% of ferromagnetic...     

Design optimization of a solar tower power plant heliostat field by considering different heliostat shapes

The present study focuses on the optimization of solar tower power plant heliostat field by considering different heliostat shapes including rectangular, square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, and circular heliostat shapes. The optimization is carried out using an in-house developed code-based MATLAB program. The developed in-house code is validated first on a well-known PS10 Solar Thermal Power plant having rectangular heliostats shape and the resulting yearly unweighted heliostat field efficiency of about 64.43% could be obtained. The optimized PS10 heliostat field using different heliostat shapes showed that the circular and octagon heliostat shapes provide better efficiency with minimum land area. The yearly efficiency is increased from 69.65% for the rectangular heliostat shape to 70.96% and 71% for the octagon and circular shapes, respectively. In addition, the calculated field area (land area) is reduced for the case of circular and octagon heliostat shapes with a gain of about 11.10% and 10.93% (about 42.0436 × 10³ and 41.4036 × 10³ m²), respectively, in comparison with the PS10 field area.     

Enhanced Configurable DCT Cordic Loeffler Architectures for Optimal Power-PSNR Trade-Off

The Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is one of the most widely used techniques of transforms in digital signal processing. It is the main algorithm in image and video coding systems. In this paper, we propose an algorithm which generates enhanced Cordic based Loeffler DCT architectures for angle’s precision degrees ranging from 10^?1 to 10^?7. High level PSNR, area and power estimators have been proposed to make a trade-off between consumption and image quality. An optimal architecture has been retained for its low complexity, low power and high PSNR. The complexity of this architecture is the lowest among the conventional DCT architectures even the BinDCT which is a reference in terms of reduced complexity. The selected architecture has also the closest PSNR to the reference Loeffler-DCT architecture without a substancial loss of power.     

Correction to: SPMI: Single Phase Multiple Initiator Protocol for Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

One of the complex problems nowadays in communication systems is the lack of frequency spectrum. To solve this problem, cognitive radio is considered the best candidate that can opportunistically exploit the spectrum. The periodogram based spectrum sensing technique can be used to detect the spectrum in cognitive radio. It is a useful technique since does not need to prior information about the primary signal. In this paper, a new periodogram is presented using the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). Results are analyzed and compared with the current raw periodogram. It is observed that the DCT periodogram outperforms the raw technique in terms of probabilities of false alarm and detection, variance, and complexity. In addition, the lowest power of DCT coefficients can be removed without compromising the sensing performance. The proposed system shows high probability of detection with low probability of false alarm even in the case of low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR).