Sensorless fault diagnosis of induction motors

Early detection and diagnosis of incipient faults is desirable for online condition assessment, product quality assurance, and improved operational efficiency of induction motors. In this paper, a speed-sensorless fault diagnosis system is developed for induction motors, using recurrent dynamic neural networks and multiresolution or Fourier-based signal processing for transient or quasi-steady-state operation, respectively. In addition to nameplate information required for the initial system setup, the proposed fault diagnosis system uses only motor terminal voltages and currents. The effectiveness of the proposed diagnosis system in detecting the most widely encountered motor electrical and mechanical faults is demonstrated through extensive staged faults. The developed system is scalable to different power ratings and it has been successfully demonstrated with data from 2.2, 373 and 597 kW induction motors.     

Supported Pt nanoparticles for the hydrogen mitigation application

Accidents at TMI, USA and the recent one at Fukushima, JAPAN has emphasized the need for mitigation of hydrogen generated in nuclear reactor containment during accidental conditions. Passive Autocatalytic Recombiner (PAR) is one of the best solutions to deal with such situations during loss of coolant accidents. A novel breed of catalysts based on cordierite supported Pt nanoparticles has been prepared by chemical reduction route for mitigating the hydrogen generated during such accidents. These catalysts have been characterized for their phase purity, surface composition, surface area, particle size, morphology and elemental loading of the noble metal. The supported noble metal particles are found to be of 7 nm–11 nm dimensions, depending on the extent of noble metal loading. The catalytic activity of these catalysts has been evaluated in presence and absence of various prospective contaminants like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, humidity, and condensed water in a laboratory scale reactor. Developed catalysts have been found to be catalytically active for H₂–O₂ recombination reaction in presence of 100% relative humidity and 2000 ppm of carbon monoxide.     

Negotiation framework for group recommendation based on fuzzy computational model of trust and distrust

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Group recommender system (GRS) is the gradually prospering type of recommender system (RS) which tends to provide recommendations for the group of users rather...     

Control and sizing of modular multilevel converter-based STATCOM with hybrid energy storage system for large-scale integration of wind farms with the grid

Electrical Engineering - A configuration of energy storage system with STATCOM features (E-STATCOM) using modular multilevel converter (MMC) is presented in this paper. It helps to integrate large...     

Microfluidic glycosyl hydrolase screening for biomass-to-biofuel conversion

The hydrolysis of biomass to fermentable sugars using glycosyl hydrolases such as cellulases and hemicellulases is a limiting and costly step in the conversion of biomass to biofuels. Enhancement in hydrolysis efficiency is necessary and requires improvement in both enzymes and processing strategies. Advances in both areas in turn strongly depend on the progress in developing high-throughput assays to rapidly and quantitatively screen a large number of enzymes and processing conditions. For example, the characterization of various cellodextrins and xylooligomers produced during the time course of saccharification is important in the design of suitable reactors, enzyme cocktail compositions, and biomass pretreatment schemes. We have developed a microfluidic-chip-based assay for rapid and precise characterization of glycans and xylans resulting from biomass hydrolysis. The technique enables multiplexed separation of soluble cellodextrins and xylose oligomers in around 1 min (10-fold faster than HPLC). The microfluidic device was used to elucidate the mode of action of Tm_Cel5A, a novel cellulase from hyperthermophile Thermotoga maritima . The results demonstrate that the cellulase is active at 80 °C and effectively hydrolyzes cellodextrins and ionic-liquid-pretreated switchgrass and Avicel to glucose, cellobiose, and cellotriose. The proposed microscale approach is ideal for quantitative large-scale screening of enzyme libraries for biomass hydrolysis, for development of energy feedstocks, and for polysaccharide sequencing.     

Variations in normal color vision. III. Unique hues in Indian and United States observers

Basic color categories are thought to share a common pattern across linguistic groups, yet the focal colors defining those categories can vary substantially within any single group. We asked whether focal colors can also differ systematically across different groups of individuals living in potentially different color environments, by measuring focal and unique hues for observers in India and the United States. Differences between groups were generally small relative to the within-group variations, consistent with a strong common basis for color naming across diverse contexts. However, for most hues the average settings differed significantly across subpopulations. These differences persisted across testing conditions and thus probably reflect longer-term contextual influences on color appearance judgments. They suggest that while color categories may be qualitatively similar, precisely how the hue spectrum is parsed may differ quantitatively across different populations of observers. Both the between-group and the within-group differences are inconsistent with the differences predicted by common peripheral sources of variation in color vision (e.g., in lens or macular pigment) and may reflect an influence of environmental or cultural differences in focal color choices.     

Design and performance evaluation of load distribution strategies for multiple divisible loads on heterogeneous linear daisy chain networks

In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling multiple divisible loads on heterogeneous linear daisy chain networks. Our objective is to design a load distribution strategy such that the total processing time of a set of loads is minimized. We assume that the set of loads are resident in one of the farthest end processors, which has a scheduler that will distribute the load to the other processors in the network. When distributing a load from the set, the distribution pattern of the previous load has to be taken into consideration to ensure that no processors are left idle and there are no collisions in the communication links. We design single and multi-installments strategies to achieve the above objective. We derive certain important conditions to determine whether an optimum solution exists. We propose two heuristic strategies when an optimum solution is unattainable. Using all the above strategies, we conduct four different simulation experiments to track the performance of strategies under several real-life situations. We conducted four different simulation experiments based on the two heuristic strategies to identify the best combination suitable for our multiple-loads distribution strategy. We also run simulations for a homogeneous system to quantify the performance under 3 different policies, that is, when the loads are (a) unsorted, (b) sorted with smallest load first (SLF) and (c) sorted with largest load first (LLF). A detailed analysis of the simulation results is presented and based on these, recommendations are made for the choice of strategies. Finally, we compare the performance of a single-load distribution strategy against the multiple-loads distribution strategy designed in this paper to quantify the exact performance gain that can be achieved. Illustrative examples are also provided for ease of understanding.     

Using abstraction and model checking to detect safety violations inrequirements specifications

Exposing inconsistencies can uncover many defects in software specifications. One approach to exposing inconsistencies analyzes two redundant specifications, one operational and the other property-based, and reports discrepancies. This paper describes a “practical” formal method, based on this approach and the SCR (software cost reduction) tabular notation, that can expose inconsistencies in software requirements specifications. Because users of the method do not need advanced mathematical training or theorem-proving skills, most software developers should be able to apply the method without extraordinary effort. This paper also describes an application of the method which exposed a safety violation in the contractor-produced software requirements specification of a sizable, safety-critical control system. Because the enormous state space of specifications of practical software usually renders direct analysis impractical, a common approach is to apply abstraction to the specification. To reduce the state space of the control system specification, two “pushbutton” abstraction methods were applied, one which automatically removes irrelevant variables and a second which replaces the large, possibly infinite, type sets of certain variables with smaller type sets. Analyzing the reduced specification with the model checker Spin uncovered a possible safety violation. Simulation demonstrated that the safety violation was not spurious but an actual defect in the original specification     

Persistent primitive sciatic artery

Angiography revealed persistence of the primitive sciatic artery in two cases. In one, the artery supplied a large arteriovenous malformation, and the profunda femoris artery was absent. In the other, there were associated findings of neurofibromatosis, decreased left lower limb lymphatic vessels, a left subinguinal lymphocele, and absent external iliac and femoral arteries.     

GEMA: An Object Replacement Algorithm for Cooperative Web Proxy Systems

In this paper, we design and analyze a web object replacement algorithm, referred to as gain-based exchange and migration algorithm (GEMA) suitable for a cooperative World Wide Web proxy caching environment. In a cooperative environment where more than one proxy exists, the replacement algorithms used for single system cache cannot not be directly put in use to achieve an acceptable performance. In this paper, we first present an analytical model, which quantifies the importance, referred to as object-caching gain, of an object at a cache. This gain is used in making replacement decisions and considers the benefit of caching at local as well as neighboring proxies. Our model efficiently exploits the advantages present in the existing the research contributions on designing replacement strategies for the single-cache environment. Further, with this model, we introduce two basic powerful primitive operations, namely the object exchange and object migration, to improve an overall performance. These two operations are carried out as an outcome of replacement decisions based on the comparison of gains among objects. Thus, the calculation of the gain and deciding on which of the operations to use constitute the main part of our algorithm GEMA. For quantifying the performance of GEMA, we carry out rigorous simulation experiments based on trace-driven and event-driven approaches. Using the event-driven simulation, we comprehensively testify the performance improvement of GEMA under a variety of performance measures such as, average access time of web objects, hit ratio, and byte hit ratio. We compare and analyze our strategies with some of the popular strategies found in the literature. We also highlight some possible extensions to the research contributions in this paper.