An approach for automated fault diagnosis based on a fuzzy decision tree and boundary analysis of a reconstructed phase space

Although reconstructed phase space is one of the most powerful methods for analyzing a time series, it can fail in fault diagnosis of an induction motor when the appropriate pre-processing is not performed. Therefore, boundary analysis based a new feature extraction method in phase space is proposed for diagnosis of induction motor faults. The proposed approach requires the measurement of one phase current signal to construct the phase space representation. Each phase space is converted into an image, and the boundary of each image is extracted by a boundary detection algorithm. A fuzzy decision tree has been designed to detect broken rotor bars and broken connector faults. The results indicate that the proposed approach has a higher recognition rate than other methods on the same dataset.     

Microstructure and densification of ZrB2–SiC composites prepared by spark plasma sintering

ZrB₂–SiC composites were prepared by spark plasma sintering (SPS) at temperatures of 1800–2100 °C for 180–300 s under a pressure of 20 MPa and at higher temperatures of above 2100 °C without a holding time under 10 MPa. Densification, microstructure and mechanical properties of ZrB₂–SiC composites were investigated. Fully dense ZrB₂–SiC composites containing 20–60 mass% SiC with a relative density of more than 99% were obtained at 2000 and 2100 °C for 180 s. Below 2120 °C, microstructures consisted of equiaxed ZrB₂ grains with a size of 2–5 μm and α-SiC grains with a size of 2–4 μm. Morphological change from equiaxed to elongated α-SiC grains was observed at higher temperatures. Vickers hardness of ZrB₂–SiC composites increased with increasing sintering temperature and SiC content up to 60 mass%, and ZrB₂–SiC composite containing 60 mass% SiC sintered at 2100 °C for 180 s had the highest value of 26.8 GPa. The highest fracture toughness was observed for ZrB₂–SiC composites containing 50 mass% SiC independent of sintering temperatures.     

Mesoscopic nonequilibrium thermodynamics treatment of the grain boundary thermal grooving induced by the anisotropic surface drift diffusion

A systematic study based on the self-consistent dynamical simulations is presented for the grain boundary thermal grooving problem by strictly following the irreversible thermodynamic theory of surfaces and interfaces with singularities [T. O. Ogurtani, J. Chem. Phys. 124, 144706 (2006)]. This approach furnishes us to have auto-control on the otherwise free-motion of the grain boundary triple junction without presuming any equilibrium dihedral (wetting) angles at the edges. The effects of physicochemical properties and the anisotropic surface diffusivity on the transient grooving behavior, which takes place at the early stage of the scenario, were considered. We analyzed the experimental thermal grooving data reported for tungsten in the literature, and compared them with the carried simulation results. This investigation showed that the observed changes in the dihedral angles are strictly connected to the transient behavior of the simulated global system, and manifest themselves at the early stage of the thermal grooving phenomenon.     

A study on soil-structure interaction analysis in canyon-shaped topographies

In this paper, a coupled finite and infinite element system is used to study the effects of canyon-shaped topography and geotechnical characteristics of the soil on the dynamic response of free surface and of 2-D soil-structure systems under ground motion. A parametric study is carried out for canyon-shaped topographies. It is concluded that topographic conditions may have important effects on the ground motion along the canyon. Geotechnical properties of the soil also have significant amplification effects on the whole system motion, which cannot be neglected for design purposes. Thus, the dynamic response of both free surface and a soil-structure system are primarily affected by surface shapes and geotechnical properties of the soil. Location of the structure is another parameter affecting the whole system response.     

Improving hydrophobicity on polyurethane-based synthetic leather through plasma polymerization for easy care effect

This study reports on the deposition of a hydrophobic coating on polyurethane (PU)-based synthetic leather through a plasma polymerization method and investigates the hydrophobic behavior of the plasma-coated substrate. The silicon compound of hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO), inactive gas argon (Ar), and toluene were used to impart surface hydrophobicity to a PU-based substrate. Surface hydrophobicity was analyzed by water contact angle measurements. Surface hydrophobicity was increased by deposition of compositions of 100% HMDSO, 3:1 HMDSO/toluene, and 1:1 HMDSO/toluene. Optimum conditions of 40 W, 30 s plasma treatment resulted in essentially the same initial contact angle results of approximately 100° for all three treatment compositions. The initial water contact angle for untreated material was about 73°. A water droplet took 1800 s to spread out on the plasma-treated sample after it had been placed on the sample surface. An increase in plasma power also led to a decrease in contact angle, which may be attributed to oxidization of HMDSO during plasma deposition. XPS analysis showed that plasma polymerization of HMDSO/toluene compositions led to a significant increase in atomic percentage of Si compound responsible for the hydrophobic surface. The easy clean results for the treated and untreated PU-based synthetic leather samples clearly showed that the remaining stain on the plasma-polymerized sample was less than that of untreated sample. The plasma-formed coating was both hydrophobic and formed a physical barrier against water and stain.     

通过智能电机控制优化实时性能与效率

本文介绍了高级电机的类型及利弊.并介绍了集成型电机控制方案.     

Shadowing tradespeople: Inefficiency in maintenance fieldwork

This research investigates current practices in Operations and Maintenance (O&M), from the initial phase of assigning maintenance requests through the completion of the requests, in order to identify types of inefficiency and their causes. Fifty-eight real maintenance cases have been shadowed; and maintenance activities performed by the tradespeople have been recorded with time data corresponding to each activity. O&M inefficiencies categorized into two groups, Structural and Individual, are demonstrated through specific cases. A statistical analysis is used to show how O&M tasks, activities, and categories impact overall O&M performance. The results show that tradespeople vastly underutilize maintenance data in the field due to problems with data accessibility and reliability. Based on the shadowing activity results, we observed 12+% potential for improvement in maintenance time efficiency by providing proper information support.     

Comparison of one-dimensional and multi-dimensional models in stability analysis of turning operations

Chatter is one of the main problems in machining resulting in poor surface quality and low productivity. Chatter can be avoided by applying stability diagrams which are generated using stability models. The stability analysis of turning has mostly been performed using single dimensional, so-called oriented transfer function approach whereas the actual turning processes usually involve multi-dimensional dynamics. In this paper, a comparative analysis between one dimensional (1D) and multi-dimensional stability models is given for turning operations. The multi dimensional model includes the inclination and side edge cutting angles and insert nose radius in order to demonstrate their effect on absolute stable depth of cut predictions. Chatter experiments are conducted in order to compare with both model predictions. It is demonstrated that for higher inclination angles and insert nose radii 1D models result in significant errors, and multi-dimensional solutions are required.     

Asphaltene Deposition During Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage: Effect of Non-Condensable Gases

Asphaltene deposition was investigated during laboratory-scale steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) experiments to probe in situ upgrading of a heavy oil. Tests were conducted with and without the addition of non-condensable gases (carbon dioxide or n-butane) to the steam. The apparatus was a three-dimensional scaled physical model packed with crushed limestone saturated with 12.4° API heavy-crude oil. Temperature, pressure, and production data, as well as the asphaltene content of the produced oil, were monitored continuously during the experiments. For small well separations, as the fraction of non-condensable gas in the steam increased, the steam condensation temperature and the steam-oil ratio decreased. As a result of lower temperature, the heavy oil was less mobile in the steam chamber relative to pure steam injection. Thus, the heating period was prolonged and the recovery, as well as the rate of oil recovery, decreased. Asphaltene content of the oil produced as a result of pure steam injection decreased initially showing deposition of asphaltene within the porous matrix of the model. As the steam injection continued, the asphaltene content of the produced oil increased but remained below the initial value. Thus, the produced oil indicated some in situ upgrading. As the carbon dioxide concentration in the steam increased, greater asphaltene deposition occurred; however, no significant change in asphaltene content was found when n-butane was added to the steam. Post-experimental analyses of the porous media for asphaltene content confirmed retention for the pure steam and steam with added CO₂ experiments. Numerical simulation of the asphaltene deposition process using a pure solid deposition model corroborated experimental findings and showed that deposition occurred mainly at the steam-chamber boundary.     

Multi-radio diversity in wireless networks

This paper describes the Multi-Radio Diversity (MRD) wireless system, which uses path diversity to improve loss resilience in wireless local area networks (WLANs). MRD coordinates wireless receptions among multiple radios to improve loss resilience in the face of path-dependent frame corruption over the radio. MRD incorporates two techniques to recover from bit errors and lower the loss rates observed by higher layers, without consuming much extra bandwidth. The first technique is frame combining, in which multiple, possibly erroneous, copies of a given frame are combined together in an attempt to recover the frame without retransmission. The second technique is a low-overhead retransmission scheme called request-for-acknowledgment (RFA), which operates above the link layer and below the network layer to attempt to recover from frame combining failures. We present an analysis that determines how the parameters for these algorithms should be chosen. We have designed and implemented MRD as a fully functional WLAN infrastructure based on 802.11a. We evaluate the MRD system under several different physical configurations, using both UDP and TCP, and measured throughput gains up to 3× over single radio communication schemes employing 802.11’s autorate adaptation scheme. Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL, Switzerland. Allen Miu received his Ph.D. degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 and is currently a wireless systems architect at Ruckus Wireless, Inc. He received his S.M. in Computer Science from MIT and a B.Sc. with highest honors in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. He previously worked on the Cricket Indoor Location System and was a research intern at Microsoft Research, Redmond in 2000 and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto in 2002. His research interests include wireless networks, location systems, mobile computing, and embedded systems. Hari Balakrishnan is an Associate Professor in the EECS Department and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. His research interests is in the area of networked computer systems. In addition to many widely cited papers, several systems developed as part of his research are available in the public domain. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998 and a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) in 1993. His honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2002), an NSF CAREER Award (2000), the ACM doctoral dissertation award for his work on reliable data transport over wireless networks (1998), and seven award-winning papers at various top conferences and journals, including the IEEE Communication Society’s William R. Bennett Prize (2004). He has also received awards for excellence in teaching and research at MIT (Spira, Junior Bose, and Harold Edgerton faculty achievement awards). C. Emre Koksal received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara in 1996. He received his S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1998 and 2002 respectively. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Networks and Mobile Systems Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT until 2003. Since then he has been a senior researcher jointly in the Laboratory for Computer Communications and the Laboratory for Information Theory at EPFL, Switzerland. His general areas of interest are wireless communications, computer networks, information theory, stochastic processes and financial economics. He also has a certificate on Financial Technology from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.