Knowledge-based control and case-based diagnosis based upon empirical knowledge and fuzzy logic for the SBR plant.

Because biological wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) involve a long time-delay and various disturbances, in general, skilled operators manually control the plant based on empirical knowledge. And operators usually diagnose the plant using similar cases experienced in the past. For the effective management of the plant, system automation has to be accomplished based upon operating recipes. This paper introduces automatic control and diagnosis based upon the operator's knowledge. Fuzzy logic was employed to design this knowledge-based controller because fuzzy logic can convert the linguistic information to rules. The controller can manage the influent and external carbon in considering the loading rate. The input of the controller is not the loading rate but the dissolved oxygen (DO) lag-time, which has a strong relation to the loading rate. This approach can replace an expensive sensor, which measures the loading rate and ammonia concentration in the reactor, with a cheaper DO sensor. The proposed controller can assure optimal operation and prevent the over-feeding problem. Case-based diagnosis was achieved by the analysis of profile patterns collected from the past. A new test profile was diagnosed by comparing it with template patterns containing normal and abnormal cases. The proposed control and diagnostic system will guarantee the effective and stable operation of WWTPs.     

Response to ‘Comments on: A cohesion measure for object‐oriented classes’

Indicating that CBMC does not satisfy the monotonic property in terms of the number of interactions, Xu and Zhou proposed an augmented definition of CBMC by adopting cut set instead of glue methods. The augmented CBMC clearly satisfies the monotonic property. However, CBMC is designed to overcome the problem with respect to the number of interactions and, therefore, focuses on the interaction pattern, especially, member connectivity. Consequently, it does not make sense to mention the monotonic property of CBMC with respect to interaction number. Moreover, the notion of glue methods allows several interpretations on the design quality of a class. However, that meaningful interpretation is not possible for the augmented definition due to the removal of the notion of glue methods. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corrosion resistance of austenitic stainless steel separator for molten carbonate fuel cell

STS310S and SC-STS310S (simultaneously co-deposited chromium and aluminum onto 310S austenitic stainless steel substrate by pack-cementation process) were used as separator materials on the cathode side of a molten carbonate fuel cell. With the STS310S, corrosion proceeded via three steps; a formation step of unstable corrosion product, a protection step against corrosion until breakaway, and an advance step of corrosion after breakaway. The final corrosion product was LiFeO₂ and the loss of mass was 6.5 mg/cm² after a corrosion test of 480 hr at 650°C. The SC-STS310S showed more effective corrosion resistance, however, than did common STS310S. There was especially no corrosion loss on the SC-STS310S after the 480 hr corrosion test. It is anticipated that it will be very useful as an alternative separator on the cathode side off the MCFC in the future.     

Tables for boundary-layer thicknesses of similar compressible laminar flow

Similarity solution of the compressible, laminar boundary-layer equation depends on pressure gradient parameter β and wall to inviscid stagnation temperature ratiog _w . However, the derived quantities, such as various thicknesses, also depend on speed parameter S, thereby requiring three dimensional tables for the tabulated results. A new formulation is provided that enables all quantities of interest to be determined by the two-dimensional tables in which β andg _w are the input parameters. With such a set, accurate values can be found for the skin-friction coefficient, Stanton number, and the five most common viscous and thermal boundary-layer thicknesses for arbitrary values of the speed parameter. A comprehensive set of tables is provided in which β ranges from its separation value to 100 andg _w ranges 0 to 5. Quasi-linearization method is applied to the governing equations and generalized Newton-Raphson method is used to obtain successive initial condition. As a result computation time is reduced significantly.     

DC potential drop method for evaluating material degradation

The remaining life estimation for the aged components in power plants as well as chemical plants are very important because mechanical properties of the components are degraded with in-service exposure time in high temperatures. Since it is difficult to take specimens from the operating components to evaluate mechanical properties of components, nondestructive techniques are needed to evaluate the degradation. In this study, test materials with several different degradation levels were prepared by isothermal aging heat treatment at 630°C. The DC potential drop method and destructive methods such as tensile and fracture toughness were used in order to evaluate the degradation of 1Cr-1Mo-0.25V steels. In this result, we can see that tensile strength and fracture toughness can be calculated from resistivity and it is possible to evaluate material degradation using DC potential drop method, non-destructive method.     

Frequency effects of upstream wake and blade interaction on the unsteady boundary layer flow

Effects of the reduced frequency of upstream wake on downstream unsteady boundary layer flow were simulated by using a Navier-Stokes code. The Navier-Stokes code is based on an unstructured finite volume method and uses a low Reynolds number turbulence model to close the momentum equations. The geometry used in this paper is the MIT flapping foil experimental set-up and the reduced frequency of the upstream wake is varied in the range of 0.91 to 10.86 to study its effect on the unsteady boundary layer flow. Numerical solutions show that they can be divided into two categories. One is so called the low frequency solution, and behaves quite similar to a Stokes layer. Its characteristics is found to be quite similar to those due to either a temporal or spatial wave. The low frequency solutions are observed clearly when the reduced frequency is smaller than 3.26. The other one is the high frequency solution. It is observed for the reduced frequency larger than 7.24. It shows a sudden shift of the phase angle of the unsteady velocity around the edge of the boundary layer. The shift of phase angle is about 180 degree, and leads to separation of the boundary layer flow from corresponding outer flow. The high frequency solution shows the characteristics of a temporal wave whose wave length is half of the upstream frequency. This characteristics of the high frequency solution is found to be caused by the strong interaction between unsteady vortices. This strong interaction also leads to destroy of the upstream wake strips inside the viscous sublayer as well as the buffer layer.     

Study on the heating behavior of Ni-embedded thermoplastic polyurethane adhesive film via induction heating

The heating behavior of nanoscopic and microscopic Nickel particle-embedded thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) adhesive under induction heating is studied. Different particle sizes and content of Nickel were applied to TPU with varying film thicknesses and output power of the induction heater. From the results, heat generation of the TPU films increased with increases in Nickel content, TPU film thickness, and output power. The heat generation of the Nickel particle-embedded TPU films was in the order of 70 nm > 1 µm > 70 µm > 20 µm in terms of particle size, and this result can be explained by increases in the ratio of eddy current heating to hysteresis heating with increases in particle size.     

A power‐efficient 600‐mVpp voltage‐mode driver with independently matched pull‐up and pull‐down impedances

In this study, a large‐swing, low‐power voltage‐mode driver with independently matched pull‐up and pull‐down impedances is proposed. To achieve large swing and constant impedances during a transition, a P‐over‐N structure is implemented with regulators calibrating the impedances. Two regulators are dedicated to matching the pull‐up and pull‐down impedances by regulating the supply voltages of the driver and predriver, respectively. Because background impedance calibration loops are adopted to track the process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations, the proposed driver can operate properly without additional calibration time. To reduce the power consumption of the calibration loops, scaled replicas of the actual driver are used. Moreover, an analysis of design optimization for the proposed driver is presented. The proposed driver was fabricated in 65‐nm CMOS technology and verified at a 5‐Gb/s data rate. Measurement results show that the proposed driver has a voltage swing of 600 mV_pp and a horizontal eye opening of 0.5 UI. The prototype chip consumes 6 mW at a 1.0‐V supply. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.