A speed control method for a PM motor using a speed observer and a low‐resolution encoder

This paper proposes a new speed control method for a PM motor using a low‐resolution encoder and a speed observer. The servo system should be economical and simple. For this purpose, this paper realizes the high‐performance speed control system using a low‐resolution encoder, whose performance is nearly equal to the performance of speed servo system using a conventional optical encoder. The speed observer uses the information of motor current and motor voltage. The rotor position is calculated by the estimated value of speed observer. This observer has the influence of electrical parameter variation. This paper proposes the correction algorithm of both the voltage error of PWM inverter and the electrical parameter variation. The experimental results and numerical simulation results point out that the proposed speed control system has the desired speed response with respect to parameter variations and load torque perturbation. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 143(1): 66–75, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.10121     

Biological materials: Structure and mechanical properties

Most natural (or biological) materials are complex composites whose mechanical properties are often outstanding, considering the weak constituents from which they are assembled. These complex structures, which have risen from hundreds of million years of evolution, are inspiring Materials Scientists in the design of novel materials.Their defining characteristics, hierarchy, multifunctionality, and self-healing capability, are illustrated. Self-organization is also a fundamental feature of many biological materials and the manner by which the structures are assembled from the molecular level up. The basic building blocks are described, starting with the 20 amino acids and proceeding to polypeptides, polysaccharides, and polypeptides-saccharides. These, on their turn, compose the basic proteins, which are the primary constituents of ‘soft tissues’ and are also present in most biominerals. There are over 1000 proteins, and we describe only the principal ones, with emphasis on collagen, chitin, keratin, and elastin. The ‘hard’ phases are primarily strengthened by minerals, which nucleate and grow in a biomediated environment that determines the size, shape and distribution of individual crystals. The most important mineral phases are discussed: hydroxyapatite, silica, and aragonite.Using the classification of Wegst and Ashby, the principal mechanical characteristics and structures of biological ceramics, polymer composites, elastomers, and cellular materials are presented. Selected systems in each class are described with emphasis on the relationship between their structure and mechanical response. A fifth class is added to this: functional biological materials, which have a structure developed for a specific function: adhesion, optical properties, etc.An outgrowth of this effort is the search for bioinspired materials and structures. Traditional approaches focus on design methodologies of biological materials using conventional synthetic materials. The new frontiers reside in the synthesis of bioinspired materials through processes that are characteristic of biological systems; these involve nanoscale self-assembly of the components and the development of hierarchical structures. Although this approach is still in its infancy, it will eventually lead to a plethora of new materials systems as we elucidate the fundamental mechanisms of growth and the structure of biological systems.     

Study of reactivity control method by the application of gadolinium hydride to accelerator-driven system

A reactivity control method for accelerator-driven system (ADS) is studied for its ability to reduce both the maximum beam current and the load on the beam window. A burnable position (BP) assembly (with gadolinium and zirconium hydride pins) is applied to the ADS core for reactivity control, and various BP assembly optimizations (such as pin arrangement, BP assembly loading position, and BP composition) are performed to minimize the burnup reactivity swing. These optimizations lead to a decreased burnup reactivity swing that is as much as 82.5% less than the swing of non-BP-loaded core; furthermore, the maximum beam current is 12.5 mA. The reactor characteristics of the optimized BP-loaded ADS core are also analyzed to investigate how the introduction of BP assembly influences the system. Safety parameters (such as the Doppler coefficient and the coolant void reactivity) worsen with the introduction of BP assembly, and the total minor actinide transmutation amount decreases 30–40 kg because of the moderated neutrons and changed fuel composition.     

Novel voltage-mode biquad without external passive elements

This paper introduces a voltage-mode biquad filter using only active devices such as operational amplifiers and operational transconductance amplifiers (OTAs). The circuit configuration is obtained from Soderstrand's active-R state variable filter as a prototype. The proposed circuit can realize five different biquad transfer functions, and the circuit characteristics can be electronically tuned by adjusting the transconductance gains of the OTAs. An example is given, together with simulated results by PSPICE. The circuit configuration is very suitable for implementation in both bipolar and CMOS technologies.     

High-efficiency bipolar transconductors composed of hyperbolic function circuits with an intermediate voltage terminal and a triple-tail cell

Relatively high transconductance in bipolar devices contributes to the economy of power dissipation on analog integrated circuits. Recently, a high-speed transistor, such as the HBT attracts attention of researchers and developers in electronic communication industries and is expected to be applied to RF circuits. In this paper, high-efficiency bipolar transconductors are presented. The proposed circuits are composed of a hyperbolic function circuit with an intermediate voltage terminal and a triple-tail cell. The parameter values for linearisation are all integers. The values can be realised precisely. The linearity of the proposed transconductors is superior to the triple-tail cell. The linear input range is 1.5 times as wide as that of the conventional triple-tail cell. Nevertheless, the power dissipation is lower than the triple-tail cell. Further, sensitivity analysis shows that the proposed transconductors have lower sensitivity than the triple-tail cell. These properties are confirmed by SPICE simulation.     

A feedforward excess-phase cancellation technique for integrators

Integrators are useful analogue function blocks. A representative application of integrators is a continuous-time filter on an integrated circuit. Excess phase shift of integrators is one of the most severe problems, because excess phase shift at the unity gain frequency degrades the frequency characteristics of the filters. This paper describes a feedforward excess-phase cancellation technique. The proposed technique is applied to integrators which have feedback with an amplifier. The proposed idea is verified by experiment. It is shown that the excess-phase shift due to the gain-bandwidth product of operational amplifiers is cancelled. The proposed technique is useful for realization of integrated continuous-time filters using integrators because extra capacitors are unnecessary. An integrator with the excess-phase cancellation and a third-order leapfrog filter using the integrator are designed and demonstrated by HSPICE simulation. The integrator has a parasitic pole whose frequency is proportional to the unity gain frequency. The simulation results show that the phase characteristics are improved by the proposed technique over the wide range of the unity gain frequency.     

Effect of Liposome Size on Internal RNA Replication Coupled with Replicase Translation

Cell membranes inhibit the diffusion of intracellular materials, and compartment size can strongly affect the intracellular biochemical reactions. To assess the effect of the size of microcompartments on intracellular reactions, we constructed a primitive cell model consisting of giant liposomes and a translation‐coupled RNA replication (TcRR) system. The RNA was replicated by Qβ replicase, which was translated from the RNA in giant liposomes encapsulating the cell‐free translation system. A reporter RNA encoding the antisense strand of β‐glucuronidase was introduced into the system to yield a TcRR read‐out (green fluorescence). We demonstrate that TcRR was hardly detectable in larger liposomes (230 fL) but was more effective in smaller (7.7 fL) liposomes. Our experimental and theoretical results show that smaller microcompartments considerably enhance TcRR because the synthesized molecules, such as RNA and replicases, are more concentrated in smaller liposomes.