Sprinklered office fire tests

This paper presents data relating to the performance of sprinklers and detectors in real office fire situations. For sprinklers, these data are additional to that associated with the standardized testing used to determine the design delivery density and pressure requirements for various occupancy situations, and provide a useful insight into the effect of sprinklers on developing fires with various office situations. The data given in this paper include the times for activation of various types of sprinkler heads (normal and fast response), the efficacy of the systems as far as extinguishment is concerned, estimates of the maximum size of the fires prior to commencement of extinguishment and associated air temperatures at various locations within the office enclosures. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two-dimensional symmetric multimode interferences in silicon square waveguides

Symmetric interference in two-dimensional multimode silicon waveguides is experimentally investigated. For a 100/spl times/100 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ cross section, 2700-/spl mu/m-long waveguide fabricated on silicon-on-insulator substrate, an 8/spl times/8 matrix of replicated images with high contrast ratio is demonstrated for 1530-1570 nm wavelength range. Symmetric interference results in reduced device length, and the actual device length is consistent with the theoretical expectation. The device also exhibits stable imaging in terms of good loss uniformity, and low wavelength and polarization dependencies among the replicated images.     

Investigation of the structure and properties of modified Armenian minerals for polymer-based composites

The results of investigation of the modification of the Armenian minerals with fluorine-containing oligomers show that a modified product appears when the mineral fillers are treated with fluoroalkanes. The product preserves the structure of the fillers with a “grafted” fluoroalkane layer in which chlorine atoms locate mainly over their periphery. The composite materials based on heterochained polymers and the modified fillers possess a stronger wear resistance and a low friction coefficient.     

Single and matrix HgCdTe photovoltaic detectors

The recent researches and technological developments of middle and long wavelength infrared HgCdTe photovoltaic detectors are presented. Structure, topology, design and performance of HgCdTe photodiodes, silicon readout electronics, Focal Plane Arrays both staring and time delay and integration types, thermal imagers are discussed. Negative differential conductance, bistability and high frequency oscillations under background infrared radiation in HgCdTe photodiodes are reported.     

Hydrogen production in solid electrolyte membrane reactors (SEMRs)

In the present work, the prospects and trends of solid electrolyte membrane reactors (SEMRs) towards hydrogen production, are discussed. Initially, an overview of the principles, the properties and the techniques related to the usage of the SEMRs, are presented. In the following, a literature survey covering earlier and recent developments of the various methods (e.g. reforming or partial oxidation or dehydrogenation of hydrocarbons, steam electrolysis) employed in the SEMRs for the production of hydrogen, is performed. Finally, the current status of this research field is analyzed and future research topics are proposed.     

Architectural,construction and environmental matters of Bahrain's International Formula 1 Circuit

The Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) is considered as one of the best international racing car track in terms of technical aspects and architectural quality. Two Formula 1 races have been hosted in the Kingdom of Bahrain, in 2004 and 2005, at BIC. The BIC had recently won the award of the best international racing car circuit.     

Small-scale CDM projects in a competitive electricity industry: How good is a simplified baseline methodology?

Setting baseline emissions is one of the principal tasks involved in awarding credits for greenhouse gas emission (GHG) mitigation projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). An emission baseline has to be project-specific in order to be accurate. However, project-specific baseline calculations are subject to high transaction costs, which disadvantage small-scale projects. For this reason, the CDM-Executive Board (CDM-EB) has approved simplified baseline methodologies for selected small-scale CDM project categories. While the simplified methods help reduce the transaction cost, they may also result in inaccuracies in the estimation of emission reductions from CDM projects. The purpose of this paper is to present a rigorous economic scheduling method for calculating the GHG emission reduction in a hypothetical competitive electricity industry due to the operation of a renewable energy-based power plant under CDM and compare the GHG emission reduction derived from the rigorous method with that obtained from the use of a simplified (i.e., standardized) method approved by the CDM-EB. A key finding of the paper is that depending upon the level of power demand, prices of electricity and input fuels, the simplified method can lead to either significant overestimation or substantial underestimation of emission reduction due to the operation of renewable energy-based power projects in a competitive electricity industry.     

Online and Offline Rotary Regression Analysis of Torque Estimator for Switched Reluctance Motor Drives

A new torque estimator for switched reluctance motor (SRM) drives based on 2-D rotary regression analysis is presented in this paper. The proposed torque estimator is composed of a bicubic regressive polynomial as a function of rotor position and input current. The regressive coefficients can be computed offline or online from the torque characteristics acquired either experimentally or from numerical computation. Furthermore, a torque estimation method by taking mutual coupling into consideration is proposed. It can be seen that the estimated and experimentally obtained self-coupling and mutual-coupling torque characteristics are in good agreement with each other. In addition, the dynamic torque waveforms with and without the mutual coupling, estimated by the proposed estimator, are found to be virtually the same as those obtained from the bicubic spline interpolation for SRM drives with single-pulse voltage, hysteresis current chopping, as well as with voltage pulse width modulation control. The success of all the case studies being reported is a good validation of the usefulness and accuracy of the proposed real-time torque estimator that, as described in this paper, can be used to quickly estimate the instantaneous output torque of SRM drives.