Control of Three-Phase, Four-Wire PWM Rectifier

This paper presents the analysis, design, and control of a four-wire rectifier system using split-capacitor topology. The proposed controller does not require any complex transformation or input voltage sensing. A detailed analysis of the distortions in the line and the neutral currents is presented. It is shown that the single-carrier-based, conventional sine-triangle PWM (CSPWM) scheme results in a peak-to-peak neutral current ripple, which is greater than the peak-to-peak ripple of any of the line currents. Also, for the same operating condition, the distortions in the line and the neutral currents increase considerably, when a three-limb boost inductor is used instead of three single-phase inductors. A three-carrier-based SPWM scheme is proposed in this paper. Compared to CSPWM, the proposed scheme significantly reduces the neutral current ripple when three single-phase inductors are used, and reduces both line and neutral current ripples when a three-limb inductor is used. The control scheme is verified through Matlab simulation. It is implemented on an field-programmable gate-array (FPGA)-based digital controller and tested on a prototype. Simulation and experimental results are presented.     

Novel Systemic Treatment Modalities Including Immunotherapy and Molecular Targeted Therapy for Recurrent and Metastatic Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) are the sixth most common cancers worldwide. More than half of patients with HNSCC eventually experience disease recurrence and/or metastasis, which can threaten their long-term survival. HNSCCs located in the oral cavity and larynx are usually associated with tobacco and/or alcohol use, whereas human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, particularly HPV16 infection, is increasingly recognized as a cause of oropharyngeal HNSCC. Despite clinical, histologic, and molecular differences between HPV-positive and HPV-negative HNSCCs, current treatment approaches are the same. For recurrent disease, these strategies include chemotherapy, immunotherapy with PD-1-inhibitors, or a monoclonal antibody, cetuximab, that targets epidermal growth factor; these therapies can be administered either as single agents or in combination. However, these treatment strategies carry a high risk of toxic side effects; therefore, more effective and less toxic treatments are needed. The landscape of HNSCC therapy is changing significantly; numerous clinical trials are underway to test novel therapeutic options like adaptive cellular therapy, antibody-drug conjugates, new targeted therapy agents, novel immunotherapy combinations, and therapeutic vaccines. This review helps in understanding the various developments in HNSCC therapy and sheds light on the path ahead in terms of further research in this field.     

Self-adaptive differential evolution for feature selection in hyperspectral image data

Hyperspectral images are captured from hundreds of narrow and contiguous bands from the visible to infrared regions of electromagnetic spectrum. Each pixel of an image is represented by a vector where the components of the vector constitute the reflectance value of the surface for each of the bands. The length of the vector is equal to the number of bands. Due to the presence of large number of bands, classification of hyperspectral images becomes computation intensive. Moreover, higher correlation among neighboring bands increases the redundancy among them. As a result, feature selection becomes very essential for reducing the dimensionality. In the proposed work, an attempt has been made to develop a supervised feature selection technique guided by evolutionary algorithms. Self-adaptive differential evolution (SADE) is used for feature subset generation. Generated subsets are evaluated using a wrapper model where fuzzy k-nearest neighbor classifier is taken into consideration. Our proposed method also uses a feature ranking technique, ReliefF algorithm, for removing duplicate features. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, investigation is carried out on three sets of data and the results are compared with four other evolutionary based state-of-the-art feature selection techniques. The proposed method shows promising results compared to others in terms of overall classification accuracy and Kappa coefficient.     

A Two-network thermomechanical model of a shape memory polymer

The aim of this work is to demonstrate a Helmholtz potential based approach for the development of the constitutive equations for a shape memory polymer undergoing a thermomechanical cycle. The model is able to simulate the response of the material during heating and cooling cycles and the sensitive dependence of the response on thermal expansion. We notice that the yield-stress of the material controls the gross features of the response of the model, and suggests that the material yields differently depending on not just the current value of the temperature but also on whether the temperature of the material dropped or increased from the previous time-step somewhat similar to the Bauschinger effect in plasticity, except that here the controlling parameter is the rate of temperature change rather than rate of plastic strain. The results of the simulation are in qualitative and quantitative agreement with experiments performed on two different shape memory polymer samples: polyurethane and epoxy resin. We find that modeling the hysteresis of the yield stress of the material during temperature changes is the key to the results.     

Microstructural effects on ductile fracture in heterogeneous materials. Part I: Sensitivity analysis with LE-VCFEM

Ductile failure of heterogeneous materials, such as cast aluminum alloys and discretely reinforced aluminums or DRA’s, initiates with cracking, fragmentation or interface separation of inclusions, that is followed by propagation in the matrix by a ductile mechanism of void nucleation and growth. Damage localizes in bands of intense plastic deformation between inclusions and coalesces into a macroscopic crack leading to overall failure. Ductile fracture is very sensitive to the local variations of the microstructure morphology. This is the first of a two part paper on the effect of microstructural morphology and properties on the ductile fracture in heterogeneous ductile materials. In this paper the locally enhanced Voronoi cell finite element method (LE-VCFEM) for rate-dependent porous elastic–viscoplastic materials is used to investigate the sensitivity of strain to failure to loading rates, microstructural morphology and material properties. A model is also proposed for strain to failure, incorporating the effects of important morphological parameters.     

Role of residual stresses induced by industrial fabrication on stress corrosion cracking susceptibility of austenitic stainless steel

Effect of residual stress generated during tube fabrication, roll expansion and machining of stainless steel on the stress corrosion cracking (SCC) susceptibility was studied by testing fabricated tubes, tube–tube sheet joint and heavily machined plate of austenitic stainless steel (SS) in boiling MgCl₂. U bend samples of machined plate were exposed to acidified SO₄ + Cl^? environment at room temperature to study its ambient temperature SCC behavior. The results correlate the SCC behavior of the SS tubes and roll expanded joints to the nature and magnitude of residual stresses present. The study also highlights the distinct difference in ambient temperature SCC behavior of machined vs. nonmachined surfaces.     

Crack and wear behavior of SiC particulate reinforced aluminium based metal matrix composite fabricated by direct metal laser sintering process

In this investigation, crack density and wear performance of SiC particulate (SiCp) reinforced Al-based metal matrix composite (Al-MMC) fabricated by direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) process have been studied. Mainly, size and volume fraction of SiCp have been varied to analyze the crack and wear behavior of the composite. The study has suggested that crack density increases significantly after 15 volume percentage (vol.%) of SiCp. The paper has also suggested that when size (mesh) of reinforcement increases, wear resistance of the composite drops. Three hundred mesh of SiCp offers better wear resistance; above 300 mesh the specific wear rate increases significantly. Similarly, there has been no improvement of wear resistance after 20 vol.% of reinforcement. The scanning electron micrographs of the worn surfaces have revealed that during the wear test SiCp fragments into small pieces which act as abrasives to result in abrasive wear in the specimen.     

Effect of microstructure on non-linear behavior of ultrasound during low cycle fatigue of pearlitic steels

Influence of microstructural changes on the second harmonics of sinusoidal ultrasonic wave during low cycle fatigue (LCF) deformation in pearlitic steel was studied. Fatigue tests were interrupted and at every interruption, non-linear ultrasonic (NLU) parameter (β) was determined. Microstructures of cyclically deformed specimens at various cycles were examined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The variation of β with fatigue cycles was correlated with the microstructural changes and the results were explained through the variation in dislocation morphology and carbon content of the steel.     

Thermal stability of CeO<Subscript>2</Subscript>/ZrO<Subscript>2</Subscript> multilayer thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition

Multilayers of CeO₂/ZrO₂ thin films were deposited on Si (100) substrates using pulsed laser deposition at an optimized oxygen partial pressure of 3×10⁻² mbar and at room temperature. The CeO₂ layer thickness was 10 nm, while the ZrO₂ layer thickness was varied as 10, 20 and 30 nm. CeO₂ and ZrO₂ layers were deposited alternately to obtain 25 bilayers. High temperature x-ray diffraction (HTXRD) results showed that the multilayer films had cubic ceria and tetragonal ZrO₂. Thermal expansion coefficients were calculated for CeO₂ and t-ZrO₂ and found to increase with the decrease of ZrO₂ layer thickness. The cross sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) of CeO₂/ZrO₂ multilayer also indicated that ceria was found to be in cubic phase while zirconia contained predominantly tetragonal phase along with cubic phase in thermally annealed specimen.