Characterization of Microstructures across the Heat-Affected Zone of the Modified 9Cr-1Mo Weld Joint to Understand Its Role in Promoting Type IV Cracking

In the postweld heat-treated (PWHT) fusion welded modified 9Cr-1Mo steel joint, a soft zone was identified at the outer edge of the heat-affected zone (HAZ) of the base metal adjacent to the deposited weld metal. Hardness and tensile tests were performed on the base metal subjected to soaking for 5 minutes at temperatures below Ac₁ to above Ac₃ and tempering at the PWHT condition. These tests indicated that the soft zone in the weld joint corresponds to the intercritical region of HAZ. Creep tests were conducted on the base metal and cross weld joint. At relatively lower stresses and higher test temperatures, the weld joint possessed lower creep rupture life than the base metal, and the difference in creep rupture life increased with the decrease in stress and increase in temperature. Preferential accumulation of creep deformation coupled with extensive creep cavitation in the intercritical region of HAZ led to the premature failure of the weld joint in the intercritical region of the HAZ, commonly known as type IV cracking. The microstructures across the HAZ of the weld joint have been characterized to understand the role of microstructure in promoting type IV cracking. Strength reduction in the intercritical HAZ of the joint resulted from the combined effects of coarsening of dislocation substructures and precipitates. Constrained deformation of the soft intercritical HAZ sandwich between relatively stronger constitutes of the joint induced creep cavitation in the soft zone resulting in premature failure.     

Influence of crossover methods used by genetic algorithm-based heuristic to solve the selective harmonic equations (SHE) in multi-level voltage source inverter

Genetic Algorithms (GA) has always done justice to the art of optimization. One such endeavor has been made in employing the roots of GA in a most proficient way to determine the switching moments of a cascaded H-bridge seven level inverter with equal DC sources. Evolutionary techniques have proved themselves efficient to solve such an obscurity. GA is one of the methods to achieve the objective through biological mimicking. The extraordinary property of crossover is extracted using Random 3-Point Neighbourhood Crossover (RPNC) and Multi Midpoint Selective Bit Neighbourhood crossover (MMSBNC). This paper deals with solving of the selective harmonic equations (SHE) using binary coded GA specific to knowledge based neighbourhood multipoint crossover technique. This is directly related to the switching moments of the multilevel inverter under consideration. Although the previous root-finding techniques such as N-R or resultant like methods endeavor the same, the latter offers faster convergence, better program reliability and wide range of solutions. With an acute algorithm developed in Turbo C, the switching moments are calculated offline. The simulation results closely agree with the hardware results.     

SIMPLE oPSU BROTH-BAX® PCR-PICOGREEN® SYSTEM FOR RAPID DETECTION OF LISTERIA MONOCYTOGENES IN PASTEURIZED MILK AND HOT DOGS

Factors that significantly affect BAX® PCR detection of Listeria monocytogenes from optimized Penn State University (oPSU) broth were identified and optimized. Concentration of PCR product was significantly reduced by BAX™ protease and significantly increased by eliminating the lysis step and directly diluting oPSU broth prior to PCR. A simple oPSU broth-BAX® PCR-PicoGreen® (PSU-BAX-PicoGreen) system was developed and compared with current methods for detecting low levels of L. monocytogenes in commercial milk and hot dogs. All 30 milk samples inoculated with 10–20 CFU per mL L. monocytogenes were positive by FDA, BAX® and PSU-BAX-PicoGreen methods and all 42 uninoculated milk samples were negative by all of the above methods. All 30 hot dog samples inoculated with 10-20 CFU/g L. monocytogenes were positive by the USDA and PSU-BAX-PicoGreen methods, however, 2 hot dog samples gave indeterminate results with the standard BAX® method. All 42 uninoculated hot dog samples were negative by USDA, 9 were indeterminate by BAX® and 2 were positive by PSU-BAX-PicoGreen. The PSU-BAX-PicoGreen system may provide a simple and accurate method for rapidly screening pasteurized foods for both injured and noninjured L. monocytogenes.     

DESIGN OF VARIABLE STRUCTURE CONTROLLER FOR STATIC VAR COMPENSATOR

ABSTRACT

Static Var Compensator (SVC) is a relatively new kind of reactive power and voltage control device. It can be used not only to improve dynamic and transient stability of power system, but is especially suitable for voltage control of long distance bulk power transmission lines. To enhance the performance of SVC, in addition to voltage control (main control), a supplementary control (auxiliary control) is required. Variable Structure (VS) Stabilizer is proposed in this paper, as supplementary controller to SVC. The machine, excitation and SVC dynamics are considered. In this paper, a systematic procedure for evaluating gains for sliding mode to occur is presented. The switching vector is constructed using pole-assignment method. Trial and error, and heuristics approach is completely avoided for evaluating the gains in the sliding mode     

DAMPING OF TORSIONAL OSCILLATIONS–A COORDINATED APPROACH

ABSTRACT

Damping of torsional oscillations using coordinated control through power system stabilizer (PSS) and thyristor controlled reactor(TCR) is presented in this paper. The PSS has modal speed deviations as its feedback signal. The reactive power control is achieved through thyristor controlled reactor (TCR) at the machine terminals. Generator speed deviation is used as auxiliary signal and terminal voltage feedback signal as main control signal for TCR. The following control strategies have been analysed :

a PSS with modal speed control

b PSS with modal speeds plus TCR with terminal voltage control

c PSS with modal speeds plus TCR with complete controls (voltage feed back signal and generator speed deviation signal)

The main objective of this paper is to discuss the modelling aspects and analyse different control strategies for damping torsional oscillations in series compensated ac transmission system. The control parameters like gains and time constants have been obtained by performing repeated eigenvalue analysis. IEEE First Benchmark Model is considered for illustration.