Large scale distributed computing systems have been extensively utilized to host critical applications in the fields of national defense, finance, scientific research, commerce, etc. However, applications in distributed systems face the risk of service outages due to inevitable faults. Without proper fault management methods, faults can lead to significant revenue loss and degradation of Quality of Service (QoS). An ideal fault management solution should guarantee fast and accurate fault diagnosis, scalability in distributed systems, portability for a variety of systems, and the versatility of recovering different types of faults. This dissertation presents a model-based fault management structure which automatically recovers computing systems from faults. This structure can recover a system from common faults while minimizing the impact on the system’s QoS. It covers all stages of fault management including fault detection, identification and recovery. It also has the flexibility to incorporate various fault diagnosis methods. When faults occur, the approach identifies fault types and intensity, and it accordingly computes the optimal recovery plan with minimum performance degradation, based on a cost function that defines performance objectives and a predictive control algorithm. The fault management approach has been verified on a centralized Web application testbed and a distributed big data processing testbed with four types of simulated faults: memory leak, network congestion, CPU hog and disk failure. The feasibility of the fault recovery control algorithm is also verified. Simulation results show that our approach enabled effective automatic recovery from faults. Performance evaluation reveals that CPU and memory overhead of the fault management process is negligible. To let domain engineers conveniently apply the proposed fault management structure on their specific systems, a component-based modeling environment is developed. The meta-model of the fault management structure is developed with Unified Modeling Language as an abstract of a general fault recovery solution for computing systems. It defines the fundamental reusable components that comprise such a system, including the connections among them, attributes of each component and constraints. The meta-model can be interpreted into a userriendly graphic modeling environment for creating application models of practical domain specific systems and generating executable codes on them.

Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) are attractive candidates in the search for cleaner and energy efficient production due to their numerous advantages such as fuel flexibility, modularity and exceptional efficiencies when combined heat and power is harnessed. A key element in its design are the interconnects which are mainly manufactured from custom ferritic stainless steels to carry the electricity between two adjacent cells. However, the high operation temperatures increase the chromia scale thickness in those steels, which reduces their conductivity. At the same time, chromium (VI) volatilization due to the wet atmosphere poisons the electrodes and reduces the cell life. Therefore, the narrow of the selection of suitable materials and high production costs have hindered their commercialization. Recent advances in lower temperature SOFC operation have opened a window for new interconnect materials and innovative processes. A Ce/Co nanocoating can be applied in the readily available AISI 441 ferritic steel to form a protective spinel oxide layer that reduces the effect of both degradations in the interconnects. The coating is applied in a continuous roll-to-roll process and then the interconnect shape is pressed in the material, manufactured as Sanergy HT 441 by Sandvik. However, mechanical stresses cause microcracks that expose the substrate material, which can impact the oxidation behaviour negatively. Fortunately, pre-treatments can achieve the spinel to diffuse over short distances and combine with elements in the substrate, homogenizing the protective effect. This phenomenon known as self-healing has not been studied with sufficient depth for the Sanergy HT 441. Thus, different series of temperature and short pre-treatments times were tested, and self-healing properties were observed by means of SEM surface characterization and chemical analysis. The results indicate that self-healing can be obtained within short times using isothermal pre-treatments at temperatures over 750 °C. / Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC) är attraktiva kandidater i jakten på renare och energieffektiv produktion på grund av deras många fördelar som bränsleflexibilitet, modularitet och exceptionella effektivitet när kombinerad värme och kraft utnyttjas. Ett viktigt element i dess utformning är sammankopplingar som huvudsakligen tillverkas av anpassade ferritiska rostfria stål för att transportera elektricitet mellan två angränsande celler. De höga driftstemperaturerna ökar emellertid tjockleken på kromskalan i dessa stål, vilket minskar deras konduktivitet. Samtidigt förorenar krom (VI) på grund av den våta atmosfären elektroderna och reducerar celllivslängden. Därför har det smala urvalet av lämpliga material och höga produktionskostnader hindrat deras kommersialisering. De senaste framstegen inom SOFC-drift med lägre temperatur har öppnat ett fönster för nya sammankopplingsmaterial och innovativa processer. En Ce / Co-nanocoating kan appliceras i det lättillgängliga AISI 441 ferritstålet för att bilda ett skyddande spinelloxidskikt som minskar effekten av båda nedbrytningarna i sammankopplingarna. Beläggningen appliceras i en kontinuerlig rulle-till-rullningsprocess och sedan pressas sammankopplingsformen in i materialet, tillverkat som Sanergy HT 441 av Sandvik. Mekaniska spänningar orsakar emellertid mikrokrackar som exponerar underlagsmaterialet, vilket kan påverka oxidationsbeteendet negativt.Lyckligtvis kan förbehandlingar uppnå att spinellen diffunderar över korta avstånd och kombineras med element i underlaget och homogeniserar den skyddande effekten. Detta fenomen som kallas självhelande har inte studerats med tillräckligt djup för Sanergy HT 441. Således testades olika serier av temperatur och korta förbehandlingstider, och självhelande egenskaper observerades med hjälp av SEM-ytkarakterisering och kemisk analys. Resultaten indikerar att självläkning kan uppnås inom korta tider med användning av isotermisk förbehandling vid temperaturer över 750 ° C.

No description available.

No description available.

A Sustainable Autonomic Architecture for Organically Reconfigurable Computing System based on SRAM Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is proposed, modeled analytically, simulated, prototyped, and measured. Low-level organic elements are analyzed and designed to achieve novel self-monitoring, self-diagnosis, and self-repair organic properties. The prototype of a 2-D spatial gradient Sobel video edge-detection organic system use-case developed on a XC4VSX35 Xilinx Virtex-4 Video Starter Kit is presented. Experimental results demonstrate the applicability of the proposed architecture and provide the infrastructure to quantify the performance and overcome fault-handling limitations. Dynamic online autonomous functionality restoration after a malfunction or functionality shift due to changing requirements is achieved at a fine granularity by exploiting dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (PR) techniques. A Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based hardware/software platform for intrinsic evolvable hardware is designed and evaluated for digital circuit repair using a variety of well-accepted benchmarks. Dynamic bitstream compilation for enhanced mutation and crossover operators is achieved by directly manipulating the bitstream using a layered toolset. Experimental results on the edge-detector organic system prototype have shown complete organic online refurbishment after a hard fault. In contrast to previous toolsets requiring many milliseconds or seconds, an average of 0.47 microseconds is required to perform the genetic mutation, 4.2 microseconds to perform the single point conventional crossover, 3.1 microseconds to perform Partial Match Crossover (PMX) as well as Order Crossover (OX), 2.8 microseconds to perform Cycle Crossover (CX), and 1.1 milliseconds for one input pattern intrinsic evaluation. These represent a performance advantage of three orders of magnitude over the JBITS software framework and more than seven orders of magnitude over the Xilinx design flow. Combinatorial Group Testing (CGT) technique was combined with the conventional GA in what is called CGT-pruned GA to reduce repair time and increase system availability. Results have shown up to 37.6% convergence advantage using the pruned technique. Lastly, a quantitative stochastic sustainability model for reparable systems is formulated to evaluate the Sustainability of FPGA-based reparable systems. This model computes at design-time the resources required for refurbishment to meet mission availability and lifetime requirements in a given fault-susceptible missions. By applying this model to MCNC benchmark circuits and the Sobel Edge-Detector in a realistic space mission use-case on Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA, we demonstrate a comprehensive model encompassing the inter-relationships between system sustainability and fault rates, utilized, and redundant hardware resources, repair policy parameters and decaying reparability.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p>A series of bismaleimide and bisfuran monomers were synthesized and then combined to produce thermally reversible polymers. Reversibility was demonstrated through multiple heating and cooling cycles, and verified using ¹H NMR spectroscopy. Variation of the spacer chemistry in the monomers was found to profoundly influence the physical properties of the resulting polymers. A tripodal maleimide and furan system was then synthesized, but it was found that the incorporation of cross-linking into the polymer network did not significantly alter the mechanical properties of the resulting polymers.</p> <p>Dilute solutions of polystyrene (PS)/poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) blends containing PS- or PMMA-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) were spin cast and annealed at 180°C for 12 h. Characterization of the annealed films by scanning Raman spectroscopy confirmed that the migration of the nanotubes in the films could be controlled using the appropriate functionality on the nanotubes, thus the PS-functionalized nanotubes were found to migrate to the PS domains, while the PMMA-functionalized nanotubes migrated to the PMMA domains.</p> <p>SWNTs were then functionalized using linear reversible polymers, resulting in significant solubilization of the nanotubes. Heating of this solution resulted in the collapse of the DA polymer, and precipitation of the dissolved nanotubes, illustrating the reversible nature of the polymers, and their influence on carbon nanotube solubilization.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)