Superconduttori bulk in MgB2, ottenuti con tecnologia Mg-RLI brevettata da Edison Spa, sono stati oggetto di un'approfondita analisi in termini di forze di levitazione. Questo studio è stato preliminare per la progettazione di un innovativo sistema di levitazione lineare. I risultati ottenuti sperimentalmente sono stati validati attraverso modelli numerici sviluppati ad hoc. I campioni oggetto dello studio sono tre bulk in MgB2 rappresentativi delle tipiche forme usate nelle applicazioni reali: un disco, un cilindro, una piastra. I bulk sono stati misurati con un sistema di misura per le forze di levitazione realizzato a tale scopo. Un protocollo sperimentale è stato seguito per la caratterizzazione di base, sia in condizioni Field Cooling sia Zero Field Cooling, al quale sono state affiancate prove specifiche come la possibilità di mantenere inalterate le proprietà superconduttive attraverso la giunzione di più campioni con la tecnologia Mg-RLI. Un modello numerico è stato sviluppato per convalidare i risultati sperimentali e per studiare l'elettrodinamica della levitazione. Diverse configurazioni di rotori magnetici sono state accoppiate con un cilindro in MgB2 con lo scopo di valutare la soluzione ottimale; questo tema è stato apporofondito attraverso lo sviluppo di un software di simulazione che può tenere conto sia del numero di magneti sia della presenza di anelli in materiale magneti intercalati fra di essi. Studi analoghi sono stati portati avanti su una piastra di MgB2 per simulare il comportamento di una geometria piana. Un sistema di raffreddamento innovativo basato sull'azoto solido è stato studiato per poterlo accoppiare con un sistema di levitazione. Il criostato progettato è costituito da due dewar, uno dentro l'altro; quello interno ha lo scopo di raffreddare l'MgB2 mentre quello esterno di limitare delle perdite verso l'esterno. Il criopattino così ottenuto è accoppiato in condizioni FC ad una rotaia formata da magneti permanenti in NdFeB. / A complet analysis about the superconduction levitaton forces of various MgB2 samples has been performed as preliminary study for an innovative linear levitating system. MgB2 bulks are produced by the Reactive Liquid Infiltration (Mg-RLI) method developed by Edison SpA. The experimental results are also evaluated by means of numerical models. A new measurement system have been developed to perform an evaluation of the levitation forces of three MgB2 bulks as case study: a disc, a cylinder and a slab. The possibility to joint different pieces of bulk has been proved, such as the optimal relaxation time of this material (S=0.009 @ 33K). A numerical model has been developed to evaluate the experimental results of the MgB2 disc and to investigate the electrodynamics of levitation. Several types of permant magnets (PM) configuration have been coupled with a MgB2 cylinder to tentatively determine the best configuration; that has been also numerical evaluated by means of a numerical model which take into account the number of the PMs and the presence of rings of magnetic material between them to form a rotor. Similar studies has been carried out on a planar geometry by a MgB2 slab and different PM configuration. An innovative refrigeration method based on solid nitrogen has been studied to be coupled with a levitation system. The cryostat consists of two nested dewars, built by differents materials; the internal one lodge four MgB2 slabs while the external one reduce the thermal losses. A guideway made of NdFeB permanent magnets has been realized to test in Field Cooling configuration the possibility to use MgB2 – RLI for levitating systems.

More efficient water treatment technologies would decrease the water bodies’ pollution and the actual intake of water resource. The aim of this thesis is an in-depth analysis of the magnetic separation of pollutants from water by means of a continuous-flow magnetic filter subjected to a field gradient produced by permanent magnets. This technique has the potential to improve times and efficiencies of both urban wastewater treatment plants and drinking water treatment plants. It might also substitute industrial wastewater treatments. This technique combines a physico-chemical phase of adsorption and a magnetic phase of filtration, having the potential to bond magnetite with any conventional adsorbent powder. The removal of both Magnetic Activated Carbons (MACs) and zeolite-magnetite mix with the addition of a coagulant was investigated. Adsorption tests of different pollutants (surfactants, endocrine disruptors, Fe(III), Mn(II), Ca(II)) on these adsorbents were also performed achieving good results. The numerical results concerning the adsorbent removals well reproduced the experimental ones obtained from two different experimental setups. In real situations the treatable flow rates are up to 90 m3/h (2000 m3/d).

The quench characteristics of second generation (2 G) YBCO Coated Conductor (CC) tapes are of fundamental importance for the design and safe operation of superconducting cables and magnets based on this material. Their ability to transport high current densities at high temperature, up to 77 K, and at very high fields, over 20 T, together with the increasing knowledge in their manufacturing, which is reducing their cost, are pushing the use of this innovative material in numerous system applications, from high field magnets for research to motors and generators as well as for cables. The aim of this Ph. D. thesis is the experimental analysis and numerical simulations of quench in superconducting HTS tapes and coils. A measurements facility for the characterization of superconducting tapes and coils was designed, assembled and tested. The facility consist of a cryostat, a cryocooler, a vacuum system, resistive and superconducting current leads and signal feedthrough. Moreover, the data acquisition system and the software for critical current and quench measurements were developed. A 2D model was developed using the finite element code COMSOL Multiphysics R . The problem of modeling the high aspect ratio of the tape is tackled by multiplying the tape thickness by a constant factor, compensating the heat and electrical balance equations by introducing a material anisotropy. The model was then validated both with the results of a 1D quench model based on a non-linear electric circuit coupled to a thermal model of the tape, to literature measurements and to critical current and quench measurements made in the cryogenic facility. Finally the model was extended to the study of coils and windings with the definition of the tape and stack homogenized properties. The procedure allows the definition of a multi-scale hierarchical model, able to simulate the windings with different degrees of detail.

CdTe and Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) thin film solar cells are fabricated, electrically characterized and modelled in this thesis. We start from the fabrication of CdTe thin film devices where the R.F. magnetron sputtering system is used to deposit the CdS/CdTe based solar cells. The chlorine post-growth treatment is modified in order to uniformly cover the cell surface and reduce the probability of pinholes and shunting pathways creation which, in turn, reduces the series resistance. The deionized water etching is proposed, for the first time, as the simplest solution to optimize the effect of shunt resistance, stability and metal-semiconductor inter-diffusion at the back contact. In continue, oxygen incorporation is proposed while CdTe layer deposition. This technique has been rarely examined through R.F sputtering deposition of such devices. The above experiments are characterized electrically and optically by current-voltage characterization, scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction and optical spectroscopy. Furthermore, for the first time, the degradation rate of CdTe devices over time is numerically simulated through AMPS and SCAPS simulators. It is proposed that the instability of electrical parameters is coupled with the material properties and external stresses (bias, temperature and illumination). Then, CIGS materials are simulated and characterized by several techniques such as surface photovoltage spectroscopy is used (as a novel idea) to extract the band gap of graded band gap CIGS layers, surface or bulk defect states. The surface roughness is scanned by atomic force microscopy on nanometre scale to obtain the surface topography of the film. The modified equivalent circuits are proposed and the band gap graded profiles are simulated by AMPS simulator and several graded profiles are examined in order to optimize their thickness, grading strength and electrical parameters. Furthermore, the transport mechanisms and Auger generation phenomenon are modelled in CIGS devices.

This dissertation presents the theory and the conducted activity that lead to the construction of a high voltage high frequency arbitrary waveform voltage generator. The generator has been specifically designed to supply power to a wide range of plasma actuators. The system has been completely designed, manufactured and tested at the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering of the University of Bologna. The generator structure is based on the single phase cascaded H-bridge multilevel topology and is comprised of 24 elementary units that are series connected in order to form the typical staircase output voltage waveform of a multilevel converter. The total number of voltage levels that can be produced by the generator is 49. Each level is 600 V making the output peak-to-peak voltage equal to 28.8 kV. The large number of levels provides high resolution with respect to the output voltage having thus the possibility to generate arbitrary waveforms. Maximum frequency of operation is 20 kHz. A study of the relevant literature shows that this is the first time that a cascaded multilevel converter of such dimensions has been constructed. Isolation and control challenges had to be solved for the realization of the system. The biggest problem of the current technology in power supplies for plasma actuators is load matching. Resonant converters are the most used power supplies and are seriously affected by this problem. The manufactured generator completely solves this issue providing consistent voltage output independently of the connected load. This fact is very important when executing tests and during the comparison of the results because all measures should be comparable and not dependent from matching issues. The use of the multilevel converter for power supplying a plasma actuator is a real technological breakthrough that has provided and will continue to provide very significant experimental results.

Analysis of the peak-to-peak output current ripple amplitude for multiphase and multilevel inverters is presented in this PhD thesis. The current ripple is calculated on the basis of the alternating voltage component, and peak-to-peak value is defined by the current slopes and application times of the voltage levels in a switching period. Detailed analytical expressions of peak-to-peak current ripple distribution over a fundamental period are given as function of the modulation index. For all the cases, reference is made to centered and symmetrical switching patterns, generated either by carrier-based or space vector PWM. Starting from the definition and the analysis of the output current ripple in three-phase two-level inverters, the theoretical developments have been extended to the case of multiphase inverters, with emphasis on the five- and seven-phase inverters. The instantaneous current ripple is introduced for a generic balanced multiphase loads consisting of series RL impedance and ac back emf (RLE). Simplified and effective expressions to account for the maximum of the output current ripple have been defined. The peak-to-peak current ripple diagrams are presented and discussed. The analysis of the output current ripple has been extended also to multilevel inverters, specifically three-phase three-level inverters. Also in this case, the current ripple analysis is carried out for a balanced three-phase system consisting of series RL impedance and ac back emf (RLE), representing both motor loads and grid-connected applications. The peak-to-peak current ripple diagrams are presented and discussed. In addition, simulation and experimental results are carried out to prove the validity of the analytical developments in all the cases. The cases with different phase numbers and with different number of levels are compared among them, and some useful conclusions have been pointed out. Furthermore, some application examples are given.

Zugl.: Halle (Saale), Universiẗat, Diss., 2007.

Tesi per compendi de publicacions. / This thesis is about statistics' contributions to industry. It is an article compendium comprising four articles divided in two blocks: (i) two contributions for a water supply company, and (ii) significance of the effects in Design of Experiments. In the first block, great emphasis is placed on how the research design and statistics can be applied to various real problems that a water company raises and it aims to convince water management companies that statistics can be very useful to improve their services. The article "A methodology to model water demand based on the identification of homogeneous client segments. Application to the city of Barcelona", makes a comprehensive review of all the steps carried out for developing a mathematical model to forecast future water demand. It pays attention on how to know more about the influence of socioeconomic factors on customer's consumption in order to detect segments of customers with homogenous habits to objectively explain the behavior of the demand. The second article -related to water demand management, "An Approach to disaggregating total household water consumption into major end-uses" describes the procedure to assign water consumption to microcomponents (taps, showers, cisterns, washer machines and dishwashers) on the basis of the readings of water consumption of the water meter. The main idea to accomplish this is, to determine which of the devices has caused the consumption, to treat the consumption of each device as a stochastic process. In the second block of the thesis, a better way to judge the significance of effects in unreplicated factorial experiments is described. The article "Proposal of a Single Critical Value for the Lenth Method" analyzes the many analytical procedures that have been proposed for identifying significant effects in not replicated two level factorial designs. Many of them are based on the original "Lenth Method and explain and try to overcome the problems that it presents". The article proposes a new strategy to choose the critical values to better differentiate the inert from the active factors. The last article "Analysing DOE with Statistical Software Packages: Controversies and Proposals" review the most important and commonly used in industry statistical software with DOE capabilities: JMP, Minitab, SigmaXL, StatGraphics and Statistica and evaluates how well they resolve the problem of analyzing the significance of effects in unreplicated factorial designs

L’objectif de cette thèse était d’étudier la possibilité de compromissions électromagnétiques par le rayonnement des lignes d’énergie électrique. Nous nous sommes concentrés sur deux cas de figure. Le premier, à l’intérieur de bâtiments, concerne la technologie CPL « courant porteur en ligne ». Le second, en extérieur, sur un site industriel, porte sur la problématique de la propagation et du rayonnement de signaux caractéristiques d’un matériel industriel.Dans le premier cas, nous détaillons les mécanismes mis en jeu dans le rayonnement des câbles « basse tension » (BT) par la mesure et la modélisation. On distingue deux canaux de propagation. Le premier « filaire » correspond au canal usuel d’une liaison CPL entre deux modems. Le second est le canal « sans fil », qui correspond à la réception, aux bornes d’une antenne magnétique, d’une injection en mode différentiel sur 2 fils du câble. Ces deux types de canaux de propagation sont caractérisés expérimentalement, ce qui permet de déduire grâce à un logiciel les possibilités de décodage de l’information portée par le rayonnement compromettant. Dans le second cas, qui prend en compte les lignes « haute tension » (HT), nous considérons les fonctions de transfert successives du courant, associées à la propagation sur les lignes BT, au passage du transformateur BT/HT, puis à la propagation sur les lignes HT. Des modélisations ont été réalisées à l’aide du logiciel commercial EMTP, dont les résultats ont été comparés aux mesures expérimentales obtenues au cours de ce travail. Le rayonnement des lignes HT est abordé tant d’un point de vue théorique qu’expérimental. / The aim of this thesis was to study the possibility for power lines to emit compromising electromagnetic radiations. We focused on two cases. The first one was inside buildings, on PLC “Power Line Communication”. The second one was outside, on an industrial site, and about propagation and radiation of the characteristic signals produced by an industrial material.In the first case, we describe, measuring and modeling, the mechanisms involved in radiation cable Low Voltage (LV). There are two channels of propagation. The first is "wired" and the usual channel of a PLC link between two modems. The second channel is "wireless", which corresponds to the reception, across a magnetic antenna, of a differential injection of 2 lines of the cable. Both types of propagation channels are characterized experimentally, which enable us to deduced, using software, the decoding possibility of the information carried out by the compromising emanations.In the second case, considering "High Voltage" (HV) lines, we studies the successive transfer functions of the current associated with the spread on LV lines, crossing the transformer LV / HV, and then spreading on HV lines. Modelings were performed using commercial software EMTP. The results were compared with experimental measurements obtained during our study. HV lines radiations are discussed both from a theoretical and an experimental perspective.

El fenomen migratori i la integració de les persones nouvingudes a les societats d'acollida ha esdevingut un dels grans temes d'estudi de la sociologia actual. Aquesta tesi eminentment qualitativa i amb una perspectiva local i territorial que abasta l'àmbit de Ponent, s'endinsa en una anàlisi comparativa i d'evolució de la inserció sociolaboral de les persones immigrades en el període 2005-2011 que ha estat marcat de forma significativa per una profunda crisi econòmica. L'objectiu de la tesi ha estat conèixer els discursos dels dos grans protagonistes d'aquesta inserció com són d'una banda l'empresariat i d'altra banda les persones immigrades. En l'anàlisi d'aquests discursos i la seva evolució en aquests anys hem pogut constatar i posar de manifest les diferents lògiques, paradoxes i oportunitats que envolten el fenomen migratori desde la perspectiva empresarial i també hem pogut conèixer les diferents estratègies emprades per les persones immigrades en un context cada cop més hostil per a la seva integració. En definitiva aquesta tesi pretén aportar elements de reflexió crítica sobre els factors d'integració i d'exclusió que envolten el fenomen migratori amb la inserció sociolaboral com a fil conductor i la integració social com a gran qüestió de fons. / El fenómeno migratorio y la integración de las personas recién llegadas a las sociedades de acogida se ha convertido en uno de los grandes temas de estudio de la sociología actual. Esta tesis eminentemente cualitativa y con una perspectiva local y territorial que abarca el ámbito de Ponent, se adentra en un análisis comparativo y de evolución de la inserción sociolaboral de las personas inmigradas en el periodo 2005-2011 que ha estado marcado de forma significativa por una profunda crisis económica. El objetivo de la tesis ha sido conocer los discursos de los dos grandes protagonistas de esta inserción como son por un lado el empresariado y por otro lado las personas inmigradas. En el análisis de estos discursos y su evolución en estos años hemos podido constatar y poner de manifiesto las diferentes lógicas, paradojas y oportunidades que rodean el fenómeno migratorio desde la perspectiva empresarial y también hemos podido conocer las diferentes estrategias empleadas por las personas inmigradas en un contexto cada vez más hostil para su integración. En definitiva esta tesis pretende aportar elementos de reflexión crítica sobre los factores de integración y de exclusión que rodean el fenómeno migratorio con la inserción sociolaboral como hilo conductor y la integración social como gran cuestión de fondo. / The phenomenon of migration and integration of newcomers to the host society has become a major research areas of current sociology. This thesis mainly qualitative and local and regional perspective that encompasses the area west, entering a comparative analysis and evolution of the social integration of immigrants in the period 2005-2011 was marked so that significant for a deep economic crisis. The aim of the thesis was to the speeches of the two protagonists of this insertion is like a banda banda employers and other immigrants. In the analysis of these discourses and their evolution over the years we have seen and highlighted the different logics, paradoxes and opportunities surrounding the phenomenon of migration from the business perspective and we have to know the different strategies used by people immigrants in a context increasingly hostile to integration. In summary this thesis aims to provide elements of critical reflection on the factors of integration and exclusion that surround the migratory phenomenon with social integration, in terms of social integration and a great question