Thesis (Ph. D.) - Carleton University, 1992. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2005. / Vita. Thesis advisor: Paul Dupuis. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-153). Also available online.

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Master of Science / Department of Architectural Engineering and Construction Science / Fred L. Hasler / Typical building power supplied from power plants has significantly evolved over the last century. After power is generated and transferred from the power plant, it is distributed to the customer. The concept of Microgrid was introduced to address increasing concerns with power reliability requirements for some facilities. The Microgrid is a localized electric grid that can operate autonomously from the traditional electric grid (Macrogrid). Compared with generator sets, a Microgrid provides a faster system response and recovery to either whole or part of the electric load for a facility. The Microgrid can operate under two operation conditions: grid-tied mode and island mode. When it is working individually like an “island”, the system is not providing or receiving disturbance to or from the Macrogrid. The purpose of this paper is to give a detailed introduction of Microgrid and present research and conclusion about its feasibility. This report references previously published research to explain what a Microgrid is. Also, two detailed case studies provide a discussion about the feasibility of the Microgrid in terms of its reliability, economics and environmental impact - air quality. Although there are many challenges that Microgrids are facing, there are quite a number of reasons to consider them. The goal is to balance the benefits and challenges of Microgrids depend on each case. No doubt, the existing power grid will still provide the majority of power supply for global population. However, many companies and government-funded laboratories are investing time and money into research and development of Microgrids. With the advancement of the Microgrids, it is likely that Microgrids will be playing a larger role in providing secure, reliable energy to the building industry.

Ce travail de thèse concerne les structures artificielles à base de métamatériaux permettant la réalisation d’absorbants parfaits. Après une brève introduction des métamatériaux, de leur fonctionnement en tant qu’absorbants et de l’état de l’art, quatre types de structures fonctionnant en bandes centimétrique ou millimétrique ont été conçus puis fabriqués à savoir (i) des réseaux de cubes BaSrTiO3 (BST) basés sur les résonances de Mie, (ii) des réseaux désordonnés composés d’anneaux métalliques mettant en jeu des effets de résonance semblables aux systèmes plasmoniques (iii) des absorbants à quatre résonateurs élémentaires sur substrat flexible et (iv) des réseaux multicouches métal-diélectrique de forme pyramidale. Pour l’ensemble, des simulations numériques, corroborées par l’expérience en guide d’onde ou en espace libre, montrent l’existence d’un moment magnétique. Celui-ci est induit par une boucle des courants de déplacement et de conduction. Pour les structures périodiques, les conditions de grande largeur de bande d’absorption ont été établies sur la base du piégeage et de la dissipation de l’énergie incidente. Pour les réseaux désordonnés, il est montré le rôle capital des couplages entre résonateurs. Des structures périodiques à base de ferroélectrique de dimensions sous longueur d’onde ont été assemblées avec succès tandis que des absorbants flexibles ont été réalisés par technique d’impression jet d’encre montrant l’amélioration d’un facteur quatre de la bande d’absorption. Des améliorations comparables ont été obtenues à l’aide de réseaux d’anneaux, dont les positions dans le plan sont désordonnées, résultant de la distribution des fréquences de résonance par effet de couplage fort entre les résonateurs. / In this thesis broadband Metamaterial Perfect Absorbers (MPAs) have been investigated. Following a brief introduction of metamaterials, operating mechanisms and state of the art of MPA, four absorber types operating either at centimeter or millimeter wavelengths have been designed and fabricated namely :(i) Mie-resonance based BaSrTiO3 (BST) arrays operating at microwaves, (ii) plasmonic-type disordered ring-shaped MPA, (iii) four patches millimeter wave flexible absorbers (iv) Pyramidal metal/dielectric stacked resonator arrays. For all the structures, it was demonstrated, through numerical simulations, assessed by characterization in a waveguide configuration or in free space, that unit absorbance relies on magnetic resonances induced by a current loop combining displacement and conduction currents. For periodic arrays, the condition for a broad band operation was established via the optimization of dissipation and trapping of electromagnetic energy in the resonators. For disordered metamaterials, it was shown the major role played by the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction. From the technological side, Ferroelectrics cube arrays with subwavelength dimensions were assembled onto a metal plate while flexible multi-resonators periodic arrays were successfully fabricated by ink-jet printing showing a fourfold enhancement of the absorbance bandwidth thanks to the overlapping of resonance frequencies. Comparable improvement in the bandwidth was also pointed out with randomly position metal ring arrays due to the distribution of resonance frequencies that result from tight in-plane resonator coupling.

L’absorption des ondes électromagnétiques est un objectif suscitant beaucoup d’intérêt de nos jours notamment pour les applications en furtivité dans le domaine militaire, mais également dans le domaine civil pour limiter l’exposition aux signaux de communication sans fil et pour préserver l’intégrité des informations échangées. La conception d’absorbants pour le domaine des basses fréquences reste un challenge dans la mesure où l’épaisseur des objets est proportionnelle à la longueur d’onde, ce qui peut se traduire par des masses et des encombrements importants. Cette caractéristique est un facteur limitant, notamment pour la protection des équipements embarqués. C’est pourquoi l’objectif de cette thèse est de concevoir des absorbants électromagnétiques à la fois large bande et le moins épais possible pour des faibles fréquences (typiquement entre 1 et 10 GHz). Dans un premier temps, nous avons cherché à comprendre le rôle des paramètres constitutifs des matériaux (permittivité et perméabilité complexe) dans l’absorption de l’onde. Nous avons ensuite décrit les efficacités d’absorption au sein d’une structure résonante par le biais du facteur de qualité. Sur ces bases de conception, nous avons proposé plusieurs types de structures absorbantes. La première repose sur la structuration d’un matériau composite ferromagnétique par ajout de motif métallique ou par détourage. Les motifs fractals (courbes de Moore) ont permis d’obtenir des largeurs de bandes relatives de l’ordre de 130 %, à 90 % d’absorption en puissance, autour de la fréquence de 7 GHz, avec une épaisseur faible devant la plus grande longueur d’onde absorbée. Les autres absorbants étudiés dans cette thèse présentent une structuration MIM (métal/ isolant/ métal) avec des résonateurs répartis aléatoirement. La distribution aléatoire du premier absorbant, dimensionné pour des fréquences voisines de 10 GHz, suit la loi de probabilité de Poisson où les résonateurs peuvent se superposer. Nous avons utilisé des outils mathématiques permettant de décrire la topologie de la distribution afin de relier la géométrie de l’absorbant à l’absorption de l’onde électromagnétique. Deux autres structures aléatoires, dimensionnées pour les longueurs d’ondes millimétriques, répartissent les résonateurs avec une condition de non contact. Nous montrons qu’une augmentation du nombre de résonateurs permet d’obtenir une absorption supérieure à 90 % avec un élargissement de bande. Enfin, nous avons mené une étude de prospective en vue d’étudier la réponse d’une métasurface aléatoire aux ondes électromagnétiques et acoustiques dans le domaine infrarouge. / Absorption of electromagnetic power arouses a lot of interest not solely for stealth applications in military domain, but also in civil life to reduce the exposure to wireless communication signals and to preserve the totality of exchanged information. Absorbers designing for low frequency domain remains a challenge since the object’s thickness has to be proportional to the working wavelength, which leads to significant mass and size. This characteristic is a limiting factor, especially for the on-board equipment protection. That is why the main objective of this thesis is to design a low-profile electromagnetic absorber specified for broadband operation at low frequency (typically between 1 and 10 GHz). First, we tried to deeply understand the role of materials’ constitutive parameters (complex permittivity and permeability) in the power absorption. Next we described the absorption efficiency by a resonant structure in terms of quality factor, thus introducing a balance condition. From this design rules, we proposed several types of absorbing structures. The first one is based on a ferromagnetic composite material structuration either by addition of metallic pattern or by etching technique. Fractals patterns (Moore’s curve) enabled to obtain a relative frequency bandwidth in the range of 130 %, for 90 % power absorption, around a frequency of 7 GHz, for a thickness which is a fraction absorbed wavelength. The other absorbers studied during this thesis display a MIM (metal/ isolator/ metal) structuration with randomly distributed resonators. The random distribution of the first absorber, sized for operating frequencies around 10 GHz, obeys the probability law of Poisson in which overlapping between resonators is allowed. We used some mathematical tools to describe the random distribution’s topology in order to link the absorber’s geometry to the electromagnetic power absorption characteristics. Two other random structures, dimensioned for millimeter wavelengths, distribute the resonators with a no contact condition. We showed that by increasing of density of the resonators, one can obtain an absorbance higher than 90 % with a bandwidth enhancement. Finally, we carried out a prospective study in order regarding a random metasurface which can behaves as a common platform for electromagnetic and acoustic waves in the infrared domain.

Advances in technology have provided industry with an array of devices for collecting data. The frequency and scale of data collection means that there are now many large datasets being generated. To find patterns in these datasets it would be useful to be able to apply modern methods of classification such as support vector machines. Unfortunately these methods are computationally expensive, quadratic in the number of data points in fact, so cannot be applied directly. This thesis proposes a framework whereby a variety of clustering methods can be used to summarise datasets, that is, reduce them to a smaller but still representative dataset so that these advanced methods can be applied. It compares the results of using this framework against using random selection on a large number of classification and regression problems. Results show that the clustered datasets are on average fifty percent smaller than the original datasets without loss of classification accuracy which is significantly better than random selection. They also show that there is no free lunch, for each dataset it is important to choose a clustering method carefully.

In large workspaces that do not fit on the screen space, users have to navigate to various regions outside the viewport to locate items of interest. Researchers have developed a variety of different navigation techniques to improve the performance of working with large workspaces. In this thesis I design, implement, and evaluate two novel navigation techniques to access off-screen content. I call these techniques Multiscale Window and Crystal Ball. The design of these two techniques was based on two hybrid interaction systems WinHop and Multiscale Zoom. Multiscale Window takes advantage of Multiscale Zoom to provide an overview of the context by incorporating full-detail object representations (proxies), and Crystal Ball is an improvement to WinHop. The implemented techniques were designed to alleviate the shortcomings of both hybrid techniques; Multiscale Zoom lacks the ability to provide detail information of overlapped proxies, and WinHop does not facilitate navigation to the off-screen region due to the animation. I evaluated the Multiscale Window and Crystal Ball techniques in two experiments. In the first experiment (N = 14) a Tablet PC with a digital pen as an input device was used. Results showed that there was no significant difference between Multiscale Window and Multiscale Zoom. However, Crystal Ball showed improved effects over WinHop in most tasks. The second experiment (N = 14) compared the same techniques as in experiment one, on a PC with a mouse as input device. The results indicated that subjects were faster with Crystal Ball than WinHop. Like the first experiment, Multiscale Window did not show any significant improvement over Multiscale Zoom. / May 2009