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The world is continually changing towards more energy efficient alternatives and less pollution. For the traction market, electric powertrains have become the go-to method, superior to both steam and diesel-electric hybrid systems. For subways and trams the natural development now is towards smaller motors with high power output, the goal is to use as much space as possible for the passengers and keep the performance of a larger motor setup. One problem with increasing the power density of the motors is that the accumulated heat from losses also increases per volume. All motors have different efficiency and different limits on temperatures in different parts. For this project a closed, self-ventilated traction motor with axis height 250mm (CSV250) was evaluated. The motor has an input power just above 140kW and the identified limiting factor is the temperature of the bearings, specifically the front bearing located at the fan side of the motor.   An already existing and partly validated ANSYS MotorCAD model was used for full system overview and as a guide to build a COMSOL Multiphysics model of the motor rotor. The COMSOL model could be effectively changed to represent different configurations of the solution. The COMSOL solver is based on the finite element method, FEM, whereas the MotorCAD model is built as a thermal network with lumped parameter method, LPM.    The proposed solution to the high temperature is implementation of heat-pipes in strategic positions. This project only contains evaluation of heat-pipes positioned in the center of the shaft deployed in three different configurations: a short heat-pipe transferring heat from the bearing to the fan, a long heat-pipe transferring heat from the active rotor parts to the fan and a long heat-pipe similar to previous case but with the heat-pipe insulted at the bearing section. The simulations yield performance specifications for the solution design that will give the expected result, complemented with theory this can then give the full appliable solution to the specified problem.   For the short heat-pipe case a decrease in temperature form 116.5 to 96.5°C was achieved in the front bearing by increasing the heat-transfer from the bearing towards the fan with 84.4W. This is well under the preferred temperature of maximum 110°C. In the long heat-pipe case a total of 360W was dispersed through the fan and this lowered the highest temperature point in the rotor from 172.2 to 160.8°C but with the negative effect of increasing the temperature of the front bearing. In the third case the insulation of the long heat-pipe in the bearing section managed to lower this increased temperature from 130.4 to 122.4°C while 360W were still transferred through to the fan. This is under the absolute maximum at 130°C but over 110°C. The results point towards the possibility to increase power density and keeping temperatures manageable using heat-pipes but further work and experiments is needed to prov the concept.

Depuis le Baby-Boom d'après guerre, la France, comme d'autres pays, est confrontée à un vieillissement de la population et à des pathologies qui deviennent de plus en plus chroniques. Ces nouveaux problèmes de santé impliquent des prises en charge plus fréquentes, plus complexes et plus transversales. Cependant, plusieurs freins liés à l'évolution de la société où à l'organisation interne du système de santé, viennent entraver le développement de prises en charge adaptées pour répondre aux nouveaux besoins. Dans un contexte de réduction des dépenses, il est nécessaire d'avoir une meilleure maîtrise des processus de santé.L'objectif de nos travaux est de proposer un ensemble de méthodes pour une meilleure compréhension du parcours de santé de la personne âgée en Auvergne. Pour cela, une description des parcours des personnes âgées est nécessaire pour avoir cette vue d'ensemble aujourd'hui manquante. De plus, cela permettra d'identifier les intervenants, les interactions ou encore les contraintes impliquées dans les différents parcours. Les travaux présentés dans ce manuscrit s'intéressent à deux problématiques. La première consiste à mettre au point des méthodes pour modéliser rapidement et efficacement les parcours de santé. Ces modèles permettront d'analyser comment les différents segments d'une prise en charge s'enchaînent. La seconde problématique consiste à proposer des méthodes pour extraire des informations pertinentes à partir des données selon un point de vue métier prédéfini, propre à la personne qui souhaite analyser ce modèle. Ces informations permettront par exemple de détecter des segments de parcours fréquents, ou encore anormaux.Pour répondre à ces problématiques, les méthodes que nous proposons dans ce manuscrit sont issues du process mining et du data mining. Ces disciplines ont pour objectif d'exploiter les données disponibles dans les systèmes d'information pour en extraire des connaissances pertinentes. Dans un premier temps, nous proposons une méthodologie qui se base sur le pouvoir d'expression des modèles de processus pour extraire des connaissances intéressantes. Dans un second temps, nous proposons des techniques pour construire des modèles de processus partiels, dont l'objectif est de permettre l'extraction de fragments de comportements intéressants.Les expérimentations effectuées démontrent l'efficacité des méthodes proposées. De plus, différentes études de cas ont été menées dans divers domaines pour prouver la généricité des techniques développées. / Ever since the post-World War II baby-boom, France has had to cope with an aging population and with pathologies that have become chronic. These new health problems imply more reccurent, more complex and multidisciplinary medical care. However, multiple obstacles related to the evolution of the society or to the internal organization of the healthcare system hinder the development of new and more adapted health procedures to meet new medical needs. In a context where health expanses have to be reduced, it is necessary to have a better management of health processes.Our work aims at proposing a set of methods to gain an understanding of the elderly health path in the Auvergne region. To this end, a description of the elderly health path is necessary in order to have this missing overview. Moreover, this will enable the identification of the stakeholders, their interactions and the constraints to which they are submitted in the different health procedures.The work presented in this thesis focuses on two problems. The first one consists in developing techniques to efficiently model health paths. With these models, we will be able to analyze how the different segments of a medical care are ordered. The second problem consists in developing techniques to extract relevant information from the data, according to a predefined business point of view, specific to the user who analyzes the model. This knowledge will enable the detection of frequent or abnormal parts of a health path.To resolve these problems, the methods we propose in this thesis are related to process mining and data mining. These disciplines aim at exploiting data available in today's information systems in order to discover useful knowledge. In a first part, we propose a methodology that relies on the expressive power of process models to extract relevant information. In a second part, we propose techniques to build local process models that represent interesting fragments of behavior.The experiments we performed show the efficiency of the methods we propose. Moreover, we analyze data from different application domains to prove the genericity of the developed techniques.

Adaptiva styrprinciper har framhållits som potentiell lösning till en rad strategiskt kostsamma nackdelar kopplade till den traditionella årsbudgeten. Denna studie syftar till att studerasambandet mellan dessa adaptiva styrprinciper och osäker miljö. Teoribildningen som ligger till grund för det analytiska ramverket har tematiserats i fyra kategorier av adaptiva styrprinciper som visats återkommande i den tidigare forskningen rörande beyond budgeting och dess besläktade hybrider: decentralisering, adaptiv planering och resursallokering, adaptiv målsättning och prestationsmätning samt adaptiva incitamentspraktiker. Denna tidigare forskning har emellertid inte undersökt mindre företags benägenhet att implementera dessa praktiker, och hur detta förhåller sig under perioder av generell osäkerhet. Covid-19-pandemin utgör en unik möjlighet på så sätt att andra typer av osäkerhet tidigare har tagit formen av specifika attribut (exempelvis konkurrensutsättning), medan pandemin får anses vara generellt utan motstycke under de i övrigt rådande omständigheterna. Forskningsfrågan definieras därmed som: Har mindre svenska tillverkningsföretag anammat adaptiva styrprinciper i större utsträckning under pandemin? För att undersöka huruvida dessa styrprinciper har ett samband med osäker miljö på det sätt som antyds utifrån teori användes en kvantitativ metod. En enkät skickades till 616 svenska tillverkningsföretag med 10-199 anställda, varav 88 användbara svar samlades in. Även om respondenterna uppvisade bred tendens till anammande (såsom teorin skulle förutse) var inte denna förändringsgrad under pandemin statistiskt signifikant utifrån linjär sannolikhetsmodell. / Adaptive management practices have been touted as being the solution to a number of strategically costly problems connected to the traditional yearly budget. The purpose of this study is to examine the relation between adaptive management practices and an uncertain environment. The underlying theory of the analytical framework specifically concerns four adaptive management practices that have proven to be recurring in the beyond budgeting literature and its adjacent hybrids: decentralization, adaptive planning and resource allocation, adaptive goal and performance measurements and adaptive incentives. Prior research has overlooked the aspect of smaller companies and their willingness to change and adapt their management practices during times of general uncertainty. The Covid-19 pandemic during 2020-2021 constituted a rare opportunity in the sense that other types of uncertainty have tended to be specific (e.g. increased competition), whereas the pandemic is taken to be generally unprecedented in relation to all other aspects of the current business environment. The research question was therefore formulated as: Have Swedish small scale manufacturing companies adopted adaptive management practices to a larger extent during the pandemic? To examine whether the adoption of these tools relate to uncertain environments, in the manner in which the theory suggests, a quantitative approach was utilized. A survey was sent to 616 Swedish manufacturing companies with 10-199 employees, out of which 88 useful answers were gathered. Although the respondents showed tendencies of adoption across the board (as the theory would predict) the changes made during the pandemic did not reach statistical significance in the linear probability model.

Detta är en tvärkulturell, kvantitativ studie som undersöker sambandet mellan utbildning och ensamhet. Tidigare forskning i ämnet har varierande resultat samtidigt som fokus ofta legat på konsekvenser av ensamhet istället för vad som orsakar ensamhet. Trots det utgår denna studie från att den alienerande skolmiljön, som bidrar till ensamhetskänslor, samt humankapitalteorin, som ger en förståelse vad som kan uppmuntra till fortsatta studier, innebär att en lägre utbildningsnivå associerar med ensamhetskänslor. Datamaterialet som används för att testa hypotesen kommer från European Social Survey runda 7 vilket innebär att 21 länder inkluderas med mellan 1 400–3 000 respondenter per nation. Denna studie använder samma binära definition av ensamhetsvariabeln som Brülde och Fors (2015). Med hjälp av linjära sannolikhetsmodeller testas sedan hypotesen, analyserna inkluderar över 35 000 respondenter. Resultatet innebär att det finns empiriskt stöd för hypotesen och därmed antas en individs utbildningsnivå inverkar på hens ensamhetskänslor. Det kan tyckas märkligt att personer som spenderar mer tid i den alienerande skolmiljön är mindre ensamma än de med lägre utbildningsnivå. Teorierna ger dock flera möjliga förklaringar till detta, dels att individer som är känsliga för den alienerande miljön väljer att inte fortsätta studier på högre nivå, vilket ger dem sämre förutsättningar på arbetsmarknaden samtidigt som förvärvsarbetet också kan leda till alienering och därmed riskeras ensamhetskänslorna intensifieras. Medan för andra individer ger det ökande humankapitalet, som utbildningen innebär, incitament för att bortse från den alienerande miljön och därmed motverkas alienationens negativa konsekvenser. Därutöver går det att argumentera för att den högre utbildningen fostrar en slags social individualism som studenterna har nytta av senare i livet.

M.A. / The following study investigates the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) which is a grassroots movement in South Africa. While there have been many movements to emerge, the LPM was formed in 2001 in response to increasing housing evictions and insecure land tenure. The formation of the movement was met in some cases by minor state concessions but also by state brutality. This study focuses on the experiences of the urban landless and argues that the manner in which the movement frames its demands, together with the political opportunity structure, have an impact upon the extent to which the LPM has effectively mobilised around land issues, as well as upon the cycles that the movement has undergone. In order to unpack the experiences of the landless, two theoretical concepts were used to frame the discussion, namely, political opportunity structure and the cycles of protest. Analysing the changing political opportunity structure proved useful in demonstrating some of the constraints and opportunities faced by movements in their attempts to attain land, while the notion of cycles of protest was useful in showing the phases undergone by the movement from its inception in 2001 until 2010. In order to understand the experiences of the urban landless regarding the manner in which they frame their demands and mobilise around land issues, a qualitative research design was employed by making use of a case study method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with both leaders and supporters of the movement. In addition, focus groups, meeting attendance and informal discussions helped to enrich the data included in this case study on the experiences of the urban landless.

Le contexte général de cette thèse se situe dans le domaine de la synthèse RTL (Register Transfer Level). Une spécification initiale en termes de transferts de registres décrite dans un langage de haut niveau (VHDL, Verilog) définit l'ordre des opérations. A partir de cette spécification, le système de synthèse RTL génère une description structurelle fonctionnellement équivalente interconnectant des portes de base et des macro blocs de la cible technologique. Le langage de description considéré ici est le langage VHDL standardisé par le groupe IEEE en 1987. Ce choix est justifié par une étude comparative entre différents langages. Les principales caractéristiques du langage VHDL ainsi que les améliorations apportées par la nouvelle norme de 1992 sont évoquées. Dans une seconde partie, les limitations du langage VHDL pour son utilisation en synthèse et le flot de conception à partir d'une spécification RTL sont présentés. Plusieurs modèles VHDL d'éléments simples et de macro blocs sont décrits pour la synthèse. Le flot général de conception utilisant ces macro blocs est analysé et détaillé pour deux cas pratiques: l'utilisation des générateurs XBLOX de Xilinx et ACTgen d'Actel dans le logiciel de synthèse ASYL+. La dernière partie s'attache plus précisément à la modélisation d'éléments de bibliothèques en vue de leur utilisation en synthèse. Un format de bibliothèque, permettant de décrire tout aussi bien des portes simples que des macro blocs, est défini. Le nouveau format de bibliothèque standard VITAL est analysé ainsi que ses perspectives d'utilisation en simulation et en synthèse. La norme LPM qui définit un ensemble d'éléments standards indépendants de la technologie est également présentée. Cette dernière partie a conduit à la définition d'un nouveau flot de synthèse unifié utilisant les macro blocs et à la mise en place de plusieurs optimisations basées sur la notion de dérivation

The present research work has been carried out to develop a unified knowledge-based hybrid methodology combining regression-based, lumped parameter and finite element analyses that can be implemented in the initial phase of vehicle design resulting in a superior side crash performance. As a first step, a regression-based model (RBM) is developed between the injury parameter Thoracic Trauma Index (TTI) of the rear SID and characteristic side impact dynamic response variables such as rear door velocity (final) and intrusion supplementing an existing RBM for front TTI prediction. In order to derive the rear TTI RBM, existing public domain vehicle crash test data provided by NHTSA has been used. A computer-based tool with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been developed for obtaining possible solution sets of response variables satisfying the regression relations for both front and rear TTI. As a next step in the formulation of the present hybrid methodology for vehicle side impact safety design, a new Lumped Parameter Model (LPM) representing NHTSA side impact is developed. The LPM developed consists of body sub-systems like B-pillar, front door, rear door and rocker (i.e. sill) on the struck side of the vehicle, MDB, and “rest of the vehicle” as lumped masses along with representative nonlinear springs between them. It has been envisaged that for the initial conceptual design to progress, the targets of dynamic response variables obtained from RBM should yield a set of spring characteristics broadly defining the required vehicle side structure. However, this is an inverse problem of dynamics which would require an inordinate amount of time to be solved iteratively. Hence a knowledge-based approach is adopted here to link the two sets of variables i.e., the dynamic response parameters (such as average door and B-pillar velocities, door intrusion, etc.) and the stiffness and strength characteristics of the springs present in LPM. In effect, this mapping is accomplished with the help of an artificial neural network (ANN) algorithm (referred to as ANN_RBM_LPM in the current work). To generate the required knowledge database for ANN_RBM_LPM, one thousand cases of LPM chosen with the help of the Latin Hypercube technique are run with varying spring characteristics. The goal of finding the desired design solutions describing vehicle geometry in an efficient manner is accomplished with the help of a second ANN algorithm which links sets of dynamic spring characteristics with sets of sectional properties of doors, B-pillar and rocker (referred as ANN_LPM_FEM in the current work). The implementation of this approach requires creation of a knowledge database containing paired sets of spring characteristics and sectional details just mentioned. The effectiveness of the hybrid methodology comprising both ANN_RBM_LPM and ANN_LPM_FEM is finally illustrated by improving the side impact performance of a Honda Accord finite element model. Thus, the unique knowledge-based hybrid approach developed here can be deployed in real world vehicle safety design for both new and existing vehicles leading to enormous saving of time and costly design iterations.