No description available.

This thesis describes the design of multivariable excitation controllers for synchronous generators, and their practical implementation on a laboratory machine system. The main objectives of the investigation were aimed at extending the steady-state stability limit of the generator and improving its general controllability. The present work is principally concerned with the implementation and test of the designs. Instrumentation has been developed to measure and combine feedback signals; this instrumentation and the laboratory generator system are described in detail. The performances of the controllers are predicted by computer simulation and evaluated by practical testing; attention is focussed on comparison of predicted and experimental performances. The theoretical basis of the design strategy is described, in which an optimal control algorithm applies the system states as feedback signals to the open-loop system, thereby shifting certain of the system eigenvalues to more desirable, predetermined locations. The state variables are selected as physically measurable quantities which obviates the need for implementing state estimation techniques.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio University, March, 1994. / Title from PDF t.p.

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 1993. / Title from PDF t.p.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Newcastle, 1995. / "The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Newcastle." Includes bibliographical references (p. [137]-143) and index. Also available online.

Neonatal septicaemia and nosocomial infection are major causes of morbidity in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) in both developed and developing countries. This study documents infective episodes at two resource disparate NICUs; the Grantley Stable Neonatal Unit (GSNU), Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH), Australia 1997-2006 and Danang NICU, Vietnam. The specific aims are: 1. To compare the incidence of neonatal septicaemia at RBWH and Danang NICU. 2. To compare of the epidemiological characteristics of nosocomial infections in the two NICUs. 3. To study risk factors associated with nosocomial infection in the two NICUs (including staff numbers, infant numbers and nursing workload). 4. To review published guidelines on healthcare physical environments and staffing levels and to survey the GSNU & Danang NICU in relation to these. 5. To develop a prospective surveillance system to monitor infection episodes in Danang NICU 6. To recommend strategies for the control of neonatal sepsis in Danang NICU. The GSNU at the RBWH, Australia is a 71 bed neonatal care facility with an established infection surveillance system in a well resource environment. Danang NICU, Vietnam provides care to a high risk neonatal population with no established infection surveillance system in a developing country with more limited resources. This study found the GSNU had a low rate of neonatal septicaemia, during the ten year period from 1997 to 2006 with 253 babies (2.1%) diagnosed with septicaemia. In Danang NICU, in the year 2007 alone, there were 52 cases (2.9%) of septicaemia documented but the incidence of neonatal infection is likely to have underestimated due to (i) the failure to collect blood culture before commencing antibiotic treatment. (ii) Difficulties associated with data retrieval from maternal and neonatal records and (iii) lack of a systematic surveillance system with prospectively collected data. The organisms causing early onset and late onset septicaemia were substantially different in the two NICUs. Group B streptococcus (GBS) and Escherichia coli were the major organisms causing early onset sepsis (EOS) at the GSNU, accounting for 37.8% and 29.7% respectively, whilst coagulase-negative staphylococcus (CONS) was the commonest organism (25.7%) for late onset sepsis (LOS). In Danang NICU, Klebsiella spp was the major pathogen and was responsible for 75% of neonatal septicaemia in both early and late onset sepsis. The isolation of Klebsiella spp in a high proportion of infants at less than 48 hours may suggest nosocomial or maternal route of acquisition. The rate of GBS infections in Danang Hospital, Vietnam, is hard to estimate and interpret due to limited microbiologic data. The anti-serum used to classify the Streptococcal types is not readily available in Danang Hospital. In some cases, organisms that are isolated are suspected to be GBS however, this is not confirmed microbiologically. The study identifies a high prevalence of neonatal septicaemia in Danang NICU. It identifies a close relationship between rates of infection and poor nursing care practices and limited resources. The standard care system used at the GSNU as well as the international literature was studied in relation to infection control practices. This was then used to develop the following recommendations that specifically target a reduction in infection rates in Danang NICU: 1. Implement an infection surveillance system 2. Report regularly from the database and embed discussion of the data into unit management policy 3. Revise neonatal and pathology practice in relation to blood cultures 4. Use shorter duration of antibiotics course based on culture results 5. Modify care practices that expose infants to cross infection 6. Identify specific staff with particular responsibilities in maintenance of standards

In this research, an autonomous vehicle function management methodology is studied. In accordance with the traffic situation, the decision making level chooses the optimal function that guarantees safety and minimizes fuel consumption while the control level is implemented via neuromorphic strategy based on the brain limbic system. To realize the decision making strategy, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used by considering driving safety, driving speed, and fuel efficiency as the objectives. According to the traffic situation and predefined driving mode, Lane Change Maneuver (LCM) and Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) are chosen as the alternative functions in the AHP framework. The adaptive AHP is utilized to cope with dynamically changing traffic environment. The proposed adaptive AHP algorithm provides an optimal relative importance matrix that is essential to make decisions under a varying traffic situation and driving modes. The simulation results show that proposed autonomous vehicle function management structure produces optimal decisions that satisfy the driving preference. The stability of BLS based control is also investigated via Cell-to-Cell Mapping. In this research, autonomous vehicle functions such as Lane change maneuver and Adaptive cruise control are developed by means of BLS based control. The simulation results considered various traffic situations that an autonomous vehicle can encounter. To demonstrate the suggested control method Cell-to-Cell Mapping is utilized. Subsequently, the autonomous vehicle function management strategy is developed by Applying AHP and an adaptive AHP strategy is developed to cope with various traffic situations and driving modes. The suggested method is verified numerical simulations.

In autonomous navigation of mobile robots the dynamic environment is a source of problems. Because it is not possible to model all the possible conditions, the key point in the robot control is to design a system that is adaptable to different conditions and robust in dynamic environments. This study presents a reactive control system for a Khepera robot with the ability to navigate in a dynamic environment for reaching goal objects. The main motivation of this research is to design a robot control, which is robust to sensor errors and sudden changes and adaptable to different environments and conditions. Behavior based approach is used with taking the advantage of fuzzy reasoning in design. Experiments are made on Webots, which is a simulation environment for Khepera robot.

Content: In most of the tanneries, water and chemicals are added manually in the tanning drum and pH of the float / leather is adjusted. Addition of correct amount of process recipe are necessary for better processing of the hides and minimizing wastage of utility, thereby controlling pollution load in effluent. However, fugitive-emission from process and drains accumulate ammonia, hydrogen-sulphide and volatile organic compounds which contribute bad odor in tannery as well as in wastewater-treatment premises causing problems to occupational health & safety of workers. Both local and supervisory control stations are employed to monitor and accurately manage the unit operations. The objective of this work is to produce consistent quality of leathers and to provide a healthy environment through automatic dosing and odor abatement system. Therefore the entire process control operation is integrated to operate through PLCs with following five modules: i) Water addition module ii) Chemical preparation and dosing system iii) pH monitoring and float recycle system iv) Drum rotation module v) Odor reduction module. In the integrated system, critical and bulk chemicals are stored in bulk storage tanks and are drawn into the load cell (LC) as per process sequence or recipe for feeding into the drums through auxiliary tanks. The float-recycle system helps to remix & heat the float where a pH electrode is housed to monitor pH online. The pH monitoring system adjusts addition of critical chemicals that indicates automatic end point. The contaminated air inside the tannery is sucked and passed through blower and then through bio-filter. The filtration process is based on the principle that VOCs (in the order of 50-200 ppm) and odors can be biologically treated by naturally occurring microbes. The control parameters monitored are: moisture in the bed and uniformity of media (contaminated air or process liquor). The humidity and temperature of inlet media is controlled and contact time with microbes is 10-30 secs. Moisture is controlled to maintain microbial population. A lead in laboratory scale has been developed to measure process variables (PV) considering their spatial distribution in two dimensions. Spatial distribution of process variables inside hides (across cross section) may provide accurate measurement of through reconstruction of image and data driven models using artificial intelligence tools. Computational intelligence is developed for updation of model parameters as that can be used for direct estimation of PV Take-Away: 1. Cleaner production is provided through automation of dosing & pH monitoring using PLC in indegeneous way 2. Pollution Load in exit stream and odor-gas emmision are minimized 3. Artificial Intelligence and data analytics techniques are used in Leather making