The thesis topic is the accounting workflow of the company Siemens Enteprise Communications, s.r.o. The first, theoretical, part of the thesis focuses on general characteristics of the accounting system including the company rules and the need for such a system. The second part of the thesis deals with the workflow of accounting documents (invoices, credit notes, travel orders and other accounting documents). The thesis closes with a comparison of two workflow systems.

Master Thesis is focused on problems elimination and processes simplification in the purchase and supply chain of the company Sunnysoft. There were several solution variants suggested from which the best one was chosen and has been successfully applied in the company.

Solar DEC (Desiccant and Evaporative Cooling) air-conditioning is a renewable technological approach to the future air-conditioning of buildings driven with solar-thermal heat. The principal acceptance of solar airconditioning has led to system prototypes mainly across Europe, however the diffusion of this innovative technology is proceeding slowly due to little field testing experience. In climates with coexisting heating demand particularly, a multivalent system approach that utilizes solar-heat not only for air-conditioning but also for hot water preparation and heating has potential as a feasible concept. However, previous research focused on systems using solar heat exclusively for the DEC-process. This research contributes to the advancement of the solar DEC-technology with multivalent use of solar thermal heat. The investigation consists of an initial detailed in-situ monitoring analysis of a system prototype operated in an industrial environment, followed by the development of optimised system concepts and a climate-specific analysis of the solar DEC-technology. The monitoring provided in-depth knowledge about the system operation, revealing the reasons for the insufficient refrigeration capacity achieved in practice. A detailed simulation model for an entire multivalent solar DEC-system including the heat sinks, DEC-system, heating and hot-water preparation was developed and a DEC-control strategy has been formulated. A new optimised control strategy for multivalent systems with simultaneous sink supply concept was devised. A sensitivity analysis was carried out to investigate the key design parameters for the dimensioning of multivalent solar DEC-systems. The research concluded that the auxiliary primary energy consumption of the optimised system was lower by one third compared to the initial system. Finally, a methodological zoning approach was developed, to systematically produce design-specific outline data for the application of the solar DEC-technology at climatically different sites.

In this thesis different control methods are applied to the beam and ball system. Test setup for the previous thesis is handled, circuit assemblies and hardware redesigned. As the system is controlled by the control law partitioning method by a computer, discrete time system model is created. The controllability and the observability of the system are analyzed and a nonlinear controller by using control law partitioning in other words computed torque is designed. State feedback control algorithm previously designed is repeated. In case of calculating the non measurable state variables two different reduced order observers are designed for these two different controllers, one for control law partitioning controller and the other for state-feedback controller. Two controller methods designed for the thesis study are tested in the computer environment using modeling and simulation tools (Also a different controller by using sliding mode controller is designed and tested in the computer environment using simulation tools). A controller software program is written for the designed controller algorithms and this software is tested on the test setup. It is observed that the system is stable when we apply either of the control algorithms.

This thesis aims to propose multiple methods for performing a hardware-in-the-loop simulation, providing the hardware and software tools necessary for design and execution. For this purpose, methods of modeling commonly encountered dynamical system components are explored and techniques suitable for calculating the states of the modeled system are presented. Modules and subsystems that enable the realization of a hardware-in-the-loop simulation application and its interfacing with external controller hardware are explained. The thesis also presents three different simulation scenarios. Solutions suitable for these scenarios are provided along with their implementations. The details and specifications of the developed software packages and hardware platforms are given. The provided results illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of the approaches used in these solutions.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-162).

The construction of fish passes has been a longstanding measure to improve river ecosystem status by ensuring the passability of weirs, dams and other in- channel structures for migratory fish. Many fish passes have a low biological effectiveness because of unsuitable hydrodynamic conditions hindering fish to rapidly detect the pass entrance. There has been a need for techniques to quantify the hydrodynamics surrounding fish pass entrances in order to identify those passes that require enhancement and to improve the design of new passes. This PhD thesis presents the development of a methodology for the rapid, spatially continuous quantification of near-pass hydrodynamics in the field. The methodology involves moving-vessel Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) measurements in order to quantify the 3-dimensional water velocity distribution around fish pass entrances. The approach presented in this thesis is novel because it integrates a set of techniques to make ADCP data robust against errors associated with the environmental conditions near engineered in-channel structures. These techniques provide solutions to (i) ADCP compass errors from magnetic interference, (ii) bias in water velocity data caused by spatial flow heterogeneity, (iii) the accurate ADCP positioning in locales with constrained line of sight to navigation satellites, and (iv) the accurate and cost-effective sensor deployment following pre-defined sampling strategies. The effectiveness and transferability of the methodology were evaluated at three fish pass sites covering conditions of low, medium and high discharge. The methodology outputs enabled a detailed quantitative characterisation of the fish pass attraction flow and its interaction with other hydrodynamic features. The outputs are suitable to formulate novel indicators of hydrodynamic fish pass attractiveness and they revealed the need to refine traditional fish pass design guidelines.

The work presented in the thesis concerns the design and development of a novel thruster fault diagnosis and accommodation system (PDAS) for overactuated, open-frame underwater vehicles. The remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) considered in this thesis have four thrusters for motion in the horizontal plane with three controllable degrees of freedom (DoF). Due to the redundancy resulting from this configuration, for the case of a partial fault or a total fault in a single thruster it is possible to reallocate control among operable thrusters in order that the ROV pilot is able to maintain control of the faulty ROV and to continue with missions. The proposed PDAS consists of two subsystems: a fault diagnosis subsystem (FDS) and a fault accommodation subsystem (FAS). The FDS uses fault detector units to monitor thruster states. Robust and reliable interrogation of thruster states, and subsequent identification of faults, is accomplished using methods based on the integration of selforganising maps and fuzzy logic clustering. The FAS uses information provided by the FDS to perform an appropriate redistribution of thruster demands in order to accommodate faults. The FAS uses a hybrid approach for control allocation, which integrates the pseudoinverse method and the fixed-point iterations method. A control energy cost function is used as the optimisation criteria. In fault-free and faulty cases the FAS finds the optimal solution, which minimises this criteria. The concept of feasible region is developed in order to visualise thruster velocity saturation bounds. The PDAS provides a dynamic update of saturation bounds using a complex three-dimensional visualisation of the feasible region (attainable command set), such that the ROV pilot is informed with the effects of thruster fault accommodation, incorporated in the new shape of the attainable command set. In this way the ROV pilot can easy adapt to newly created changes and continue the mission in the presence of a fault. The prototype of the PDAS was developed in the MATLAB environment as a Simulink model, which includes a nonlinear model of an ROV with 6 DOF, propulsion system and a hand control unit. The hand control unit was simulated in hardware using a joystick as input device to generate command signals. Different fault conditions are simulated in order to investigate the performance of the PDAS. A virtual underwater world was developed, which enabled tuning, testing and evaluation of the PDAS using simulations of two underwater vehicles (FALCON, Seaeye Marine Ltd. and URIS, University of Girona) in a 'realistic' underwater environment. The performance of the PDAS was demonstrated and evaluated via tank trials of the FALCON ROV in QinetiQ Ocean Basin Tank at Haslar, where the existing control software was enhanced with the PDAS algorithm. The results of real-world experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the PDAS in maintaining vehicle manoeuvrability and in preserving the vehicle mission in the presence of thruster faults.

Budgetary control has been used and researched for years by both Western academics and practitioners. In China, it is re-emerging as a tool to implement management control, but might be used in different ways both in terms of understanding and operation. The research objective of this thesis is to examine the applicability of Western theories of change in management accounting in the context of budgeting in Chinese corporations. Challenges can exist because of the differences between Western assumptions and Chinese reality. The current thesis focuses on difficulties Chinese companies encounter in practical and deeper ideological ways: firstly, Western market-based ideology conflicts with an ideology which has been shaped by central-planning for decades; secondly, difficulties stem from the different cultural context of China which emphasizes hierarchical politeness, kinship ties, trust based on personal relationships, collectivism and social harmony, diligence and individual modesty, and less developed modern legal regulatory systems – these all contribute to China’s own way of doing things. This thesis also focuses on the transition process in China. Based on the assumption that budgetary changes do not happen in isolation from other management accounting changes, this thesis discusses these changes which synchronically took place while the case-study companies were implementing budgetary systems. This thesis adopts a longitudinal and in-depth qualitative case study research design, after adjustments made during the learning experience of the pilot study. It takes an interpretive and constructive philosophical underpinning, which allows the researcher to observe and understand the process of change, as well as the differences between Chinese practices and Western theories. Findings show that certain Western management accounting theories of change and Western theories of budgeting work in the case study Chinese corporations. Management accounting theories using an interpretive approach (for example, Berry et al., 1985; Scapens and Roberts, 1993; Ahrens and Chapman, 2002) lead the researcher to interpret management accounting practices from the practitioner’s points of view, and they have provided a range of terms to explain success or failure of management accounting changes. This approach together with Scapens et al.’s Institutional theory approach in management accounting have been found especially useful, in explaining the differences between Chinese vs. Western context. Furthermore, the contingency theory approach in management accounting gives a ‘platform’ which allows the researcher to assess a wide range of possible factors and their relationships with budgetary systems in studied companies. This approach is found useful in this thesis to present changes in other management accounting perspectives. Last but not least, this thesis finds existing Western literature in technical perspective of budgetary objectives, budgetary evaluation and participation, and budgetary effectiveness useful in a different context of China. By describing the change management process, an aspect which is not addressed frequently in the research literature, this thesis argues that to sufficiently understand Chinese companies’ budgetary changes, one also needs to understand unique cultural, social-economical and religious circumstances, and to adjust literature and methodology to adapt to these circumstances. This thesis provides an empirical experience concerning these issues. This thesis contributes to the understanding of management accounting change in China, and the tension which exists when Chinese companies are moving into Western management accounting practices.

Vehicle Dynamics Control (VDC) systems (also known as Active Chassis systems) are mechatronic systems developed for improving vehicle comfort, handling and/or stability. Traditionally, most of these systems have been individually developed and manufactured by various suppliers and utilised by automotive manufacturers. These decentralised control systems usually improve one aspect of vehicle performance and in some cases even worsen some other features of the vehicle. Although the benefit of the stand-alone VDC systems has been proven, however, by increasing the number of the active systems in vehicles, the importance of controlling them in a coordinated and integrated manner to reduce the system complexity, eliminate the possible conflicts as well as expand the system operational envelope, has become predominant. The subject of Integrated Vehicle Dynamics Control (IVDC) for improving the overall vehicle performance in the existence of several VDC active systems has recently become the topic of many research and development activities in both academia and industries Several approaches have been proposed for integration of vehicle control systems, which range from the simple and obvious solution of networking the sensors, actuators and processors signals through different protocols like CAN or FlexRay, to some sort of complicated multi-layered, multi-variable control architectures. In fact, development of an integrated control system is a challenging multidisciplinary task and should be able to reduce the complexity, increase the flexibility and improve the overall performance of the vehicle. The aim of this thesis is to develop a low-cost control scheme for integration of Electric Power-Assisted Steering (EPAS) system with Enhanced Stability Program (ESP) system to improve driver comfort as well as vehicle safety. In this dissertation, a systematic approach toward a modular, flexible and reconfigurable control architecture for integrated vehicle dynamics control systems is proposed which can be implemented in real time environment with low computational cost. The proposed control architecture, so named “Integrated Vehicle Control System (IVCS)”, is customised for integration of EPAS and ESP control systems. IVCS architecture consists of three cascade control loops, including high-level vehicle control, low-level (steering torque and brake slip) control and smart actuator (EPAS and EHB) control systems. The controllers are designed based on Youla parameterisation (closed-loop shaping) method. A fast, adaptive and reconfigurable control allocation scheme is proposed to coordinate the control of EPAS and ESP systems. An integrated ESP & ESP HiL/RCP system including the real EPAS and Electro Hydraulic Brake (EHB) smart actuators integrated with a virtual vehicle model (using CarMaker/HiL®) with driver in the loop capability is designed and utilised as a rapid control development platform to verify and validate the developed control systems in real time environment. Integrated Vehicle Dynamic Control is one of the most promising and challenging research and development topics. A general architecture and control logic of the IVDC system based on a modular and reconfigurable control allocation scheme for redundant systems is presented in this research. The proposed fault tolerant configuration is applicable for not only integrated control of EPAS and ESP system but also for integration of other types of the vehicle active systems which could be the subject of future works.