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This thesis focuses on the single-phase voltage-source inverter for use in photovoltaic (PV) electricity generating systems in both stand-alone and grid-tied applications. In many cases, developments in single-phase PV systems have followed developments in three-phase systems. Time-variant systems are more difficult to control than time-invariant systems. Nevertheless, by using suitable transformation techniques, time-variant systems can often be modelled as time-invariant systems. After the transformation, the control signals that are usually time-variant (often varying sinusoidally in time) become time-invariant at the fundamental frequency, and are hence much easier to deal with. With this approach, synchronous rotating frame control techniques have been previously proposed for high performance three-phase inverter applications. The transformation theory cannot be applied directly in single-phase systems without modification, and the d-q components would not be time-invariant in situations where harmonics, resonances or unbalance is present. Single-phase inverter controller designs based on the use of a synchronous rotating reference frame have been proposed, but such designs do not always perform as well as expected. This thesis aims to improve single-phase voltage-source inverters. The main objective is to address, in terms of cost, efficiency, power management and power quality, the problems found with single-phase designs based on a synchronous rotating frame single-phase inverter controller. Consequently, this thesis focuses on a novel controller approach in order to obtain a more reliable and flexible single-phase inverter. As the first step, this thesis investigates the single-phase inverter switching gate-drive algorithms and develops a form of space-vector pulse-width-modulation (SVPWM) in order to reduce total harmonic distortion. The results of the new SVPWM algorithm demonstrate its superior performance when compared with sinusoidal pulse-width-modulation (SPWM) which is often used with single-phase inverters. The second step, which is further reviewed and presented in this thesis, is the modelling of the single-phase inverter control based on the synchronous rotating frame. A mathematical analysis is conducted to determine the mechanism of the coupling that exists between the voltage phase and amplitude terms, and a new transformation strategy is proposed based on using the voltage phase as a reference at the Park transformation stages, and the current phase as a reference for the current at the transformation stages. The line-frequency components of the feedback signals are transformed to time-invariant components, thus eliminating the ripple and reducing the computational burden associated with the controller stage. Consequently, the inverter feedback controller stage is designed so that the coupling terms are decoupled within the controller itself. The effectiveness of the techniques proposed in this thesis are demonstrated by simulation using the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment. The proposed technique was also investigated through a practical implementation of the control system using a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) and a single-phase inverter. This practical system was tested up to 1 kW only (limited by the available inverter hardware). Nevertheless, the correlation between the simulation and the practical results is high and this gives confidence that the developed mechanism will allow the 2.5kW goal to be achieved. Practical test cases illustrate the effectiveness of the models. In addition, the comparisons between experimental and simulation results permit the system's behaviour and performance to be accurately evaluated. With the development of the new controller, small-scale single-phase renewable energy systems will become more useful in the field of power quality management through their ability to separately control the phase and amplitude of the output voltage. Consequently, incorporation of this type of generator within the national electrical distribution network, as distributed generators (DG) at low-voltage level, can assist with power quality management at the consumer side of the grid. In addition, such a generator can also operate in stand-alone mode if the grid becomes unavailable. The third step in this thesis investigates small-scale single-phase renewable energy systems operating as decentralized distributed generators within a local network. This operation is achieved by controlling the inverter side using the quantities measured at the common coupling point between the grid and the inverter, without requiring other extensive communications. Thus, the small-scale single-phase renewable energy distributed generator systems will contain only a local controller at each installation.

BACKGROUND:Interruption of vector-borne transmission of Trypanosoma cruzi remains an unrealized objective in many Latin American countries. The task of vector control is complicated by the emergence of vector insects in urban areas.METHODS:Utilizing data from a large-scale vector control program in Arequipa, Peru, we explored the spatial patterns of infestation by Triatoma infestans in an urban and peri-urban landscape. Multilevel logistic regression was utilized to assess the associations between household infestation and household- and locality-level socio-environmental measures.RESULTS:Of 37,229 households inspected for infestation, 6,982 (18.8% / 95% CI: 18.4 - 19.2%) were infested by T. infestans. Eighty clusters of infestation were identified, ranging in area from 0.1 to 68.7 hectares and containing as few as one and as many as 1,139 infested households. Spatial dependence between infested households was significant at distances up to 2,000 meters. Household T. infestans infestation was associated with household- and locality-level factors, including housing density, elevation, land surface temperature, and locality type.CONCLUSIONS:High levels of T. infestans infestation, characterized by spatial heterogeneity, were found across extensive urban and peri-urban areas prior to vector control. Several environmental and social factors, which may directly or indirectly influence the biology and behavior of T. infestans, were associated with infestation. Spatial clustering of infestation in the urban context may both challenge and inform surveillance and control of vector reemergence after insecticide intervention.

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Permanent magnet synchronous motors are finding ever increasing use in hybrid and electric vehicles. This thesis develops a new control strategy for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (PMSMs) to reduce the motor and inverter losses compared to conventional control techniques. The strategy utilises three common control modes for PMSMs; brushless DC with 120°E conduction, brushless DC with 180°E conduction, and brushless AC control. The torque and power output for each control mode is determined for an example motor system using a three phase axial flux YASA motor and an IGBT inverter. The loss components for the motor and inverter are also estimated using a combination of analytical and simulation techniques and results are then validated against experimental measurements. Efficiency maps for each control mode have been used to determine an optimal mode utilisation strategy, which minimises the total system losses and maximises the available motor torque output. The proposed control strategy switches between the three control modes without interruption of motor torque to maximise the system efficiency for the instantaneous operating speed and demanded torque output. The benefits of the new strategy are demonstrated using an example vehicle over a simulated drive cycle. This yields a 10% reduction in losses compared to conventional brushless AC control.

O comportamento humano é influenciado por fatores sociais, culturais, econômicos e políticos, e pode aumentar ou diminuir o risco de infecção pela dengue, dependendo da relação entre a população e o inseto vetor da doença. Devido ao fato de nenhuma vacina 100% eficaz ter sido disponibilizada ainda, a disseminação da dengue só pode ser contida por técnicas de controle da população de vetores (Aedes aegypti e outros) e pela proteção individual dos componentes da população humana. Este estudo testou a hipótese de que as populações afetadas pela dengue provavelmente vão reduzir a intensidade de seus hábitos relacionados ao controle dos vetores na presença de uma vacina parcialmente protetora. Essa hipótese foi testada por uma avaliação em campo, na qual uma amostra de população de área endêmica para a dengue foi entrevistada sobre seus hábitos de controle do vetor na presença de uma vacina teórica. As entrevistas demonstraram que as pessoas que foram informadas sobre uma vacina muito eficiente iriam reduzir seus hábitos de controle do mosquito de maneira significativa mais importante do que a amostra que foi informada sobre a presença de uma vacina pouco eficaz / Human behaviors, which are influenced by social, cultural, economic and political factors, can increase or decrease the risk of dengue infection, depending on the relationship with the insect vector. Because no 100% efficacious vaccine is currently available, the spread of dengue can only be curtailed by controlling vector populations (Aedes aegypti and others) and by protecting individuals. This study tested the hypothesis that dengue-affected populations are likely to relax their vector-control habits if a potentially protective vaccine becomes available. The hypothesis was tested using an empirical field test in which the local population of an endemic area was interviewed about their vector-control habits given the presence of a theoretical vaccine. The interview showed that people who were informed that a very effective vaccine is available would reduce their vector-control habits significantly compared to a group that was informed that the vaccine is not very effective

This dissertation focuses on the constrained control of multi-body systems which are actuated by vectorized thrusters. A general control framework is proposed to stabilize the task configuration while ensuring constraints satisfaction at all times. For this purpose, the equations of motion of the system are derived using the Euler-Lagrange method. It is seen that under some reasonable conditions, the system dynamics are decoupled. This property is exploited in a cascade control scheme to stabilize the points of equilibrium of the system. The control scheme is composed of an inner loop, tasked to control the attitude of the vectorized thrusters, and an outer loop which is tasked to stabilize the task configuration of the system to a desired configuration. To prove stability, input-to-state stability and small gain arguments are used. All stability properties are derived in the absence of constraints, and are shown to be local. The main result of this analysis is that the proposed control scheme can be directly applied under the assumption that a suitable mapping between the generalized force and the real inputs of the system is designed. This thesis proposes to enforce constraints by augmenting the control scheme with two types of Reference Governor units: the Scalar Reference Governor, and the Explicit Reference Governor. This dissertation presents two case studies which inspired the main generalization of this thesis: (i) the control of an unmanned aerial and ground vehicle manipulating an object, and (ii) the control of a tethered quadrotor. Two further case studies are discussed afterwards to show that the generalized control framework can be directly applied when a suitable mapping is designed. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Malgré les efforts nationaux et internationaux, le paludisme reste un problème de santépublique majeur dans de nombreux pays et les systèmes de santé ont des difficultés pourévaluer son poids réel, le risque de transmission des plasmodiums et leur répartitiongéographique. Pourtant, l’hétérogénéité spatiale du paludisme peut être importante et dans cecontexte de concentration du risque, la lutte contre la maladie peut gagner à être focaliséedans certains lieux et certaines périodes. D’une part, l’environnement est un déterminantmajeur de la biodiversité du paludisme à cause du caractère vectoriel de la transmission et despréférences bioécologiques des vecteurs. D’autre part, les satellites en orbite peuvent fournirdes données environnementales, climatiques et météorologiques qui ont déjà été utilisées pourl’étude de maladies infectieuses. La « télé-épidémiologie » a été définie comme une approcheintégrée visant à associer des données médicales, épidémiologiques ou entomologiques deterrain à des données environnementales obtenues par satellites, en s’appuyant sur lacompréhension et la mesure des mécanismes physiques et biologiques qui sont en jeu. Dansles villes, il a déjà été possible de mettre en évidence, en utilisant des données satellites à deséchelles appropriés, des associations entre des éléments urbains cartographiés et desindicateurs paludométriques. Chez des voyageurs, dans l’objectif d’une évaluation du risquede contracter le paludisme ou de l’efficacité de mesures prophylactiques, il serait utile depouvoir évaluer et prédire les niveaux d’exposition à la transmission dans les différenteslocalités parcourues. L’objectif général des travaux de la présente thèse était d’identifier desfacteurs environnementaux mesurables par satellite et utilisables pour l’évaluation du risquede paludisme chez les voyageurs d’une part et en milieu urbain d’autre part.Tout d’abord, des données de télédétection ont été utilisées pour évaluer les niveauxd’expositions au risque de paludisme d’une population de militaires, dans le cadre d’un travailsur l’estimation de leurs facteurs de risque d’accès palustre. Les résultats ont montré que,même en prenant en compte les facteurs de confusion de l’âge et de l’observance de lachimioprophylaxie, l’environnement était le principal facteur associé au risque de survenued’accès palustres.En parallèle, une large collecte de données entomologiques a été effectuée pendant cinq ansdans la ville de Dakar et a permis de mettre en évidence une très forte hétérogénéité spatiale ettemporelle de la transmission du paludisme dans la ville. Les informations collectées ont étécentralisées dans une base de données géoréférencée (SIG - Système d’InformationGéographique) contenant toutes les variables entomologiques, environnementales,météorologiques, biologiques et physiques relevées sur le terrain ou par satellites.Puis un travail de modélisation du risque entomologique dans la capitale du Sénégal, basé surles données collectées sur le terrain et sur des données environnementales issues d’imagessatellites a été mené. Une première étape a permis de mettre en évidence les évolutions deszones à risque de transmission et d’affirmer que le pourcentage de la population dakaroise àfort risque de transmission avait diminué entre 1996 et 2007. Une deuxième étape a conduit àl’élaboration de 1) une carte des gîtes larvaires accompagné d’un indice de productivité dansla ville de Dakar, 2) une carte des densités d’agressivité des anophèles adultes, puis 3) cescartes étaient rendues dynamiques, c'est-à-dire que les variations temporelles liées auxvariations de leurs déterminants météorologiques étaient prises en compte.Les résultats des travaux de thèse ont montré que des données de télédétection associées à unegrande quantité de données de terrain peuvent permettre l’ajustement de modèles prédictifs etla construction de cartes de risque entomologique, en milieu urbain ou pour des populationsmobiles. / Despite national an international efforts, malaria remains a major public health in manycountries and sanitary systems are hindered by the lack of information on the actual burden ofmalaria, on the plasmodium transmission risk and on their geographical distribution.Nevertheless, spatial heterogeneity can be important and in this context, malaria control couldbe improved if could be focused in place and time. On one hand, the environment is a majordeterminant of malaria biodiversity, because of the vectorial transmission and the vectorsbioecological preferences. On another hand, orbiting satellites can provide environmental,climatic and meteorological data that already have been used for the study of infectiousdiseases. “Tele-epidemiology” has been defined as an integrated approach aiming atassociating medical, epidemiological or entomological ground data, with remotely-sensedenvironmental data, based on the in depth comprehension and measurement of the involvedphysical and biological mechanisms. In cities, it has already been possible to highlightassociations between mapped urban settings and malariometric indices, using satellite data atappropriate scales. Among travellers, in the objective to evaluate malaria risk or efficacy ofprophylactic devices, it would be useful to evaluate and predict transmission levels in thevisited places. The objective of the present thesis was to identify environmental factors thatcould be remotely-sensed and that could be used in the evaluation of malaria risk amongtravellers on one hand and in urban settings on the other hand.First, remotely-sensed data have been used to evaluate levels of exposure to malaria risk ofmilitaries, in the scope of a study on their risk factors for clinical malaria. Results haveshowed that, even when taking into account age and compliance to chemoprophylaxis asconfusion factors, the environment was the factor the most strongly associated to clinicalmalaria risk.In parallel, an extensive entomological study has been conducted during five years in Dakarand allowed demonstrating a strong spatial and temporal heterogeneity of malariatransmission in the city. Collected information were centralized in a georeferenced database(GIS - Geographic Information System) containing all entomological, environmental,meteorological, biological and physical data collected on the field or by remote sensing.Finally, modelling of entomological risk in the capital city of Senegal was undertaken, basedon data collected on the ground and environmental data issued from satellites. A first stepshowed the evolution of malaria transmission risk areas and allowed declaring that thefraction of human population that was at high risk for transmission decreased between 1996and 2007. A second step led to the development of 1) a map of the breeding sites with aproductivity indicator in Dakar city, 2) a map of aggressive adult Anopheles densities, and 3)a dynamic aspect was added to those maps, taking into account the variations of theirmeteorological determinants.The results of the work undertaken in this thesis demonstrated that remotely-sensedinformation, associated with a large amount of ground data, allow to adjust predictive models and to draw entomological risk maps, in urban settings or for moving populations

A parametric study on Secondary Injection Thrust Vector Control (SITVC) has been accomplished numerically with the help of a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code called FLUENT&reg / . This study consists of two parts / the first part includes the simulation of three dimensional flowfield inside a test case nozzle for the selection of parameters associated with both computational grid and the CFD solver such as mesh size, turbulence model accompanied with two different wall treatment approaches, and solver type. This part revealed that simulation of internal flowfield by a segregated solver with Realizable k-&amp / #949 / (Rke) turbulence model accompanied by enhanced wall treatment approach is accurate enough to resolve this kind of complex three dimensional fluid flow problems. In the second part a typical rocket nozzle with conical diverging section is picked for the parametric study on injection mass flow rate, injection location and injection angle. A test matrix is constructed / several numerical simulations are run to yield the assessment of performance of SITVC system. The results stated that for a nozzle with a small divergence angle, downstream injections with distances of 2.5-3.5 throat diameters from the nozzle throat lead to higher efficiencies over a certain range of total pressure ratios, i.e., mass flow rate ratios, upstream injections should be aligned more to the nozzle axis, i.e., higher injection angles, to prevent reflection of shock waves from the opposite wall and thus low efficiencies. Injection locations that are too much downstream may result reversed flows on nozzle exit.

A servo system intended to steer antennas on board ships is designed, built and tested. It uses a Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) motor with an encoder to keep track of its position, and Field Oriented Control (FOC) implemented on Toshibas microprocessor TMPM373 in order to control the current flowing to the motor. The servo system will be connected in cascade to another already existing servo system and controlled with two input signals. The first signal determines if the antenna axis should rotate clockwise or counter clockwise. The second signal is a stream of pulses, where each pulse means that the motor should move one encoder point. A printed circuit board is designed and built to complete these tasks. A proportional-integral regulator is used to control the position of the motor, using the position error as the controller input. The servo system is tested. The performance of the resulting servo system is sufficient to satisfy the required position error limit of 0.5 degrees. In order to reduce the periodic disturbances presented in the system in experiments, Iterative Learning Control (ILC) is implemented. It is shown that using ILC further decreases the position error.