I have structured my master's thesis in terms of an opposition between Kojeve's existentialist, Marxist philosophical formulation of Hegel's Phenomenology and Levinas's post-Heideggerian, anti-Hegelian phenomenology in Totality and Infinity. While Levinas's project is explicitly anti-totalitarian, Kojeve's reading of the Phenomenology emphasizes the End of History in Hegel's philosophy without shrinking from its totalizing aspects. While the philosophical project of each thinker is generally antithetical to the other, it is my contention that the universal and homogeneous state, conceived by Kojeve to be the rational realization of the end of history, is a legitimate moral project for Levinasian ethics. This thesis provides both an exegesis of Kojeve's reading of Hegel's master/slave dialectic in the Phenomenology and an interpretation of the tragedy of the slave understood in terms of Holderlin's theory of the tragic. It is through the master/slave dialectic that history consummates in the end of history. Later in the thesis, I outline Levinas's project as an ethics as first philosophy in opposition to the Eleatic traditions in Western philosophy. We can trace Levinas's project in his unconventional reading of the cogito and the idea of infinity. Whereas Descartes represents a philosophical return home for Hegel, Levinas's reading of Descartes represents a philosophical sojourn away from home in the second movement of the Meditations. With these notions, we have a formal basis in accounting for the conflict in Levinas's thought between the moral necessity of universal rights and the dangers of assimilation. Finally, I argue for why the universal and homogeneous state is an ethically worthy goal from a Levinasian perspective. On this question, I engage the thought of a number of thinkers of the left: Kojeve, Derrida, Horkheimer, Adorno and Zizek. I conclude that Levinas's thought on universalism and eschatology can serve as a moral basis for the left-Hegelian project of realizing a universal and homogeneous state. Because such a state is distinguishable from a totalizing End of History, the eschatological concern for one's singularity within history is compatible with the prophetic call to strive for political universality. Ultimately, it is the responsibility to this prophetic call that guarantees one's singularity.

This paper presents the whole process of building up a high precision, high dynamical MEMS acceleration sensor. The first samples have achieved a resolution of better than 500 micro g and a bandwidth of more than 200 Hz. The sensor fabrication technology is shortly covered in the paper. A theoretical model is built from the physical principles of the complete sensor system, consisting of the MEMS sensor, the charge amplifier and the PWM driver for the sensor element. The mathematical modeling also covers problems during startup. A reduced order model of the entire system is used to design a robust control with the Mixed-Sensitivity H-infinity Approach. Since the system has an unstable pole, imposed by the electrostatic field and time delay, caused by A/D-D/A conversation delay and DSP computing time, limitations for the control design are given. The theoretical model might be inaccurate or lacks of completeness, because the parameters for the theoretical model building vary from sample to sample or might be not known. A new identification scheme for open or closed-loop operation is deployed to obtain directly from the samples the parameters of the mechanical system and the voltage dependent gains. The focus of this paper is the complete system development and identification process including practical tests in a DSP TI-TMS320C3000 environment.

Leibniz’s early conception of individual substance ontology is one of the most puzzling, and fascinating, within the history of philosophy. It is the purpose of this paper to show that: 1) Leibniz did develop a coherent scheme that embodied his substance ontology, 2) the exposition of his early substance ontology is in A Specimen of the Discoveries of the Admirable Secrets of Nature in General, written in 1688 and, 3) the scheme is not sufficiently represented in the Discourse on Metaphysics. Leibniz slowly developed a multifaceted view of substance within the twenty years previous to the writing of the Discourse. This view is comprised of the matter/form complex, the predicate-in-subject thesis and, the phenomenal characteristics of material interaction. These three facets can also be viewed as ontological, teleological/ epistemological, and phenomenological, respectively. These facets were developed concurrently and are interdependent. The understanding of any facet requires the understanding of all of them. From the exploration of Leibniz’s development of substance ontology, one can understand his presentation of rational theology in the Discourse. Leibniz develops the ontology to account for the infinite nature of material division. The unification of material bodies requires explanation. Leibniz has the desire to create a method of deriving a priori knowledge of God, the universe, and humanity; he believes his substance ontology creates the firm basis needed to accomplish this task. The Discourse on Metaphysics does not itself represent the complete scheme Leibniz developed. It shall be shown that A Specimen of the Discoveries of the Admirable Secrets of Nature in General, composed in 1688, is a definitive exposition of Leibniz's early substance ontology. The Discourse on Metaphysics can be viewed as an exposition of rational theology based upon the ontology Leibniz had developed.

When designing controllers with robust performance and stabilization requirements, H-infinity synthesis is a common tool to use. These controllers are often obtained by solving mathematical optimization problems. The controllers that result from these algorithms are typically of very high order, which complicates implementation. Low order controllers are usually desired, since they are considered more reliable than high order controllers. However, if a constraint on the maximum order of the controller is set that is lower than the order of the so-called augmented system, the optimization problem becomes nonconvex and it is relatively difficult to solve. This is true even when the order of the augmented system is low. In this thesis, optimization methods for solving these problems are considered. In contrast to other methods in the literature, the approach used in this thesis is based on formulating the constraint on the maximum order of the controller as a rational function in an equality constraint. Three methods are then suggested for solving this smooth nonconvex optimization problem. The first two methods use the fact that the rational function is nonnegative. The problem is then reformulated as an optimization problem where the rational function is to be minimized over a convex set defined by linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). This problem is then solved using two different interior point methods. In the third method the problem is solved by using a partially augmented Lagrangian formulation where the equality constraint is relaxed and incorporated into the objective function, but where the LMIs are kept as constraints. Again, the feasible set is convex and the objective function is nonconvex. The proposed methods are evaluated and compared with two well-known methods from the literature. The results indicate that the first two suggested methods perform well especially when the number of states in the augmented system is less than 10 and 20, respectively. The third method has comparable performance with two methods from literature when the number of states in the augmented system is less than 25.

This thesis is concerned with developing a control and condition monitoring system for a class of fault tolerant actuators with high levels of redundancy. The High Redundancy Actuator (HRA) is a concept inspired by biomimetics that aims to provide fault tolerance using relatively large numbers of actuation elements which are assembled in parallel and series configurations to form a single actuator. Each actuation element provides a small contribution to the overall force and displacement of the system. Since the capability of each actuation element is small, the effect of faults within the individual element of the overall system is also small. Hence, the HRA will gracefully degrade instead of going from fully functional to total failure in the presence of faults. Previous research on HRA using electromechanical technology has focused on a relatively low number of actuation elements (i.e. 4 elements), which were controlled with multiple loop control methods. The objective of this thesis is to expand upon this, by considering an HRA with a larger number of actuation elements (i.e. 12 elements). First, a mathematical model of a general n-by-m HRA is derived from first principles. This method can be used to represent any size of electromechanical HRA with actuation elements arranged in a matrix form. Then, a mathematical model of a 4-by-3 HRA is obtained from the general n-by-m model and verified experimentally using the HRA test rig. This actuator model is then used as a foundation for the controller design and condition monitoring development. For control design, two classical and control method-based controllers are compared with an H_infinity approach. The objective for the control design is to make the HRA track a position demand signal in both health and faulty conditions. For the classical PI controller design, the first approach uses twelve local controllers (1 per actuator) and the second uses only a single global controller. For the H_infinity control design, a mixed sensitivity functions is used to obtain good tracking performance and robustness to modelling uncertainties. Both of these methods demonstrate good tracking performance, with a slower response in the presence of faults. As expected, the H_infinity control method's robustness to modelling uncertainties, results in a smaller performance degradation in the presence of faults, compared with the classical designs. Unlike previous work, the thesis also makes a novel contribution to the condition monitoring of HRA. The proposed algorithm does not require the use of multiple sensors. The condition monitoring scheme is based on least-squares parameter estimation and fuzzy logic inference. The least-squares parameter estimation estimates the physical parameters of the electromechanical actuator based on input-output data collected from real-time experiments, while the fuzzy logic inference determines the health condition of the actuator based on the estimated physical parameters. Hence, overall, a new approach to both control and monitoring of an HRA is proposed and demonstrated on a twelve elements HRA test rig.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:11:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 898655 bytes, checksum: da0dcd2488921a9f83fe8abb462c70a5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-08 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This essay aims to discourse on the concept of infinite in Baruch Spinoza, taking as main theoretical reference two of his works, the Metaphysical Thoughts and The Letter 12. The objective is to show that the concept of infinite represents a key idea to Spinoza s system, where all his theses concerning immanent causality and psychophysical parallelism are based on. The research begins with a historical approach about the matter of infinite, discussed by a tradition of thinkers who preceded Spinoza, since the Greeks until Descartes in modernity. In a second moment, the analysis turns to the matter of infinite understood by Spinoza who, as he defends the idea of current infinite, ends up retaking the theory of Anaxagoras, Nicolau of Cusa and Giordano Bruno, where, according to them, God is not separated of his creatures, but keeps a relation of immanency with them. In this case, according to Spinoza, to affirm that God is infinite means saying that He comprehends all things and nothing can exist separated from Him, and moreover, being substance, God cannot be separate of his conditions (modes), what is explained by the immanency of his causality, in what cause (God) and effect (modes) occur simultaneously. The habit of separate the substance from his conditions comes from the misunderstanding between the way how the mind understands the substance through the beings of Reason (time, measure, number) and the essence of the own substance. Through the beings of Reason, the substance is composed of parts and, therefore, it is divisible; however, considering its essential aspect, it is indivisible. This explains the thesis of parallelism as well since mind and body, due to inseparability of conditions, cannot be considered independent substances, but expressions of a single and same substance, either conceived by the attribute of thinking, or conceived by the attribute of extension. According to Spinoza, the dualism proposed by his main interlocutor, Descartes, precisely appeared due to the fact of his misunderstanding concerning the real aspect of substance (indivisible attributes) with his modal aspect (divisible modes). / Esta dissertação tem o objetivo de discorrer sobre o conceito de infinito em Baruch Spinoza, tomando como referencial teórico principal duas de suas obras, Os Pensamentos Metafísicos e a Carta 12. A tarefa aqui é mostrar que o conceito de infinito representa uma ideia chave para o sistema de Spinoza, sobre o qual estão assentadas as teses da causalidade imanente e do paralelismo psicofísico. O estudo se inicia com uma abordagem histórica acerca da questão do infinito, discutido por uma tradição de pensadores que antecederam Spinoza, desde os gregos até Descartes na modernidade. Em um segundo momento, a análise se volta para questão do infinito entendido por Spinoza que, ao defender a ideia do infinito atual, acaba retomando as teorias de Anaxágoras, Nicolau de Cusa e Giordano Bruno, segundo as quais Deus não está separado de suas criaturas, mas mantém uma relação de imanência com elas. Nesse caso, para Spinoza, afirmar que Deus é infinito significa dizer que Ele abrange todas as coisas e nada pode existir separado Dele, ou melhor, sendo substância, Deus não pode ser separado de suas afecções (os modos), o que é explicado pela imanência de sua causalidade, na qual causa (Deus) e o efeito (as afecções) ocorrem conjuntamente. O hábito de separar a substância de suas afecções vem da confusão entre o modo como a mente percebe a substância através dos entes de Razão (tempo, medida, número) e a essência da própria substância. Pelos entes de Razão, a substância é composta de partes e, portanto divisível; todavia, considerando o seu aspecto essencial, ela é indivisível. Isso explica também a tese do paralelismo já que a mente e o corpo, devido à indissociabilidade das afecções, não podem ser consideradas substâncias independentes, mas expressões de uma única e mesma substância, ora concebida pelo atributo pensamento, ora concebida pelo atributo extensão. De acordo com Spinoza, o dualismo proposto pelo seu principal interlocutor, Descartes, surgiu justamente pelo fato deste confundir o aspecto real da substância (atributos indivisíveis) com seu aspecto modal (modos divisíveis).

Orientador: Alberto Luiz Serpa / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecanica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T21:19:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Pereira_DanielAugusto_M.pdf: 6268866 bytes, checksum: 3faebe29f9ec8e8f665d11ac095420f8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Esta dissertação aborda a aplicação de técnicas modernas de controle de sistemas dinâmicosao problema de detecção de falhas. Duas diferentes abordagens de detecção são utilizadas: estimação da falha e geração de resíduo. Tanto na estimação de falha quanto na geração de resíduo é formulado um problema H1 cujo objetivo é encontrar um filtro que garanta robustez a distúrbios.No caso da geração de resíduos, o índice H- é utilizado como critério de desempenho adicional para garantir a sensibilidade à falha e é transformado em um critério H1. O projeto H1 é abordado sob o ponto de vista de desigualdades matriciais lineares. Falhas e distúrbios devem apresentar comportamento em freqüência distintos para que os filtros consigam separar os efeitos dos mesmos. Para garantir o desempenho nas regiões em freqüência de interesse são utilizados filtros de ponderação. Em contraposição a essa abordagem, os resultados recentes da literatura sobre o lema generalizado de Kalman-Yakubovi?c-Popov e o controle H1 restrito na freqüência também são usados como ferramentas de projeto independentes de filtros de ponderação. Os métodos sãocomparados usando modelos de simulação e experimentos no âmbito de estruturas flexíveis / Abstract: This dissertation adresses the application of modern techniques from control of dynamicsystems to the problem of fault detection. Two different approaches are used: fault estimation and residual generation. Both fault estimation and residual generation are formulated as an H1 problem whose objective is to find a filter ensuring robustness to disturbance. In the case of residual generation, theH- index is used as an additional performance criterion to ensure fault sensitiveness and is transformed into an H1 criterion. The H1 design is treated from the point of view of linear matrix inequalities. Faults and disturbances must have distinct frequency distributions so the filter is able to separate them. Weighting functions are used to guarantee performance at the frequency region of interest. In contrast with this approach, recent results from literature on the generalisedKalman-Yakubovi?c-Popov lemma and frequency restricted H1 control are also used as design methods whose application is independent of weighting functions. All methods are compared using simple simulation models and experiments with flexible / Mestrado / Mecanica dos Sólidos e Projeto Mecanico / Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-07-19T14:34:12Z No. of bitstreams: 1 vitorgomesdasilva.pdf: 370193 bytes, checksum: 4cf969480f7948120406cd14956aad98 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-07-22T15:15:21Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 vitorgomesdasilva.pdf: 370193 bytes, checksum: 4cf969480f7948120406cd14956aad98 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-22T15:15:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 vitorgomesdasilva.pdf: 370193 bytes, checksum: 4cf969480f7948120406cd14956aad98 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-31 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Esta dissertação apresenta os pontos fundamentais da ética e da teoria da religião de Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher durante o seu contato com o movimento romântico. Buscou-se definir o conceito de romantismo através de uma breve reconstrução de suas origens e da relação de Schleiermacher com tal movimento. A concepção ética schleiermacheriana construída em constante diálogo com Kant amadurece na medida em que entra em contato com as suas concepções religiosas do período romântico. Por meio das discussões em torno da essência da religião, Schleiermacher adiciona elementos tal como o Eterno ou o Infinito à sua ética, caracterizada fundamentalmente pela promoção da individualidade. Desta forma, ética e religião edificam um rico diálogo no qual o indivíduo e o Infinito emergem como elementos fundamentais e irredutíveis da visão de mundo schleiermacheriana. / This thesis presents the fundamental points of Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher’s ethical conception and theory of religion during his contact with the romantic movement. We sought to define the concept of romanticism through a brief reconstruction of its origins and of Schleiermacher’s relationship with this movement. Constructed through an ongoing conversation with Kant, Schleiermacher’s ethical conception becomes mature as it gets in touch with the religious conceptions of the romantic period. Through the discussions on the essence of religion, Schleiermacher adds elements such as the Eternal or the Infinity to his ethics, which is characterized primarily by the promotion of individuality. Thus, ethics and religion build a rich dialogue in which the individual and the Infinity emerge as fundamental and irreducible elements of the Schleiermacherian worldview.

Orientador: Alberto Luiz Serpa / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecânica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-22T23:18:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Medeiros_MarianeMendes_M.pdf: 1617094 bytes, checksum: d2be1eafefa6985fbd91c7c052f71868 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: O presente trabalho propõe o estudo de estruturas flexíveis e controle de vibrações sob a ótica da otimização simultânea de ambos. Iniciando pela modelagem da estrutura, é apresentada a justificativa para o uso de Elementos Finitos e modelagem no Espaço de Estados, passando ainda pela realização balanceada e redução de ordem do sistema. Na sequência, é descrita a síntese do controlador ??, que parte do princípio da minimização da Norma ?? do sistema. A solução do problema é então apresentada sob a abordagem das Desigualdades Matriciais Lineares, enfoque mais atual devido às suas propriedades de linearidade e convexidade quando aplicada dentro da teoria de controle. Em se tratando do processo de otimização, é desenvolvido um estudo sobre o método simultâneo, onde parâmetros da estrutura são otimizados juntamente com os do controlador de maneira a diminuir os efeitos negativos entre as dinâmicas quando otimizadas separadamente. Ainda assim, são apresentadas duas outras abordagens como forma de comparação: a Ativa Serial e a Passiva Estrutural. Para todos os três casos, a técnica escolhida para a resolução do problema de otimização foi o Algoritmo Genético, cujas vantagens e desvantagens são mostradas junto com toda a descrição de conceitos envolvidos, considerando seus operadores, fluxo algorítmico e até mesmo critérios de parada. Por fim, serão apresentados os resultados analisados sobre um modelo de uma viga engastada, submetida à distúrbios externos, através de uma simulação em MATLAB que engloba todos os conceitos estudados / Abstract: The present work proposes the study of flexible structures and vibration control under the light of simultaneous optimization. Starting by structure modeling, it presents the reason for use Finite Element and State-Space modeling, passing also through the balanced realization and order reduction of the system. Sequentially, it describes the synthesis of ?? controller, which considers the minimization of ?? norm of the system. The solution of the problem is then presented under Linear Matrix Inequalities approach, the most up-to-date method due to linearity and convexity properties when applied to control theory. Regarding optimization process, it is developed a study of a simultaneous optimization method where structure parameters are optimized along with the controller ones, aiming to diminish negative influence between dynamics when separately optimized. Even tough, two other approaches are presented by means of comparison: Serial Active and Structural Passive. For all three cases, the chosen technique to solve the optimization problem was the Genetic Algorithm whose advantages and disadvantages are shown along with a description of all involved concepts, considering its operators, algorithmic flux and even stopping criteria. Last, the results analysed over a clamped beam model subjected to external disturbances are shown, through a MATLAB simulation that encloses all studied concepts / Mestrado / Materiais e Processos de Fabricação / Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica

Orientador: Grace Silva Deaecto / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecânica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T00:51:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Santos_GuilhermeCavalari_M.pdf: 16424850 bytes, checksum: 7f2f16f9c4c4f920f928c8d19273978a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: Esta dissertação trata do projeto de controle H2 e Hoo via realimentação de estado para sistemas afins com comutação a tempo contínuo. Nosso objetivo principal é projetar um conjunto de ganhos de realimentação de estado e uma função de comutação assegurando estabilidade assintótica global do ponto de equilíbrio desejado. Este ponto deve pertencer a um conjunto de pontos de equilíbrio atingíveis a ser determinado. Além disso, o projeto deve levar em conta índices de desempenho H2 e Hoo que são adequadamente definidos. Para o projeto de controle Hoo, duas funções de comutação são propostas e discutidas. A primeira delas depende somente do estado, enquanto a segunda representa uma nova proposta que é mais geral e depende também da entrada externa. As condições obtidas são menos conservadoras do que as técnicas recentes disponíveis na literatura, por exemplo, os métodos baseados na função de Lyapunov do tipo máximo e os utilizados normalmente para assegurar estabilidade prática. Exemplos numéricos ilustram os resultados teóricos obtidos e são usados para comparações / Abstract: This Master's thesis deals with state feedback H2 and Hoo control design of continuous-time switched affine systems. Our main goal is to design a set of state feedback gains and a switching function assuring global asymptotical stability of a desired equilibrium point. This point must belong to a set of attainable equilibrium points to be determined. Moreover, the design must consider H2 and Hoo performance indexes to be defined. For the Hoo control design, two different switching functions are proposed and discussed. The first one depends only on the state and the other depends on the state and on the external input. The conditions are less conservative than the techniques available in the literature to date, as for instance, those based on a max-type Lyapunov function and those commonly used to assure practical stability. Numerical examples illustrate the theoretical results and are used for comparisons / Mestrado / Mecanica dos Sólidos e Projeto Mecanico / Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica