The Ladle Metallurgy Furnace (LMF) in secondary steelmaking processing allows (1) the adjustment of the chemical composition by ferroalloy addition, (2) temperature control by electrical reheating (3) homogenization of chemical composition by argon stirring (4) desulphurization and (5) control of inclusions produced during steel deoxidation. The solid oxide inclusions not only cause nozzle clogging during the continuous casting process and reduce production efficiency, but they are also harmful to the properties of the steel product. In the case of aluminum killed steel, calcium treatment of steel is typically employed to modify the solid alumina inclusions or magnesium aluminate inclusions to liquid or partially liquid calcium aluminates. Injected calcium in form of calcium wire creates calcium bubbles. A portion of calcium dissolves into the steel and diffuses into the steel bulk. However, during the dissolution process some of the injected calcium reacts, close to the injection plume, with dissolved sulfur and oxygen in the steel to form calcium sulfide and calcium oxide inclusions [1]. During ladle treatment of aluminum killed steel the inclusions which form initially are typically alumina. As the dissolved oxygen content of the steel is reduced to very low levels magnesium may be reduced from the slag and subsequently react with the inclusions resulting in a shift towards higher contents of MgO and formation of magnesium aluminate spinel. Magnesium may originate from the top slag, ferro alloys or refractories. Therefore, magnesium aluminate spinels are almost always present before calcium injection and any consideration of calcium treatment should also consider the modification of spinel in addition to alumina. The current work develops a fundamental kinetic model to describe the evolution of the inclusion population during ladle treatment of aluminum killed steels. The model builds on previous work in the author’s laboratory predicting the kinetics of slag metal reactions during ladle treatment and the transformation of alumina to magnesium aluminate spinel. The model addresses the modification of alumina inclusions by calcium and considers mass transfer of species to the inclusion-steel interface and diffusion within the calcium aluminate phases formed on the inclusion. The dissolution of calcium from calcium bubbles into the steel and formation of oxide and sulfide inclusions at the plume is coupled with the kinetic model for inclusion modification. It is found that rate of supply of calcium to the inclusions controls the overall rate of transformation. The inclusion-steel kinetic model is then coupled with the previously developed steel-slag kinetic model. The coupled inclusion-steel-slag kinetic model is applied to the chemical composition changes in molten steel, slag, and evolution of inclusions in the ladle. The result of calculations is found to agree well with industrial heats for species in the steel as well as inclusions during Ca treatment. The kinetic model is further extended to model the modification of spinel inclusions by calcium treatment. Coupling the model for inclusions modification to a multi component kinetic model for the slag-steel reactions in the ladle furnace allowed prediction of the change of average composition of inclusions which was subsequently verified using plant data from ArcelorMittal Dofasco operations. Good agreement between the experimental and calculated average composition of inclusions was obtained for most of the industrial heats. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the coupled kinetic model was performed to compare the effect of the different processing conditions including sulphur content, stirring, total oxygen, slag composition and reoxidation, on the evolution path of inclusions. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The objective of this diploma thesis is to design and implement a diagnostic tool for communication protocol of SD memory cards. The diagnostic tool will be able to monitor and interfere with communication of an SD memory card. The hardware implementation will be based on platform with Kinetis K66 microcontroller. A PC application designed for windows is also a part of diagnostic tool. There is a conclusion of the diagnostic tool limitation at the end of the thesis.

This master's thesis focuses on designing and implementing a framework that would offer basic program resources for application development on hardware platform FITkit Minerva. First part of this work focuses on designing a data channel between PC and the kit for which the USB interface was used. Next part focuses on implementing a channel between an ARM based microcontroller and FPGA Xilinx Spartan-6. That led to creating a special system inside FPGA that allows adding new HW components that communicate with the microcontroller, which can be used for implementing HW acceleration techniques. Another outcome of this work is a debugging interface that allows to program and debug FPGA using development environment Xilinx ISE without a need of the original Xilinx JTAG adapter. This was achieved by using the XVC protocol that allows to create a custom JTAG adapter that in this case was implemented in the software of the microcontroller.

The aim of this Master thesis is create an expansion module with TFT touch screen display for educational Mierva platform. Low level driver and graphical user interface library will be developed for this module. GUI library enables user to design an graphical application in easy way.

This master’s thesis deals with the draft and design of HID periphery Touchpad. The Kinetis microcontroller produced by NXP, TSI periphery and embedded library NXP Touch are used for the design. The resulting device is connected as USB HID type mouse or trackpad. Hardware part of the project is implemented by whole MCU Kinetis Family on PCBs designed by author, one part also uses evaluation kits NXP Freedom KL25z and KE15z.

This diploma thesis focuses on designing a USB analyzer. First part of this work describes the USB bus and types of USB data transfers. Next part explores existing USB analyzers. After that, FitKIT Minerva is presented as target platform for USB analyzer implementation. Next part of this project is dedicated to design the analyzer architecture and its parts: physical layer circuit, communication interface and user interface. Rest of the work show how the analyzer was implemented and evaluates the results achieved. Final result of this thesis is a working USB analyzer on FitKIT Minerva platform with graphical user interface accesible via web browser.

This master thesis describes the design of a battery-powered smart lock using IoT networks and NFC technology for user authentication. The first part of the thesis describes the individual components to be used for the device design and also deals with the design of matching circuits and the antenna for the NFC. The following part of the thesis describes the design of the hardware, particularly the design of the printed circuit board. The third part describes the firmware and the final part of the thesis is dedicated to the security analysis.

Aim of this thesis is modular design of control system for Golem device, which is used for drug research. Several modules with specified controlled area were designed. They communicate using CAN bus and are controlled by Raspberry Pi computer. The thesis includes PCB design and control firmware for modules, backend application for Raspberry Pi, which provides application interface, and simple protocol used for communication between modules. Designed system was tested in simulated environment.

This project describes a concept of a library architecture that will enable to hide platform-specific behaviour of different MCUs under an united API that will enable the developers to develop portable applications. After a short summary of the current situation, the report describes the main principles of the library-to-be followed by definitions of behaviour of each module that can be controlled using the library. Then this report describes techniques used in the implementation and platform specifics. In the conclusion there is an idea of the direction in which the development could continue.

The scope of this work was to design a bootloader for Kinetis K60, an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller. The bootloader should simplify the process of loading user applications to the flash memory of the microcontroller on the Minerva development kit. Based on a quick research of existing bootloader solutions, new bootloader was designed together with communication protocol that would suit the needs for transfer of both the file data and configuration information through all the supported communication interfaces - USB, SDHC, Ethernet and RS-232. On the PC side, development of bootloader’s application library and two supporting utilities with graphical and command line interfaces was made. The system can be used out of the box as well as it can be further extended in the future.