Graduation date: 1997

In power system studies, some parameters cannot be measured directly by using the currently existing power meters. These power system parameters include the power system Thevenin impedance, harmonic impedances, zero sequence impedance, and the load model parameters. The power systems Thevenin impedance at a load bus is an important parameter for power system planning and operation. The effects of changing the system operation conditions on voltages at the load buses can be easily determined if the power system impedance parameters are known. Moreover, by knowing the Thevenin equivalent parameters, one can calculate the systems voltage stability margin and maximum loadability. The knowledge of power system harmonic impedances is necessary for harmonic mitigation, determination of harmonic limit compliance, prediction of system resonance, and harmonic propagation studies. Moreover, real-time monitoring of the systems harmonic impedances provides significant improvements to the design and operation of active filters. The systems zero sequence impedance at the substation bus is also important information for power system studies. It is used to calculate the different ground fault levels at substations. Furthermore, the loads in power systems play a significant role in power system planning, control, and stability analysis. Having reliable and accurate models of the loads is essential for designing automatic control systems and optimizing their configuration. Obtaining such models has been a challenging problem for power system engineers for decades, especially in the current deregulated market environment. This thesis presents newly developed and verified algorithms for online measurement and monitoring of these power system parameters. The algorithm proposed for monitoring the systems Thevenin, harmonic, and zero sequence impedance parameters, uses the natural variations of the loads connected to the substations. The proposed algorithm for monitoring of load model parameters uses the voltage and current waveforms captured during the operation of the Under Load Tap Change (ULTC) transformers installed in the distribution substations. The proposed algorithms are applied to several field measurements from different substations. The results show that the algorithms fulfill the requirements for the online measurement and monitoring of power system Thevenin, harmonic and zero sequence impedances as well as the load model parameters. / Energy Systems

M.S. / Environmental Science / A continuous real-time in-situ ammonia monitor has been developed. It utilizes the reaction between ammonia gas and sulfuric acid aerosol to form ammonium sulfate for ammonia measurement. A sensitivity-improved Flame Photometric Detector (FPD) is used with the instrument. The detection limit of the monitor for measuring ammonia is 0.4 ppb NH3 with a time resolution of five minutes. The detection limit of the FPD for measuring sulfur has been improved by a factor greater than ten. The present detection limit of the FPD is 0.07 ppb S, which is an improvement over the previous detection limit of 1 ppb S.

Novel microscale velocity and temperature measurement techniques were studied based on confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and optical serial sectioning microscopy (OSSM). Two microscopic measurement systems were developed, 1) a CLSM micro particle image velocimetry (PIV) system with a dual Nipkow disk confocal unit (CSU-10), a CW argon-ion laser and an upright microscope, and 2) an OSSM micro- particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) system with an epi-fluorescence microscope and a non-designed specimen to make a three-dimensional (3-D) diffraction particle image. The CLSM micro-PIV system shows a unique optical slicing capability allowing true depth-wise resolved vector field mapping. A comparative study is presented between the CLSM micro-PIV and a conventional epi-fluorescence micro-PIV. Both have been applied to the creeping Poiseuille flows in two different microtubes of 99-µm (Re = 0.00275) and 516-µm ID diameters (Re = 0.021). The CLSM micro-PIV consistently shows significantly improved particle image contrasts, the definition of "optical slicing" and measured flow vector fields more accurately agreeing with predictions based on the Poiseuille flow fields, compared to the conventional micro-PIV. The OSSM micro-PTV technique is applied for a 3-D vector field mapping in a microscopic flow and a Brownian motion tracking of nanoparticles. This technique modifies OSSM system for a micro-fluidic experiment, and the imaging system captures a diffracted particle image having numerous circular fringes instead of an in-focus particle image. The 3-D particle tracking is based on a correlation between the 3-D diffraction pattern of a particle and the defocus distance from a focal plane. A computational program is invented for the OSSM micro-PTV, and provides a 3-D velocity vector field with a spatial resolution of 5.16 µm. In addition, a concept of nonintrusive thermometry is presented based on the correlation of the Brownian motion of suspended nanoparticles with the surrounding fluid temperature. Detection of fully three-dimensional Brownian motion is possible by the use of the OSSM, and the measured value of mean square displacement (MSD) is compared fairly well with Einstein's predictions.

An increasing number of power plants in Scandinavia are beginning to use biofuel instead of coal or oil. The material in the new fuel is a mixture of woodchips, mostly Pine, Spruce and Salix, bark, GROT (tops and branches from felling waste) and sawdust from sawmills. It is heterogeneous, having a moisture content varying from 15% up to 65%. The moisture content affects the combustion of the fuel and therefore its commercial value. The industry is now interested in obtaining a method for measuring the moisture content of biofuel, quickly and reliably; preferably on delivery at the power plant. The measuring technique presented in this thesis is the first reported in the literature capable of measuring the moisture content of a large sample of such an heterogeneous material as biofuel. The equipment is today calibrated for a sample volume of 0.1 m3. A radio frequent signal is supplied from an antenna and penetrates the biofuel. Its reflection is modeled using partial least squares. As part of the work presented in this thesis, a new type of measuring rig and an analysis method for measurement of the moisture content of large samples of heterogeneous material have been developed. A statistical model for moisture content measurements of five different biofuel materials using radio waves has been built, having a root mean square error of prediction of 2.7. The interactions between biofuels and radio frequent signals have been demonstrated, indicating a variation of the reflection with varying types of biofuel material and variation in the reflection and delay of the signal with varying moisture content.

In many fields of statistical application the fundamental task is to quantify the association between some explanatory variables or covariates and a response or outcome variable through a suitable regression model. The accuracy of such quantification depends on how precisely we measure the relevant covariates. In many instances, we can not measure some of the covariates accurately, rather we can measure noisy versions of them. In statistical terminology this is known as measurement errors or errors in variables. Regression analyses based on noisy covariate measurements lead to biased and inaccurate inference about the true underlying response-covariate associations. In this thesis we investigate some aspects of measurement error modelling in the case of binary logistic regression models. We suggest a flexible parametric approach for adjusting the measurement error bias while estimating the response-covariate relationship through logistic regression model. We investigate the performance of the proposed flexible parametric approach in comparison with the other flexible parametric and nonparametric approaches through extensive simulation studies. We also compare the proposed method with the other competitive methods with respect to a real-life data set. Though emphasis is put on the logistic regression model the proposed method is applicable to the other members of the generalized linear models, and other types of non-linear regression models too. Finally, we develop a new computational technique to approximate the large sample bias that my arise due to exposure model misspecification in the estimation of the regression parameters in a measurement error scenario.

<p>The demand for higher bit rates to support new services and more users is pushing wireless systems to millimetre-wave frequency bands with more available bandwidth and less interference. However at these frequencies, antenna dimensions are dramatically reduced complicating the fabrication process. Conductor loss is also significant, reducing the efficiency and gain of fabricated metallic antennas. To better utilize millimetre-wave frequencies for wireless applications, antennas with simple fabrication, higher efficiency, and larger impedance bandwidth are required.</p> <p>Dielectric Resonator Antennas (DRAs) offer many appealing features such as large impedance bandwidth and high radiation efficiency due to the lack of conductor and surface wave losses. DRAs also provide design flexibility and versatility. Different radiation patterns can be achieved by different geometries or resonance modes, wideband or compact antennas can be provided by different dielectric constants, and DRAs can be excited by a wide variety of feeding structures. Nevertheless, compared to their metallic counterparts, fabrication of DRAs is challenging since they have traditionally been made of high permittivity ceramics, which are naturally hard and extremely difficult to machine and cannot be easily made in an automatic way. The fabrication of these three dimensional structures is even more difficult at millimetre-wave frequencies where the size of the antenna is reduced to the millimetre or sub-millimetre range, and tolerances to common manufacturing imperfections are even smaller. These fabrication problems restrict the wide use of DRAs, especially for high volume commercial applications.</p> <p>A new approach to utilize the superior features of DRAs for commercial applications, introduced in this thesis, is to exploit polymer-based resonator antennas (PRAs), which dramatically simplifies fabrication due to the natural softness and results in a wide impedance bandwidth due to the low permittivity of polymers. Numerous polymer types with exceptional characteristics can be used to fulfill the requirements of particular applications or achieve extraordinary benefits. For instance, in this thesis photoresist polymers facilitate the fabrication of PRAs using lithographic processes. Another advantage derived from this approach is the capability of mixing polymers with a wide variety of fillers to produce composite materials with improved or extraordinary characteristics.</p> <p>The key contributions of this thesis are in introducing SU-8 photoresist as a radiating material, developing three lithographic methods to fabricate photoresist-ceramic composite structures, introducing a simple and non-destructive measurement method to define electrical properties of the photoresist composites, and demonstrating these structures as improved antenna components.</p> <p>It is shown that pure SU-8 resonators can be highly efficient antennas with wideband characteristics. To achieve more advantages for RF applications, the microwave properties of photoresists are modified by producing ceramic composite materials. X-ray lithography fabrication is optimized and as a result one direct and two indirect methods are proposed to pattern ultra thick (up to 2.3 mm) structures and complicated shapes with an aspect ratio as high as 36:1. To measure the permittivity and loss tangent of the resulting materials, a modified ring resonator technique in one-layer and two-layer microstrip configurations is developed. This method eliminates the requirement to metalize the samples and enables characterization of permittivity and dielectric loss in a wide frequency range from 2 to 40 GHz. Various composite PRAs with new designs (e.g. frame-based and strip-fed structures) are lithographically fabricated, tested, and discussed. The prototype antennas offer -10 dB bandwidths as large as 50% and gain in the range of 5 dBi.

The Canadian Penning Trap Mass Spectrometer (CPTMS) located at the ATLAS (Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System) facility of Argonne National Laboratory makes precise mass measurements on both stable and unstable isotopes. A 252Cf fission source has been used as the ion source for the unstable isotope mass measurements. This thesis concentrates on the mass measurements of the fission fragments from the 252Cf fission source using the CPTMS system. It is the first time that the masses of such fission fragments have been measured with a mass spectrometer. The masses of 108Tc, 108Ru, 109Ru and 110Ru have been measured to a precision of 10-7. The results have been compared to exiting mass measurements and the Atomic Mass Evaluation (AME2003). In general good agreement between this work and existing data is realized. A few discrepancies are identified. / October 2006

In manufacturing, measurement systems are used to control processes and inspect parts with the goal of producing high quality product for the customer. Modern Quality Systems require the periodic assessment of key measurement systems to ensure that they are functioning as expected. Estimating the proportion of the process variation due to the measurement system is an important part of these assessments. The measurement system may be simple, for example, with one gauge automatically measuring a single characteristic on every part or complex with multiple characteristics, gauges, operators etc. Traditional assessment plans involve selecting a random sample of parts and then repeatedly measuring each part under a variety of conditions that depend on the complexity of the measurement system. In this thesis, we propose new plans for assessing the measurement system variation based on the concept of leveraging. In a leveraged plan, we select parts (non-randomly) with extreme initial values to measure repeatedly. Depending on the context, parts with initial measurements may be available from regular production or from a specially conducted baseline study. We use the term leveraging because of the re-use of parts with extreme values. The term leverage has been used by the  proponents of the problem solving system initially proposed by Dorian  Shainin. Parts with relatively large and small values of the response  are compared to identify the major causes of the variation. There is no discussion of the theory of leveraging in the literature or its application to measurement system  assessment. In this thesis, we provide motivation for why leveraging  is valuable and apply it to measurement system  assessments. We consider three common contexts in the thesis: Simple measurement systems with one gauge, no operator effects and no external information about the process performance; Measurement systems, as stated above, where we have external information, as would be the case, for example, if the measurement system was used for 100% inspection; Measurement systems with multiple operators. For each of these contexts, we develop new leveraged assessment plans and show that these plans are substantially more efficient than traditional plans in estimating the proportion of the process variation due to the measurement system. In each case, we also provide methodology for planning the leveraged study and for analysing the data generated. We then develop another new application of leveraging in the assessment of a measurement system used for 100% inspection. A common practice is to re-measure all parts with a first  measurement outside of inspection limits. We propose using these repeated measurements to assess the variation in the measurement system. Here the system itself does the leveraging since we have repeated measurements only on relatively large or small parts. We recommend using maximum likelihood estimation but we show that the ANOVA estimator, although  biased, is comparable to the MLE when the measurement system is reliable.  We also provide guidelines on how to schedule such assessments. To outline the thesis, in the first two chapters, we review the contexts described above. For each context, we discuss how to characterize the measurement system performance, the common assessment plans and their analysis. In Chapter 3, we introduce the concept of leveraging and provide motivation for why it is effective. Chapters 4 to 7 contain the bulk of the new results in the thesis. In Chapters 4, 5 and 6, which correspond to the three contexts described above, we provide new leveraged plans, show their superiority to the standard plans and provide a methodology to help design leveraged plans. In Chapter 7, we show how to assess an inspection system using repeated measurements on initially rejected parts. In the final chapter, we discuss other potential applications of leveraging to other measurement system assessment problems and to a problem in genetics.

Recently material physics group at Science Institute of University of Iceland has been using reactive sputtering to grow thin films used in various research projects at the institute. These films have been grown using dc sputtering which has been proven a very successful method. High power impulse magnetron sputtering or HiPIMS is an new pulsed power sputtering method where shorter but high power pulses are used to sputter over lower steady power. The project resulted in a functional system capable of growing thin films using HiPIMS. Thin films grown with high power pulses have a higher film density and other more preferable properties compared to films grown using direct current magnetron sputtering.