Development of a Universal EtherCAT-Based Fieldbus Module

Suomalaisessa yrityksessä SKS Control Oy:ssa aloitettiin tuotekehitysprojekti jonka tarkoitus oli uusia eräs vanha tuoteportfolio. Portfolio sisältää tuotteita jotka käytetään sähköiseen liikkeenohjauksen yhteydessä ja portfoliossa löytyy esimerkiksi erilaisia CPU-moduuleja, näyttöjä, HMI:ta ja I/O laitteita ym. Tämä kirjoitelma keskittyy yhteen uuteen tulevaan moduuliin, joka on EtherCAT pohjanen kenttäväylämoduuli. Tämän uuden tuotteen tarkoitus on korvata muutama vanha tuote ja samalla tuoda uusia ominaisuuksia jotka olisi ollut vaikeita tai mahdottomia toteuttaa vanhoilla tuotteilla. Sitä osaa tuotekehitysprojektia joka esitetään tässä työssä sisältää kolmea eri osaa. Ensimmäinen osa käsittelee olennaisimmat alueet tuotteen teoreettisesta taustasta ja samalla esittelee tuotteen halutut spesifikaatiot ja ominaisuudet. Tämän yhteydessä esitetään myös erilaiset keinot toteuttaa nämä halutut ominaisuudet. Työn toinen osa käsittelee tuotteen rautapuolen suunnittelua jakamalla kaikki toiminnalliset osat pienempiin osakokonaisuuksiin ja käsittelemällä niitä erikseen. Tässä osassa keskitytään enemmän elektroniikan suunnitteluun kun mekaaniseen. Lopuksi työ käsittelee tuotteeseen liittyvää ohjelmointiosuutta joka pääosin käsittelee rautapuolen ohjelmointia VHDL kielellä ja pienemmissä määrissä muita tuotteeseen liittyviä ohjelmointikieliä kuten C.A product development project was set up at the Finnish company SKS Control Oy in order to renew an older product portfolio consisting of a number of different devices used in electrically implemented motion control systems. These products include, for example, a range of programmable CPU units, display devices, HMIs, and I/O devices. This work focuses on the process of developing one of the new products, which is an EtherCAT-based fieldbus module. The purpose of this product is to replace a number of older products by integrating their functionality into one extensive modular-structured device. Along with this, the new module is intended to provide various new features that were hard or impossible to implement with the older products. The part of the product development work which is presented here consists of three main parts. The first one presents some of the most relevant theoretical background behind the field-bus module along with a list of wanted features and properties. Together with the theory, this part discusses a way of satisfying these design constraints while using a module structure similar to the other products in the portfolio. Second, the work covers the hardware design of the module by dividing it into smaller functional blocks and discussing them separately. Here the focus lies on the electronic design rather than the mechanical. Finally, the work includes a section about the software work included in the product development. This part mainly focuses on the hardware description language VHDL and, to a smaller extent, on additional software, such as C, used in the product or together with it

A fast remotely operable digital twin of a generic electric powertrain for geographically distributed hardware-in-the-loop simulation testbed

The automotive industry today is seeing far-reaching and portentous changes that will change the face of it in the foreseeable future. Digitalisation and Electrification are two of the key megatrends that is changing the way vehicles are developed and produced. A recent development in R&D process is the Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) method that uses a hybrid approach of testing a physical prototype immersed in a virtual environment, which is nowadays being creatively re-applied towards geographically separated multi-centre testing strategies, that suits the horizontally integrated and supply-chain driven industry very well. Geographical separation entails the deployment of a “Digital Twin” in remote centre(s) participating in multi-centre testing. This PhD aims to produce a highly robust, efficient, and rapidly computable Digital Twin of a generic electric powertrain using the multi-frequency averaging (MFA) technique that has been extended for variable frequency operation. This PhD also aims to commission a local HIL simulation testbed for a generic electric power inverter testing. The greater goal is to co-simulate the local HIL centre testing a prototype inverter, and its Digital Twin in a different location “twinning” the prototype inverter as best as possible. A novel approach for the Digital Twin has been proposed that employs Dynamic Phasors to solve the system in the frequency domain. An original method of multiplication of two signals in the frequency domain has been proposed. The resultant model has been verified against an equivalent time domain switching model and shown to outperform appreciably. A distinctive advantage the MFA Digital Twin offers is the “fidelity customisability”; based on application, the Twin can be set to compute a low (or high)-fi model at different computational cost. Finally, a novel method of communicating high-speed motor shaft position information using a low-speed processing system has been developed and validated. This has been applied to run real-life HIL simulation cycles on a test inverter and effects studied. The two ends of a multi-HIL testbed, i.e., local HIL environment for an inverter, and its Digital Twin, has been developed and validated. The last piece of the puzzle, i.e., employing a State Convergence algorithm to ensure the Digital Twin is accurate duplicating the performance of its “master”, is required to close the loop. Several ideas and process plans have been proposed to do the same

Power converters in WBG device technology for automotive applications and characterization setups for GaN power transistors

This PhD dissertation envisages the design of innovative power converters exploiting WBG devices to get state-of-the-art performance in products intended for industrial applications of automotive field. The collaborations with different specialized companies, provided the opportunity to access commercially-available state-of-the-art SiC and GaN technologies and the possibility to realize innovative converter prototypes. Concerning SiC technology, the complete design of a $350kW$ Battery Emulator instrument in collaboration with a company leader in the automotive testing sector, was carried out from scratch exploiting state-of-the-art SiC power-modules, planar magnetics and top-notch MCU technologies. Discrete high-voltage GaN switches were exploited in the Power Supplies design for automotive charger application to target improved performances compared to the market state-of-the-art. Specifically, two high-efficiency prototypes, an AC/DC converter and a DC/DC converter of $7.5kW$, have been realized for this purpose. To further investigate the characteristics of state-of-the-art GaN power devices two measurement set-ups have been designed. In particular, the trapping phenomenon causing the collapse of drain current during ON-state with a consequent degradation of ON-resistance has been analyzed

Low dimensionality spectral sensing for low cost material discrimination and identification

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-193).Spectroscopy is a powerful tool in material identification, characterization and discrimination. Unfortunately industrial and laboratory spectrometers are typically very large, costly, and inconvenient. The aim of this thesis is to broaden the awareness and appeal of spectroscopic sensing modalities by exploring specialized, rather than general purpose instruments. Rather than sensing the entire spectrum, these devices work by observing just the particular spectral features needed to perform identification or discrimination. This approach greatly simplifies the instrument reducing the cost, size, power consumption, and analysis complexity by many orders of magnitude. In this work the anatomy of such specialized sensors is explored by way of a thorough discussion of illuminators, current sources, photodetectors, photodiode amplifiers, control systems and part selection. In the following chapters, instruments are designed and fabricated, and their tradeoffs are enumerated and discussed. Finally, these building-blocks are combined to construct several working prototypes which are informally characterized.by Andrew Matthew Bardagjy.S.M

Entwicklung und Implementierung einer Messmethodik für einen hochperformanten Gleichtakttransienten- Störfestigkeitstest

Common Mode Transient Immunity (CMTI) is one of the most important key characteristics of an isolator. CMTI is defined as the ability of an isolation barrier to tolerate fast common mode transients and thus to maintain the system integrity. Measuring CMTI requires creating very fast voltage changes between two isolated circuit reference grounds. Furthermore, the capability of the isolator to resist temporary high voltage, named isolation voltage, represents another main characteristic of isolators. Today’s state-of-the-art measurement methods require a high voltage pulse generator such as an ESD surge generator to generate fast high voltage pulses to measure CMTI. To test the isolation voltage, extra equipment is used for stressing the device with the specified voltage, which would increase the production testing cost. Moreover, working with high voltages in production environments needs higher safety requirements. That’s why, in this thesis, a new method was developed to test both CMTI and isolation voltage in the same environment together with other parameters. In fact, this work investigates the methodology used for testing digital isolators. The emphasis of this thesis lies in the implementation of a new method to characterize the key parameters of an isolation barrier during the production testing. For the CMTI measurement, a signal with the corresponding slope is produced and fed into the Device Under Test (DUT). To verify the isolation voltage, the proposed concept utilizes a DC-DC converter to supply the device explicitly with 120% of the specified isolation voltage. This voltage is applied for 1 second during the production testing. The same voltage converter is used together with a high voltage switch and an appropriate regulation circuit using passive elements to generate transients with predefined levels and slopes. Additionally, the other characteristics of the digital isolator are tested with the same board and during the same test sequence. The proposed method was tested successfully using a test board and an evaluation board. The CMTI measurements showed high accuracy in the slope. In addition, integrating the high voltage tests together with other characterizations into one single Printed Circuit Board (PCB), used to fully characterize the devices, reduces test time and thus cost. The results of the measurements demonstrate the good performance of the proposed concept.Die Common Mode Transient Immunity (CMTI) ist einer der wichtigsten Kennwerte von Isolatoren. CMTI bezeichnet die Störfestigkeit einer Isolationsbarriere gegen schnelle Gleichtakttransienten und somit die Aufrechterhaltung der Systemintegrität. Die Messung der CMTI erfordert die Erzeugung von sehr schnellen Spannungsänderungen zwieschen zwei isolierten Referenzmassen einer Schaltung. Eine weitere bedeutende Spezifikation stellt die sogenannte Isolationsspannung dar, die die Fähigkeit eines Isolators beschreibt, temporär hohen Spannungen zu widerstehen. Messmethoden nach Stand der Technik benutzen einen Hochspannungsimpulsgenerator, wie z.B. einen ESD-Stossspannungsgenerator, der schnelle Hochspannungsimpulse generiert, um die CMTI zu messen. Zur Prüfung der Isolationsspannung wird ein zusätzliches Prüfgerät benötigt um den Prüfling zu belasten, was für die Produktion enorm hohe Kosten verursacht. Außerdem erfordert die Arbeit mit hohen Spannungen höhere Sicherheitsanforderungen. Deshalb wurde im Rahmen dieser Arbeit ein neues Verfahrenskonzept entwickelt um sowohl die CMTI als auch die Isolationsspannung in der gleichen Produktionsumgebung zusammen mit anderen Parametern zu prüfen. In dieser Arbeit wird eine Methodik für die Prüfung von Isolatoren digitaler Signale untersucht. Der Schwerpunkt ist dabei die Implementierung einer neuen Methode zur Charakterisierung der beiden wichtigsten Kennwerte einer Isolationsbarriere während des Produktionstestes. Für die CMTI-Messung wird ein Signal mit der entsprechenden Steigung erzeugt und dem Isolator zugeführt. Zur Ãœberprüfung der Isolationsspannung wird ein DC-DC-Wandler verwendet, der 120 % der zu prüfenden Spannung liefert. Diese wird während des Produktionstests für eine Sekunde angelegt. Der gleiche Spannungswandler wird zusammen mit einem Hochspannungsschalter und einem geeigneten Regelkreis aus passiven Elementen verwendet um Transienten mit den gewünschten Pegeln und Steigungen zu erzeugen. Darüber hinaus werden die anderen Eigenschaften des digitalen Isolators auf der gleichen Platine und während der gleichen Prüfsequenz getestet. Die vorgeschlagene Methode wurde erfolgreich auf zwei Test- und Evaluierungsplatinen getestet. Die CMTI-Messungen zeigen eine hohe Genauigkeit der Steigung. Darüber hinaus reduziert die Integration der CMTI- und Isolationstests zusammen mit anderen Charakterisierungen in einer Platine die Testzeit und somit die Gesamtkosten. Die Ergebnisse der Messungen zeigen die hohe Leistungsfähigkeit des vorgeschlagenen Konzepts

A Modular Approach to Adaptive Reactive Streaming Systems

The latest generations of FPGA devices offer large resource counts that provide the headroom to implement large-scale and complex systems. However, there are increasing challenges for the designer, not just because of pure size and complexity, but also in harnessing effectively the flexibility and programmability of the FPGA. A central issue is the need to integrate modules from diverse sources to promote modular design and reuse. Further, the capability to perform dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) of FPGA devices means that implemented systems can be made reconfigurable, allowing components to be changed during operation. However, use of DPR typically requires low-level planning of the system implementation, adding to the design challenge. This dissertation presents ReShape: a high-level approach for designing systems by interconnecting modules, which gives a ‘plug and play’ look and feel to the designer, is supported by tools that carry out implementation and verification functions, and is carried through to support system reconfiguration during operation. The emphasis is on the inter-module connections and abstracting the communication patterns that are typical between modules – for example, the streaming of data that is common in many FPGA-based systems, or the reading and writing of data to and from memory modules. ShapeUp is also presented as the static precursor to ReShape. In both, the details of wiring and signaling are hidden from view, via metadata associated with individual modules. ReShape allows system reconfiguration at the module level, by supporting type checking of replacement modules and by managing the overall system implementation, via metadata associated with its FPGA floorplan. The methodology and tools have been implemented in a prototype for a broad domain-specific setting – networking systems – and have been validated on real telecommunications design projects

Combined Additive Manufacturing and Machining for Large-Scale Prototyping for Minimising Material Wastage

This research project aimed to develop a combined additive and subtractive manufacturing platform capable of rapidly producing large-scale prototypes for minimising material wastage. A design conceptualisation process led to the design and development of a system to deposit the additive material. The developed system was mounted to a large-scale CNC milling machine. This combination of additive and subtractive manufacturing into a single system integrated the separate benefits of the two independent technologies. Mastercam was selected as the preferred CAD/CAM software package to generate toolpaths for the additive and subtractive processes. The Beckhoff HMI provided a user-friendly interface to interpret the generated G-code files, set the Work Coordinate System, and control user-defined parameters such as the feed rate. An in-depth statistical analysis of the developed platform's dimensional accuracy, repeatability, stability, and material wastage was performed. In addition, the effects of the independent adjustment of the subtractive manufacturing process parameters such as the spindle speed, feed rate, depth of cut and stepover distance were considered. Finally, a cycle time comparison was performed in producing a working prototype between the developed HM system and a commercially available 3D printer. This research provided a platform for further investigation into the ever-expanding applications and benefits of rapid prototyping.Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment, and Technology, 202

Emerging Converter Topologies and Control for Grid Connected Photovoltaic Systems

Continuous cost reduction of photovoltaic (PV) systems and the rise of power auctions resulted in the establishment of PV power not only as a green energy source but also as a cost-effective solution to the electricity generation market. Various commercial solutions for grid-connected PV systems are available at any power level, ranging from multi-megawatt utility-scale solar farms to sub-kilowatt residential PV installations. Compared to utility-scale systems, the feasibility of small-scale residential PV installations is still limited by existing technologies that have not yet properly address issues like operation in weak grids, opaque and partial shading, etc. New market drivers such as warranty improvement to match the PV module lifespan, operation voltage range extension for application flexibility, and embedded energy storage for load shifting have again put small-scale PV systems in the spotlight. This Special Issue collects the latest developments in the field of power electronic converter topologies, control, design, and optimization for better energy yield, power conversion efficiency, reliability, and longer lifetime of the small-scale PV systems. This Special Issue will serve as a reference and update for academics, researchers, and practicing engineers to inspire new research and developments that pave the way for next-generation PV systems for residential and small commercial applications

Combined Additive Manufacturing and Machining for Large-Scale Prototyping for Minimising Material Wastage

This research project aimed to develop a combined additive and subtractive manufacturing platform capable of rapidly producing large-scale prototypes for minimising material wastage. A design conceptualisation process led to the design and development of a system to deposit the additive material. The developed system was mounted to a large-scale CNC milling machine. This combination of additive and subtractive manufacturing into a single system integrated the separate benefits of the two independent technologies. Mastercam was selected as the preferred CAD/CAM software package to generate toolpaths for the additive and subtractive processes. The Beckhoff HMI provided a user-friendly interface to interpret the generated G-code files, set the Work Coordinate System, and control user-defined parameters such as the feed rate. An in-depth statistical analysis of the developed platform's dimensional accuracy, repeatability, stability, and material wastage was performed. In addition, the effects of the independent adjustment of the subtractive manufacturing process parameters such as the spindle speed, feed rate, depth of cut and stepover distance were considered. Finally, a cycle time comparison was performed in producing a working prototype between the developed HM system and a commercially available 3D printer. This research provided a platform for further investigation into the ever-expanding applications and benefits of rapid prototyping.Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment, and Technology, 202