A wireless ultrasonic NDT sensor system

Ultrasonic condition monitoring technologies have been traditionally utilized in industrial and construction environments where structural integrity is of concern. Such techniques include active systems with either single or multiple transmit-receiver combinations used to obtain defect positioning and magnitude. Active sensors are implemented in two ways; in a thickness operation mode, or as an area-mapping tool operating over longer distances. In addition, passive ultrasonic receivers can be employed to detect and record acoustic emission activity. Existing equipment requires cabling for such systems leading to expensive, complicated installations. This work describes the development and operation of a system that combines these existing ultrasonic technologies with modern wireless techniques within a miniaturized, battery-operated design. A completely wireless sensor has been designed that can independently record and analyze ultrasonic signals. Integrated into the sensor are custom ultrasonic transducers, associated analogue drive and receive electronics, and a Texas Instruments Digital Signal Processor (DSP) used to both control the system and implement the signal processing routines. BlueTooth wireless communication is used for connection to a central observation station, from where network operation can be controlled. Extending battery life is of prime importance and the device employs several strategies to do this. Low voltage transducer excitation suffers from poor signal-to-noise ratios, which can be enhanced by signal processing routines implemented on the DSP. Routines investigated include averaging, digital filtering and pulse compression

Direct usage of photovoltaic solar panels to supply a freezer motor with variable DC input voltage

In this paper, a single-phase photovoltaic (PV) inverter fed by a boost converter to supply a freezer motor with variable DC input is investigated. The proposed circuit has two stages. Firstly, the DC output of the PV panel that varies between 150 and 300 V will be applied to the boost converter. The boost converter will boost the input voltage to a fixed 300 V DC. Next, this voltage is supplied to the single-phase full-bridge inverter to obtain 230 V AC. In the end, The output of the inverter will feed a freezer motor. The PV panels can be stand-alone or grid-connected. The grid-connected PV is divided into two categories, such as with a transformer and without a transformer, a transformer type has galvanic isolation resulting in increasing the security and also provides no further DC current toward the grid, but it is expensive, heavy and bulky. The transformerless type holds high efficiency and it is cheaper, but it suffers from leakage current between PV and the grid. This paper proposes a stand-alone direct use of PV to supply a freezer; therefore, no grid connection will result in no leakage current between the PV and Grid. The proposed circuit has some features such as no filtering circuit at the output of the inverter, no battery in the system, DC-link instead of AC link that reduces no-loads, having a higher efficiency, and holding enough energy in the DC-link capacitor to get the motor started. The circuit uses no transformers, thus, it is cheaper and has a smaller size. In addition, the system does not require a complex pulse width modulation (PWM) technique, because the motor can operate with a pulsed waveform. The control strategy uses the PWM signal with the desired timing. With this type of square wave, the harmonics (5th and 7th) of the voltage are reduced. The experimental and simulation results are presented to verify the feasibility of the proposed strategy

Analysis and design of a capsule landing system and surface vehicle control system for Mars exploration

Problems related to the design and control of a mobile planetary vehicle to implement a systematic plan for the exploration of Mars are reported. Problem areas include: vehicle configuration, control, dynamics, systems and propulsion; systems analysis, terrain modeling and path selection; and chemical analysis of specimens. These tasks are summarized: vehicle model design, mathematical model of vehicle dynamics, experimental vehicle dynamics, obstacle negotiation, electrochemical controls, remote control, collapsibility and deployment, construction of a wheel tester, wheel analysis, payload design, system design optimization, effect of design assumptions, accessory optimal design, on-board computer subsystem, laser range measurement, discrete obstacle detection, obstacle detection systems, terrain modeling, path selection system simulation and evaluation, gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer system concepts, and chromatograph model evaluation and improvement

Electric Vehicles Charging Technology Review and Optimal Size Estimation

AbstractMany different types of electric vehicle (EV) charging technologies are described in literature and implemented in practical applications. This paper presents an overview of the existing and proposed EV charging technologies in terms of converter topologies, power levels, power flow directions and charging control strategies. An overview of the main charging methods is presented as well, particularly the goal is to highlight an effective and fast charging technique for lithium ions batteries concerning prolonging cell cycle life and retaining high charging efficiency. Once presented the main important aspects of charging technologies and strategies, in the last part of this paper, through the use of genetic algorithm, the optimal size of the charging systems is estimated and, on the base of a sensitive analysis, the possible future trends in this field are finally valued

Fast Charging Technique For Lithium-Ion Cell

Climate change is a big concern among the people. Day by day people are trying to increase the use of the sustainable energy in every sector of their life. Like other sectors, transportation sector manufacturers are beginning to shifting from fossil fuels based models to electric models. Manufacturers are trying to introduce electrified models from bicycles to cars. For energy storage, these electrified models are highly dependent on the battery. Lithium-ion cells have a high energy density, no memory effect, long cycle life and low self discharge quality, and are therefor highly used from portable electronics to electric vehicles everywhere. A main concern with a rechargeable battery is that it needs to recharge in regular intervals. This charging procedure is time consuming and can have a great impact on the total capacity of the battery, cycle life, and charging efficiency (or energy efficiency). A gasoline-base vehicle takes 3-5 minutes to fill the gas tank, but, an electric vehicle may need up to 10-12 hours (depend on the battery pack capacity) to be fully charged. For that, electric vehicles can become unreliable under emergency conditions and a deterent to regular users. As a result, charging technology has become a major concern among the manufacturers of electric vehicles. Using fast charging techniques can create unwanted side effects, like, thermal runaway, capacity fade, lithium platting and other electrochemical changes. In this thesis we developed an optimal fast charging technique for lithium-ion cells, which will be able to charge the cell faster compared with present industrial charging methods and maintain the long cycle life without significant decay of the capcity. We used 18650 lithium-ion cells for testing. During testing continuous cycling test was stopped when the capacity degraded by 20% of it’s original capacity. We compared our proposed fast charging technique with an available industrial charging technique. Due to differences in the charging times, when our proposed fast charging technique goes through more than 1600 cycles, the industrial charging technique had completed only 660 cycles. For comparision purposes, we chose 600 cycles as the common comparision point. We had found that our proposed technique took an average 63.7 minutes to charge 100% of the cell after 600th cycle. At the same time, the industrial charging technique took an average of 150 minutes to charge 100% of the cell. From this comparision it was clear the our proposed method is 135% faster than the available industrial charging technique. Capacity degradation was 10.5% for the fast charging technique and 6.6% for the industrial charging. As a result, we can say our proposed fast charging technique is faster and capabale of maintaining the capacity degradation rate within reasonable limits

Power Quality Enhancement in Electricity Grids with Wind Energy Using Multicell Converters and Energy Storage

In recent years, the wind power industry is experiencing a rapid growth and more wind farms with larger size wind turbines are being connected to the power system. While this contributes to the overall security of electricity supply, large-scale deployment of wind energy into the grid also presents many technical challenges. Most of these challenges are one way or another, related to the variability and intermittent nature of wind and affect the power quality of the distribution grid. Power quality relates to factors that cause variations in the voltage level and frequency as well as distortion in the voltage and current waveforms due to wind variability which produces both harmonics and inter-harmonics. The main motivation behind work is to propose a new topology of the static AC/DC/AC multicell converter to improve the power quality in grid-connected wind energy conversion systems. Serial switching cells have the ability to achieve a high power with lower-size components and improve the voltage waveforms at the input and output of the converter by increasing the number of cells. Furthermore, a battery energy storage system is included and a power management strategy is designed to ensure the continuity of power supply and consequently the autonomy of the proposed system. The simulation results are presented for a 149.2 kW wind turbine induction generator system and the results obtained demonstrate the reduced harmonics, improved transient response, and reference tracking of the voltage output of the wind energy conversion system.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Optimal design and implementation of a drivetrain for an ultra-light electric vehicle

This paper presents an integrated design of a drivetrain for a single-person ultra-light electric vehicle (ULEV). To calculate losses and efficiency of the inverter, the permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) and the gearbox, parameterised analytical models are used. For the gearbox - which has a single gear ratio - the studied parameters are the gear ratio, the number of stages, the number of teeth and the module of each spur gear combination. The novelty of the paper is that it learns how the total average efficiency and the total mass of the drivetrain depend on the gear ratio, on the number of stages in the gearbox, on the motor parameters and on the chosen several driving cycles including the new European driving cycle (NEDC). On the basis of the presented results, it is possible to choose the right configuration of power electronics, PMSM and gearbox in order to have a good trade-off between high efficiency and low mass