A New Methodology for Building-Up a Robust Model for Heliostat Field Flux Characterization

The heliostat field of solar central receiver systems (SCRS) is formed by hundreds, even thousands, of working heliostats. Their adequate configuration and control define a currently active research line. For instance, automatic aiming methodologies of existing heliostat fields are being widely studied. In general, control techniques require a model of the system to be controlled in order to obtain an estimation of its states. However, this kind of information may not be available or may be hard to obtain for every plant to be studied. In this work, an innovative methodology for data-based analytical heliostat field characterization is proposed and described. It formalizes the way in which the behavior of a whole field can be derived from the study of its more descriptive parts. By successfully applying this procedure, the instantaneous behavior of a field could be expressed by a reduced set of expressions that can be seen as a field descriptor. It is not intended to replace real experimentation but to enhance researchers’ autonomy to build their own reliable and portable synthetic datasets at preliminary stages of their work. The methodology proposed in this paper is successfully applied to a virtual field. Only 30 heliostats out of 541 were studied to characterize the whole field. For the validation set, the average difference in power between the flux maps directly fitted from the measured information and the estimated ones is only of 0.67% (just 0.10946 kW/m2 of root-mean-square error, on average, between them). According to these results, a consistent field descriptor can be built by applying the proposed methodology, which is hence ready for use

Improving time-efficiency in blocking expanding ring search for mobile ad hoc networks

We propose a new strategy for reducing the amount of latency and energy consumption in Blocking Expanding Ring Search (BERS) and enhanced Blocking Expanding Ring Search (BERS*) for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). BERS and BERS* are respectively energy and energy–time efficient route discovery protocols for MANETs as compared to conventional Expanding Ring Search (ERS). In this study, we identify unnecessary waiting time caused by a STOP/END instruction in BERS/BERS* and explore the potential of further improvement of their time efficiency. This leads to tBERS and tBERS*, the improved BERS and BERS* respectively. In tBERS/tBERS*, a route node may also issue the STOP/END instruction to terminate flooding. We implement this idea in algorithms, conduct analysis, and achieve further latency reduction in both tBERS and tBERS* as well as the energy saving in tBERS*

Heat storage in alloy transformations

The theory of eutectic transformation was examined to find guidelines to the best material combinations to examine. The heats of transformation were measured calorimetrically, and the volume changes of expanding solid mixtures and homogeneous liquid solutions, especially during the transformation between the two states at fixed temperature, were measured by changes in X-ray absorption. Heat flow models appropriate to storage in phase change materials were developed along with efficient calculating procedures so that the relative importance of the problems associated with energy storage density, heat conduction, and similar properties could be assessed

Investigation of the tolerance of wavelength-routed optical networks to traffic load variations.

This thesis focuses on the performance of circuit-switched wavelength-routed optical network with unpredictable traffic pattern variations. This characteristic of optical networks is termed traffic forecast tolerance. First, the increasing volume and heterogeneous nature of data and voice traffic is discussed. The challenges in designing robust optical networks to handle unpredictable traffic statistics are described. Other work relating to the same research issues are discussed. A general methodology to quantify the traffic forecast tolerance of optical networks is presented. A traffic model is proposed to simulate dynamic, non-uniform loads, and used to test wavelength-routed optical networks considering numerous network topologies. The number of wavelengths required and the effect of the routing and wavelength allocation algorithm are investigated. A new method of quantifying the network tolerance is proposed, based on the calculation of the increase in the standard deviation of the blocking probabilities with increasing traffic load non-uniformity. The performance of different networks are calculated and compared. The relationship between physical features of the network topology and traffic forecast tolerance is investigated. A large number of randomly connected networks with different sizes were assessed. It is shown that the average lightpath length and the number of wavelengths required for full interconnection of the nodes in static operation both exhibit a strong correlation with the network tolerance, regardless of the degree of load non-uniformity. Finally, the impact of wavelength conversion on network tolerance is investigated. Wavelength conversion significantly increases the robustness of optical networks to unpredictable traffic variations. In particular, two sparse wavelength conversion schemes are compared and discussed: distributed wavelength conversion and localized wavelength conversion. It is found that the distributed wavelength conversion scheme outperforms localized wavelength conversion scheme, both with uniform loading and in terms of the network tolerance. The results described in this thesis can be used for the analysis and design of reliable WDM optical networks that are robust to future traffic demand variations

Inhomogeneity growth in two-component fermionic systems

The dynamics of fermionic many-body systems is investigated in the framework of Boltzmann-Langevin (BL) stochastic one-body approaches. Within the recently introduced BLOB model, we examine the interplay between mean-field effects and two-body correlations, of stochastic nature, for nuclear matter at moderate temperature and in several density conditions, corresponding to stable or mechanically unstable situations. Numerical results are compared to analytic expectations for the fluctuation amplitude of isoscalar and isovector densities, probing the link to the properties of the employed effective interaction, namely symmetry energy (for isovector modes) and incompressibility (for isoscalar modes). For unstable systems, clusterization is observed. The associated features are compared to analytical results for the typical length and time scales characterizing the growth of unstable modes in nuclear matter and for the isotopic variance of the emerging fragments. We show that the BLOB model is generally better suited than simplified approaches previously introduced to solve the BL equation, and it is therefore more advantageous in applications to open systems, like heavy ion collisions.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figure

Heat storage in alloy transformations

The feasibility of using metal alloys as thermal energy storage media was determined. The following major elements were studied: (1) identification of congruently transforming alloys and thermochemical property measurements; (2) development of a precise and convenient method for measuring volume change during phase transformation and thermal expansion coefficients; (3) development of a numerical modeling routine for calculating heat flow in cylindrical heat exchangers containing phase change materials; and (4) identification of materials that could be used to contain the metal alloys. Several eutectic alloys and ternary intermetallic phases were determined. A method employing X-ray absorption techniques was developed to determine the coefficients of thermal expansion of both the solid and liquid phases and the volume change during phase transformation from data obtained during one continuous experimental test. The method and apparatus are discussed and the experimental results are presented. The development of the numerical modeling method is presented and results are discussed for both salt and metal alloy phase change media

Aeronautical Engineering: A special bibliography with indexes, supplement 67, February 1976

This bibliography lists 341 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in January 1976