ReSCon '09, Research Student Conference: Book of Abstracts

The second SED Research Student Conference (ReSCon2009) was hosted over three days, 22-24 June 2009, in the Lecture Centre at Brunel University. The conference consisted of technical presentations, a poster session and social events. The abstracts and presentations were the result of ongoing research by postgraduate research students from the School of Engineering and Design at Brunel University. The conference is held annually, and ReSCon plays a key role in contributing to research and innovations within the School

ReSCon '10, Research Student Conference: Book of Abstracts

The third SED Research Student Conference (ReSCon2010) was hosted over three days, 21-23 June 2010, in the Hamilton Centre at Brunel University. The conference consisted of oral and poster presentations, which showcased the high quality and diversity of the research being conducted within the School of Engineering and Design. The abstracts and presentations were the result of ongoing research by postgraduate research students from the School. The conference is held annually, and ReSCon plays a key role in contributing to research and innovations within the School

Field Programmable Gate Arrays and Reconfigurable Computing in Automatic Control

New combustion engine principles increase the demands on feedback combustion control, at the same time economical considerations currently enforce the usage of low-end control hardware limiting implementation possibilities. Significant development is simultaneously and continuously carried out within the field of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). In recent years FPGAs have developed, from being a device mainly used to implement grids of 'glue-logic' to something of a flexible 'dream device' in cost and performance sensitive applications. It is not solely the development of FPGA devices which has made the FPGA the promising implementation platform it is, development of software tool sets and design methodologies is as important as the device as such. This thesis describes the nature of FPGAs, how they work, which programming environments that are available and which design methodologies that can be used on different levels. Focus is set on implementing control and feedback control on FPGAs in general terms. There are a lot of practical considerations differing between the FPGA environment and the well-known micro-controller environment and those are discussed from the view of the literature available in the different areas. The potential application of FPGAs is described and illustrated with application examples found in the literature, both general applications and control applications are discussed. The intended application is control of internal combustion engines and one FPGA implementation of a modeling algorithm commonly used within automotive control is described and discussed. The intention is to illustrate the usefulness in automotive control applications. Finally a suggestion of a suitable FPGA based automotive-control development environment is treat

Experimental Characterization of Hydraulic System Sound

The purpose of this research was to establish test methods for characterizing the interaction between the hydraulic fluid and hydraulic hose at clipping points in mobile heavy equipment hydraulic systems. A simple hydraulic circuit test bench was developed and the laboratory axial piston pump was characterized using ISO 10767-1. A direct relationship between the fluidborne noise and structureborne noise present at each hose clip location was observed for a specific operating condition using operating deflection shapes and structureborne noise measurements. This result shows that optimal hose clip placement can be a viable solution to structureborne noise reduction. Additionally, a modal superposition method for predicting pressure ripple at any point in the pump outlet hose was established using order-based modal analysis. The fluidborne noise in the circuit was balanced in a power flow approach and compared to fluidborne noise predictions at the mounts

Full-Scale System for Quantifying Leakage of Docking System Seals for Space Applications

NASA is developing a new docking and berthing system to support future space exploration missions to low-Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars. This mechanism, called the Low Impact Docking System, is designed to connect pressurized space vehicles and structures. NASA Glenn Research Center is playing a key role in developing advanced technology for the main interface seal for this new docking system. The baseline system is designed to have a fully androgynous mating interface, thereby requiring a seal-on-seal configuration when two systems mate. These seals will be approximately 147 cm (58 in.) in diameter. NASA Glenn has designed and fabricated a new test fixture which will be used to evaluate the leakage of candidate full-scale seals under simulated thermal, vacuum, and engagement conditions. This includes testing under seal-on-seal or seal-on-plate configurations, temperatures from -50 to 50 C (-58 to 122 F), operational and pre-flight checkout pressure gradients, and vehicle misalignment (plus or minus 0.381 cm (0.150 in.)) and gapping (up to 0.10 cm (0.040 in.)) conditions. This paper describes the main design features of the test rig and techniques used to overcome some of the design challenges

Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Reconfigurable Communication-centric Systems on Chip 2010 - ReCoSoC\u2710 - May 17-19, 2010 Karlsruhe, Germany. (KIT Scientific Reports ; 7551)

ReCoSoC is intended to be a periodic annual meeting to expose and discuss gathered expertise as well as state of the art research around SoC related topics through plenary invited papers and posters. The workshop aims to provide a prospective view of tomorrow\u27s challenges in the multibillion transistor era, taking into account the emerging techniques and architectures exploring the synergy between flexible on-chip communication and system reconfigurability

Computer-aided design for multilayer microfluidic chips

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-66).Microfluidic chips fabricated by multilayer soft lithography are emerging as "lab-on-a-chip" systems that can automate biological experiments. As we are able to build more complex microfluidic chips with thousands of components, it becomes possible to build devices which can be programmatically changed to solve multiple problems. However, the current design methodology does not scale. In this thesis, we introduce design automation techniques to multilayer soft lithography microfluidics. Our work focuses on automating the design of the control layer. We present a method to define an Instruction Set Architecture as a hierarchical composition of flows. From this specification, we automatically infer and generate the logic and signals to control the chip. To complete the design automation of the control layer, we suggest a routing algorithm to connect control channels to peripheral I/O ports. To the microfluidic community, we offer a free computer-aided design tool, Micado, which implements our ideas for automation in a practical plug-in to AutoCAD. We have evaluated our work on real chips and our tool has been used successfully by microfluidic designers.by Nada Amin.M.Eng

Development of a Fabrication Technique for Soft Planar Inflatable Composites

Soft robotics is a rapidly growing field in robotics that combines aspects of biologically inspired characteristics to unorthodox methods capable of conforming and/or adapting to unknown tasks or environments that would otherwise be improbable or complex with conventional robotic technologies. The field of soft robotics has grown rapidly over the past decade with increasing popularity and relevance to real-world applications. However, the means of fabricating these soft, compliant and intricate robots still poses a fundamental challenge, due to the liberal use of soft materials that are difficult to manipulate in their original state such as elastomers and fabric. These material properties rely on informal design approaches and bespoke fabrication methods to build soft systems. As such, there are a limited variety of fabrication techniques used to develop soft robots which hinders the scalability of robots and the time to manufacture, thus limiting their development. This research focuses towards developing a novel fabrication method for constructing soft planar inflatable composites. The fundamental method is based on a sub-set of additive manufacturing known as composite layering. The approach is designed from a planar manner and takes layers of elastomeric materials, embedded strain-limiting and mask layers. These components are then built up through a layer-by-layer fabrication method with the use of a bespoke film applicator set-up. This enables the fabrication of millimetre-scale soft inflatable composites with complex integrated masks and/or strain-limiting layers. These inflatable composites can then be cut into a desired shape via laser cutting or ablation. A design approach was also developed to expand the functionality of these inflatable composites through modelling and simulation via finite element analysis. Proof of concept prototypes were designed and fabricated to enable pneumatic driven actuation in the form of bending soft actuators, adjustable stiffness sensor, and planar shape change. This technique highlights the feasibility of the fabrication method and the value of its use in creating multi-material composite soft actuators which are thin, compact, flexible, and stretchable and can be applicable towards real-world application

Reversible Computation: Extending Horizons of Computing

This open access State-of-the-Art Survey presents the main recent scientific outcomes in the area of reversible computation, focusing on those that have emerged during COST Action IC1405 "Reversible Computation - Extending Horizons of Computing", a European research network that operated from May 2015 to April 2019. Reversible computation is a new paradigm that extends the traditional forwards-only mode of computation with the ability to execute in reverse, so that computation can run backwards as easily and naturally as forwards. It aims to deliver novel computing devices and software, and to enhance existing systems by equipping them with reversibility. There are many potential applications of reversible computation, including languages and software tools for reliable and recovery-oriented distributed systems and revolutionary reversible logic gates and circuits, but they can only be realized and have lasting effect if conceptual and firm theoretical foundations are established first

Development and Evaluation of Sensor Concepts for Ageless Aerospace Vehicles: Report 3 - Design of the Concept Demonstrator

This report provides an outline of the essential features of a Structural Health Monitoring Concept Demonstrator (CD) that will be constructed during the next eight months. It is emphasized that the design cannot be considered to be complete, and that design work will continue in parallel with construction and testing. A major advantage of the modular design is that small modules of the system can be developed, tested and modified before a commitment is made to full system development. The CD is expected to develop and evolve for a number of years after its initial construction. This first stage will, of necessity, be relatively simple and have limited capabilities. Later developments will improve all aspects of the functionality of the system, including sensing, processing, communications, intelligence and response. The report indicates the directions this later development will take