Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

Modeling and simulation enabled UAV electrical power system design

With the diversity of mission capability and the associated requirement for more advanced technologies, designing modern unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems is an especially challenging task. In particular, the increasing reliance on the electrical power system for delivering key aircraft functions, both electrical and mechanical, requires that a systems-approach be employed in their development. A key factor in this process is the use of modeling and simulation to inform upon critical design choices made. However, effective systems-level simulation of complex UAV power systems presents many challenges, which must be addressed to maximize the value of such methods. This paper presents the initial stages of a power system design process for a medium altitude long endurance (MALE) UAV focusing particularly on the development of three full candidate architecture models and associated technologies. The unique challenges faced in developing such a suite of models and their ultimate role in the design process is explored, with case studies presented to reinforce key points. The role of the developed models in supporting the design process is then discussed

Operational criteria for battlefield vehicles

textModern military ground vehicles are no longer able to respond effectively to the rapidly changing mission requirements of modern military conflicts. Military vehicle architectures, which utilize passive suspension components and traditional drivetrain/steering systems, do not provide the operational flexibility to meet the demands of the operator. Advances in intelligent actuation technology allow for the development of a new vehicle architecture - the Intelligent Corner Vehicle (ICV). The ICV utilizes intelligent actuator technology to actively control the four degrees of freedom of each wheel of the vehicle - drive, camber, steering, and suspension. The utilization of intelligent actuation requires the characterization of the motions and behavior of the tire and the vehicle chassis in order to effectively apply the tire to the road surface - the development of vehicle performance criteria. A brief review of the state of wheeled military systems is presented. Many modern military vehicles were designed to improve protection at the expense of mobility - a process that has had negative effects on vehicle capability. An overview of the pneumatic tire used for wheeled vehicles is presented, highlighting the nonlinearities of tire behavior. The complexity of tire force generation drives the need for the application of intelligent actuation. Traditional actuation of wheel motion is presented along with a variety of current efforts to apply intelligent actuation to individual degrees of freedom of the tire. These efforts can be shown to improve vehicle performance, but intelligent actuation must be applied to all aspects of tire motion, requiring the use of the ICV architecture and the generation of performance criteria by which the complex motion of the vehicle may be evaluated. The Robotics Research Group has a history of developing and evaluating performance criteria for complex dynamic systems. and review of performance criteria developed for serial chain robotics is presented. These criteria address task independent actuator motion in addition to actuator ranges and limits, and their application to the ICV is discussed. A brief overview of several important concepts of classical vehicle dynamics are presented. The application of criteria derived from these concepts to the ICV architecture is discussed. This report presents the complexities of tire behavior and vehicle motion, the need for alternative architectures (the ICV), and a variety of performance criteria required to evaluate vehicle motion in real time. Criteria that are presented are summarized along with their definition and physical meaning. Future work for the development of the ICV involves the generation of a vehicle model for evaluating the application and range values of the presented criteria.Mechanical Engineerin

Methods and Tools to Ease the Electrification of Off-Highway Vehicles and Machinery Produced by Small and Medium-Sized Companies

Sostenibilità ambientale, emissione di gas serra, e inquinamento atmosferico sono tra i grandi driver dell’elettrificazione dei trasporti. Da questo punto di vista, l’elettrificazione dei consumi è evidente nel automotive, ma lo stesso è iniziato anche per l’industria Off-Highway. Questo passaggio è importante per lo sviluppo di nuove tecnologie, ma comporta nuove sfide. Per esempio, facilita l’insorgere di architetture e lo sviluppo di tecnologie evolutive e rivoluzionarie, favorendo la nascita di nuovi macchinari e aziende. A tal proposito, sia il mondo industriale che quello accademico hanno iniziato lo sviluppo di soluzioni elettrificate, ma con alti costi. Per le aziende medio-piccole, più sensibili al cambiamento, le risorse richieste da questo processo possono essere molto sfidanti. Molte lavorano come integratori di sistemi, cioè comprano dai fornitori componenti e sistemi stock. Al contrario, le aziende leader del mercato possono puntare su prodotti ottimizzati basati su componenti custom, rientrando dell’investimento iniziale grazie all’economia di scala. Modellistica e simulazione possono aiutare molto la progettazione a livello sistemico, ma lo sviluppo di un modello matematico non è banale. Questo processo può tuttavia essere semplificato da software di modellistica indirizzati all’ambiente industriale, specialmente per i produttori più piccoli. Modellistica e simulazione consentono il passaggio dall’approccio steady-state a transient-state, fondamentale per studiare i vantaggi dell’elettrificazione: nuove strategie di controllo, minori consumi energetici, maggior produttività, ecc. Dopo un’iniziale presentazione dell’industria, della sua storia, e delle sfide, sono presentati i componenti e le architetture principali. Sono anche mostrati i macchinari più interessanti per capire le tendenze di industria e ambiente accademico. Per esempio, si capisce che il retrofitting dei macchinari è importante per questa fase di transizione, seppur vero che possono essere applicate diverse migliorie. Per investigare quanto un software di modellistica di tipo industry-oriented sia in grado di aiutare le piccole-medie aziende del settore, un sollevatore idraulico elettrificato è creato usando Simscape. È mostrata la modellizzazione dei quattro sottosistemi principali, e i movimenti principali della macchina comparati con i dati sperimentali. Se ci si concentra sul focus di questo lavoro, simulazione e prove reali sono abbastanza vicini. Infatti, pur riconoscendo che modelli più dettagliati siano necessari per analisi più accurate, è evidente che questa tipologia di software può già essere usata per modellare sistemi complessi e prendere confidenza con alcuni risultati. Infine, due diversi approcci sono analizzati simulando il modello su un ciclo di lavoro. Innanzitutto, senza alcun cambiamento al sistema di controllo, viene proposto un valore di velocità che bilanci consumo di energia e produttività della macchina. A questo proposito, lo storico e le osservazioni empiriche del costruttore confermano tale risultato, evidenziando la buona applicabilità del modello. In secondo luogo, è implementata e simulata una nuova strategia per il controllo della velocità del motore elettrico, e i risultati mostrano una diminuzione del consumo energetico. Tuttavia, per migliorare l’accuratezza della previsione e diminuire di più i consumi, è necessario approfondire ulteriormente alcune componenti. I risultati ottenuti testimoniano quanto il sistema attuale possa essere migliorato senza cambiare alcun componente, basandosi solamente su un design di tipo transient-state, e sfruttando i vantaggi dell’elettrificazione. Inoltre, è dimostrato quanto un software di modellistica industry-oriented possa essere utile ai produttori più piccoli per affrontare meglio questa importante transizione.Environmental sustainability, greenhouse emissions, and air pollution reduction are among the major drivers for the electrification of the transport and mobility sector. Indeed, the electrification of the consumptions for the automotive industry is in broad daylight, but the same process has just started for the off-highway industry. This process enables new technologies, but it comes also with new challenges and objectives. For instance, it facilitates new off-highway architectures and the development of both incremental and disruptive technology, enabling the emergence of completely new machinery and companies too. In this regard, industry and academia have already started developing electrified solutions, but they come with high development costs. Small and medium-sized companies can be particularly sensitive to changes, and the expertise, cost, and timeframe related to this process can be extremely challenging. Many of these companies usually work as system integrators, relying on the integration and tuning of off-the-shelf components and systems. On the contrary, leading off-highway manufacturers can design more optimized machinery thanks to custom-made products, relying on the economy of scale to return on investments. Modeling and simulation can greatly help system-level design but building the mathematical model of an entire machinery is not trivial. In this regard, using industry-oriented modeling software like Simscape can simplify it, especially for small manufacturers. Indeed, modeling and simulation shift the design from steady-state design to dynamic and transient-state design, which is an essential step to investigate the potential of electrification: new control strategies, lower energy consumption, higher productivity, better forecast of the machinery hour rate, etc. After an overview of the industry, its history, and the new challenges, the main components and architectures typical of the electrification process are presented. The most interesting electrified machinery are also shown to understand the general trends of both industry and academia. In fact, this analysis shows how much retrofitting can be important for this transition to more electrified machinery, but also how many improvements can be applied. To investigate how much an industry-oriented modeling software can help small and medium-sized companies, an electrified material handler is modeled using Simscape. The modeling of the main four subsystems is presented (energy storage, electric motor, mechanics, and hydraulics), and the most important movements are compared with experimental data. While focusing on the real objectives of this work, simulation and real-world testing show a good match. Indeed, even if the modeling of other subsystems is needed for more in-depth and accurate analysis, it is shown how industry-oriented software can be used to model complex subsystems and to get sensible results. Lastly, two different approaches are analyzed by simulating the model over a personalized and realistic duty cycle. First, without changing anything of the current control strategy of the machinery, one reference velocity is proposed to balance energy consumption and productivity. The empirical results of the manufacturer of the hydraulic material handler confirm this trend, highlighting the good applicability of the model. Second, a new strategy based on the control of the electric motor speed is proposed and simulated. The results show the possibility of reducing energy consumption, but some components need to be modeled more in-depth to reach better accuracy and even lower results. Nonetheless, it proves how much the system can be improved without changing any component, by relying on transient-state design and using the additional control variables enabled by electrification. Furthermore, it is shown how much an industry-oriented modeling software can help SMEs during this important phase

Fly-by-light flight control system technology development plan

The results of a four-month, phased effort to develop a Fly-by-Light Technology Development Plan are documented. The technical shortfalls for each phase were identified and a development plan to bridge the technical gap was developed. The production configuration was defined for a 757-type airplane, but it is suggested that the demonstration flight be conducted on the NASA Transport Systems Research Vehicle. The modifications required and verification and validation issues are delineated in this report. A detailed schedule for the phased introduction of fly-by-light system components has been generated. It is concluded that a fiber-optics program would contribute significantly toward developing the required state of readiness that will make a fly-by-light control system not only cost effective but reliable without mitigating the weight and high-energy radio frequency related benefits

Influence of Architecture Design on the Performance and Fuel Efficiency of Hydraulic Hybrid Transmissions

Hydraulic hybrids are a proven and effective alternative to electric hybrids for increasing the fuel efficiency of on-road vehicles. To further the state-of-the-art this work investigates how architecture design influences the performance, fuel efficiency, and controllability of hydraulic hybrid transmissions. To that end a novel neural network based power management controller was proposed and investigated for conventional hydraulic hybrids. This control scheme trained a neural network to generalize the globally optimal, though non-implementable, state trajectories generated by dynamic programming. Once trained the neural network was used for online prediction of a transmission’s optimal state trajectory during untrained cycles forming the basis of an implementable controller. During hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing the proposed control strategy improved fuel efficiency by up to 25.5% when compared with baseline approaches. To further improve performance and fuel efficiency a novel transmission architecture termed a Blended Hydraulic Hybrid was proposed and investigated. This novel architecture improves on existing hydraulic hybrids by partially decoupling power transmission from energy storage while simultaneously providing means to recouple the systems when advantageous. Optimal control studies showed the proposed architecture improved fuel efficiency over both baseline mechanical and conventional hydraulic hybrid transmissions. Effective system level and supervisory control schemes were also proposed for the blended hybrid. In order to investigate the concept’s feasibility a blended hybrid transmission was constructed and successfully tested on a HIL transmission dynamometer. Finally to investigate controllability and driver perception an SUV was retrofitted with a blended hybrid transmission. Successful on-road vehicle testing showcased the potential of this novel hybrid architecture as a viable alternative to more conventional electric hybrids in the transportation sector

Optimization of Roadway Electrification Integrating Wireless Power Transfer: TechnoEconomic Assessment and Lifecycle Analysis

Electric vehicles are the main technology currently being pursued to reduce dependence on fossil fuels in the transportation sector. These vehicles provide both reduced greenhouse gas emissions and decreased operating costs when compared to conventional internal combustion vehicles, while providing the flexibility to use both renewable and fossil energy. However, these vehicles have seen limited consumer adoption due to their large purchase prices and limited driving range. Both purchase price and driving range are related to the large onboard battery systems required for electric vehicle travel. One solution to decrease dependence on large battery systems has focused on charging vehicles in-motion using wireless power transfer. In-motion charging of electric vehicles would allow for longer range travel with smaller onboard battery systems which would lead to cheaper vehicles and, in turn, greater consumer acceptance. Wireless power transfer is commonly used for small electronics (i.e. cell phones), but has seen limited use on large scale projects. Therefore, limited work has been done to understand the feasibility of in-motion charging of electric vehicles using wireless power transfer. The goal of this thesis is to better understand the economic feasibility, environmental benefit, and infrastructure requirements of a wirelessly charged electric vehicle fleet for transportation in the United States

Design Space Exploration in Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber physical systems (CPS) integrate a variety of engineering areas such as control, mechanical and computer engineering in a holistic design effort. While interdependencies between the different disciplines are key attributes of CPS design science, little is known about the impact of design decisions of the cyber part on the overall system qualities. To investigate these interdependencies, this paper proposes a simulation-based Design Space Exploration (DSE) framework that considers detailed cyber system parameters such as cache size, bus width, and voltage levels in addition to physical and control parameters of the CPS. We propose an exploration algorithm that surfs the parameter configurations in the cyber physical sub-systems, in order to approximate the Pareto-optimal design points with regards to the trade-os among the design objectives, such as energy consumption and control stability. We apply the proposed framework to a network control system for an inverted-pendulum application. The presented holistic evaluation of the identified Pareto-points reveals the presence of non-trivial trade-os, which are imposed by the control, physical, and detailed cyber parameters. For instance the identified energy and control optimal design points comprise configurations with a wide range of CPU speeds, sample times and cache configuration following non-trivial zig-zag patterns. The proposed framework could identify and manage those trade-os and, as a result, is an imperative rst step to automate the search for superior CSP configurations

Volume 3 – Conference

We are pleased to present the conference proceedings for the 12th edition of the International Fluid Power Conference (IFK). The IFK is one of the world’s most significant scientific conferences on fluid power control technology and systems. It offers a common platform for the presentation and discussion of trends and innovations to manufacturers, users and scientists. The Chair of Fluid-Mechatronic Systems at the TU Dresden is organizing and hosting the IFK for the sixth time. Supporting hosts are the Fluid Power Association of the German Engineering Federation (VDMA), Dresdner Verein zur Förderung der Fluidtechnik e. V. (DVF) and GWT-TUD GmbH. The organization and the conference location alternates every two years between the Chair of Fluid-Mechatronic Systems in Dresden and the Institute for Fluid Power Drives and Systems in Aachen. The symposium on the first day is dedicated to presentations focused on methodology and fundamental research. The two following conference days offer a wide variety of application and technology orientated papers about the latest state of the art in fluid power. It is this combination that makes the IFK a unique and excellent forum for the exchange of academic research and industrial application experience. A simultaneously ongoing exhibition offers the possibility to get product information and to have individual talks with manufacturers. The theme of the 12th IFK is “Fluid Power – Future Technology”, covering topics that enable the development of 5G-ready, cost-efficient and demand-driven structures, as well as individual decentralized drives. Another topic is the real-time data exchange that allows the application of numerous predictive maintenance strategies, which will significantly increase the availability of fluid power systems and their elements and ensure their improved lifetime performance. We create an atmosphere for casual exchange by offering a vast frame and cultural program. This includes a get-together, a conference banquet, laboratory festivities and some physical activities such as jogging in Dresden’s old town.:Group 8: Pneumatics Group 9 | 11: Mobile applications Group 10: Special domains Group 12: Novel system architectures Group 13 | 15: Actuators & sensors Group 14: Safety & reliabilit

Propulsion Control Technology Development Needs to Address NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Goals for Thrusts 3a and 4

The Commercial Aero-Propulsion Control Working Group (CAPCWG), consisting of propulsion control technology leads from The Boeing Company, GE Aviation, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Glenn Research Center, has been working together over the past year to identify propulsion control technology areas of common interest that we believe are critical to achieving the challenging NASA Aeronautics Research goals for Thrust 3a: Ultra-Efficient Commercial Vehicles - Subsonic Transports, and Thrust 4: Transition to Alternative Propulsion and Energy. This paper describes the various propulsion control technology development areas identified by CAPCWG as most critical for NASA to invest in. For Thrust 3a these are: i) Integrated On-Board Model Based Engine Control and Health Management; ii) Flexible and Modular Networked Control Hardware and Software Architecture; iii) Intelligent Air/Fuel Control for Low Emissions Combustion; and iv) Active Clearance Control. For Thrust 4a, the focus is on Hybrid Electric Propulsion (HEP) for single aisle commercial aircraft. The specific technology development areas include: i) Integrated Power and Propulsion System Dynamic Modeling for Control; ii) Control Architectures for HEP; iii) HEP Control Verification and Validation; and iv) Engine/Airplane Control Integration. For each of the technology areas, the discussion includes: problem to be solved and how it relates to NASA goals, and the challenges to be addressed in reducing risk