Non-invasive inspections: a review on methods and tools

Non-Invasive Inspection (NII) has become a fundamental tool in modern industrial maintenance strategies. Remote and online inspection features keep operators fully aware of the health of industrial assets whilst saving money, lives, production and the environment. This paper conducted crucial research to identify suitable sensing techniques for machine health diagnosis in an NII manner, mainly to detect machine shaft misalignment and gearbox tooth damage for different types of machines, even those installed in a hostile environment, using literature on several sensing tools and techniques. The researched tools are critically reviewed based on the published literature. However, in the absence of a formal definition of NII in the existing literature, we have categorised NII tools and methods into two distinct categories. Later, we describe the use of these tools as contact-based, such as vibration, alternative current (AC), voltage and flux analysis, and non-contact-based, such as laser, imaging, acoustic, thermographic and radar, under each category in detail. The unaddressed issues and challenges are discussed at the end of the paper. The conclusions suggest that one cannot single out an NII technique or method to perform health diagnostics for every machine efficiently. There are limitations with all of the reviewed tools and methods, but good results possible if the machine operational requirements and maintenance needs are considered. It has been noted that the sensors based on radar principles are particularly effective when monitoring assets, but further comprehensive research is required to explore the full potential of these sensors in the context of the NII of machine health. Hence it was identified that the radar sensing technique has excellent features, although it has not been comprehensively employed in machine health diagnosis

Multitasking Fe3O4@Cu@Au and Fe3O4@SiO2 nanoparticles for biomedical applications

Tra i nanomateriali utili in ambito biomedico, le nanoparticelle di magnetite offrono grandi vantaggi sia in campo diagnostico che terapeutico, permettendo di combinare le loro peculiari proprietà magnetiche con le note proprietà chimico fisiche che caratterizzano le nanoparticelle. Realizzando una struttura core-shell e funzionalizzando la superficie della nanoparticella con sostanze biologicamente o farmacologicamente attive, è possibile, da un lato, conservare le proprietà superparamagnetiche del nucleo e, dall'altro, ottenere nanosistemi multifunzionali più selettivi e/o efficaci nei confronti dei target biologici prescelti. Lo scopo di questa tesi ha riguardato, quindi, la progettazione e la realizzazione di nanosistemi basati su nanoparticelle core-shell costituite da Fe3O4@Cu@Au o Fe3O4@SiO2 utilizzabili per diverse applicazioni biomediche. La sintesi delle nanoparticelle è stata effettuata utilizzando reagenti biocompatibili mentre una approfondita caratterizzazione chimico-fisica dei nanosistemi è stata ottenuta tramite l'analisi con differenti tecniche microscopiche e spettroscopiche. Attraverso esperimenti biologici in vitro, è stata valutata l' efficacia terapeutica e/o l' internalizzazione in cellule immunitarie di nanosistemi opportunamente funzionalizzati con farmaci chemioterapici, macromolecole biologiche o metaboliti secondari con attivià antibiotica. Infine, nanoparticelle funzionalizzate con specifici anticorpi sono state utilizzate per lo sviluppo di strumenti diagnostici per la rivelazione di neurotrasmettitori in vitro

Advanced photonic and electronic systems - WILGA 2017

WILGA annual symposium on advanced photonic and electronic systems has been organized by young scientist for young scientists since two decades. It traditionally gathers more than 350 young researchers and their tutors. Ph.D students and graduates present their recent achievements during well attended oral sessions. Wilga is a very good digest of Ph.D. works carried out at technical universities in electronics and photonics, as well as information sciences throughout Poland and some neighboring countries. Publishing patronage over Wilga keep Elektronika technical journal by SEP, IJET by PAN and Proceedings of SPIE. The latter world editorial series publishes annually more than 200 papers from Wilga. Wilga 2017 was the XL edition of this meeting. The following topical tracks were distinguished: photonics, electronics, information technologies and system research. The article is a digest of some chosen works presented during Wilga 2017 symposium. WILGA 2017 works were published in Proc. SPIE vol.10445

NASA Tech Briefs Index, 1977, volume 2, numbers 1-4

Announcements of new technology derived from the research and development activities of NASA are presented. Abstracts, and indexes for subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief number are presented for 1977

Magnetic DNA detection sensor for point-of-care diagnostics

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis focuses on inductive base sensor design at MHz range frequency. The background theory, design, experiments and results for a new magnetic particles sensor is presented. A new magnetic sensor based on a planar coil was investigated for DNA pathogen detection. Change in inductance of the planar coil due to the presence of magnetic particles with varying mass was measured. The experimental set-up consisted of different sized planar coil with associated electronics for inductance measurements. The best sensor performance was accomplished using two different inductors while oscillating at frequencies 2.4MHz using 9.5μH inductor and 7.2MHz with 85μH inductor. The sensor has very large signal to noise ratio (580×103), while the average amount of frequency drift was 0.58. This sensor was tested with various types of magnetic particles. In addition, iron-oxide nanoparticles were synthesized through water in oil microemulsion method and with an average size of 25nm. The best sensitivity achieved for detection of 50μg iron-oxide particles was with the bead size of 10nm. 81Hz frequency shift was attained in regard to that amount of particles. This research shows that increasing the resonance frequency to 7.2MHz can cause the larger output signal difference (frequency shift) in the presence of magnetic particles; however, the sensor stability is the most important factor for determining the detection resolution and sensitivity. The sensitivity is better if the sensor can detect smaller amount of magnetic sample. The results of this research demonstrate that while the sample consists of smaller size particles, the sensor can detect the lower amount of sample. This is due to the heating effect of nanoparticles. On the other hand the sample distance from the sensor has a major impact on the sensitivity too; the shorter the distance, the higher the sensitivity. This technique can potentially be extended to detect several different types of bacterial pathogens and can be modified for multiplex quantitative detection. This sensing technique will be incorporated into a handheld, disposable microfluidic chip for point-of-care diagnostics for sexually transmitted diseases. Key words: Point of care diagnostics, Magnetic particle Detection, Molecular detection, Inductive sensin

Portable Computer Technology (PCT) Research and Development Program Phase 2

The subject of this project report, focused on: (1) Design and development of two Advanced Portable Workstation 2 (APW 2) units. These units incorporate advanced technology features such as a low power Pentium processor, a high resolution color display, National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) video handling capabilities, a Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) interface, and Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) and ethernet interfaces. (2) Use these units to integrate and demonstrate advanced wireless network and portable video capabilities. (3) Qualification of the APW 2 systems for use in specific experiments aboard the Mir Space Station. A major objective of the PCT Phase 2 program was to help guide future choices in computing platforms and techniques for meeting National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission objectives. The focus being on the development of optimal configurations of computing hardware, software applications, and network technologies for use on NASA missions

Transverse Diagnostics For High Energy Hadron Colliders

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a circular synchrotron accelerator that will explore new Physics at the higher energies ever achieved, aiming to find the Higgs boson. The LHC is being built at CERN and by 2007 it will be ready to produce head-on collisions of protons at a centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV. The employment of superconducting magnets for achieving high energies, the high luminosity required for physics, the limited dynamic aperture and the large energy stored in the beams will make the machine very challenging to operate, especially during the injection process and the energy ramp. Two particular problems will be a high sensitivity to beam losses and a relatively poor field quality requiring the use of many types of magnetic correction elements. This may lead to the inclusion of certain beam measurements in feedback loops, making special demands on the control system. The injection and acceleration of the LHC proton beams without particle losses and emittance blow up will require an accurate control of the beam parameters. The value of the betatron tune is about 63 units and needs to be controlled to a level of $\Delta Q = ±0.003$. Orbit excursions should be limited to less than 0.5 mm. The linear chromaticity should be limited to some units (nominal value $Q'_HV = 2$). This Thesis will be focused on the improvement of new instrumentation for the measurement of beam parameters that is compatible with LHC high intens ity running. In this sense, the importance for the performance of the accelerator of terms such as tune or chromaticity will be pointed out. This work can be considered to be divided into two differentiated parts: the tests performed to a potentially beam diagnostics device and the improvement of the sensitivity of an already existing monitor. However, behind both subjects there is a common objective: the need of implementing new sensitive and non destructive methods for measuring parameters of major importance to keep the beam within the tight tolerances imposed to the superconducting and high energy accelerator LHC

Aeronautical Engineering: A special bibliography with indexes, supplement 62

This bibliography lists 306 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in September 1975

FPGA-based High Performance Diagnostics For Fusion

High performance diagnostics are an important aspect of fusion research. Increasing shot-lengths paired with the requirement for higher accuracy and speed make it mandatory to employ new technology to cope with the increasing demands on digitization and data handling. Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are well known in high performance applications. Their ability to handle multiple fast data streams whilst remaining programmable make them an ideal tool for diagnostic development. Both the improvement of old and the design of new diagnostics can benefit from FPGA-technology and increase the amount of accessible physics significantly. In this work the developments on two FPGA-based diagnostics are presented. In the first part a new open-hardware low-cost FPGA-based digitizer is presented for the MAST-Upgrade (MAST-U) integral electron density interferometer. The system is shown to have an optically limited phase accuracy and a detection bandwidth of over 3.5 MHz. Data is acquired continuously at 20 MS/s and streamed to an acquisition PC via optical fiber. By employing a dual-FPGA approach real-time processing of the density signal can be achieved despite severly limited resources, thus providing a control signal for the MAST-U plasma control system system with less than 8 μs latency. Due to MAST-U being still inoperable, in-situ testing has been conducted on the ASDEX Upgrade, where fast wave physics up to 3.5 MHz could first be observed. The second part presents developments to the Synthetic Aperture Microwave Imaging (SAMI) diagnostic. In addition to improving the utilization of long shot-lengths and enabling dual-polarized acquisition the system has been enhanced to continuously acquire active probing profiles for 2D Doppler back-scattering (DBS), a technique recently developed using SAMI. The aim is to measure pitch angle profiles to derive the edge current density. SAMI has been transferred to the NSTX-Upgrade and integrated into the experiment’s infrastructure, where it has been acquiring data since May 2016. As part of this move an investigation into near-field effects on SAMI’s image reconstruction algorithms was conducted