The safety case and the lessons learned for the reliability and maintainability case

This paper examine the safety case and the lessons learned for the reliability and maintainability case

Simulation of site-specific irrigation control strategies with sparse input data

Crop and irrigation water use efficiencies may be improved by managing irrigation application timing and volumes using physical and agronomic principles. However, the crop water requirement may be spatially variable due to different soil properties and genetic variations in the crop across the field. Adaptive control strategies can be used to locally control water applications in response to in-field temporal and spatial variability with the aim of maximising both crop development and water use efficiency. A simulation framework ‘VARIwise’ has been created to aid the development, evaluation and management of spatially and temporally varied adaptive irrigation control strategies (McCarthy et al., 2010). VARIwise enables alternative control strategies to be simulated with different crop and environmental conditions and at a range of spatial resolutions. An iterative learning controller and model predictive controller have been implemented in VARIwise to improve the irrigation of cotton. The iterative learning control strategy involves using the soil moisture response to the previous irrigation volume to adjust the applied irrigation volume applied at the next irrigation event. For field implementation this controller has low data requirements as only soil moisture data is required after each irrigation event. In contrast, a model predictive controller has high data requirements as measured soil and plant data are required at a high spatial resolution in a field implementation. Model predictive control involves using a calibrated model to determine the irrigation application and/or timing which results in the highest predicted yield or water use efficiency. The implementation of these strategies is described and a case study is presented to demonstrate the operation of the strategies with various levels of data availability. It is concluded that in situations of sparse data, the iterative learning controller performs significantly better than a model predictive controller

Air pollution and livestock production

The air in a livestock farming environment contains high concentrations of dust particles and gaseous pollutants. The total inhalable dust can enter the nose and mouth during normal breathing and the thoracic dust can reach into the lungs. However, it is the respirable dust particles that can penetrate further into the gas-exchange region, making it the most hazardous dust component. Prolonged exposure to high concentrations of dust particles can lead to respiratory health issues for both livestock and farming staff. Ammonia, an example of a gaseous pollutant, is derived from the decomposition of nitrous compounds. Increased exposure to ammonia may also have an effect on the health of humans and livestock. There are a number of technologies available to ensure exposure to these pollutants is minimised. Through proactive means, (the optimal design and management of livestock buildings) air quality can be improved to reduce the likelihood of risks associated with sub-optimal air quality. Once air problems have taken hold, other reduction methods need to be applied utilising a more reactive approach. A key requirement for the control of concentration and exposure of airborne pollutants to an acceptable level is to be able to conduct real-time measurements of these pollutants. This paper provides a review of airborne pollution including methods to both measure and control the concentration of pollutants in livestock buildings

Overview of methods to analyse dynamic data

This book gives an overview of existing data analysis methods to analyse the dynamic data obtained from full scale testing, with their advantages and drawbacks. The overview of full scale testing and dynamic data analysis is limited to energy performance characterization of either building components or whole buildings. The methods range from averaging and regression methods to dynamic approaches based on system identification techniques. These methods are discussed in relation to their application in following in situ measurements: -measurement of thermal transmittance of building components based on heat flux meters; -measurement of thermal and solar transmittance of building components tested in outdoor calorimetric test cells; -measurement of heat transfer coefficient and solar aperture of whole buildings based on co-heating or transient heating tests; -characterisation of the energy performance of whole buildings based on energy use monitoring

A stable and accurate control-volume technique based on integrated radial basis function networks for fluid-flow problems

Radial basis function networks (RBFNs) have been widely used in solving partial differential equations as they are able to provide fast convergence. Integrated RBFNs have the ability to avoid the problem of reduced convergence-rate caused by differentiation. This paper is concerned with the use of integrated RBFNs in the context of control-volume discretisations for the simulation of fluid-flow problems. Special attention is given to (i) the development of a stable high-order upwind scheme for the convection term and (ii) the development of a local high-order approximation scheme for the diffusion term. Benchmark problems including the lid-driven triangular-cavity flow are employed to validate the present technique. Accurate results at high values of the Reynolds number are obtained using relatively-coarse grids

Modelling and Analysis Using GROOVE

In this paper we present case studies that describe how the graph transformation tool GROOVE has been used to model problems from a wide variety of domains. These case studies highlight the wide applicability of GROOVE in particular, and of graph transformation in general. They also give concrete templates for using GROOVE in practice. Furthermore, we use the case studies to analyse the main strong and weak points of GROOVE

Case studies of outdoor testing and analysis of building components

The construction and development of the PASSYS/PASLINK outdoor test cells were funded by the European Commission, with the objective of providing high-quality test environments for quantifying the performance of passive solar building components. Over the years since the original test cells were commissioned, the initial concept for outdoor testing has been extended to include other test cell types. Significant improvements have been made to the experimental procedures and analysis techniques, and a broad range of components has been tested. This paper describes representative experiments that have been conducted using these highly controlled outdoor test environments, indicates some of the related analysis, and shows the type of information that can be obtained from such tests. It demonstrates the way in which component performance can be ascertained in the realistic external environment. The case studies chosen range from building component tests within EC research projects to commercial tests, and from conventional building components to novel integrated facade systems. They also include a large range of passive and active components. Each case study summarises the test component, the purpose of the test, details of the test configuration (period of test, instrumentation, etc.), results and analysis, and associated modelling and monitoring where appropriate. The paper concludes with an appraisal of the advantages and limitations of the test cells for the various component types

Simulation-assisted control in building energy management systems

Technological advances in real-time data collection, data transfer and ever-increasing computational power are bringing simulation-assisted control and on-line fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) closer to reality than was imagined when building energy management systems (BEMSs) were introduced in the 1970s. This paper describes the development and testing of a prototype simulation-assisted controller, in which a detailed simulation program is embedded in real-time control decision making. Results from an experiment in a full-scale environmental test facility demonstrate the feasibility of predictive control using a physically-based thermal simulation program