Heat Pipes for Computer Cooling Applications

There is an increasing demand for efficient cooling techniques in computer industry to dissipate the associated heat from the newly designed and developed computer processors to accommodate for their enhanced processing power and faster operations. Such a demand necessitates researchers to explore efficient approaches for central processing unit (CPU) cooling. Consequently, heat pipes can be a viable and promising solution for this challenge. In this chapter, a CPU thermal design power (TDP), cooling methods of electronic equipments, heat pipe theory and operation, heat pipes components, such as the wall material, the wick structure, and the working fluid, are presented. Moreover, we review experimentally, analytically and numerically the types of heat pipes with their applications for electronic cooling in general and the computer cooling in particular. Summary tables that compare the content, methodology, and types of heat pipes are presented. Due to the numerous advantages of the heat pipe in electronic cooling, this chapter definitely leads to further research in computer cooling applications

Roads’ Traffic and Conditions Monitoring using Smart Phones: Gaza Strip as a Project Scope

In this paper we introduce briefly our joint research project "Smart Privacy Preserving Roads’ Traffic and Conditions Monitoring" (Smart P2 Road) and describe the achieved progress and the current status of the project. The motivation for our research project is the increasing need for road status and traffic monitoring services as the demand for motorized transportation is growing while having limited resources of highways, parks and roads. We use smartphones as a platform for implementing our system because they come equipped with a wide range of sensors. The most important sensors for our project are the accelerometers and gyroscopes which constitute the inertial measurement unit (IMU) and the positioning devices based on a satellite constellation such as GPS, GLONASS and Galileo. Moreover, they have detailed maps of the roads for easier navigation. Other professional road monitoring sensors such as Antilock Brake System (ABS) sensor which already exists in modern vehicles can be interfaced in a modular fashion to our system. The uniqueness of Smart P2 Road is to integrate several sensors and devices with a strong emphasis on trust, privacy, security and dependability for reliable use by public users and local authorities. The integrity is verified through experimental monitoring of roads across Gaza Strip, Palestine and Amman, Jordan. In those experiments we collect various sensory data, keeping in mind respecting the privacy of the driver as a priority. These collected data were processed and classified using k-means algorithm. The preliminary results show a success rate of 95% for the underdevelopment system

Thermal Insulation in Buildings Using Two Wall Cavities

The present work examines a system that uses two separated wall cavities filled with air which can be used as a thermal insulator in buildings. It is well known that stationary air has lower thermal conductivity 0.026 W/m.K. This has made it of practical interest in many applications such as in thermal insulation materials (e.g. porous materials) and as thermal insulator (e.g. enclosures, wall cavities). Specifically this work investigates the use of two separated wall cavities that trap air inside each one and placed in a building wall where the heat transfer is expected. And to achieve that, the rate of heat transfer through this wall is first calculated with the assumption of pure conduction (i.e. trapped air in the two wall cavities is assumed to be stationary). Then convection heat transfer rates through the two wall cavities are estimated based on the Nusselt numbers and hence the dominating heat transfer mechanism (conduction and/or convection) is explored. Taking into account all the above, introducing two cavities filled with air to building wall can work effectively as thermal insulator as indicated by lower Nusselt numbers and hence lower convection heat transfer rates through the two wall cavities. Advantage of using two wall cavities over one wall cavity of larger thickness is evidenced by the higher convection heat transfer rates which are associated with one wall cavity of larger thicknesses – that's the wall with two cavities can effectively resist the heat flow than the wall with one cavity of larger thicknes

Work in Progress – Establishing a Master Program in Cyber Physical Systems: Basic Findings and Future Perspectives

© 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This paper reports on the basic findings and future perspectives of a capacity building project funded by the European Union. The International Master of Science on Cyber Physical Systems (MS@CPS) is a collaborative project that aims to establish a master program in cyber physical systems (CPS). A consortium composed of nine partners proposed the project. Three partners are European and from Germany, UK and Sweden; while the other six partners are from the South Mediterranean region and include: Palestine, Jordan and Tunisia. The consortium is led by the University of Siegen in Germany who also manages the implementation of the work packages. CPS is an emerging engineering subject with significant economic and societal implications, which motivated the consortium to propose the establishment of a master program to offer educational and training opportunities at graduate level in the fields of CPS. In this paper, CPS as a field of study is introduced with an emphasis on its importance, especially with regard to meeting local needs. A brief description of the project is presented in conjunction with the methodology for developing the courses and their learning outcomes

Novel approaches for improved performance of inertial sensors and integrated navigation systems

Navigation is the science and art that answers the questions of knowing where you are at the current moment and where you will be in the next moment. Modern navigation systems are based mainly on satellite and inertial sensors. Inertial sensor systems are becoming very popular in navigation systems because they are self contained sensors. The goal of this research is to develop novel approaches for improving the performance of inertial sensor systems and their integration algorithms with external sensors such as global positioning system (GPS) and magnetometers. The standalone inertial navigation system (INS) is dependent on the inertial measurement unit (IMU). An IMU is traditionally composed of three orthogonal gyroscopes and three orthogonal accelerometers. In the inertial sensors side, we focus on the use of distributed accelerometers for inferring the angular motion from the angular information contained in their measurements. There exists a variety of reasons for conducting this research. In short, high quality gyros have high cost, high power consumption, large weight and large volume. On the other hand, accelerometers are less costly, easier to manufacture, have less power consumption and less weight than gyros. We developed different fusion approaches for benefiting from the angular information vector (AIV) resulting from the distributed accelerometers to form a gyro-free IMU (GF-IMU) or to aid the GF-IMU by conventional gyros. By improving the performance we mean reducing noise and bias level in the estimated inertial quantity. In the integrated navigation side, we present different approaches to implement the GPS/INS integration filters and the attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) algorithms. We use direction cosine matrix (DCM) based algorithms which implies estimating the elements of the DCM directly within the filter. The basis for this method is the ground alignment method for attitude and heading determination. The attitude update of the DCM is performed using angle rotation vector. The filter is able to detect the gyro bias vector and follow its variation and hence it fits low-cost sensors as well as high grade sensor. We validated the efficiency of the algorithms using proper simulations and real-time implementations.Navigation ist eine Wissenschaft und Kunst, die auf die Fragen, wo Sie zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt sind und wo Sie im nächsten Moment sein werden, antwortet. Moderne Navigationssysteme basieren hauptsächlich auf Satellitensystemen und Inertialsensoren. Inertialsensoren sind in Navigationssystemen beliebt, da sie in sich geschlossene Sensoren sind. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Entwicklung neuartiger Konzepte für die Verbesserung der Leistung der Inertialsensoren und zur Sensordatenfusion mit externen Sensoren wie zum Beispiel das Globale Positionsbestimmungssystem (GPS) und Magnetometer. Ein Inertialnavigationssystem (INS) beinhaltet ein Inertiales Meßsystem (IMU). Ein IMU besteht traditionell aus drei orthogonalen Gyroskopen und drei orthogonalen Beschleunigungssensoren. Bei den Inertialsensoren konzentrieren wir uns auf die Verwendung von verteilten Beschleunigungssensoren zum Ableiten der Rotationsbewegung aus der Winkelinformationen, die in den Messungen enthalten ist. Es gibt eine Reihe von Gründen für die Durchführung dieser Forschung. Kurz gesagt, qualitativ hochwertige Gyroskope sind teuer und haben einen hohen Stromverbrauch sowie großes Gewicht und Volumen. Auf der anderen Seite, sind Beschleunigungssensoren weniger kostspielig, leichter herzustellen, und haben einen geringeren Stromverbrauch sowie ein geringeres Gewicht als Gyroskope. Wir entwickelten verschiedene Fusionsansätze um vom Winkelinformation Vektor (AIV) zu profitieren. Diese Information wird von den verteilten Beschleunigungssensoren geliefert und zu einer Gyroskop-freien IMU (GF-IMU) geführt, die gegebenenfalls mit konventionellen Gyroskopen gestützt werden kann. Bei der integrierten Navigation präsentieren wir verschiedene Ansätze, um die GPS / INS-Integration-Filter und die "Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS)" Algorithmen zu implementieren. Wir verwenden die Richtungskosinusmatrix (DCM) in den Algorithmen. Die Elemente der DCM werden innerhalb des Filters bestimmt. Die Aktualisierung der DCM erfolgt mittels Winkel-Rotationsvektor. Das Filter ist in der Lage, den Gyroskope-offset zu erkennen und seine Abweichung zu verfolgen und somit passt es zu kostengünstigen als auch zu hochwertigen Sensoren. Die Leistungsfähigkeit der Algorithmen wurde unter Verwendung geeigneter Simulationen und Echtzeit- Implementierungen demonstriert

Angular Motion Estimation Using Dynamic Models in a Gyro-Free Inertial Measurement Unit

In this paper, we summarize the results of using dynamic models borrowed from tracking theory in describing the time evolution of the state vector to have an estimate of the angular motion in a gyro-free inertial measurement unit (GF-IMU). The GF-IMU is a special type inertial measurement unit (IMU) that uses only a set of accelerometers in inferring the angular motion. Using distributed accelerometers, we get an angular information vector (AIV) composed of angular acceleration and quadratic angular velocity terms. We use a Kalman filter approach to estimate the angular velocity vector since it is not expressed explicitly within the AIV. The bias parameters inherent in the accelerometers measurements’ produce a biased AIV and hence the AIV bias parameters are estimated within an augmented state vector. Using dynamic models, the appended bias parameters of the AIV become observable and hence we can have unbiased angular motion estimate. Moreover, a good model is required to extract the maximum amount of information from the observation. Observability analysis is done to determine the conditions for having an observable state space model. For higher grades of accelerometers and under relatively higher sampling frequency, the error of accelerometer measurements is dominated by the noise error. Consequently, simulations are conducted on two models, one has bias parameters appended in the state space model and the other is a reduced model without bias parameters

Wind Energy Potential of Gaza Using Small Wind Turbines: A Feasibility Study

In this paper, we conduct a feasibility study of the wind energy potential in Gaza, which suffers from a severe shortage of energy supplies. Our calculated energy harvested from the wind is based on data for a typical meteorological year, which are fed into a small wind turbine of 5 kW power rating installable on the roof of residential buildings. The expected annual energy output at a height of 10 m amounts to 2695 kWh, but it can be increased by 35–125% at higher altitudes between 20 m and 70 m. The results also depict the great potential of wind energy to complement other renewable resources such as solar energy: the harvested energy of a wind system constitutes to up to 84% of the annual output of an equivalent power rating photovoltaic system and even outperforms the solar energy in the winter months. We also show that one wind turbine and one comparable photovoltaic system together could provide enough energy for 3.7 households. Hence, a combination of wind and solar energy could stabilize the decentralized energy production in Gaza. This is very important in a region where people seek to reach energy self-sufficient buildings due to the severe electricity shortage in the local grid

Stepping into Renewable Energy: Advantages & Disadvantages – Development & Future

The distribution of renewable energy becomes increasingly important in the future, particularly in the areas where the electricity generation is more difficult or impossible. Also, the question of renewable energies is rising for environmental reasons, because the renewable energy use no emissions of pollutants such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide as in the case of conventional electricity generation in power plants. This article examines the different renewable energy types and their definitions. Stepping into renewable energy is explained and illustrated. Here, the advantages and disadvantages of types of energy are considered and compared in order to determine the use of profitability. In addition, the distribution of individual types of energy taken in general considered