An automatic maintenance system for nuclear power plants instrumentation

Maintenance and testing of reactor protection systems is an important cause of unplanned reactor trips due to be commonly carried out in manual mode. The execution of surveillance procedures in this mode entails a great number of manual operations. Automated testing is the answer because it minimises test times and reduces the risk of human errors. GAMA-I is an automatic system for testing the reactor protection instrumentation which is based on VXI instrumentation cards. This system has important advantages over previous ones in terms of easiness to carry out software modifications related to configuration changes in the protection system. The system uses visual programming and the modifications can be implemented by ordinary instrumentation specialists without programming experience.The system has been developed at the Vandellos II Nuclear Power Plant by the I&C groups of Vandellos II, Tecnatom S.A. and ENWESA Servicios S.A. The representation for this project is held by the Spanish Association for the Nuclear Technologic Development (DTN). Financial support for this research was provided by the Electrical and Electronic Research Program (PIE-OCIDE) of the Spanish Ministry of Industry

PWM Control of a Buck Converter with an Amorphous Core Coil

Pulse-width modulation is widely used to control electronic converters. One of the most topologies used for high DC voltage/low DC voltage conversion is the Buck converter. It is obtained as a second order system with a LC filter between the switching subsystem and the load. The use of a coil with an amorphous magnetic material core instead of air core lets design converters with smaller size. If high switching frequencies are used for obtaining high quality voltage output, the value of the auto inductance L is reduced throughout the time. Then, robust controllers are needed if the accuracy of the converter response must not be affected by auto inductance and load variations. This paper presents a robust controller for a Buck converter based on a state space feedback control system combined with an additional virtual space variable which minimizes the effects of the inductance and load variations when a not-toohigh switching frequency is applied. The system exhibits a null steady-state average error response for the entire range of parameter variations. Simulation results are presented

Development of an electrochemical maltose biosensor

In this work, electrochemical maltose biosensors based on mutants of the maltose binding protein (MBP) are developed. A ruthenium II complex (Ru II ), which is covalently attached to MBP, serves as an electrochemical reporter of MBP conformational changes. Biosensors were made through direct attachment of Ru II complex modified MBP to gold electrode surfaces. The responses of some individual mutants were evaluated using square wave voltammetry. A maltose-dependent change in Faradic current and capacitance was observed. It is therefore demonstrated that biosensors using generically this family of bacterial periplasmic binding proteins (bPBP) can be made lending themselves to facile biorecognition element preparation and low cost electrochemical transduction

Using the Own Flexibility of a Climbing Robot as a Double Force Sensor

Force sensors are used when interaction tasks are carried out by robots in general, and by climbing robots in particular. If the mechanics and electronics systems are contained inside the own robot, the robot becomes portable without external control. Commercial force sensors cannot be used due to limited space and weight. By selecting the links material with appropriate stiffness and placing strain gauges on the structure, the own robot flexibility can be used such as force sensor. Thus, forces applied on the robot tip can be measured without additional external devices. Only gauges and small internal electronic converters are necessary. This paper illustrates the proposed algorithm to achieve these measurements. Additionally, experimental results are presented

Torque control of switched reluctance motors

This paper presents the performance of an instantaneous torque control method. The simulation and experimental results illustrate the capability of Switched Reluctance Motors (SRM) being used in the motor drive industry. Based on experimental data, the advantages of this control method and its disadvantages in practical implementation were studied. The model used in the simulation is the linear magnetic model which has the 12/8 structure, the same structure as the experimental switched reluctance motor

Performance optimization in switched reluctance motor drives

In this paper, switched reluctance motors (SRM) are proposed as an alternative for electric power assisted steering (EPAS) applications. A prototype machine has been developed as very attractive design for a steering electric motor, both from a cost and size perspective. A fourphase 8/6 SRM drive is designed for a rack type EPAS which should provide a maximum force of 10 kN. Two-dimension finite element analysis is used to validate the design

A machine learning approach to pedestrian detection for autonomous vehicles using High-Definition 3D Range Data

This article describes an automated sensor-based system to detect pedestrians in an autonomous vehicle application. Although the vehicle is equipped with a broad set of sensors, the article focuses on the processing of the information generated by a Velodyne HDL-64E LIDAR sensor. The cloud of points generated by the sensor (more than 1 million points per revolution) is processed to detect pedestrians, by selecting cubic shapes and applying machine vision and machine learning algorithms to the XY, XZ, and YZ projections of the points contained in the cube. The work relates an exhaustive analysis of the performance of three different machine learning algorithms: k-Nearest Neighbours (kNN), Naïve Bayes classifier (NBC), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). These algorithms have been trained with 1931 samples. The final performance of the method, measured a real traffic scenery, which contained 16 pedestrians and 469 samples of non-pedestrians, shows sensitivity (81.2%), accuracy (96.2%) and specificity (96.8%).This work was partially supported by ViSelTR (ref. TIN2012-39279) and cDrone (ref. TIN2013-45920-R) projects of the Spanish Government, and the “Research Programme for Groups of Scientific Excellence at Region of Murcia” of the Seneca Foundation (Agency for Science and Technology of the Region of Murcia—19895/GERM/15). 3D LIDAR has been funded by UPCA13-3E-1929 infrastructure projects of the Spanish Government. Diego Alonso wishes to thank the Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Subprograma Estatal de Movilidad, Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013–2016 for grant CAS14/00238

Dynamic control of a reconfigurable stair-climbing mobility system

Electric-powered wheelchairs improve the mobility of people with physical disabilities, but the problem to deal with certain architectural barriers has not been resolved satisfactorily. In order to solve this problem, a stair-climbing mobility system (SCMS) was developed. This paper presents a practical dynamic control system that allows the SCMS to exhibit a successful climbing process when faced with typical architectural barriers such as curbs, ramps, or staircases. The implemented control system depicts high simplicity, computational efficiency, and the possibility of an easy implementation in a microprocessor-/microcontroller-based system. Finally, experiments are included to support theoretical results

Automatic inspection system for quality evaluation of fresh tuna meat

This paper describes an Automated Visual Inspection System SIVATUN" for quality control of Tuna Meat which automate manual inspection operation. Depending on whether tuna are reared in cages or in the open sea and depending on the method of capture (electroslaughtering, shooting, etc.), differences are observed and changes take place in the organic nature of Blue Fin Tuna (Thunnus Thynnus) meat, affecting appearance and quality. These changes are caused by an increase and accumulation of lactate, which negatively affects the quality. This drop in quality translates into loss of value of the meat in Japanese tuna markets (Tsukiji market and Sashimi market are the main destinations of tuna captured off the southeast coast of Spain). In order to evaluate these changes, Japanese experts are employed to carry out visual inspections, which therefore constitute a subjective assessment. This paper describes the development of an automated visual inspection system that can analyze, model and detect these changes. The ultimate aim is to establish quality indicators and classifiers that will accompany tuna meat from the time of capture and so make it possible to track this product in the main tuna meat export markets. In this way we can establish a connection between variation of tuna meat quality and the feeding and slaughtering methods used, thus providing feedback to the fattening and slaughtering processes so as to improve the global quality of Blue Fin Tuna catches.This work was made possible by the financial support of the Department of Science, Technology, Industry and Trade of the Region of Murcia, through project SIVATUN-2102SIU0020, and also by the invaluable cooperation of Gines Mendez Espafia S.L. factory staff and the Oceanographic Spanish Institute, without whom the system could not have been developed

Effective Power Signal Filtering using LC Filters with Air Core Coils

Computer controlled power supplies are usually expensive when high performance (power, wide voltage range, low ripple factor and low response time) are required. This paper presents a simple and effective computer controlled DC system based on a commercial V/f inverter combined with a three-phase bridge rectifier and a LC power filter. Because of the widely variable frequency range of the V/f inverter when a wide range of voltage is required, amorphous or ferromagnetic core coils are avoided, and air core coils become an excellent solution to implement the filter and increase the efficiency of the power system. The proposed method for designing the LC filter is based on the full dynamic model of the filter-load set and the selection of the desired poles of the system according to the load to be coupled. The proposed topology lets obtain good time responses (setting time less than 100 ms) and good ripple factor (less than 1%) without any overshooting, even when low voltage output is required