The Overlooked Actors in the EU Studies: Examining the Strategies and Objectives of Religious Actors in the European Union. Bruges Political Research Papers 81/2020.

In the context of the European Union, religious actors hold a unique position. Despite being defined as civil society organizations by the EU, according to Article 17 on the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union, religious actors and non-confessional organization enjoy an “open, transparent, and regular dialogue” with the EU. Aside from making them the only civil society actors singled-out in the TFEU, the ramifications of Article 17 also include annual high-level religious leaders’ meetings with EU institutions as well as highprofile EU officials such as the Vice Presidents of the European Commission and of the European Parliament, who are charged with dialogue with religious actors. Despite their special standing and active participation, religious actors have been overlooked in the EU studies. As a result, this paper focuses on the most transnationally active religious actors – the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches – and examines their objectives and strategies through the institutionalist theories in Political Science. In doing so, it finds that religious actors represent strategic political actors who are mainly driven by their self-interest

A study of heat transfer in heat pipe evaporators with metal fiber capillary structures

This paper reports a detailed investigation into the influence of the structural and hydrodynamic characteristics of metal fiber capillary structures (CS) when such materials are used in the construction of heat pipe and thermosyphon evaporators. The study investigates parameters such as the heat transfer coefficient ® and the critical heat flux for these materials when operating under conditions corresponding to those encountered in heat evaporators. This research has been performed using dedicated experimental equipment simulating the operating conditions of heat pipes and thermosyphons upon boiling of representative working liquids such as distilled water and acetone. A wide range of characteristics have been investigated for metal capillary structures produced from copper and stainless steel fibers: range of CS porosity = 40% to 90%; range of CS thickness δ = 0.2 mm to 10.0 mm; CS skeleton thermal conductivity range λ = 0.1 W/(m · K) to 70.0 W/(m · K). © 2012 by Begell House, Inc.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

A Novel Five-leg Inverter PWM Technique for Two-Motor Centre-Driven Winders

Two three-phase motors can be controlled independently using a five-leg inverter as the supply, with one leg being common to both machines. Major shortcoming of this topology for general applications is the need to double the DC bus voltage in order to achieve the same speed control range as with the standard dual three-phase voltage source inverter (VSI) supply. Further, the semi-conductors of the common leg have to withstand up to twice the operating current of the other legs. This paper investigates use of the five-leg inverter topology for a specific constant-power two-motor centre-driven winder drive, where the listed drawbacks can be either fully avoided or at least reduced. A PWM method is developed, which enables control over how the available DC bus voltage is allocated to the two motors. This PWM technique, when used for two-motor winder control, enables operation without any increase in the required DC link voltage. The increase of the switch current rating in the common inverter leg can be kept at 50%, meaning that the five-leg topology enables a saving in the capital cost when compared to the standard dual three-phase topology