Energy Management in Buildings: Lessons Learnt for Modeling and Advanced Control Design

This paper presents a comparative analysis of different modeling and control techniques that can be used to tackle the energy efficiency and management problems in buildings. Multiple resources are considered, from generation to storage, distribution and delivery. In particular, it is shown what are the real needs and advantages of adopting different techniques, based on different applications, type of buildings, boundary conditions. This contribution is based widely on the experience performed by the authors in the recent years in dealing with existing residential, commercial and tertiary filed buildings, with application ranging from local temperature control up to smart grids where buildings are seen as an active node of the grid thanks to their ability to shape the thermal and electrical profile in real time. As for control models, a wide range of modeling techniques are here investigated and compared, from linear time-invariant models, to time-varying, to nonlinear ones. Similarly, control techniques include adaptive ones and real-time predictive ones

The EU’s Proposed Reform of Directors’ Duties and the Missing Link to Soft Law

In this paper, we investigate whether reform of EU company law is needed to make corporate governance more sustainable. We also consider some issues to which the EU proposals on company law and sustainability paid scant attention, such as the role of corporate governance codes and other types of soft law, mainly of international origin, in promoting sustainable governance. In addition, we underline that in recent years the EU has adopted several measures which offer better prospects for sustainable governance than the reform of directors' duties the EU is currently debating. We conclude that the failure to take corporate governance codes and the existing regulatory framework into account could seriously impair pending reforms of directors' duties and their link to sustainability

From rods to helices: evidence of a screw-like nematic phase

Evidence of a special chiral nematic phase is provided using numerical simulation and Onsager theory for systems of hard helical particles. This phase appears at the high density end of the nematic phase, when helices are well aligned, and is characterized by the C$_2$ symmetry axes of the helices spiraling around the nematic director with periodicity equal to the particle pitch. This coupling between translational and rotational degrees of freedom allows a more efficient packing and hence an increase of translational entropy. Suitable order parameters and correlation functions are introduced to identify this screw-like phase, whose main features are then studied as a function of radius and pitch of the helical particles. Our study highlights the physical mechanism underlying a similar ordering observed in colloidal helical flagella [E. Barry et al. \textit{Phys. Rev. Lett.} \textbf{96}, 018305 (2006)] and raises the question of whether it could be observed in other helical particle systems, such as DNA, at sufficiently high densities.Comment: List of authors correcte

The Thermal Diffusivity of Biochar Coating Deposited on a Heat Exchanger †

Biochar is a charcoal-like material obtained by burning organic wastes, coming from agricultural and forestry, in a controlled pyrolysis process. In this application, it is deposited on an aluminum foil of thickness 100 μm, which is used as a part of an heat exchanger. The thickness of the deposition of biochar on the aluminum foil ranges from 75 to 250 μm. The result coating is rough and, therefore, it is supposed to improve the heat exchange with the ambient environment, depending on the granulometry of the deposit. One key feature of the deposit is its thermal conductivity. In this work, it is determined by means of IR thermography used as a detector in a Laser Flash configuration. This allows us to evaluate the out-of-plane thermal diffusivity. Such measurements are complemented by density obtained by hydrostatic balance and specific heat by a differential scanning calorimeter

A method for the assessment and compensation of positioning errors in industrial robots

Industrial Robots (IR) are currently employed in several production areas as they enable flexible automation and high productivity on a wide range of operations. The IR low positioning performance, however, has limited their use in high precision applications, namely where positioning errors assume importance for the process and directly affect the quality of the final products. Common approaches to increase the IR accuracy rely on empirical relations which are valid for a single IR model. Also, existing works show no uniformity regarding the experimental procedures followed during the IR performance assessment and identification phases. With the aim to overcome these restrictions and further extend the IR usability, this paper presents a general method for the evaluation of IR pose and path accuracy, primarily focusing on instrumentation and testing procedures. After a detailed description of the experimental campaign carried out on a KUKA KR210 R2700 Prime robot under different operating conditions (speed, payload and temperature state), a novel online compensation approach is presented and validated. The position corrections are processed with an industrial PC by means of a purposely developed application which receives as input the position feedback from a laser tracker. Experiments conducted on straight paths confirmed the validity of the proposed approach, which allows remarkable reductions (in the order of 90%) of the orthogonal deviations and in-line errors during the robot movements

Performance Characterization of Image Feature Detectors in Relation to the Scene Content Utilizing a Large Image Database

Selecting the most suitable local invariant feature detector for a particular application has rendered the task of evaluating feature detectors a critical issue in vision research. Although the literature offers a variety of comparison works focusing on performance evaluation of image feature detectors under several types of image transformations, the influence of the scene content on the performance of local feature detectors has received little attention so far. This paper aims to bridge this gap with a new framework for determining the type of scenes which maximize and minimize the performance of detectors in terms of repeatability rate. The results are presented for several state-of-the-art feature detectors that have been obtained using a large image database of 20482 images under JPEG compression, uniform light and blur changes with 539 different scenes captured from real-world scenarios. These results provide new insights into the behavior of feature detectors

MAC Europe 1991 campaign: AIRSAR/AVIRIS data integration for agricultural test site classification

During summer 1991, multi-sensor data were acquired over the Italian test site 'Otrepo Pavese', an agricultural flat area in Northern Italy. This area has been the Telespazio pilot test site for experimental activities related to agriculture applications. The aim of the investigation described in the following paper is to assess the amount of information contained in the AIRSAR (Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar) and AVIRIS (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer) data, and to evaluate classification results obtained from each sensor data separately and from the combined dataset. All classifications are examined by means of the resulting confusion matrices and Khat coefficients. Improvements of the classification results obtained by using the integrated dataset are finally evaluated

A concise enantioselective synthesis of (+)-endo-brevicomin accomplished by a tellurium/metal exchange reaction

A homoenolate generated by tellurium/lithium exchange reaction was employed in a straightforward enantioselective synthesis of (+)-endo-brevicomin in 70% yield and 84.4% e.e.Um homoenolato gerado pela reação de troca telúrio/lítio foi aplicado na síntese enantioseletiva do (+)-endo-brevicomin com 70% de rendimento isolado e 84,4% de e.e.FAPESPCNPqCoordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES

Water demand prospects for the irrigation in São Francisco River.

Abstract: This study analyzed how the irrigation expansion in São Francisco Hydrographic Region (SFRH) would affect the water availability in four specifics physiographic regions into SFRH (Upper, Middle, sub-Middle, and Lower). The TERM-BR model was used to simulate expansion scenarios in irrigated areas aiming to verify the impact in the water use for 2025 and 2035 according to with National Water Resources Plan (PNRH), and Water Resources Plan for the São Francisco River (SFP). The simulations were carried out for areas deemed potentially suitable for irrigation based on the Ministry of National Integration report (MI). The Climatic Water Balance (CWB) was estimated for São Francisco hydrographic region (SFRH) in order to compare regional water supply and demand. Results suggest that cities located in Upper and Middle São Francisco region would present greater irrigation potential due to the water availability and the proximity to neighborhoods that also irrigate. The comparative result of the CWB and the TERM-BR model shown water availability problems in the states of Alagoas and Pernambuco in particular and cities located in São Francisco Lower.GTAP Resource #5725