Control loop measurement based isolation of faults and disturbances in process plants

This thesis focuses on the development of data-driven automated techniques to enhance performance assessment methods. These techniques include process control loop status monitoring, fault localisation in a number of interacting control loops and the detection and isolation of multiple oscillations in a multi-loop situation. Not only do they make use of controlled variables, but they also make use of controller outputs, indicator readings, set-points and controller settings. The idea behind loop status is that knowledge of the current behaviour of a loop is important when assessing MVC-based performance, because of the assumptions that are made in the assessment. Current behaviour is defined in terms of the kind of deterministic trend that is present in the loop at the time of assessment. When the status is other than steady, MVC-based approaches are inappropriate. Either the assessment must be delayed until steady conditions are attained or other methods must be applied. When the status is other than steady, knowledge of current behaviour can help identify the possible cause. One way of doing this is to derive another statistic, the overall loop performance index (OLPI), from loop status. The thesis describes a novel fault localisation technique, which analyses this statistic to find the source of a plant-wide disturbance, when a number of interacting control loops are perturbed by a single dominant disturbance/fault. Although the technique can isolate a single dominant oscillation, it is not able to isolate the sources of multiple, dominant oscillations. To do this, a novel technique is proposed that is based on the application of spectral independent component analysis (ICA). Spectral independent component analysis (spectral ICA) is based on the analysis of spectra derived via a discrete Fourier transform from time domain process data. The analysis is able to extract dominant spectrum-like independent components each of which has a narrow-bank peak that captures the behaviour of one of the oscillation sources. It is shown that the extraction of independent components with single spectral peaks can be guaranteed by an ICA algorithm that maximises the kurtosis of the independent components (ICs). This is a significant advantage over spectral principle component analysis (PCA), because multiple spectral peaks could be present in the extracted principle components (PCs), and the interpretation of detection and isolation of oscillation disturbances based on spectral PCs is not straightforward. The novel spectral ICA method is applied to a simulated data set and to real plant data obtained from an industrial chemical plant. Results demonstrate its ability to detect and isolate multiple dominant oscillations in different frequency ranges

Improved Performance of d₃₁-Mode Needle-actuating Transducer with PMN-PT Piezocrystal

Prototypes of a PZT-based ultrasound needle-actuating device have shown the ability to reduce needle penetration force and enhance needle visibility with color Doppler imaging during needle insertion for tissue biopsy and regional anesthesia. However, the demand for smaller, lighter devices and the need for high performance transducers have motivated investigation of a different configuration of needle-actuation transducer, utilizing the d 31-mode of PZT4 piezoceramic, and exploration of further improvement in its performance using relaxor-type piezocrystal. This paper outlines the development of the d 31-mode needle actuation transducer design from simulation to fabrication and demonstration. Full characterization was performed on transducers for performance comparison. The performance of the proposed smaller, lighter d 31-mode transducer is comparable with that of previous $d-{33}$-mode transducers. Furthermore, it has been found to be much more efficient when using PMN-PT piezocrystal rather than piezoceramic. </p

Wall shear stress measurement in carotid artery phantoms with variation in degree of stenosis using plane wave vector doppler

Wall shear stress (WSS) plays an important role in the formation, growth, and rupture of atherosclerotic plaques in arteries. This study measured WSS in diseased carotid artery phantoms with degrees of stenosis varying from 0 to 60% with both steady and pulsatile flow. Experiments were performed using in silico and real flow phantoms. Blood velocities were estimated using plane wave (PW) vector Doppler. Wall shear stress was then estimated from the velocity gradient near the wall multiplied by the viscosity of a blood-mimicking fluid. The estimated WSS using the in silico phantom agreed within 10% of the ground-truth values (root-mean-square error). The phantom experiment showed that the mean WSS and maximum WSS increased with the increasing degree of stenosis. The simulation and experiment results provide the necessary validation data to give confidence in WSS measurements in patients using the PW vector Doppler technique

A review of current evidence about lncRNA MEG3: A tumor suppressor in multiple cancers

Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3) is a lncRNA located at the DLK1-MEG3 site of human chromosome 14q32.3. The expression of MEG3 in various tumors is substantially lower than that in normal adjacent tissues, and deletion of MEG3 expression is involved in the occurrence of many tumors. The high expression of MEG3 could inhibit the occurrence and development of tumors through several mechanisms, which has become a research hotspot in recent years. As a member of tumor suppressor lncRNAs, MEG3 is expected to be a new target for tumor diagnosis and treatment. This review discusses the molecular mechanisms of MEG3 in different tumors and future challenges for the diagnosis and treatment of cancers through MEG3

Graph theoretical analysis of functional network for comprehension of sign language

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC: 31571158, 31170969) and National Key Basic Research Program of China (2014CB846102), and a grant from the National Institutes of Health (R01 DC010997). We thank Yong He and Roel Willems for providing insightful comments to this study and Amie Fairs for proofreading the manuscript. No conflict of interest is declared.Peer reviewedPostprin