China’s new exchange rate regime, optimal basket currency and currency diversification

We build an optimising framework to analyse a class of economies that adopt an ECU-type basket currency while in transition to increased flexibility of the exchange rate regime. Instead of conventional basket pegging, such an economy uses an ECU-type currency index as a benchmark for monitoring and assessing exchange rate movements. This provides an anchoring device for the nations exchange rate regime and allows the home currencys exchange rate to fluctuate. Under the assumption that the central bank is chiefly interested in maintaining stability, the optimal structure of the basket currency is based on its contribution to minimizing the volatility of the countrys external account. A currency invariance index is applied to capture the effect of the countrys exit from exclusive linkage with the US dollar. The approach is illustrated by Chinese exchange rate policy. We find it advisable and viable for China to form a basket currency with a diversified portfolio of currencies. While the portfolios weighting scheme could favour the dollar, euro and Japanese yen, we show that the composition of the basket is open to a wide range of possibilities. Moreover, contrary to general fears, there is considerable potential for China to engage in currency diversification, which will not necessarily affect the dollars position.basket currency; currency diversification; China

Universal fractional-order design of linear phase lead compensation multirate repetitive control for PWM inverters

Repetitive control (RC) with linear phase lead compensation provides a simple but very effective control solution for any periodic signal with a known period. Multirate repetitive control (MRC) with a downsampling rate can reduce the need of memory size and computational cost, and then leads to a more feasible design of the plug-in repetitive control systems in practical applications. However, with fixed sampling rate, both MRC and its linear phase lead compensator are sensitive to the ratio of the sampling frequency to the frequency of interested periodic signals: (1) MRC might fails to exactly compensate the periodic signal in the case of a fractional ratio; (2) linear phase lead compensation might fail to enable MRC to achieve satisfactory performance in the case of a low ratio. In this paper, a universal fractional-order design of linear phase lead compensation MRC is proposed to tackle periodic signals with high accuracy, fast dynamic response, good robustness, and cost-effective implementation regardless of the frequency ratio, which offers a unified framework for housing various RC schemes in extensive engineering application. An application example of programmable AC power supply is explored to comprehensively testify the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme

Shear strengthening of RC beams using carbon fiber reinforced polymer laminates

Shear failure is catastrophic and occurs usually without advanced warning, thus it is desirable that the beam fails in flexure rather than in shear. Many existing reinforced concrete (RC) members are found to be deficient in shear strength and need to be repaired. Deficiencies occur due to several reasons such as insufficient shear reinforcement or reduction in steel area due to corrosion, increased service load, and construction defects. Externally bonded reinforcement such as Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) provides an excellent solution in these situations. In order to investigate the shear behavior of RC beams with externally bonded CFRP shear reinforcement, experimental programs as well as analytical studies were conducted in this research. The research consists of three parts. They are 1). Regular beams with CFRP shear strengthening; 2). Deep beams with CFRP shear strengthening; and 3). Shear damaged beams with CFRP shear strengthening. CFRP laminates of various types and configurations were applied externally to the beams as shear reinforcement. During the present experimental investigation, a total of five 4-foot long and six 6-foot long regular RC beams and sixteen 3-foot long deep RC beams were tested to study the behavior of shear strengthening using CFRP system. All beams were loaded by a 220-kip MTS TestStar 11 testing system. Results of the test demonstrate the feasibility of using externally applied, epoxy-bonded CFRP system to restore or increase the loadcarrying capacity in shear of RC beams. The CFRP system has been found to increase significantly the serviceability, ductility, and ultimate shear strength of a concrete beam. Restoring beam shear strength using CFRP is a highly effective technique. Based on the experiments and analysis carried out at NJIT and the results from other researchers, new analysis and design methods for both regular and deep RC beams with externally bonded CFRP shear strengthening have also been proposed as well

The Fastest Growing Fossil Fuel Source in the European Union

Energy forecasts predict natural gas to be the fastest growing fossil fuel source in the next 2-3 decades in Europe. However, projections of European gas demand are being revised downwards. Due to decrease in indigenous production and increase in natural gas primary consumption certainty about future gas demand in the European Union has changed over the past few years. Thus is expected to become a more dependent to import needed capacity from outside of Europe satisfying the European increasing demand for natural gas and at the same time protecting the climate and environment is one of the greatest challenges of this age. This paper demonstrates the main important planned natural gas pipeline’s mechanisms for Europe to see how much of expected future demand of Europe will be covered by planned natural gas pipelines. If there will be no economical and most important political, etc issues it seems planned pipelines will be operated in the time scheduled and cover the most part of European demand raised by decrease in indigenous and increase in primary consumption in coming decades

Investigation into fuel pre-treatments for combustion improvement on a compression ignition engine

PhD ThesisThis project aims to improve the combustion performance of a compression ignition engine using three novel fuel pre-treatments, the employment of renewable fuels, nano additive modified fuels and supercritical (SC) fuel combustion, from the perspective of spray characteristics and engine performance. In this project, HVO and GTL are selected as the renewable fuels, whilst CeO2 nanopowder and CNT are the nano additives. A CVV system is fabricated to investigate macroscopic spray characteristics of test fuels at various conditions. A 2D CFD model coupled with the DoE method is developed to correlate experimental conditions to macroscopic spray characteristics. A Cummins ISB4.5 diesel engine test rig is employed to obtain the in-cylinder behaviour and pollutant emissions. A 3D CFD model is built to study the advantages of SC fuel combustion. GTL shows the smallest spray tip penetration during both the injection and post-injection periods, whilst DF has the largest penetration, but the average cone angles are almost the same. Nano additives have no impact on the average cone angle and spray tip penetration, except that CNT can increase the spray tip penetration slightly in the post-injection period. Empirical models are formulated and indicates different impacts of each experimental condition during injection and post-injection. HVO and GTL have lower fuel consumption and NOx, HC and PN emissions than DF. CeO2 nanopowder can significantly reduce NOx, HC and PN emissions, whilst CO can only be reduced in a certain engine load and speed range. CNT lowers down all emissions when blending with most test fuels except GTL. Compared with conventional spray combustion, SC fuel combustion illustrates significantly higher in-cylinder peak pressure and thus improved engine output power. Moreover, the fuel concentration and temperature field during the SC combustion are more evenly distributed, which enables more sufficient combustion and reduction of NOx and soot generation.The SAgE Faculty Doctoral Training Award (DTA) and the China Scholarship Council (CSC) provided me with financial support for this project

Fund family tournament and performance consequences: evidence from the UK fund industry

By applying tournament analysis to the UK Unit Trusts data, the results support significant risk shifting in the family tournament; i.e. interim winning managers tend to increase their level of risk exposure more than losing managers. It also shows that the risk-adjusted returns of the winners outperform those of the losers following the risk taking, which implies that risk altering can be regarded as an indication of managers’ superior ability. However, the tournament behaviour can still be a costly strategy for investors, since winners can be seen to beat losers in the observed returns due to the deterioration in the performance of their major portfolio holdings

Some hypothesis on commonality in liquidity: New evidence from the Chinese stock market

In this paper, we examine four specific hypotheses relating to commonality in liquidity on the Chinese stock markets. These hypotheses are: (a) that market-wide liquidity determines liquidity of individual stocks; (b) that liquidity varies with firm size; (c) that sectoral-based liquidity affects individual stock liquidities differently; and (d) that commonality in liquidity has an asymmetric effect. Based on a two-year dataset on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges comprising of over 34 and 48 million transactions respectively, we find strong support for commonality in liquidity and a greater influence of industry-wide liquidity in explaining liquidity of individual stocks. Moreover, our results suggest that of the three main sectors â financial, industrial, and resources â industrial sector‟s liquidity is most important in explaining individual stock liquidities. Finally, we do not find any evidence of size effects, and document an asymmetric effect of market-wide liquidity on liquidity of individual stocks.Commonality in Liquidity; Asymmetric Information; Size Effects; Chinese