In this paper, the authors present an extended survey on the evolution and the modern approaches in the thermal analysis of electrical machines. The improvements and the new techniques proposed in the last decade are analyzed in depth and compared in order to highlight the qualities and defects of each. In particular, thermal analysis based on lumped-parameter thermal network, finite-element analysis, and computational fluid dynamics are considered in this paper. In addition, an overview of the problems linked to the thermal parameter determination and computation is proposed and discussed. Taking into account the aims of this paper, a detailed list of books and papers is reported in the references to help researchers interested in these topics.

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Evolution and Modern Approaches for Thermal Analysis of Electrical Machines

An automated irrigation system was developed to optimize water use for agricultural crops. The system has a distributed wireless network of soil-moisture and temperature sensors placed in the root zone of the plants. In addition, a gateway unit handles sensor information, triggers actuators, and transmits data to a web application. An algorithm was developed with threshold values of temperature and soil moisture that was programmed into a microcontroller-based gateway to control water quantity. The system was powered by photovoltaic panels and had a duplex communication link based on a cellular-Internet interface that allowed for data inspection and irrigation scheduling to be programmed through a web page. The automated system was tested in a sage crop field for 136 days and water savings of up to 90% compared with traditional irrigation practices of the agricultural zone were achieved. Three replicas of the automated system have been used successfully in other places for 18 months. Because of its energy autonomy and low cost, the system has the potential to be useful in water limited geographically isolated areas.

Automated Irrigation System Using a Wireless Sensor Network and GPRS Module

A natural carbohydrate biopolymer was extracted from the agricultural biomass waste (durian seed). Subsequently, the crude biopolymer was purified by using the saturated barium hydroxide to minimize the impurities. Finally, the effect of different drying techniques on the flow characteristics and functional properties of the purified biopolymer was investigated. The present study elucidated the main functional characteristics such as flow characteristics, water- and oil-holding capacity, solubility, and foaming capacity. In most cases except for oven drying, the bulk density decreased, thus increasing the porosity. This might be attributed to the increase in the inter-particle voids of smaller sized particles with larger contact surface areas per unit volume. The current study revealed that oven-dried gum and freeze-dried gum had the highest and lowest compressibility index, thus indicating the weakest and strongest flowability among all samples. In the present work, the freeze-dried gum showed the lowest angle of repose, bulk, tapped and true density. This indicates the highest porosity degree of freeze dried gum among dried seed gums. It also exhibited the highest solubility, and foaming capacity thus providing the most desirable functional properties and flow characteristics among all drying techniques. The present study revealed that freeze drying among all drying techniques provided the most desirable functional properties and flow characteristics for durian seed gum.

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Effect of different drying techniques on flowability characteristics and chemical properties of natural carbohydrate-protein Gum from durian fruit seed.

A joint initiative by the British Thoracic Society and the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland was undertaken to update the 2001 guidelines for the selection and assessment of patients with lung cancer who can potentially be managed by radical treatment.

https://thorax.bmj.com/content/thoraxjnl/65/Suppl_3/iii1.full.pdf

Guidelines on the radical management of patients with lung cancer

In this paper, we present four purely textile patch antennas for Bluetooth applications in wearable computing using the frequency range around 2.4 GHz. The textile materials and the planar antenna shape provide a smooth integration into clothing while preserving the typical properties of textiles. The four antennas differ in the deployed materials and in the antenna polarization, but all of them feature a microstrip line as antenna feed. We have developed a manufacturing process that guarantees unaffected electrical behavior of the individual materials when composed to an antenna. Thus, the conductive textiles possess a sheet resistance of less than 1Omega/squarein order to keep losses at a minimum. The process also satisfies our requirements in terms of accuracy meeting the Bluetooth specifications. Our investigations not only characterize the performance of the antennas in planar shape, but also under defined bending conditions that resemble those of a worn garment. We show that the antennas can withstand clothing bends down to a radius of 37.5 mm without violating specifications

/pdf/design-and-characterization-of-purely-textile-patch-antennas-2nanw0dxzs.pdf

Design and Characterization of Purely Textile Patch Antennas

Developing laboratory experiments to teach students the problems related to the corrosion of metallic artifacts is a challenging problem. Corrosion processes develop over weeks with sudden corrosion rate changes so students should be able to look after the specimens on a regular basis and this is often not compatible with their other duties. This project tries to address this problem by arranging an infrastructure capable of letting students to both remotely observe the corrosion evolution, but also to act on the corrosion process by changing the parameters with affect the corrosion itself. The infrastructure deploys a double level authorization procedure so that it is possible to have several corrosion tests running in parallel with all the audience capable of following their evolutions, but only specific students enabled to change the parameters of a specific experiment. This permits to all the class to observe the effect of different events and allows them writing reports and discussing the effect of the different parameters.

A remotely accessible laboratory for corrosion training

The study of the corrosion mechanisms which affect iron artifacts is the first fundamental step for developing tailored and long-lasting conservation procedures. Unfortunately, such mechanisms are connected not only to the composition of the corrosion product layer, but also to its porosity and microstructure. μ-Raman spectroscopy can be used to assess the composition of the corrosion products, but the effect of the layer porosity requires a different approach. This paper investigates the combined use of μ-Raman and Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) for the characterization of some iron reinforcements of the Metz Cathedral (France), with the final goals of understanding the corrosion mechanism and having a reliable assessment of the artifact stability. In particular, the proposed measuring approach has proved to be able to give useful data on the electrochemical reactivity of the surface, on the presence of cracks and on the porosity degree of the corrosion product layers. After a series of laboratory tests to characterize the surface, the EIS measurements can be employed also in-situ for a noninvasive assessment of the artifact corrosion behavior. This way it is possible to conceive long-lasting monitoring campaigns, which would allow one to identify artifacts apparently well-preserved, but in danger of possible corrosion due to the porous nature of their corrosion layers and the presence of active electrochemical species in contact to the metallic surface.

Integrated measuring approach for the study of corrosion mechanisms

The auto-diagnosis system of an intelligent measuring instrument

Atmospheric particulate is one of the main responsible for the environmental pollution of highly populated cities. The particulate matter can be considered an aerosol of many particles, with different shapes, morphologies and sizes down to few micrometers. These small particles are responsible for climate changes and, when inhaled, can reach the lungs causing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Usually commercial sensors are based on passive filters and are designed to measure only particles whose size is below a certain value. Therefore, a measuring system capable of assessing the quality of air and evaluating not only the amount of particles, but also the size distribution of the particulate matter in urban atmospheres could be extremely helpful. This paper describes a simple and cheap optical solution, which is able to detect the total amount of solid pollution particles and classify them according to their average size, giving a fast response to the users.

An Optical Sensing System for Atmospheric Particulate Matter

Systematic studies on the GEM foil material are performed to measure the moisture diffusion rate and saturation level. These studies are important because the presence of this compound inside the detector’ s foil can possibly change its mechanical and electrical properties, and in such a way, the detector performance can be affected. To understand this phenomenon, a model is developed with COMSOL Multiphysics v. 4.3 [], which described the adsorption and diffusion within the geometry of GEM foil, the concentration profiles and the time required to saturate the foil. The COMSOL model is verified by experimental observations on a GEM foil sample. This note will describe the model and its experimental verification results.

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Marco Parvis

Papers

A remotely accessible laboratory for corrosion training

Integrated measuring approach for the study of corrosion mechanisms

The auto-diagnosis system of an intelligent measuring instrument

An Optical Sensing System for Atmospheric Particulate Matter

Characterization of the water diffusion in GEM foil material