Brno University of Technology

About: Brno University of Technology is a education organization based out in Brno, Czechia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Computer science & Fracture mechanics. The organization has 6339 authors who have published 15226 publications receiving 194088 citations. The organization is also known as: Vysoké učení technické v Brně & BUT.

Use of the diffusive gradients in thin films technique to evaluate (bio)available trace metal concentrations in river water.

Abstract: Concentrations of Cd, Cu, Cr, Pb, Ni and Zn were monitored in the Svitava River (the Czech Republic) during April and September 2005. Total concentrations and total dissolved concentrations were obtained through regular water sampling, and the diffusive gradients in thin films technique (DGT) were used to gain information on the kinetically labile metal concentrations. Each measured concentration was compared with the corresponding average (bio)available concentration calculated from the mass of metal accumulated by the moss species Fontinalis antipyretica. The concentrations of Cd, Pb, Cr and Zn measured using DGT corresponded well with those obtained after the deployment of Fontinalis antipyretica moss bags in the Svitava River, but the concentrations of Cu and Ni did not. The calculated (bio)available Cu concentration correlated well with the total dissolved concentration of Cu, whereas no correlation was found to exist between the concentrations of Ni.

Regional Water Resources Assessment using Water Scarcity Pinch Analysis

Abstract: Water quality problems contribute significantly to water scarcity. This study aims to redefine water scarcity caused by water quality degradation together with water quantity shortage and propose a Water Scarcity Pinch Analysis (WSPA) to quantify the regional water scarcity. WSPA is proposed based on the well-applied method of Water Pinch Analysis. The quality of water sources and demands is specified by setting water quality categories, based on which the staircase Grand Composite Curve (GCC) is constructed. After applying the water quality cascade, the GCC provides the water quantity-quality target, which is the net deficit volume (m3) of water with certain water quality (categories). The water quantity-quality target is defined as the regional water scarcity. Water quality upgrading is applied to maximise the water use efficiency for different purposes by mixing water sources with different qualities. Three case studies are set to illustrate the implementation of the proposed method and investigate the performance of the proposed WSPA. The results show that WSPA identifies both the water quantity scarcity and scarcity caused by insufficient water quality or the water quality mismatch between the sources and demands. Conclusions and novel contributions are i) WSPA enables accounting for water quality together with quantity in water scarcity assessment and provides both quantity and quality targets for minimising regional water scarcity; ii) Applying the WSPA to a macro level elevates the ratio-based water scarcity assessment from single determination to insight-based assessment that can guide the regional water resource management; iii) water quality cascade and water quality upgrade with water dilution can improve water use efficiency and reduce regional water scarcity.

Energy Harvesting Technologies for Structural Health Monitoring of Airplane Components-A Review.

Abstract: With the aim of increasing the efficiency of maintenance and fuel usage in airplanes, structural health monitoring (SHM) of critical composite structures is increasingly expected and required. The optimized usage of this concept is subject of intensive work in the framework of the EU COST Action CA18203 “Optimising Design for Inspection” (ODIN). In this context, a thorough review of a broad range of energy harvesting (EH) technologies to be potentially used as power sources for the acoustic emission and guided wave propagation sensors of the considered SHM systems, as well as for the respective data elaboration and wireless communication modules, is provided in this work. EH devices based on the usage of kinetic energy, thermal gradients, solar radiation, airflow, and other viable energy sources, proposed so far in the literature, are thus described with a critical review of the respective specific power levels, of their potential placement on airplanes, as well as the consequently necessary power management architectures. The guidelines provided for the selection of the most appropriate EH and power management technologies create the preconditions to develop a new class of autonomous sensor nodes for the in-process, non-destructive SHM of airplane components.

Integrated smart sensor networking framework for sensor-based appliances

Abstract: This paper presents an integrated, sensor networking framework stemming from the IEEE 1451 smart transducer interface standard. This object-based networking model is complemented by the Virtual Interface Architecture (VIA), a Compaq-Intel-Microsoft approach to Internet messaging, and by the Internet Protocol (IP) multicast communication, mediating efficient and unified access from Internet to smart sensors. An application of networked sensors that offers a reusable design pattern for a class of sensor-based appliances is analyzed. The kernel of the paper focuses utilization of this framework for a computer-based pressure measurement systems developing environment as a real-world project while stressing smart pressure sensor and Internet connectivity architectures.

Developing a speaker identification system for the DARPA RATS project

Abstract: This paper describes the speaker identification (SID) system developed by the Patrol team for the first phase of the DARPA RATS (Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech) program, which seeks to advance state of the art detection capabilities on audio from highly degraded communication channels. We present results using multiple SID systems differing mainly in the algorithm used for voice activity detection (VAD) and feature extraction. We show that (a) unsupervised VAD performs as well supervised methods in terms of downstream SID performance, (b) noise-robust feature extraction methods such as CFCCs out-perform MFCC front-ends on noisy audio, and (c) fusion of multiple systems provides 24% relative improvement in EER compared to the single best system when using a novel SVM-based fusion algorithm that uses side information such as gender, language, and channel id.