Westinghouse Electric

About: Westinghouse Electric is a company organization based out in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Brake & Signal. The organization has 27959 authors who have published 38036 publications receiving 523387 citations.

Vehicle stopping control apparatus

Abstract: 1,181,338. Automatic acceleration control. WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORP. Oct.7, 1968 [Nov.29, 1967], No.47392/68. Heading G3R. The invention relates to a system for bringing to a halt a vehicle such as a train or lift cage. A pulse counter 12, a tachometer 14 and an accelerometer 22 respectively measure the position, speed and deceleration of the vehicle and provide respective control signals; a computer 10 receives the position and speed signals and generates from them a signal representing the deceleration necessary to halt the vehicle at the required position. This signal is modified by a non-linear circuit 20 and then compared at 18 with the actual deceleration signal to control the drive of the vehicle. The non-linear circuit has the effect of increasing the higher values of deceleration thus tending to halt the vehicle sooner than required; this allows for errors in the measuring devices 14, 22. When the vehicle gets close to the required position a switch 21 is closed by the computer 10 to disconnect the circuit 20. The controller 24 includes means limiting the maximum acceleration to a value commensurate with passenger comfort. The accelerometer 22 may be of pendulum or spring types Fig.6, 7 (not shown) and the circuit 20 may consist of an amplifier with negative feedback applied through a Zener diode (34, Fig.5 not shown).

Automated system to prioritize repair of plant equipment

Abstract: The system of the present invention uses the importance of a piece of malfunctioning equipment, the severity and the confidence level in a diagnosis to determine repair priority of the equipment by obtaining the product (46) of the confidence level (CF), importance (IMP) and severity (SEV). The these variables are determined by expert system rules. The severity is the reciprocal (88) of the time to failure. The importance (44) is the cost to repair the maximum damage when the malfunction continues. A malfunction can affect several pieces of equipment in combination, the severity and importance associated with each piece is combined (70) with the confidence and used to determine the repair priority. When the diagnosis of a malfunction is by malfunctioning sensors, the expected equipment life (40) and the availability (86) of sensors that provide a partial backup are considered in prioritizing sensor as well as equipment repair. When a primary piece of equipment is backed up (100), the effect of both pieces of equipment failing (106) is considered in prioritizing the repair. The system ranks the repair of all possible malfunctions on a common scale. The system gives a complete repair priority picture and allows the cost effectiveness to be maximized.