Implementation of Load Control for Smart Metering in Smart Grids

The conventional energy meters are not suitable for long operating purposes as they spend much human and material resources. Smart meters, on the other hand, are devices that perform advanced functions including electrical energy consumption recording of residential/industrial users, billing, real-time monitoring, and load balancing. In this chapter, a smart home prototype is designed and implemented. Appliances are powered by the grid during daytime, and a photovoltaic panel stored power during the night or in case of an electricity outage. Second, consumed power from both sources is sensed and further processed for cumulative energy, cost calculations and bill establishment for different proposed scenarios using LABVIEW software. Data are communicated using a USB data acquisition card (DAQ-USB 6008). Finally, a simulation framework using LABVIEW software models four houses each equipped with various appliances. The simulator predicts different power consumption profiles to seek of peak-demand reduction through a load control process.

Development of sliding contact resistance testing equipment for carbon brush confluence ring

A carbon brush and a confluence ring form a pair of sliding electrical contacts. To reduce the contact resistance between the carbon brush and the confluence ring, the time for the running-in wear of the carbon brush increased during the machining process to increase the actual contact area. As a result, the welding and ablation failure between the carbon brush and the confluence ring happened under the impact of high current during service. To explore the effect of carbon brush wear on sliding electrical contact performance, it is necessary to monitor the dynamic contact resistance of the carbon brush and the confluence ring. In this paper, a set of 8-channel contact resistance testing equipment is developed. The device uses a relay array to achieve 1-8 channel gating and uses a data acquisition card to detect the contact resistance of each carbon brush and confluence ring pair combining with a four-point method. Based on the Labview software, it realizes the selection of acquisition channels, data acquisition card driving, real-time data processing, displaying, and storage. The range of contact resistance that this set of equipment can detect is 10mΩ ∼2Ω, and the accuracy can reach 1% of the full scale. Finally, the simulation experiments show that the testing equipment meets the technical requirements, and the continuous test runs stably and reliably. It can be used for the testing and research of the sliding contact resistance between the carbon brush and the confluence ring during the running-in wear process.

ESO-Based Vibration Control for All-Clamped Plate Using an Electrodynamic Inertial Actuator

This paper proposes a disturbance rejection method with extended state observer (ESO) and a tracking differentiator (TD) to realize vibration suppression of all-clamped plate structure in the presence of lumped disturbance, i.e. internal dynamic uncertainties, unknown external forces and accelerometer measurement noises. First, the structure is modeled as two degrees of freedom system based on vibration characteristics. Second, an ESO is employed to ensure the vibration suppression performance by estimating the lumped disturbances and compensating these disturbances via real-time feedforward mechanism. Meanwhile, a TD is introduced to eliminate the influence of the measurement noises. Moreover, the stability of the closed-loop system is discussed in detail. Finally, the proposed controller is verified on the hardware-in-loop plat-form based on NI PCIe-6343 data acquisition card. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed method possesses good vibration suppression performance.

Multifrequency Impedance Tomography System for Research on Environmental and Thermal Processes

The possibility for spatial and temporal monitoring of environmental, chemical or thermal processes is of high importance for their better understanding thus control and optimization. Therefore, measurement methods that enable such opportunities might be especially valuable for researchers and process engineers. For this reason, in this paper the novel Electrical Impedance Tomography system is proposed that enables the visualization of the processes in which the electrical conductivity of material is changing. The proposed EIT system is based mostly on general purpose equipment. It consists of three laboratory-grade devices: a signal generator, a switching device and a data acquisition card for voltage measurement. In addition to those devices, the current source was constructed to complete the system. The EIT system was designed to have the ability of sourcing the current of frequency up to 250 kHz. A set of validation experiments were carried out to verify the EIT system accuracy. The validation tests consisted of object detection, distinguishing between objects of different conductivity, multifrequency imaging and visualization of slow-changing processes. The obtained results were also compared with the numerical simulations. The proposed system was proven to have the ability of correct imaging of irregularity inside the area of the sensor.

Lower Limb Joint Nursing and Rehabilitation System Based on Intelligent Medical Treatment

With the aggravation of the problem of aging population, all kinds of lower limb paralysis caused by various diseases occur frequently. People’s demand for lower limb nursing and rehabilitation treatment is growing. In this paper, combined with intelligent medical technology and lower limb kinematics model, this paper proposes to build a lower limb joint nursing and rehabilitation system based on intelligent medical treatment. It is expected that, through the following limb joint rehabilitation robot as the main rehabilitation means, a smart nursing rehabilitation system which can quickly respond to users and realize remote rehabilitation nursing can be designed. First of all, it is clear that the main body of the lower limb joint rehabilitation system consists of the robot body and the state display system. Then, the sensor, amplifier, and data acquisition card are set in the data acquisition system, and the plantar balance force is detected using a FlexiForce film pressure sensor. The final control system mainly includes the main control module program and the lower limb action recognition program. The motor control software adopts PID regulation method, and the lower limb action recognition adopts SVM one-to-one classification method. After the construction of lower limb joint nursing and rehabilitation system, the accuracy rate of action recognition and classification was tested. In the third experiment, the accuracy of all the movements was 100%. Then, the joint displacement and angle changes of the experimenter assisted by the system were analyzed. The experimenter’s knee joint and hip joint show a normal walking state, and the joint angle changes tend to be normal. Ten out of 55 rehabilitation system users were randomly selected for interview survey. The total scores of operation convenience, wearing comfort, intensity suitability, and movement science of the system were 90, 83, 84, and 91, respectively. This shows that the rehabilitation action designed by the system is scientific and easy to operate and can be put into use in rehabilitation training after improving the wearing comfort.

Implementation of Load Control for Smart Metering in Smart Grids

The conventional energy meters are not suitable for long operating purposes as they spend much human and material resources. Smart meters, on the other hand, are devices that perform advanced functions including electrical energy consumption recording of residential/industrial users, billing, real-time monitoring, and load balancing. In this chapter, a smart home prototype is designed and implemented. Appliances are powered by the grid during daytime, and a photovoltaic panel stored power during the night or in case of an electricity outage. Second, consumed power from both sources is sensed and further processed for cumulative energy, cost calculations and bill establishment for different proposed scenarios using LABVIEW software. Data are communicated using a USB data acquisition card (DAQ-USB 6008). Finally, a simulation framework using LABVIEW software models four houses each equipped with various appliances. The simulator predicts different power consumption profiles to seek of peak-demand reduction through a load control process.

Cardiac Arrhythmia Prediction by Adaptive Analysis via Bluetooth

In this work, the development of a data acquisition system for adaptive monitoring based on a dynamic quadratic neural unit is presented. Acquisition of the continuous signal is achieved with the BITalino biomedical data acquisition card. The system is trained sample-by-sample with a real time recurrent learning method. Then, possible cardiac arrhythmia is predicted by implementing the adaptive monitoring in real time to recognize patterns that predict cardiac arrhythmia up to 1 second in advance. For the evaluation of the interface, tests are performed using the obtained signal in real time

MMaJIC, an Experimental Chamber for Investigating Soldering and Brazing in Microgravity

An E-1 payload, the Microgravity Materials Joining Investigative Chamber (MMaJIC), was designed and built for use aboard the International Space Station to investigate soldering and brazing phenomena in a microgravity environment. MMaJIC is a self-contained unit employing a microcontroller that runs a pre-programed experiment, monitors safety sensors, and supports temperature and video recording. MMaJIC uses individual experiment trays that can be easily modified for a specific investigation. The trays, which include a temperature/video data acquisition card, can be easily changed out and returned to Earth for evaluation. Simple operation of MMaJIC minimizes astronaut time while ensuring maximum sample throughput. It is expected that the results will shed considerable light on soldering and brazing in low-gravity environments, information that is important for NASA in conducting comprehensive repair and/or fabrication operations during long duration space missions.

3D Printed Torsional Mechanism Demonstrating Fundamentals of Free Vibrations

Commercially available turn-key systems are expensive and require substantial lab space making it harder to accommodate many in vibrations laboratories. This study presents a low-cost, compact and portable torsional mechanism incorporating multiple rotating disks and a long thin rod supported vertically with bearings and fixed supports at the top and bottom ends to study modeling of systems using experimental data. The mechanism consisting of a rod, disks, bearing and disk supports, and a base, is built by 3D printing using thermoplastic PETG. The long, thin rod in this mechanism serves as a torsional spring. The equivalent stiffnesses of the 2 DOF system can be changed by adjusting the vertical position of the disks with respect to the ends, thereby shortening or lengthening the effective twist length of the thin rod. The overall dimensions of the mechanism are 6 inches in height, 5 inches in width and 2 inches in depth, and the expected cost including the experimental setup is around $30 if an Arduino is used for data acquisition and $170 if equipped with National Instruments (NI) external data acquisition card (DAQ). Learning objectives of the lab course utilizing the proposed mechanism are identified. The free response data is collected for single degree of freedom system using an external data acquisition card and potentiometer and unknown parameters of the system are determined by system identification. Mechanism unknown parameters are calculated using system identification and theoretical model is compared with the experimental data.