SeminarTopics.INFO

ITER (originally an acronym of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international nuclear fusion research and engineering project, which is currently building the world’s largest and most advanced experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor at Cadarache in the south of France. The ITER project aims to make the long-awaited transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to full-scale electricity-producing fusion power plants. The project is funded and run by seven member entities – the European Union (EU), India, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The EU, as host party for the ITER complex, is contributing 45% of the cost, with the other six parties contributing 9% each.

The ITER fusion reactor itself has been designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power for 50 megawatts of input power, or ten times the amount of energy put in. The machine is expected to demonstrate the principle of getting more energy out of the fusion process than is used to initiate it, something that has not been achieved with previous fusion reactors. Construction of the facility began in 2007, and the first plasma is expected in 2019. When ITER becomes operational, it will become the largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in use, surpassing the Joint European Torus. The first commercial demonstration fusion power plant, named DEMO, is proposed to follow on from the ITER project to bring fusion energy to the commercial market.
The same principle of sun is used to produce heat in ITER plant.

A fuse is a one time over current protection device employing fusible link that melts after the current exceeds a certain level for a certain length of time. Typically, a wire or chemical compound breaks the circuit when the current exceeds the rated value.

Polyfuse is a new standard for circuit protection .It is resettable. Technically, Polyfuses are not fuses but polymeric positive temperature coefficient thermistors (PPTC). Re-settable fuses provide over current protection and automatic restoration.

Despite the spread of broadband technology in the last few years, there are significant areas of the world that don’t have access to high-speed Internet. When weighed against the relatively small number of customers Internet providers would gain, the incremental expenditures of laying cable and building the necessary infrastructure to provide DSL or cable in many areas, especially rural , is too great. But if broadband could be served through power lines, there would be no need to build a new infrastructure. Anywhere there is electricity there could be broadband. Technology to deliver high-speed data over the existing electric power delivery network is closer to reality in the marketplace. Broadband OverPowerline, is positioned to offer an alternative means of providing high-speed internet access, VoicE over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and other broadband services, using medium – and low – voltage lines to reach customers’ homes and businesses. By combining the technological principles of radio, wireless networking, and modems, developers have created a way to send data over power lines and into homes at speeds between 500 kilobits and 3 megabits per second (equivalent to DSL and cable). By modifying the current power grids with specialized equipment, the BPL developers could partner with power companies and Internet service providers to bring broadband to everyone with access to electricity

High Altitude Wind Power uses flying electric generator (FEG) technology in the form of what have been more popularly called flying windmills, is a proposed renewable energy project over rural or low-populated areas, to produce around 12,000 MW of electricity with only 600 well clustered rotorcraft kites that use only simple autogyro physics to generate far more kinetic energy than a nuclear plant can.

According to Sky WindPower; the overuse of fossil fuels and the overabundance of radioactive waste from nuclear energy plants is taking our planet once again down a path of destruction, for something that is more expensive and far more dangerous in the long run. FEG technology is just cheaper, cleaner and can provide more energy than those environmentally unhealthy methods of the past, making it a desirable substitute/alternative.

The secret to functioning High Altitude Wind Power is efficient tether technology that reaches 15,000 feet in the air, far higher than birds will fly, but creating restricted airspace for planes and other aircraft.

The same materials used in the tethers that hold these balloons in place can also hold flying windmills in place; and with energy cable technology getting ever lighter and stronger .Flying windmills appear to be 90 percent more energy efficient in wind tunnel tests than their land-based counterparts; that is three times more efficiency due to simple yet constantly abundant and effective high altitude wind power, available only 15,000 feet in the air by way of clustered rotor craft kites tethered with existing anti-terrorist technologies like those used on the Mexican/American border radar balloons.

High Altitude Wind Power offers itself as a clean and more powerful source of power generation than anything available on-the-grid at present and if Sky WindPower Corp. has their way, FEG technology and flying windmills will take the lead of a more sustainable future within the decade.

Compound solid state switches such as GaAs MESFETs and PIN diodes are widely used in microwave and millimeter wave integrated circuits (MMICs) for telecommunications applications including signal routing, impedance matching networks, and adjustable gain amplifiers. However, these solid-state switches have a large insertion loss (typically 1 dB) in the on state and poor electrical isolation in the off state. The recent developments of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) have been continuously providing new and improved paradigms in the field of microwave applications. Different configured micro machined miniature switches have been reported. Among these switches, capacitive membrane microwave switching devices present lower insertion loss, higher isolation, better nonlinearity and zero static power consumption. In this presentation, we describe the design, fabrication and performance of a surface micro machined capacitive microwave switch on glass substrate using electroplating techniques.

Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) are a legacy of war, insurrection, and guerilla activity. Landmines kill and maim approximately 26,000 people annually. In Cambodia, whole areas of arable land cannot be farmed due to the threat of landmines. United Nations relief operations are made more difficult and dangerous due to the mining of roads. Current demining techniques are heavily reliant on metal detectors and prodders.

Technologies are used for landmine detection are:

• • Metal detectors— capable of finding even low-metal content mines in mineralized soils.
  • Nuclear magnetic resonance, fast neutron activation and thermal neutron activation.
  • Thermal imaging and electro-optical sensors— detect evidence of buried objects.
  • Biological sensors such as dogs, pigs, bees and birds.
  • Chemical sensors such as thermal fluorescence— detect airborne and waterborne presence of explosive vapors.

In this discussion, we will concentrate on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). This ultra wide band radar provides centimeter resolution to locate even small targets. There are two distinct types of GPR, time-domain and frequency domain. Time domain or impulse GPR transmites discrete pulses of nanosecond duration and digitizes the returns at GHz sample rates. Frequency domain GPR systems transmit single frequencies either uniquely, as a series of frequency steps, or as a chirp. The amplitude and phase of the return signal is measured. The resulting data is converted to the time domain. GPR operates by detecting the dielectric contrasts in the soils, which allows it to locate even non metallic mines.

In this discussion we deal with buried anti-tank (AT) and anti-personnel (AP) landmines which require close approach or contact to activate. AT mines range from about 15 to 35 cm in size. They are typically buried up to 40cm deep, but they can also be deployed on the surface of a road to block a column of machinery. AP mines range from about 5 to 15cm in size. AT mines which are designed to impede the progress of destroy vehicles and AP mines which are designed to kill and maim people.

The microcontroller-based power monitoring system is an electronic device used to continuously monitor the parameters of power such as voltage, current, frequency, etc at the various points of an electric or electronics devices. The entire system is controlled by the microcontroller (80C31) and it is the real time monitoring of various parameters. Thus the name “REAL TIME MONITORING OF HIGH CAPACITY (400KVA-600KVA) BATTERY BACK UP SYSTEM”. This system is an 8-channel device, which accepts 8 analog input signals and consist of analog multiplexer, A/D converter, ROM, RAM, buffer etc. The different channels are selected by simple switch operation. From the UPS the channels and alarms are given to the microcontroller and it will process and control the parameters.

Electrodynamic (ED) tether is a long conducting wire extended from spacecraft. It has a strong potential for providing propellant less propulsion to spacecraft in low earth orbit. An electrodynamic Tether uses the same principle as electric motor in toys, appliances and computer disk drives. It works as a thruster, because a magnetic field exerts a force on a current carrying wire. The magnetic field is supplied by the earth. By properly controlled the forces generated by this “electrodynamic” tether can be used to pull or push a spacecraft to act as brake or a booster. NASA plans to lasso energy from Earth’s atmosphere with a tether act as part of first demonstration of a propellant-free space propulsion system, potentially leading to a revolutionary space transportation system. Working with Earth’s magnetic field would benefit a number of spacecraft including the International Space Station. Tether propulsion requires no fuel. Is completely reusable and environmentally clean and provides all these features at low cost.

Wireless transmission of electromagnetic radiation (communication signals) has become a popular method of transmitting RF signals such as cordless, wireless and cellular telephone signals, paper signals, two way radio signals, video conferencing signals and LAN signals indoors.

Indoor wireless transmission has the advantage that building in which transmission is taking place does not have to be filled with wires or cables that are equipped to carry a multitude of signals. Wires and signals are costly to install and may require expensive upgrades when their capacity is exceeded or when new technologies require different types of wires and cables than those already installed.

Traditional indoor wireless communication systems transmit and receive signals through the use of a network of transmitters, receivers and antennas that are placed throughout the interior of a building. Devices must be located such that signals must not be lost or signal strength may not get attenuated. Again a change in the existing architecture also affects the wireless transmission. Another challenge related to installation of wireless networks in buildings is the need to predict the RF propagation and coverage in the presence of complex combinations of shapes and materials in the buildings.

In general, the attenuation in buildings is larger than that in free space, requiring more cells and higher power to obtain wider coverage. Despite of all these, placement of antennas, receivers and antennas in an indoor environment is largely a process of trial and error. Hence there is need for a method and a system for efficiently transmitting RF and microwave signals indoors without having to install an extensive system of wires and cables inside the buildings.

This paper suggests an alternative method of distributing electromagnetic signals in buildings by the recognition that every building is equipped with an RF wave guide distribution system, the HVAC ducts. The use of HVAC ducts is also amenable to a systematic design procedure but should be significantly less expensive than other approaches since existing infrastructure is used and RF is distributed more efficiently.

In this paper, the implementation of a shunt active power filter with a small series reactor for a three-phase system is presented. The system consists of multiple non-linear loads, which are a combination of harmonic current sources and harmonic voltage sources, with significant unbalanced components. The filter consists of a three-phase current-controlled voltage source inverter (CC-VSI) with a filter inductance at the ac output and a dc-bus capacitor. The CC-VSI is operated to directly control the ac grid current to be sinusoidal and in phase with the grid voltage. The switching is controlled using ramp time current control, which is based on the concept of zero average current error. The simulation results indicate that the filter along with the series reactor is able to handle predominantly the harmonic voltage sources, as well as the unbalance, so that the grid currents are sinusoidal, in phase with the grid voltages and symmetrical.

When one stream of fluid is permitted to impinge on another, direction of flow changes and the tendency of a fluid to strike the wall also changes. This concept gives rise to a new engineering system known as ‘fluidics. The term fluidics is the contraction of the words fluid and logic. Tremendous progress has been made in last twenty years in design and application of fluidic devices.

The current interest in fluidics for logic and control function was launched by the U.S Army’sHarry Diamond Laboratories. In March 1960 this laboratories invented the first fluid amplifier. This work was later expanded through a series of research and development contracts and the work reported in this section was sponsored by the U.S Airforce.The environmental capability of fluidic devices permits direct measurement of required control parameters within the engine.

These devices are more economical, faster and smaller than hydraulic control elements employing moving parts such as valves etc. Fluid devices have no moving parts hence they are more reliable and have long life. Fluidics is now offering an alternative to some other devices being operated with the help of electronics. It can operate where electronic devices are unsatisfactory, such as high temperature, humidity, in presence of severe vibrations, in high fire risk or where ionizing radiations are presents.

Electro chemical machining (ECM) is the controlled removal of metal by anodic dissolution in an electrolytic medium in which the work piece is the anode & the tool is the cathode.
Working: Two electrodes are placed at a distance of about 0.5mm & immersed in an electrolyte, which is a solution of sodium chloride. When an electrical potential of about 20V is applied between the electrodes, the ions existing in the electrodes migrate toward the electrodes.

Positively charged ions are attracted towards the cathode & negatively charged towards the anode. This initiates the flow of current in the electrolyte. The electrolysis process that takes place at the cathode liberates hydroxyl ions & free hydrogen. The hydroxyl ion combines with the metal ions of anode to form insoluble metal hydroxides &the material is thus removed from the anode. This process continues and the tool reproduces its shape in the work piece (anode). The high current densities promote rapid generation of metal hydroxides and gas bubble in the small spacing between the electrodes. These become a barrier to the electrolyzing current after a few seconds. To maintain a continuous high density current, these products have to be removed continuously. This is achieved by circulating the electrolyte at high velocity through the gap between the electrodes. It is also to be noted that the machining gap size increases. Therefore to maintain a constant gap the cathode should be advanced towards the anode at the same rate at which the material is removed.

An intelligent fault diagnosis and operator support system targeting in the safer operation of generators and distribution substations in power plants is introduced in this paper. Based on Expert Systems (ES) technology it incorporates a number of rules for the real time state estimation of the generator electrical part and the distribution substation topology. Within every sampling cycle the estimated state is being compared to an a priori state formed by measurements and digital signaling coming from current and voltage transformers as well as the existing electronic protection equipment. Whenever a conflict between the estimated and measured state arises, a set of heuristic rules is activated for the fault scenario inference and report. An included SCADA helps operators in the fast processing of large amounts of data, due to the user-friendly graphical representation of the monitored system. Enhanced with many heuristic rules, being a knowledge based system, the proposed system goes beyond imitation of expert operators’ knowledge, being able to inference fault scenarios concerning even components like the power electronic circuits of generator excitation system. For example, abnormal measurements on generator’s terminals can activate rules that will generate fault hypothesis possibly related to an excitation thyristors abnormal switching operation.

Since it first appeared on the cover of Nature in February 2000, the quantum mirage” has featured on posters, calendars, websites and the covers of various books and magazines. The image – which was obtained using a scanning tunnelling microscope – shows the electronic wavefunctions inside an elliptical “quantum corral” made of cobalt atoms on a copper surface. It was created by Hari Manoharan, Christopher Lutz and Don Eigler of the IBM Almaden Research Center in California. In 1990, working with Erhard Schweizer, Eiger spelt out the letters “IBM” using 35 xenon atoms. And three years later, working with Lutz and Michael Crommie, he released the first images of the “quantum corral”, which have also been reproduced in numerous places.

The quantum mirage uses the wave nature of electrons to move the information, instead of a wire, so it has the potential to enable data transfer within future nano-scale electronic circuits so small that conventional wires do not work. It will be years before this technology becomes practical, but it could eventually yield computers that are many orders of magnitude smaller, faster, and less power-hungry than anything we can conceive today.

Land mines are a case of serious threats to the life of civilians, especially in mine-affected countries like Afghanistan and Iraq .The mines which are implanted during the war time may remain undetected for several decades and may suddenly be activated after that. There are several methods for detection of land mines, such as metal detection and explosive detection. These ways of detection are dangerous because they are done very close to the mine.

A safe method for detecting land mines is “mine detection using radar bullets”. As the name suggests detection is done using Radar Bullets and hence can be done further away from the mine. Detection is usually done from helicopters. Researchers are being conducted to overcome certain inefficiencies of this method.

Superconductivity is a phenomenon occurring in certain materials generally at very low temperatures, characterized by exactly zero electrical resistance and the exclusion of the interior magnetic field (the Meissner effect). It was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911. Applying the principle of Superconductivity in microwave and millimeter-wave (mm-wave) regions, components with superior performance can be fabricated. Major problem during the earlier days was the that the cryogenic burden has been perceived as too great compared to the performance advantage that could be realized. There were very specialized applications, such as low-noise microwave and mm-wave mixers and detectors, for the highly demanding radio astronomy applications where the performance gained was worth the effort and complexity. With the discovery of high temperature superconductors like copper oxide, rapid progress was made in the field of microwave superconductivity.

This topic describes the properties of superconductivity that can be exploited in microwave and mm-wave technologies to yield components with appreciable performance enhancement over conventional systems. Superconducting signal transmission lines can yield low attenuation, zero-dispersion signal transmission behavior for signals with frequency components less than about one tenth the superconducting energy gap. No other known microwave device technology can provide a similar behavior. Superconductors have also been used to make high speed digital circuits, josephsons junction and RF and microwave filters for mobile phone base stations.

The desire of the modern man for more and more amenities and sophistication led to the unscrupulous exploitation of natural treasure. Though nature has provided abundant source of resources. It is not unlimited. Hence the exhaustion of the natural resources is eminent. The only exception to this is sunlight.

Scientist who had understood the naked truth had thought of exploiting the solar energy and started experimenting in this direction even from 1970. But the progress was very slow. Much headway is yet to be made in this direction. However as the impotents source of non-conventional energy and due to the limited source of conventional energy emphasis has given for the better utilization of solar energy.

But the application of solar cell, photovoltaic cell etc, we are able to concert only a small percentage of solar energy into electrical energy. But by using beamed power transmission from solar power satellite we can envisage a higher percentage of conversion. By beamed power transmission, we can extend the present system of two dimensional transmission network to three dimensional, if does not have any environmental problem as well.

Magnetic levitation is the latest in transportation technology and has been the interest of many countries around the world. The idea has been around since 1904 when Robert Goddard, an American Rocket scientist, created a theory that trains could be lifted off the tracks by the use of electromagnetic rails. Many assumptions and ideas were brought about throughout the following years, but it was not until the 1970’s that Japan and Germany showed interest in it and began researching and designing.

The motion of the Maglev train is based purely on magnetism and magnetic fields. This magnetic field is produced by using high-powered electromagnets. By using magnetic fields, the Maglev train can be levitated above its track, or guideway, and propelled forward. Wheels, contact with the track, and moving parts are eliminated on the Maglev train, allowing the Maglev train to essentially move on air without friction.

Maglev can be used for both low and high speed transportation. The low speed Maglev is used for short distance travel. Birmingham, England used this low speed transportation between the years of 1984 and 1995. However, engineers are more interested in creating the high-speed Maglev vehicles. The higher speed vehicle can travel at speeds of nearly 343mph or 552 km/h. Magnetic Levitation mainly uses two different types of suspension, which are Electromagnetic Suspension and Electrodynamic Suspension. However, a third suspension system (Intuctrack) has recently been developed and is in the research and design phase. These suspension systems are what keep the train levitated off the track.

A heat pipe is a simple device that can quickly transfer heat from one point to another. They are often referred to as the “superconductors” of heat as they possess an extra ordinary heat transfer capacity & rate with almost no heat loss.

The development of the heat pipe originally started with Angier March Perkins who worked initially with the concept of the working fluid only in one phase (he took out a patent in 1839 on the hermetic tube boiler which works on this principle). Jacob Perkins (descendant of Angier March) patented the Perkins Tube in 1936 and they became widespread for use in locomotive boilers and baking ovens. The Perkins Tube was a system in which a long and twisted tube passed over an evaporator and a condenser, which caused the water within the tube to operate in two phases. Although these early designs for heat transfer systems relied on gravity to return the liquid to the evaporator (later called a thermosyphon), the Perkins Tube was the jumping off point for the development of the modern heat pipe.

The concept of the modern heat pipe, which relied on a wicking system to transport the liquid against gravity and up to the condenser, was put forward by R.S. Gaugler of the General Motors Corporation. According to his patent in 1944, Gaugler described how his heat pipe would be applied to refrigeration systems. Heat pipe research became popular after that and many industries and labs including Los Alamos, RCA, the Joint Nuclear Research Centre in Italy, began to apply heat pipe technology in their fields. By 1969, there was a vast amount of interest on the part of NASA, Hughes, the European Space Agency, and other aircraft companies in regulating the temperature of a spacecraft and how that could be done with the help of heat pipes. There has been extensive research done to date regarding specific heat transfer characteristics, in addition to the analysis of various material properties and geometries.