Design and Development of an Open-Source Wireless System for Structural Deformation Measurement with Smartphone Communication

Contemporary performance measurement systems emerged as a consequence of the acknowledged weaknesses of the traditional measurement system. It is considered that the balanced scorecard is one of the most influential innovations contributing to the transformation of contemporary management accounting discourse and practice, and its occurrance is considered as the most important event for the development of contemporary performance measurement systems. Although, after the beginning euphoria, it was turned out that the design, implementation and development of contemporary systems in a dynamic and turbulent environment, that shape the current era, is not an easy task. The researches show that the companies have many problems during the design, implementation and development of the measurement system and this still fuels the academic debates about the relevance and validity of these systems. After the development of the Balancedscorecard concept, which not only evaluates organizational performance, but also relates it to the defined strategy, and the mass implementation of this system by renowned companies, a significant part of the scientific community assessed that it is one of the most important managerial techniques, and that the problem of performance measurement, in largely overcomeHowever, subsequent research has questioned the relevance of this system, and it has been shown that its implementation can even cause damage to the company. The paper indicates that judgment and great care is necessary during the design, implementation and development of an integrated system of measures, as well as that it is necessary to ensure a positive attitude of employees, as well as to be aware of the real scope of integrated systems of performance measures.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">The External Peripheral Instrument for Deformation Measurement (EPIDM) system is composed of a sensing device and an analysis process which determines the complete geometric description of the periphery of a cross-section of a body as it deforms or is deformed in time. The sensing device is a band attached to the surface of the deformable body along the external peripheral path of the desired geometrical cross-section. The analysis process utilizes the output from strategically located sensors along the length of the band to calculate and develop the contour of the body to which it is attached.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">The advantages of the EPIDM arc that it: (a) obtains all necessary information for the determination of the body's geometrical cross-section from the peripheral sensing band thus eliminating the need for invasive or penetrating deflection sensing devices, (b) determines the complete cross-sectional geometry of the body under observation as a function of time rather than discrete pairs of deflection data, and (c) generates an output that is directly relatable to the fundamental physical parameters associated with failure of structures.</div> <div class="htmlview paragraph">The details of the operational theory and construction of the EPIDM system are discussed as are the experimental results documenting the system's accuracy and dynamic response characteristics. Procedures for developing explicit relationships between the output of the EPIDM system and classical material state variables defining a structural failure are discussed. These relationships are then used to illustrate how the EPIDM measurement system has the capability of developing universal, thoracic trauma indices capable of evaluating the safety potential for the variety of loading conditions that the thorax can experience in today's automotive crash environment.</div>

Development and characterization of a volume flow measurement system for low-pressure gases

Measurement systems receive a continuous increase in its implementation and research in control systems area. These systems are responsible mostly for the acquisition, supervision and data control, resulting from the automation action in industrial processes. Microcontrolled systems are extremely importance, therefore optimize processes in various industrial areas daily, may have several other applicability due to small size and versatility. This work aims to present the study, design and development of a non-contact measurement system applied to a conveyor, for inspection of workpiece diameter transported continuously, using automated measurement techniques in manufacturing processes. The microcontroller PIC 18F4520 is used to actuate the system developed, responsible for the acquisition, processing, and display the results in the measurement, as well as being responsible for the capture of pulses emitted by encoder, at the time that occurs the interruption of the light beam, that is generated by photoelectric presence sensor, which scanning the workpiece while it is moving at the conveyor. At the end of the inspection operation, the diameter is showed on LCD display, and the information are transmitted to a remote computer, by communication serial standard RS-232, in which both have the purpose of show and store to the operator the measurement result. With the measurement result, the system is able to analyze the collected data and quality control performance of parts produced in cell production, automatically. Tests with the measurement system developed in laboratory were carried out, revealing a repeatability of ± 124 μm to a probability of 99.00% and good reproducibility.

Indigenous health performance measurement systems in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

This paper presented a general-purpose multiport measurement system and calibration algorithm for the characterizations of N-port microwave devices. The system is built around the micro wave transition analyzer as a multi-harmonic receiver from DC to 40 GHz, which provides the system with the scope capability for time domain measurements and the vector network analyzer capabilities for frequency-domain measurements. The developed system has the capability of measuring the S-parameters of linear microwave circuits as well as the AM-AM and AM-PM conversions for nonlinear microwave devices in single-step measurements, without any need for reconnection or change in the calibration technique or meas urement setup. The system can accurately quantify the impact of crosstalk on the performance of the multiport nonlinear microwave systems in terms of power efficiency and signal distortion. The proposed calibration algorithm for waveform measurements utilizes a standard signal frequency generator and does not rely on the use of a multi-harmonic generator to calculate the error box parameters at the fundamental and harmonic frequencies. The algorithm is also applicable to any multi-harmonic phase-locked receiver based measurement system. Finally, it has been demonstrated that the measurement system is capable of performing waveform engineering measurements. The comparison of waveforms obtained in 50 Ω and non-50 Ω impedance environments using the developed system and standard commercial scopes shows good agreement. This enhances confidence in the measurement data obtained from the developed measurement system.

Managing adaptive performance in teams: Guiding principles and behavioral markers for measurement

This study presents the development of a non-contact multi-axis measurement system, which consists of a circular triangulation laser probe system, a multi-axis CNC engraving machine, and a PC, to digitize the 3D profile of small workpieces. The information in the whole measuring system, comprising a personal computer, a CNC engraving machine controller, and a controller of the circular triangulation laser probe, was integrated technically. Three scanning methods for the developed measurement system were proposed to configure the scanning path, namely the multiple-fold scanning method, the rotational scanning method, and the radial scanning method. The homogenous transformation matrix method was used to calculate the data registration of different digitized data sets. The measurement error of the development system was analyzed by digitizing a designed 3D test carrier. The root mean square error was about 0.028 mm and was obtained through a comparison between the digitized, reconstructed data and the measured data obtained with a CNC coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The developed system was applied successfully to the reverse engineering measurement of some small complex models, such as a tooth model and a toy model.

The research activity carried out during the PhD course in Electrical Engineering belongs to the branch of electric and electronic measurements. The main subject of the present thesis is a distributed measurement system to be installed in Medium Voltage power networks, as well as the method developed to analyze data acquired by the measurement system itself and to monitor power quality. In chapter 2 the increasing interest towards power quality in electrical systems is illustrated, by reporting the international research activity inherent to the problem and the relevant standards and guidelines emitted. The aspect of the quality of voltage provided by utilities and influenced by customers in the various points of a network came out only in recent years, in particular as a consequence of the energy market liberalization. Usually, the concept of quality of the delivered energy has been associated mostly to its continuity. Hence the reliability was the main characteristic to be ensured for power systems. Nowadays, the number and duration of interruptions are the “quality indicators” commonly perceived by most customers; for this reason, a short section is dedicated also to network reliability and its regulation. In this contest it should be noted that although the measurement system developed during the research activity belongs to the field of power quality evaluation systems, the information registered in real time by its remote stations can be used to improve the system reliability too. Given the vast scenario of power quality degrading phenomena that usually can occur in distribution networks, the study has been focused on electromagnetic transients affecting line voltages. The outcome of such a study has been the design and realization of a distributed measurement system which continuously monitor the phase signals in different points of a network, detect the occurrence of transients superposed to the fundamental steady state component and register the time of occurrence of such events. The data set is finally used to locate the source of the transient disturbance propagating along the network lines. Most of the oscillatory transients affecting line voltages are due to faults occurring in any point of the distribution system and have to be seen before protection equipment intervention. An important conclusion is that the method can improve the monitored network reliability, since the knowledge of the location of a fault allows the energy manager to reduce as much as possible both the area of the network to be disconnected for protection purposes and the time spent by technical staff to recover the abnormal condition and/or the damage. The part of the thesis presenting the results of such a study and activity is structured as follows: chapter 3 deals with the propagation of electromagnetic transients in power systems by defining characteristics and causes of the phenomena and briefly reporting the theory and approaches used to study transients propagation. Then the state of the art concerning methods to detect and locate faults in distribution networks is presented. Finally the attention is paid on the particular technique adopted for the same purpose during the thesis, and the methods developed on the basis of such approach. Chapter 4 reports the configuration of the distribution networks on which the fault location method has been applied by means of simulations as well as the results obtained case by case. In this way the performance featured by the location procedure firstly in ideal then in realistic operating conditions are tested. In chapter 5 the measurement system designed to implement the transients detection and fault location method is presented. The hardware belonging to the measurement chain of every acquisition channel in remote stations is described. Then, the global measurement system is characterized by considering the non ideal aspects of each device that can concur to the final combined uncertainty on the estimated position of the fault in the network under test. Finally, such parameter is computed according to the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurements, by means of a numeric procedure. In the last chapter a device is described that has been designed and realized during the PhD activity aiming at substituting the commercial capacitive voltage divider belonging to the conditioning block of the measurement chain. Such a study has been carried out aiming at providing an alternative to the used transducer that could feature equivalent performance and lower cost. In this way, the economical impact of the investment associated to the whole measurement system would be significantly reduced, making the method application much more feasible.

Due to the coming of the digital age as a result of the increasing convenience of the Internet and wireless data transmission networks, local area measurement systems are gradually being extended to wide area measurement systems. In this paper, we propose a design and implementation of a wireless remote measurement system, which is an integration of a client-server remote Windows-based signal generator, a digital storage oscilloscope, and a transmission channel of an Internet and wireless network. The experimental results show that the transmission rate of the remote measurement system can reach 1.2 K samples per second that can cause some dine delay in the whole system operation. However, due to the batching scanning mechanism in the waveform reconstruction, the overall bandwidth limitation of the measurement system is limited by the characteristics of the interface circuits. The primary results from the test circuit measured by a local oscilloscope and our experimental system agree with each other.

Currently, the number of Total Knee Arthroplasty (TKA) in Japan is 70,000. Because it is easy to expect increasing the number due to super-aging society, the clinical outcome of TKA surgery has been important The surgery requires proper soft tissue balance to avoid shortening fatigue life of prosthesis. Thus, a measurement system of force concentration about contacting region between femur component and polyethylene insert contributes to prolong the prosthesis. This study examined the force concentration by using our developed measurement system. This study performed two experiment consists of physical and simulated experiment As a result, our developed system could localize the force concentration point A future work is to apply this measurement system to the cadaveric knee.

The past decade has witnessed explosive growth in wireless big data, as well as in various big data analytics technologies. The intelligence mined from these massive datasets can be utilized to optimize wireless system design. Due to the open data policy of the mainstream OSN (Online Social Network) service providers and the pervasiveness of online social services, this paper studies how social big data can be embraced in wireless communication system design. We start with our first hand experience on crawling social big data and the principal of social-aware system design. Then we present five studies on utilizing social intelligence for system optimization, including community-aware social video distribution over cloud content delivery networks, public cloud assisted mobile social video sharing, data driven bitrate adjustment and spectrum allocation for mobile social video sharing, location-aware video streaming, and social video distribution over information-centric networking.

This study is aimed to examine the relationship among factors determining the success or failure of the implementation of performance measurement systems with the development of performance measurement systems, performance accountability, and the use of performance information in the government institutions and to examine the impacts of the development of performance measurement systems on the performance accountability and the use of performance information.This research was carried out in the Local Government of East Sumba Regency. The research respondents were the government officers of Echelon II, III, and IV. The samples were selected using purposive sampling. 509 questionnaires were distributed and 267 were used. Data were analyzed using Ordinary Least Square (OLS). This research finds that organization culture and resources have relationship with the development of performance measurement systems. In contrast, the limited information systems, difficulties in determining the performance metrics, management commitment, decision-making authority, and training do not have relationship with the development of performance measurement systems. The limited information systems, difficulties in determining the performance metrics and training do not have relationship with the performance accountability, but management commitment, decision-making authority, organization culture, and resources have relationship with the performance accountability. The difficulties in determining the performance metrics, decision-making authority, organization culture, and resources have relationship with the use of performance information, whereas the limited information systems, management commitment, and training do not have relationship with the use of performance information. Further, the development of performance measurement systems directly influences the performance accountability and the use of performance information and indirectly influences the use of performance information through the performance accountability. Keywords: performance measurement, performance accountability, performance information, local government

Design and experimental validation of an ultra-precision Abbe-compliant linear encoder-based position measurement system

In this paper, system design and simulation to develop a novel wide-band (WB) measurement system for ac partial discharge (PD) pulse current signals are introduced. The acquisition unit of the measurement system contains four channels, one used as synchronization and the three WB for PD measurement with adjustable sampling rate up to 1 GS/s and bandwidth of 10 kHz ∼ 300 MHz, which record the pulses current with their whole waveforms and the occurrence time or phase information. Grouping and separation technology used in the system resorting to the measured pulse waveform sequence is described, which can deal with the de-nosing and multi-PD sources problems before the classification to the PRPD pattern. So it makes a huge difference between those conventional ac PD detection systems only with peak value time series. Results of simulation research proves the feasibility and practicability of the designed ac PD measurement system.