Integration of Condition Based Maintenance in the Preventive Maintenance Planning of Rolling Stock

Planning rolling stock maintenance based on prognostic data (Condition Based Maintenance, CBM) is a trend since the ideal timing for maintenance before failure can be planned. With the use of prognostics, a failure can be predicted so Corrective Maintenance (CM) can be avoided. Traditional rolling stock decision-making for Preventive Maintenance...

Determination of key design parameters of a scooter-walker hybrid in scooter mode

A new type of mobility device that functions as both a walker and a scooter is being developed to address some issues of current mobility solutions. Some key design parameters for the scooter mode of this scooter-walker hybrid must be optimized. Through literature, a number of simulated "tests", mostly about safety and manoeuvrability, are...

Electric-pump Rocket Engines: Comparative analysis of the electric-pump cycle using Rocket Cycle Analysis Tool (RoCAT)

The electric-pump cycle is a rocket engine configuration that uses an electric motor to power the pumps instead of a turbine. This offers several expected advantages such as simpler design, lower development costs, and easier restartability, but comes with reduced performance compared to conventional cycles. Previous research has primarily...

Temperature effects and Performance optimization in Battery systems: Physics-based modelling of Lithium-iron-phosphate batteries

As the energy transition gains momentum, the development of effective energy storage technologies is crucial. Among these technologies, batteries are of utmost importance as they store chemical energy that can be converted into electrical energy. The operation of batteries is a complex process that involves the interplay of material technology,...

Optimization study of a hybrid powertrain: Optimization of the system components and energy management of a zero-emission hydrogen powered boat

The company H2 Marine Solutions has designed a zero-emission hydrogen powered boat. This boat is compared to its fossil fuel counterpart more than twice as heavy. The reason for this is that the system components that are used in the hybrid powertrain of the hydrogen powered boat are heavier. The main question of this research is: How can we...

Optimization of nurse scheduling satisfaction

A recent study in The Netherlands, reports an expected shortage of 140,000 healthcare employees by 2031. Two main reasons for this shortage are an increased demand for healthcare and a shortage on the healthcare labour market. The irregular shifts and unconventional working hours make nurses quit their profession or refrain others from applying....

Global Techno-Economic Feasibility of Far Offshore Green Hydrogen Production towards 2050

With space constraints onshore, strong renewable resources available far offshore<br/>and growing green hydrogen demand, far offshore green hydrogen production<br/>may be an attractive option. To assess this potential, a literature review was<br/>conducted to identify the relevant technologies to be considered and suitable<br/>modelling methods....

3D Shape Optimization of Consecutive Manifolds using Free Form Deformation and Adjoint-Based Methods

Current design methods for oblique manifolds were first presented in the paper of London et al. in 1968. This method presents a single equation to shape the dividing manifold of several manifold configurations. However, current literature shows a potential to improve the current design method by implementing advanced techniques. This paper aims...

Optimizing the pump schedule of water distribution systems using a deep learning meta-model: To what extent can algorithm unrolling optimize the pump schedule of an urban water distribution system?

This thesis investigates the integration of algorithm unrolling and genetic algorithms (GA) for optimizing pump scheduling in water distribution systems (WDS), a critical component for ensuring energy-efficient water delivery. In the context of modern civilization’s reliance on clean, affordable water for diverse uses, the operation of a WDS,...

Optimization of Acoustic Metasurfaces with Hybrid Structures for attenuation of broadband low frequency sound: An exploratory research on hybrid metamaterials to analyze/uncover possible practical applications/benefits for sound attenuation

We perform a study on acoustic metasurfaces, aiming to achieve simultaneously low resonance frequencies (below 400 Hz), high attenuation bandwidth (greater than 200 Hz), and high attenuation coefficient magnitudes (above 0.8), while maintaining a surface-like structure.<br/>We propose the implementation of geometrical optimization through...

Design and Optimization of Hyperboloid Lattice Structures for Timber Towers: A Study on Stiffness and Material Efficiency

The presented research aims to design and optimize a timber observation tower, with a primary focus being the influence of topological and curvature parameters on its stability and lateral stiffness in resistance to non-uniform wind load profiles. <br/><br/>Having recognised the environmental benefits and urgency to find other alternatives,...

Minimize experimentation overhead through dataset selection, ensemble feature attention, and feature selection with reduced subset sizes

In large-scale ML, data size becomes a critical variable, especially in the context of large companies, where models already exist and are hard to change and fine-tune. Time to market and model quality are essential metrics, thus looking for ways to select, prune and augment the input data while treating the model as a black box can speed up the...