Localness in Water-Sensitive Urban Development for Bhuj and Kozhikode, India

Outdated, updated, or not, the Brandt Line continues to provide a divide between ‘North’ and ‘South’, suggesting a dichotomy between the world’s ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ regions, respectively. To reduce the contrast between the two, and in response to the challenges posed by urban growth and climate crisis projections globally, the Water...

Developing Equations for Free Vibration Parameters of Bistable Composite Plates Using Multi-Objective Genetic Programming

For the last three decades, bistable composite laminates have gained publicity because of their outstanding features, including having two stable shapes and the ability to change these states. A common challenge regarding the analysis of these structures is the high computational cost of existing analytical methods to estimate their natural...

Studying the effect of strain induced birefringence on the sensitivity of FBG sensors for Guided wave measurements

To perform active structural health monitoring (SHM), guided waves (GW) have received great interest as they can inspect large areas with a few sensors and are sensitive to barely-visible structural damages. Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors offer several advantages such as small size, low weight and ability to be embedded but their use has...

Design and Fabrication of a Multi-Functional Programmable Thermal Test Chip

This paper focuses on the design and fabrication of a new programmable thermal test chip as a flexible and cost-effective solution for simplification of characterization/prototyping of new packages. The cell-based design format makes the chip fit into any modular array configuration. One unit cell is as small as 4x4 mm2, including 6 individually...

High-Pass ΣΔ Converter Design Using a State-Space Approach and Its Application to Cardiac Signal Acquisition

Cardiac signal acquisition with high linearity and accuracy of the high-pass cut-off frequency imposes a challenge on the implementation of the analog preprocessing and the analog-to-digital converter. This paper describes a state-space-based methodology for designing high-pass sigma-delta (HP Sigma \Delta topologies with high linearity,...

A Global Assessment of Runoff Sensitivity to Changes in Precipitation, Potential Evaporation, and Other Factors

Precipitation (P) and potential evaporation (E_p) are commonly studied drivers of changing freshwater availability, as aridity (E_p/P) explains ∼90% of the spatial differences in mean runoff across the globe. However, it is unclear if changes in aridity over time are also the most important cause for temporal changes in...

Non-diverging analytical expression for the sensitivity of converging SPECT collimators

Accurate analytical expressions for collimator resolution and sensitivity are important tools in the optimization of SPECT systems. However, presently known expressions for the sensitivity of converging collimators either diverge near the focal point or focal line(s), or are only valid on the collimator axis. As a result, these expressions...

An RF-Powered DLL-Based 2.4-GHz Transmitter for Autonomous Wireless Sensor Nodes

This paper presents the system and circuit design of a compact radio frequency (RF)-powered 2.4-GHz CMOS transmitter (TX) to be used for autonomous wireless sensor nodes (WSNs). The proposed TX utilizes the received dedicated RF signal for both energy harvesting as well as frequency synthesis. A TX RF carrier is derived from the received RF...

Sensitivity of dune erosion prediction during extreme conditions

Coastal dunes play an important role in protecting low-lying hinterland from flooding. In The Netherlands, dunes form the major part of the primary sea defence, that protects half of the population and over two-third of the economy from the sea. To design and maintain coastal dunes that properly protect the hinterland, a regular safety...

Sensitivity Modeling of On-chip Capacitances: Parasitics Extraction for Manufacturing Variability

With each new generation of IC process technologies, the impact of manufacturing variability is increasing. As such, design optimality is harder and harder to achieve and effective modeling tools and methods are needed to capture the effects of variability in such a way that it is understandable and useful to IC designers. Our research has been...

Influence of numerical and physical parameters on an implicit partitioned fluid-structure solver

sensitivity of the coupled system is a crucial point. The investigation of characteristic values which are influencing the sensitivity, especially the numerical one, and therefrom the derivation of robust parameters for numerical simulations is the main purpose of this contribution. The method which is employed to solve the fluid-structure...

Size sensitivity for the reliability index in stochastic finite element analysis of damage

The direct differentiation method is applied to the estimation of statistical size effect behaviour in quasi-brittle solids. The scale factor is included in the finite element model and the autocorrelation function. Particular attention is paid to the proper differentiation of the Nataf transformation, which has been chosen to convert the basic...

Direct detection effect in small volume hot electron bolometer mixers

We measure the direct detection effect in a small volume (0.15??m×1??m×3.5?nm) quasioptical NbN phonon cooled hot electron bolometer mixer at 1.6?THz. We find that the small signal sensitivity of the receiver is underestimated by 35% due to the direct detection effect and that the optimal operating point is shifted to higher bias voltages when...

Reliability of nondestructive inspection

This report describes the concept of reliability of nondestructive inspection (NDI) and reviews the different aspects involved. First, the probability of detection (POD) of flaws in flawed specimens is discussed. To provide a measure of confidence in an estimated POD, lower botind values of this probability at a given confidence level are...