- Date & Time: Wednesday, May 8, 2013; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Vikrant Aute, University of Maryland
MERL Host: Christopher R. Laughman
Research Area: Data Analytics
Abstract 
Heat exchangers are a key component in any air-conditioning, heat pumping and refrigeration system. These heat exchangers (aka evaporators, condensers, indoor units, outdoor units) not only contribute significantly to the total cost of the system but also contain the most refrigerant charge. There is a continued interest in improving the designs of heat exchangers and making them more compact while reducing the cost. Compact heat exchangers help improve system performance, reduce power consumption and lower the first costs. Due to the lower internal volume, they hold lower refrigerant charge which in turn results in lower environmental impact.
In the simulation based design and optimization of compact heat exchangers, there are two main challenges. The first challenge arises from the use of computationally expensive analysis tools such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The second challenge is the effect of scales. The use of CFD tools can make the optimization infeasible due to computing and engineering resource limitations. Furthermore, during CFD analysis, certain simplifications are made to the computational domain such as simulating a small periodic segment of a given heat transfer surface. In this talk, three technologies are introduced that assist in addressing these issues. These technologies are (1) Approximation Assisted Optimization, (2) Parallel Parameterized CFD, and (3) Multi-scale modeling of heat exchangers. These technologies together help reduce the computational effort by more than 90% and engineering time by more than 50%. Two real world applications focusing on air-to-refrigerant and liquid-to-refrigerant heat exchangers will be discussed, that demonstrate the application of these technologies.
-
- Date: March 25, 2013
Where: National Convention of the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
-
- Date: March 14, 2013
Where: Proceedings of the IEEE
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
Brief - The article "Wireless Power Transfer: Metamaterials and Array of Coupled Resonators" by Wang, B., Yerazunis, W. and Teo, K.H. was published in Proceedings of the IEEE.
-
- Date: January 18, 2013
Where: Symposium of the Society of Instrumentation and Control Engineers of Japan (SICE)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Fast Runcurve Optimization based on Markov Decision Process" by Fujii, S., Yoshimoto, K., Ueda, K., Takahashi, S. and Nikovski, D. was presented at the Symposium of the Society of Instrumentation and Control Engineers of Japan (SICE).
-
- Date: October 30, 2012
Where: IEEE International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Decoupled Three-Phase Load Flow Method for Unbalanced Distribution Systems" by Sun, H., Dubey, A., Nikovski, D., Ohno, T., Takano, T. and Kojima, Y. was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON).
-
- Date: October 29, 2012
Where: IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP)
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis
Research Area: Electric Systems
Brief - The paper "Power Delivery Optimization for a Mobile Power Transfer System based on Resonator Arrays" by Yerazunis, W., Wang, B. and Teo, K.H. was presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP).
-
- Date: October 17, 2012
Where: ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Decentralized Finite-Time Stabilizing Feedback Network Control" by Zhao, Y. was presented at the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference.
-
- Date: October 16, 2012
Where: Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion (ESARS)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Markov Decision Processes for Train Run Curve Optimization" by Nikovski, D., Lidicky, B., Zhang, W., Kataoka, K. and Yoshimoto, K. was presented at Electrical Systems for Aircraft, Railway and Ship Propulsion (ESARS).
-
- Date: October 14, 2012
Where: IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT Europe)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Hybrid Three-Phase Load Flow Method for Ungrounded Distribution Systems" by Sun, H., Nikovski, D., Ohno, T., Takano, T. and Kojima, Y. was presented at IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Europe (ISGT Europe).
-
- Date: October 1, 2012
Where: Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing
MERL Contacts: Arvind Raghunathan; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Optimization
Brief - The paper "Global Optimization of Optimal Power Flow Using a Branch & Bound Algorithm" by Gopalakrishnan, A., Raghunathan, A.U., Nikovski, D. and Biegler, L.T. was presented at the Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing.
-
- Date: July 16, 2012
Where: International Refrigeration and Air conditioning Conference at Purdue
MERL Contacts: Christopher R. Laughman; Daniel N. Nikovski Brief - The papers "Fast Refrigerant Property Calculations Using Interpolation-Based Methods" by Laughman, C.R., Zhao, Y. and Nikovski, D. and "Extremum Seeking Control for Energy Optimization of Vapor Compression Systems" by Burns, D.J. and Laughman, C. were presented at the International Refrigeration and Air conditioning Conference at Purdue.
-
- Date: June 28, 2012
Where: International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Bayesian Networks for Matcher Composition in Automatic Schema Matching" by Nikovski, D., Esenther, A., Ye, X., Shiba, M. and Takayama, S. was presented at the International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS).
-
- Date: May 21, 2012
Where: IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT Asia)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Two-Level State Estimation Method for Power Systems with SCADA and PMU Measurements" by Sun, H., Wang, Z. and Nikovski, D. was presented at IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT Asia).
-
- Date: March 1, 2012
Where: Journal of Electronic Science and Technology (JEST)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The article "A Hybrid Decoupled Power Flow Method for Balanced Power Distribution Systems" by Sun, H., Nikovski, D., Ohno, T., Takano, T. and Kojima, Y. was published in Journal of Electronic Science and Technology (JEST).
-
- Date & Time: Tuesday, December 20, 2011; 12:00 PM
Speaker: Olivia Leitermann, MIT
MERL Host: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Abstract - Ancillary services such as frequency regulation are required for reliable operation of the electric grid. Currently, the same traditional thermal generators that supply bulk power also perform nearly all frequency regulation. Instead, using high power energy storage resources to provide frequency regulation can allow traditional thermal generators to operate more smoothly. However, using energy storage alone for frequency regulation would require an unreasonably large energy storage capacity. Duration curves for energy capacity and instantaneous ramp rate are used to evaluate the requirements and benefits of using energy storage for a component of frequency regulation. High-pass filtering and closed-loop control are used to separate the portion of a frequency regulation control signal suitable for provision by an energy storage unit from the portion suitable for provision by traditional thermal generating resources. Not all frequency regulation signals are equally amenable to the filtering approach used here. Data from two U.S. control areas are used to demonstrate the techniques and the results are compared.
-
- Date: December 12, 2011
Where: IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference (CDC-ECC)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Optimization
Brief - The paper "Construction of Embedded Markov Decision Processes for Optimal Control of Non-Linear Systems with Continuous State Spaces" by Nikovski, D. and Esenther, A. was presented at the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference (CDC-ECC).
-
- Date: November 6, 2011
Where: IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV)
MERL Contacts: Tim K. Marks; Michael J. Jones Brief - The paper "Fully Automatic Pose-Invariant Face Recognition via 3D Pose Normalization" by Asthana, A., Marks, T.K., Jones, M.J., Tieu, K.H. and Rohith, M. was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).
-
- Date: October 23, 2011
Where: InfoVis
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Singleton Set Distribution Views for Set-Valued Attribute Visualization" by Wittenburg, K. and Pekhteryev, G. was presented at InfoVis.
-
- Date: September 27, 2011
Where: IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid and Clean Energy Technologies (ICSGCE)
MERL Contacts: Hongbo Sun; Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "A Fast and Robust Load Flow Method for Distribution Systems with Distributed Generations" by Sun, H., Nikovski, D., Ohno, T., Takano, T. and Kojima, Y. was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid and Clean Energy Technologies (ICSGCE).
-
- Date: August 29, 2011
Where: British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC)
MERL Contacts: Michael J. Jones; Tim K. Marks Brief - The paper "Pose Normalization via Learned 2D Warping for Fully Automatic Face Recognition" by Asthana, A., Jones, M.J., Marks, T.K., Tieu, K.H. and Goecke, R. was presented at the British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC).
-
- Date: August 4, 2011
Where: North American Power Symposium (NAPS)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Optimization
Brief - The paper "State-space Approximate Dynamic Programming for Stochastic Unit Commitment" by Zhang, W. and Nikovski, D. was presented at the North American Power Symposium (NAPS).
-
- Date: June 23, 2011
Where: Applied Physics Letters
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; Jinyun Zhang; William S. Yerazunis
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
Brief - The article "Experiments on Wireless Power Transfer with Metamaterials" by Wang, B., Teo, K.H., Nichino, T., Yerazunis, W., Barnwell, J. and Zhang, J. was published in Applied Physics Letters.
-
- Date: April 11, 2011
Where: European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP)
MERL Contacts: Bingnan Wang; William S. Yerazunis
Research Areas: Applied Physics, Electric Systems
Brief - The paper "Wireless Power Transfer with Metamaterials" by Wang, B., Teo, K.H., Nishino, T., Yerazunis, W., Barnwell, J. and Zhang, J. was presented at the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP).
-
- Date: September 27, 2010
Where: IEEE Conference on Innovative Technologies for an Efficient and Reliable Electricity Supply (CITRES)
MERL Contact: Daniel N. Nikovski
Research Area: Optimization
Brief - The paper "Factored Markov Decision Process Models for Stochastic Unit Commitment" by Nikovski, D. and Zhang, W. was presented at the IEEE Conference on Innovative Technologies for an Efficient and Reliable Electricity Supply (CITRES).
-
- Date: July 24, 2010
Where: Black Hat Technical Security Conference
MERL Contact: William S. Yerazunis
Research Area: Data Analytics
Brief - The paper "Keeping the Good Stuff In: Confidential Information Firewalling with the CRM114 Spam Filter & Text Classifier" by Yerazunis, W.S., Kato, M., Kori, M., Shibata, H. and Hackenberg, K. was presented at the Black Hat Technical Security Conference.
-