Search

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the list of reviewers focused on recognition of 2017 transactions and magazine paper.

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions are used to obtain information, stimulate thinking, and redirect reasoning. Academics in higher education use questions on a daily basis to stimulate thinking and reasoning in students. Final examination papers are used by academics to assess the retention and application skills of students. The assumption, however, exists that questions relating to application skills at universities of technology should start to dominate the higher academic levels in education, with a subsequent drop in questions regarding retention skills. These questions may be categorized as either higher order or lower order questions. This article attempts to distinguish between these two types of questions in light of Bloom's taxonomy, with similar concepts such as deep and surface learning being examined. The literature review is applied to an electrical engineering module titled Electronics, which serves as the case study. The results of this study indicate that a high percentage of the final examination papers dealt with the objective "Application," where students had to make use of numerous mathematical equations to solve various unknowns. The results also indicated that academics in electronics are using more lower order than higher order questions in their final examination papers. A balance is suggested between these two types of questions for various academic levels at universities of technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IEEE Transactions on Reliability is the premiere technical journal for reliability and related disciplines. We strive to continue this reputation, so we continue to discover what makes journals great. We have discovered that IEEE journals work to have the qualities readers and authors would like to expect. Correctness and technical merit are important features of accepted manuscripts, with correctness rating as most important to the responding editors. Writing and solving real problems seem to be the least important features. The relative unimportance of these last two categories may be a concern, except that relative importance is not an indicator of absolute importance. However, a recent IEEE survey suggests that members place most value on more practical articles, which suggests that the relative importance of solving real problems should be high if we are to meet the needs of our members through our journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stator ground fault location of large generators can guide rapid maintenance. In this paper, a location criterion without fault transition resistance is constructed by using the fundamental potential and the third harmonic potential of the faulty winding simultaneously. The above potentials of the faulty winding are corresponding to the fault position. To precisely locate the grounding fault, it is necessary to clarify the analytical relationship between the faulty winding potential and the fault position. However, the existing methods often take the coil potential as the unit to analyze the winding potential, which has theoretical errors for the generators with short-pitch winding. Aiming at this problem, a more precise analysis method for winding potential is established by taking the slot conductor potential as the unit. To solve the location criterion, the optimization model for each slot conductor of the faulty phase is constructed. The slot conductor with the smallest optimal objective function value is judged as the faulty slot conductor, and the corresponding decision variable is judged as the fault position. Simulation and experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, which can still meet the needs of engineering applications under multiple adverse conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents deadlines for submission of manuscript in the periodical on December 1, 2016 along with guidelines for manuscript submission. It informs that topics of manuscript includes case studies of incorporation of knowledge of telecommunication standards into professional training; impact of standards education on engineering, technology, society, and economy and best practices for incorporating standards into telecommunication curricula.

Information of papers to be published in future issues of "IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management" is presented.

The article presents a list of papers that will be published in forthcoming issues of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) transactions in Engineering Management, which includes "Casual Discovery and Inference of Project Disputes," by P. Love, P.Davis, S.O. Cheung and Z. Irani, "The Moderating Role of Organizational Context on the Relationship between Innovation and Firm Performance," by D. De Clercq, N. Thongpapanl, and D. Dimov, and "Assessing Organizational Capabilities: Reviewing and Guiding the Development of Maturity Grids," by A. Majer, J. Moultrie and P. Clarkson.

Presents the recipient of the APS 2015 R. W. P. King Paper Award. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The International Computer and Software Applications Conference has celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1986. The conference has been very successful in attracting excellent papers and panels from both academia and industry. It continued the tradition and attracted superb papers for the following tracks: software quality, software engineering, software requirements, development environments, software techniques and knowledge-based systems.

Announces the winners of the 2003 Outstanding Paper Award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society. Overview of the winning paper; Career background of the winners; Comments of award committee members on the winning paper.

Recent advances in computational methods, materials science, and new manufacturing processes are resulting in an unprecedented design flexibility which is driving the geometrical complexity of the components found in modern structures and machines. For safety-critical components, the geometrical complexity poses a significant challenge to the sensitivity of the existing nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods available for the detection of manufacturing defects or damage that develops while a component is in service. Although X-ray computed tomography is the primary NDE method used to test these parts in current industrial practice, it is widely recognized that it has limited sensitivity to critical defects, such as cracks, especially in the presence of large size parts made of dense materials. The lack of sensitive NDE methods represents a major technology gap that could impede the acceptance of rapidly developing technologies, such as 3-D printing, for the production of safety-critical components. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by exploring the possibility of inspecting a complex-shaped part with ultrasonic waves after it has been encapsulated in ice, under the paradigm of what can be defined as cryo-ultrasonic NDE. The underpinning hypothesis is that through ice encapsulation a complex-shaped part can be transformed into a simple-shaped solid whose volume can be probed with ultrasonic waves, which are known to be highly sensitive to both pores and crack-like defects and over a wide range of material properties. Damage detection is then performed by analyzing cross-sectional images of the ice-encapsulated part obtained by applying migration methods to the ultrasonic signals measured by an array of transducers. This paper lays the foundation for cryo-ultrasonic NDE and presents the first experimental results demonstrating the possibility of imaging defects through multiple ice–metal interfaces. This paves the way to the detection of defects in complex-shaped parts containing internal vanes which have so far limited the use of conventional NDE methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-domain near-field scanning is gaining more and more interest within EMC engineering to analyze electromagnetic near-fields of, e.g., quasi-stationar devices. When using a digital oscilloscope to scan the near-fields of an electronic device, the oscilloscope measures time-domain signals that comprise in most cases a large number of frequency components. For many of these components, noncoherent sampling occurs, resulting in spectral leakage when calculating the frequency spectrum of the time-domain signals with the discrete Fourier transform. This paper proposes an improved method to detect the presence of such noncoherently sampled signals as well as an iterative algorithm to obtain accurate approximations of all the frequency components with their accompanying amplitudes and phase angles. The algorithm excels over existing algorithms in obtaining these values especially in situations where several sinusoidal components are close to each other in the spectrum. This is achieved, thanks to an iterative process of removing the influence of the multiple sinusoidal components on each other. This paper contains the mathematical description of the algorithm and a numerical example evaluating the accuracy of the algorithm. The algorithm has a higher accuracy than the existing approaches, e.g., multipoint Interpolated Discrete Fourier Transform (IpDFTs), with only a slight increase of the computational cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A complex engineering system typically consists of a group of components/subsystems in a hierarchical structure and the system is monitored at only some, not all, of these hierarchical levels. This paper investigates a Bayesian approach to system reliability prediction using multilevel incomplete data. These data are drawn simultaneously from different component/subsystem levels within the same system, thus need to be analyzed with the consideration of their overlapping nature. In this paper, a Bayesian network model is proposed for modeling the reliability of a multilevel system, where a lower level node can only be connected to one higher level node. Through Bayesian inference, the posterior distributions of lifetime parameters and conditional probabilities in the model are obtained by combining prior beliefs with lifetime data coming from different system levels. This study is also extended to include mixed data types, i.e., both pass/fail data and lifetime data. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated in a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great deal of previous work has studied methods to determine system reliability. That work has defined system reliability as the probability that the production output meets a predetermined demand for a network with many workstations, each of which has random capacity determined by a discrete probability distribution. It is noteworthy that the archival work presents numerous examples, wherein entities are discrete and indivisible, while the analysis is based upon continuous flow, much like a fluid, through the network. The inconsistency, inherent in mixing discrete-entity examples with continuous-flow analysis, can result in erroneous conclusions about the system reliability. The current paper presents a rigorous discrete-analysis analytical approach, which is called the Song rule (Stochastic “Output $\geq$ demand” Networks and their Generation). Based on all examples studied in this paper, the absolute difference ratios between the previous incorrect (as published) and the correct probabilities (from the Song rule) are all greater than 23%. The proposed Song rule analysis is verified to be correct using discrete-event simulation. In addition to providing rigorous analysis for the network problems under consideration, the Song rule is a useful tool for assessing the validity of any future proposed approach for other stochastic reliability problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncertain and potentially harsh operating environments are often known to alter the operational performance of a system. In order to maintain system performance while coping with varying operating environments and potential disruptions, the resilience of engineered systems is desirable. Engineering systems are often interconnected in a dimensional way inherently from basic components to subsystems to the system of systems, which poses a grand challenge for system designers to analyze the resilience of such a complex system. Moreover, further complications in the assessment of resilience in the engineering domain are attributed to time-varying system performances, random perturbation occurrences, and probable failures caused by adverse events. This paper presents a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN) approach for the modeling and predictive resilience analysis for dynamic engineered systems. With the inter-time-slice links and the conditional probability tables in a DBN, the system performance could be molded as changing in a discrete time slice, while capturing the temporal probabilistic dependencies between the variables. An industrial-based case study of an electricity distribution system is further studied to demonstrate the effectiveness of the DBN approach for resilience analysis. The approach presented in this paper hopes to aid in realizing resiliency in system designs and to pave the way toward enhancements in developing resilient engineered systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Thanks to the favorable advantage of low cost, integrated three-port dc–dc converters with reduced switches have attracted extensive attention. In order to provide more new topologies, this paper aims to propose a programmable topology derivation method, which effectively simplifies the cumbersome process of the conventional combination method. Instead of the manual connection and examination, the proposed alternative can quickly and rigorously derive multiple viable integrated three-port dc–dc topologies from a great number of possible connections with the aid of computer program. Besides, generalized analysis is also accomplished, with which performance characteristics of all derived converters are simultaneously obtained and then a comprehensive comparison can be easily conducted to select a preferred one for the practical application. Finally, an example-specific application with one input and two outputs is given, with topology selection, design, and experimental results demonstrated in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In robotic mapping and simultaneous localization and mapping, the ability to assess the quality of estimated maps is crucial. While concepts exist for quantifying the error in the estimated trajectory of a robot, or a subset of the estimated feature locations, the difference between all current estimated and ground-truth features is rarely considered jointly. In contrast to many current methods, this paper analyzes metrics, which automatically evaluate maps based on their joint detection and description uncertainty. In the tracking literature, the optimal subpattern assignment (OSPA) metric provided a solution to the problem of assessing target tracking algorithms and has recently been applied to the assessment of robotic maps. Despite its advantages over other metrics, the OSPA metric can saturate to a limiting value irrespective of the cardinality errors and it penalizes missed detections and false alarms in an unequal manner. This paper therefore introduces the cardinalized optimal linear assignment (COLA) metric, as a complement to the OSPA metric, for feature map evaluation. Their combination is shown to provide a robust solution for the evaluation of map estimation errors in an intuitive manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite intensive investigations in the past, energetic efficiency is still one of the most important unsolved challenges in legged robot locomotion. This paper presents an unconventional approach to the problem of energetically efficient legged locomotion by applying actuation for spring mass running. This approach makes use of mechanical springs incorporated in parallel with relatively low-torque actuation, which is capable of both accommodating large payload and locomotion with low power input by exploiting self-excited vibration. For a systematic analysis, this paper employs both simulation models and physical platforms. The experiments show that the proposed approach is scalable across different payload between 0 and 150 kg, and is able to achieve a total cost of transport of 0.10, which is significantly lower than the previous locomotion robots and most of the biological systems in the similar scale, when actuated with the near-to natural frequency with the maximum payload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pulsed discharge plasma (PDP) system with a multineedle-to-plate geometry electrode was applied in this paper to investigate the regeneration of granular activated carbon (GAC) spent with phenol in the PDP system. Regeneration percentage of the GAC under different conditions of initial solution conductivity and pH values was studied to clarify the regeneration of the GAC by the PDP. Formation of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) with the same solution conditions was also investigated in this paper. The obtained results show that there was the same changing trend of GAC regeneration and H2O2 formation under different solution conditions, which clarify the critical effect of •OH on the GAC regeneration in the PDP system. The methods of scanning electron microscope (SEM), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller, Boehm titration, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were used in this paper to demonstrate the medication of the GAC by the PDP treatment. The obtained results show that the regenerated GAC could recover a partial pore structure compared with the original GAC by the SEM analysis. The surface area, micropore volume, and total pore volume of the regenerated GAC increased, while the mesopore volume and the macropore volume decreased on the regenerated GAC; comparing with the original GAC, there was higher amount of acidic functional groups and lower amount of basic functional groups on the surface of the regenerated GAC; the intensities of O–H, C=C, C=O, and C–O enhanced significantly by the FTIR analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of HVdc transmission technology, the isolation of dc faults is becoming increasingly important. As the most effective solution, hybrid HVdc circuit breaker (CB) is not mature enough, which has restricted its engineering application. Accordingly, this paper proposes an auxiliary dc CB scheme suitable for HVdc grid. In this scheme, the traditional half-bridge modular multilevel converter (MMC) is partially innovated to have the ability of auxiliary breaking operation. With the effect of the MMC auxiliary breaking (MAB) operation at both ends of the fault line, the dc fault current can be easily interrupted and isolated by low-cost CB unit installed in the dc transmission line. The equivalent circuit under MAB process is analyzed, and the fault isolation sequences are designed. Furthermore, the economic comparative analysis among three schemes is performed. Finally, a four-terminal bipolar HVdc grid test model is built in PSCAD/EMTDC; in addition, an MMC prototype with proposed scheme is also developed. The simulation and experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publishing histograms with $\epsilon$ -differential privacy has been studied extensively in the literature. Existing schemes aim at maximizing the utility of the published data, while previous experimental evaluations analyze the privacy/utility trade-off. In this paper, we provide the first experimental evaluation of differentially private methods that goes beyond utility, emphasizing also on another important aspect, namely efficiency. Towards this end, we first observe that all existing schemes are comprised of a small set of common blocks. We then optimize and choose the best implementation for each block, determine the combinations of blocks that capture the entire literature, and propose novel block combinations. We qualitatively assess the quality of the schemes based on the skyline of efficiency and utility, i.e., based on whether a method is dominated on both aspects or not. Using exhaustive experiments on four real datasets with different characteristics, we conclude that there are always trade-offs in terms of utility and efficiency. We demonstrate that the schemes derived from our novel block combinations provide the best trade-offs for time critical applications. Our work can serve as a guide to help practitioners engineer a differentially private histogram scheme depending on their application requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This paper shows that participating in a year-round program for African–American male middle school students (ages 10–14) can positively impact their attitudes toward STEM, their confidence in problem solving and team work, and their interest in STEM careers, but may not impact the interest in taking STEM classes to the same extent. Background: Increasing the number of under-represented minorities pursuing degrees in science and engineering through formal and informal learning activities has been a focus in the United States for many years. Efforts to diversify the engineering workforce have often targeted students in high school and college (ages 15–22), with varying success. Intended Outcomes: This program was designed to increase participants’ content knowledge, interest in STEM courses, interest in STEM careers, interest in attending college, and improve their attitudes about STEM. Application Design: Approaches used included: 1) introducing software tools that encouraged critical thinking, creativity and independent learning; 2) integrating engineering and software design processes; 3) providing projects that were age- and culturally-appropriate; and 4) using ethnically matched mentors. Findings: After almost two years in the program participants show improved attitudes toward STEM, more interest and career choices in computing and engineering, and increased interest in attending college. These findings suggested that summer and academic year programs can be effective for cultivating interest in computing and engineering careers, but their impact on interest in studying related subjects may need further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) is a promising technology for future nonvolatile caches and memories. To increase the storage density, multilevel cell (MLC) technique was recently introduced to STT-RAM designs at the cost of degraded access speed, reliability, and energy efficiency. Existing MLC STT-RAM cache architectures primarily focus on the performance and energy optimizations but ignore the crucial demand for reliability. In this paper, we propose “TriZone”—a holistic design scheme for MLC STT-RAM cache to simultaneously meet the requirements of performance, energy, and reliability. Three cache block configurations, namely hard, soft, and mixed, are constructed with the hard-bit, soft-bit, and both hard-bit and soft-bit of MLC STT-RAM, respectively. By observing the difference of these cache blocks, a nonuniform strength ECC (NUS-ECC) is developed to guarantee the operational reliability of a cache block with a variable decoding delay adapting to the needs of error correction (e.g., the number of the erroneous bits). The whole MLC STT-RAM cache is then partitioned into three regions, each of which is composed of different cache blocks. In order to achieve the best tradeoff among performance, energy, and reliability, we then introduce the dynamic cache partitioning to determine the partition of this tri-way MLC STT-RAM cache according to the runtime characteristic of various applications. Experiment results show that compared with conventional performance-driven MLC STT-RAM cache design with pessimistic ECC, TriZone can improve the system performance and energy by averagely 11.7% (10.0%) and 13.3% (15.7%), respectively, for single-threaded (multiprogram) applications. The additional area overhead associated with NUS-ECC is limited by ~ 3%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design structure matrix (DSM), also called the dependency structure matrix, has become a widely used modeling framework across many areas of research and practice. The DSM brings advantages of simplicity and conciseness in representation, and, supported by appropriate analysis, can also highlight important patterns in system architectures (design structures), such as modules and cycles. A literature review in 2001 cited about 100 DSM papers; there have been over 1000 since. Thus, it is useful to survey the latest DSM extensions and innovations to help consolidate progress and identify promising opportunities for further research. This paper surveys the DSM literature, primarily from archival journals, and organizes the developments pertaining to building, displaying, analyzing, and applying product, process, and organization DSMs. It then addresses DSM applications in other domains, as well as recent developments with domain mapping matrices (DMMs) and multidomain matrices (MDMs). Overall, DSM methods are becoming more mainstream, especially in the areas of engineering design, engineering management, management/organization science, and systems engineering. Despite significant research contributions, however, DSM awareness seems to be spreading more slowly in the realm of project management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a robust PD control scheme for flexible-joint robots based on a disturbance observer (DOB). In this paper, the DOB is applied only to the motor-side dynamics of the robot, and the uncertainties on the motor-side are successfully eliminated. It is shown that the proposed DOB-based approach guarantees global asymptotic stability. To this end, two special treatments are required. First, unlike the typical configuration of the DOB, nominal states of the motor-side are fed back to the PD controller. Second, a control input that makes the nominal states stable is additionally introduced. The proposed approach was verified using multi-degree-of-freedom experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Some new methods, based on characterization of the dielectric response of transformer insulation in time and frequency domains, have been pointed out by CIGRE as suitable to assess moisture content in pressboard and paper. Measuring devices available today on the market are quite robust in field conditions; however there is a risk that undesired internal and external factors might influence the measurements. These influences can lead to mistaken interpretation of insulation wetness. Operators should therefore be aware of the risks appearing at different measuring conditions and of the precautions that can be taken to minimize their effects. This work presents a systematic investigation on the influence of some factors on the results of dielectric response measurements in field conditions. The errors that can be committed during the measurements if certain precautions are not taken, with different equipment connected in parallel, are evaluated. The influence of rain and electromagnetic disturbances are also analyzed proposing solutions to attenuate their effects. Finally, a discussion on the influence of temperature distribution follows. The work is concentrated on frequency response measurements, although some results from the use of polarization and depolarization current technique are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an exploding wire experiment to measure the electrical specific action to melt of structural alloys of copper and aluminum, including C10100, C11000, C18000, C18200, Al6061, and Al7075. These alloys, which are commonly used in railguns and other pulsed power devices, are not produced in fine wire form. Instead of wires, we developed a technique to test macroscopic samples ( 0.25~mm\times 0.5~mm cross section) manufactured with wire electrical discharge machining. This paper includes a description of the design considerations for such macroscopic exploding wire experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we investigate a system composed of mixtures of one-shot units with nonhomogeneous and time-dependent characteristics. We propose analytical expressions to predict system reliability metrics and consider a physics-statistics-based lifetime model to demonstrate the units’ failure mechanism as well as its failure process uncertainty. We design a sequence of optimum accelerated non-destructive testing (NDT) plans to predict the reliability metrics of the system and show that a well-designed sequential accelerated NDTs is an effective approach to shorten the test duration with negligible consequence on system reliability metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accelerated life testing has been widely applied to obtain the reliability information of an asset (component) at use conditions when the component is highly reliable. In accelerated life testing, tested components are exposed to stress levels more severe than usual so that more component failures can be observed in a short period of time. Most existing statistical models assume a known parametric relationship between the lifetime (or lifetime characteristic) and accelerating stresses. In this paper, we propose semiparametric modeling for the relationship between the lifetime characteristic and accelerating stresses. The proposed model is suitable for both single and multiple accelerating stress cases. A maximum penalized likelihood estimation method is developed to estimate the model parameters. A simulation study is implemented to illustrate the performance of the proposed model, and a real-world case study is conducted to demonstrate the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the process of long-term use, the uncertainty of an engineering structure often presents time-variant or dynamic characteristics due to the influence of stochastic loads and material performance degradations. In such a situation, the structural design optimization will involve an important problem of time-variant reliability-based design optimization (TRBDO). Performing TRBDO involves a nested optimization, which will lead to extremely low computational efficiency. In this paper, a single-loop approach (SLA) is proposed to convert the nested optimization in TRBDO into a sequence iterative process composed of the time-variant reliability analysis (TRA), constraint discretization, and design optimization. In each iteration step, the TRA method based on stochastic process discretization is first used to calculate the time-variant reliability of constraints; second, through introducing the concept of the target reliability index of discretized time period and proposing the corresponding algorithm, each time-variant constraint is discretized into a series of time-invariant constraints to formulate a conventional reliability-based design optimization problem. The approach exhibits a good comprehensive performance in terms of efficiency and convergence. The validity and practicality of the SLA are validated by two numerical examples and a design problem for the chassis of a self-balancing vehicle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By combining the nonprobabilistic reliability theory with optimization design approach, this paper proposes a mixed reliability-based optimization method for the heat transfer system design with both fuzzy and interval parameters in material property, external load, and boundary condition. Fuzzy variables are used to represent subjective uncertainties associated with expert opinions; whereas, interval variables are adopted to quantify objective uncertainties with limited information. Based on the level-cut strategy, the mixed uncertain problem is transformed into a pure interval problem first. Then, a modified reliability analysis method using an interval ranking strategy and integral operation is presented to precisely assess the system safety possibility. Subsequently, a mixed reliability-based optimization model with fuzzy and interval parameters is established, which is a nested optimization problem with huge computational cost. A subinterval perturbation method is eventually presented for temperature field prediction, which can replace the inner loop optimization and improve the computational efficiency. A transient heat conduction example about a three-layer thermal structure verifies the superiority of the proposed model and method for mixed reliability analysis and optimization in practical engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Context: Variability (i.e., the ability of software systems or artifacts to be adjusted for different contexts) became a key property of many systems. Objective: We analyze existing research on variability in software systems. We investigate variability handling in major software engineering phases (e.g., requirements engineering, architecting). Method: We performed a systematic literature review. A manual search covered 13 premium software engineering journals and 18 premium conferences, resulting in 15,430 papers searched and 196 papers considered for analysis. To improve reliability and to increase reproducibility, we complemented the manual search with a targeted automated search. Results: Software quality attributes have not received much attention in the context of variability. Variability is studied in all software engineering phases, but testing is underrepresented. Data to motivate the applicability of current approaches are often insufficient; research designs are vaguely described. Conclusions: Based on our findings we propose dimensions of variability in software engineering. This empirically grounded classification provides a step towards a unifying, integrated perspective of variability in software systems, spanning across disparate or loosely coupled research themes in the software engineering community. Finally, we provide recommendations to bridge the gap between research and practice and point to opportunities for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Variability models represent the common and variable features of products in a product line. Since the introduction of FODA in 1990, several variability modeling languages have been proposed in academia and industry, followed by hundreds of research papers on variability models and modeling. However, little is known about the practical use of such languages. We study the constructs, semantics, usage, and associated tools of two variability modeling languages, Kconfig and CDL, which are independently developed outside academia and used in large and significant software projects. We analyze 128 variability models found in 12 open--source projects using these languages. Our study 1) supports variability modeling research with empirical data on the real-world use of its flagship concepts. However, we 2) also provide requirements for concepts and mechanisms that are not commonly considered in academic techniques, and 3) challenge assumptions about size and complexity of variability models made in academic papers. These results are of interest to researchers working on variability modeling and analysis techniques and to designers of tools, such as feature dependency checkers and interactive product configurators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As a result of their involvement in several research and development and innovation (R&D&I) projects developed in various companies, the authors acquired knowledge of two basic concepts: quality and innovation. The application of these concepts in the teaching–learning process can help teachers to incorporate informal changes in the curriculum to provide for continuous improvement. This paper presents a simple methodology to apply quality and innovation concepts and tools in the daily teaching activity. In order to show the ease of use, as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of this methodology, the experience of applying it in an engineering course over nine years, the actions undertaken, the results obtained, and the lessons learned are described here. The methodology incorporates reflection, innovation, and decision taking based on objective data. Contact with the companies involved has enabled the teachers to learn continuously and to enhance their motivation when working with students. The methodology applied and the example described in this paper can be a starting point for other teachers interested in improving the quality of their teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced mobile applications demand low power and high performance systems. In this paper, a technology computer aided design (TCAD)-based feasibility investigation of a recently proposed area tunneling field effect transistor (FET) structure is carried out from the point of high volume and ultralow power mobile applications. We demonstrate that for realization of future ultralow power and high performance systems, unique properties of area tunneling class of tunnel FET structures need to be employed. These devices are realized by engineering the tunneling region profile and tunneling cross-sectional area. The optimized devices are found to leverage up to \sim7\times energy reduction when compared with the 20-nm node MOS device options while meeting the high performance targets. Device design insights for such an area tunneling class of tunnel FET structures are discussed in this paper for the first time. It is shown that by lowering the supply voltage below 0.5 V, up to 10\times reduction of the energy delay product is feasible by using area tunneling devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent progress in high-level synthesis (HLS) has helped raise the abstraction level of hardware design. HLS flows reduce designer effort by allowing development in a high-level language, which improves debugging, code reuse and ability to explore different implementation options. However, although the HLS process is fast, implementation and performance analysis still require lengthy logic synthesis and physical design. For design optimization, HLS tools require design space exploration to obtain parallelism at multiple levels of granularity including parallelism within a single HLS-generated core and parallelism between multiple instances of cores. Core interconnect and external bandwidth limitations can significantly impact feasible options in the design space. With many dimensions in a design space exploration, it quickly becomes infeasible to perform full logic synthesis and physical design for each possible design point. However, generation and evaluation of communications infrastructure as part of the exploration is critical to determine the system performance. Thus, in this paper, we extend the prior multilevel granularity parallelism exploration in the FCUDA HLS flow, which takes CUDA code as design input and generates a corresponding field programmable gate array implementation. Our framework performs an initial characterization of the application design space, then analytically explores the design space considering parallelism, core interconnect, and external memory bandwidth, and selects a pareto-optimal set of designs. Our flow is completely automated to perform the exploration to characterize the analytical model, perform the exploration, select a solution, and integrate multiple instantiations of FCUDA cores via an advanced extensible interface bus interconnect. Our results demonstrate that this new FCUDA flow efficiently identifies and generates implementations with up to $5\times $ improved system performance compared to single-level granularity parallelism (core-level optimization). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of various new test types in production test suites with the hope of keeping defect escape level in check continuously increases the test cost while the economics of the intensely competitive consumer marketplace dictates test strategies that are low cost yet still effective in defect detection. An adaptive test methodology is proposed in this paper to address the simultaneous demand for efficiency and effectiveness in testing through an adaptive prioritization of test vectors according to defect detection effectiveness, subsequently, leading to the identification of a compact yet effective test set. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the vector prioritization process and show substantial cost reduction levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic frequency regulation and effect of penetration of static and inertial sources on system stability are important issues for islanded microgrid power quality and reliability. This paper presents a novel strategy of utilizing an inverter-based source as a voltage source inverter or virtual synchronous generator (VSG). Electromechanical and power modes are critical for small signal stability of an isolated microgrid having static and inertial sources. Interaction of these modes is analyzed through eigenvalue analysis of microgrid model and differential equations describing respective modes. Inertia is important for providing fault current, determining steady state and transient stability, and better system frequency profile. A novel technique is proposed to include inertia virtually to the inverter-based sources by adding swing equation. Furthermore, inverter-based sources with traditional and modified droop controls and VSGs are compared with respect to inertia, energy, and stability. The proposed control and stability comparison are verified through experimental microgrid setup having three inverter-based sources, which can be alternately operated as VSGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a speed-sensorless method for detecting rotor asymmetries in wound rotor induction machines working under nonstationary conditions. The method is based on the time–frequency analysis of rotor currents and on a subsequent transformation, which leads to the following goals: unlike conventional spectrograms, it enables to show the diagnostic results as a simple graph, similar to a Fourier spectrum, but where the fault components are placed always at the same positions, regardless the working conditions of the machine; moreover, it enables to assess the machine condition through a very small set of parameters. These characteristics facilitate the understanding and processing of the diagnostic results, and thus, help to design improved monitoring and predictive maintenance systems. Also these features make the proposed method very suitable for condition monitoring of wind power generators, because it fits well with the usual nonstationary working conditions of wind turbines, and makes feasible the transmission of significant diagnostic information to the remote monitoring center using standard data transmission systems. Simulation results and experimental tests, carried out on a 5-kW laboratory rig, show the validity of the proposed method and illustrate its advantages regarding previously developed diagnostic methods under nonstationary conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of sustainability-based research in Engineering Management, with a specific emphasis on work published in technology and innovation management academic journals. The importance of sustainability is not lost on managers and researchers since this research is necessary for the basic survival of society and man. This paper not only identifies the developments that have occurred in sustainability research, based on the departmental topics of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, but also potential research streams in the field. We observe that the research in this area has seen its largest growth only in the past few years, but can be traced back for almost 40 years. We also provide an overview of the special issue associated with this review along with an introduction to Sustainability in Engineering Management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper summarizes the discussions held during the First IEEE Life Sciences Grand Challenges Conference, held on October 4–5, 2012, at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, and the grand challenges identified by the conference participants. Despite tremendous efforts to develop the knowledge and ability that are essential in addressing biomedical and health problems using engineering methodologies, the optimization of this approach toward engineering the life sciences and healthcare remains a grand challenge. The conference was aimed at high-level discussions by participants representing various sectors, including academia, government, and industry. Grand challenges were identified by the conference participants in five areas including engineering the brain and nervous system; engineering the cardiovascular system; engineering of cancer diagnostics, therapeutics, and prevention; translation of discoveries to clinical applications; and education and training. A number of these challenges are identified and summarized in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This index covers all technical items - papers, correspondence, reviews, etc. - that appeared in this periodical during the year, and items from previous years that were commented upon or corrected in this year. Departments and other items may also be covered if they have been judged to have archival value. The Author Index contains the primary entry for each item, listed under the first author's name. The primary entry includes the co-authors' names, the title of the paper or other item, and its location, specified by the publication abbreviation, year, month, and inclusive pagination. The Subject Index contains entries describing the item under all appropriate subject headings, plus the first author's name, the publication abbreviation, month, and year, and inclusive pages. Note that the item title is found only under the primary entry in the Author Index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Team working is becoming increasingly important in modern organizations due to its beneficial outcomes. A team's performance levels are determined by complex interactions between the attributes of its individual members, the communication and dynamics between members, the working environment, and the team's work tasks. As organizations evolve, so too does the nature of team working. During the past two decades, product development in engineering organizations has increasingly been undertaken by multidisciplinary integrated product teams. Such increasing complexity means that the nature of research methods for studying teams must also evolve. Accordingly, this paper proposes an agent-based modeling approach for simulating team working within an engineering environment, informed by research conducted in two engineering organizations. The model includes a number of variables at an individual level (competency, motivation, availability, response rate), team level (communication, shared mental models, trust), and task level (difficulty, workflow), which jointly determine team performance (quality, time to complete the task, time spent working on the task). In addition to describing the model's development, the paper also reports the results of various simulation runs that were conducted in response to realistic team working scenarios, together with its validation. Finally, the paper discusses the model's practical applications as a tool for facilitating organizational decision making with respect to optimizing team working. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reviews and analyzes studies concerning measurement uncertainty, examining 114 papers published between 2004 and 2010 in the following international journals: IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Measurement, Flow Measurement and Instrumentation, and Precision Engineering. The papers were classified according to six different approaches identified during the research and six different methods of calculating uncertainty used by the authors of the researched articles. This paper provides a short summary of the state of the art of measurement uncertainty, analyzes the research scenario on the theme, and, finally, brings suggestions on future work based on the analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalization of complex engineering services has resulted in physically dispersed teams that can no longer rely on the traditional and familiar oral transmission of engineering expertise nor can they assume knowledge of their team members’ culture. Yet, such teams need to be able coordinate effectively the dispersed knowledge of team members. We know little about how cultural differences among engineering team members impact the coordination of dispersed knowledge, so called transactive memory systems (TMSs)—or “who knows what” and “who knows who knows what.” In this paper, we present a longitudinal case study of a dispersed, cross-cultural team involving U.S. and Romanian engineers. The cultural differences in values, practices, and institutions had a major impact on TMS indicators of specialization, coordination, and credibility. The paper demonstrates how the cultural differences impeded TMS development. The results provide insight into TMS as an implicit coordination mechanism in a global team. We provide advice in terms of interventions that can promote the development of TMS in a culturally diverse team. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

High-temperature superconductors have created the opportunity for a step change in the technology of power applications. Racetrack superconducting coils made from YBCO coated conductors have been used in several engineering applications including SMES, rotor or stator windings of electric machines. AC loss is one of the most important factors that determine the design and performance of superconducting devices. In this paper, a numerical model is developed to calculate the AC losses in superconducting racetrack coils in different magnetic conditions. This paper first discusses the AC losses of the coils in self-field or external field only. It then goes to investigate the AC losses of the coils being exposed to AC ripple field and a DC background field. Finally, the AC losses of the coils carrying DC current and being exposed to AC field are calculated. These two scenarios correspond to using superconducting coils as the rotor field winding of an electric machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]