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New Brunswick's coastal communities and civil engineering systems are vulnerable to flooding associated with tides, extreme storm surges and wave events. Coastal flood hazards and risks are projected to increase over time, as a consequence of urbanization and climate change effects. The province's Coastal Flood Hazard Mapping project aims to develop new maps for approximately 2,270 linear kilometers of the New Brunswick coast. A regional wave run-up study was conducted to characterize storm wave contributions to coastal flood hazards. Representative extreme wave run-up heights were evaluated for 614 zones along the New Brunswick coast. Zones were identified and classified according to extreme water level characteristics, wave exposure, shore type and gradient. The study involved statistical analyses of offshore wind and wave hindcast data, numerical wave transformation modelling to evaluate nearshore extreme wave conditions, and a systematic approach to calculating extreme wave run-up heights for each zone. Nearshore extreme wave parameters and run-up height data from the study will be incorporated in a publicly accessible, web-based map application, which will inform coastal flood risk management and climate change adaptation efforts in New Brunswick., 2019 Canadian Society for Civil Engineering Annual Conference, CSCE 2019, June 12-15, 2019, Laval, QC. Canada

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International audience; In this paper, we investigate DBDs in the medium frequency range (MF, 0.3–3 MHz). More precisely, for a 2 inter-dielectric gap in helium at atmospheric pressure, the frequency is varied from 1.0 to 2.7 MHz. The generated discharge shows similarities with both the low-frequency atmospheric-pressure glow discharge (APGD) and the atmospheric pressure capacitively coupled radio-frequency (CCRF) discharge. In the frequency range under investigation, two diffuse discharge modes can be observed depending on the voltage applied between the electrodes. At low applied voltage, the discharge emissions are barely visible and are concentrated in the center of the gas gap similarly to CCRF discharges in the $\Omega $ mode where the electron density is concentrated in the bulk. Ohmic heating is the main power transfer mechanism. At higher applied voltage, the discharge emissions are 10 times more intense and are closer to the dielectric surfaces similarly to the more common radio-frequency α mode. These two discharge modes can be observed in the same experimental conditions with the amplitude of the applied voltage as sole control parameter. The gas temperature obtained from N2 impurities rotational spectrum increases from room temperature to about 500 K while the power density rises from 10−1 to 101 W cm−3 when the applied voltage is increased. In addition, when the discharge transits back and forth from the $\Omega $ to the α mode, a hysteresis is observed. The transition from the $\Omega $ to the α mode occurs abruptly with a large RMS current increase while the transition from the α to the $\Omega $ mode is rather smooth with no significant discontinuity in the RMS current.

28th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 101-106, The pursuit of higher efficiency photovoltaic cells for terrestrial concentrator applications leads naturally to consideration of 4-, 5-, and 6-junction cells. In this paper we investigate the semiconductor device mechanisms affecting thermal performance of multijunction cells with more than 3 junctions. The temperature dependences of 5-junction (5J) and 3-junction (3J) cells are modeled and compared, showing nearly identical relative changes in the Voc and efficiency of 5J and 3J concentrator solar cells with varying temperature. A small increase in Jsc as cell temperature rises is largely cancelled by a corresponding decrease in fill factor, both related to current imbalance caused by shifting subcell bandgaps as temperature increases, while changes in Voc dominate the multijunction cell efficiency temperature dependence. A formal treatment relating fractional change in Voc per °C to the average subcell bandgap for any multijunction cell is developed, and compared to measured temperature dependences of Voc for 1, 3, 4, and 5-junction cells, with inverted metamorphic (IMM), semiconductor bonding technology (SBT), and upright lattice-matched (LM) cell designs. Intentional changes in subcell current balance are studied, showing that 5J and 3J cells are remarkably insensitive to whether the subcells are designed to be current balanced at 0°C, 50°C, or 100°C.

International audience

Three-dimensional models of the spine are commonly used to diagnose, to treat, and to study spinal deformities. Creating these models is however time-consuming and, therefore, expensive. We propose in this paper a reconstruction method that finds the most likely 3D reconstruction given a maximal error bound on a limited set of landmark locations supplied by the user. This problem can be solved using second-order cone programming, leading to a globally convergent method that is considerably faster than currently available methods. A user can, with our current implementation, interactively modify the landmark locations and receive instantaneous feedback on the effect of those changes on the 3D reconstruction instead of blindly selecting landmarks. The proposed method was validated on a set of 53 patients who had adolescent idiopathic scoliosis using real and synthetic tests. Test results showed that the proposed method is considerably faster than currents methods (about forty times faster), is extremely flexible, and offers comparable accuracy.