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- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
Geology and its tangential studies, collectively known and referred to in this thesis as geosciences, have been paramount to the transformation and advancement of society, fundamentally changing the way we view, interact and live with the surrounding natural and built environment. It is important to recognize the value and importance of this interdisciplinary scientific field while reconciling its ties to imperial and colonizing extractive systems which have led to harmful and invasive endeavors. This intersection among geosciences, (environmental) justice studies, and decolonization is intended to promote inclusive pedagogical models through just and equitable methodologies and frameworks as to prevent further injustices and promote recognition and healing of old wounds. By utilizing decolonial frameworks and highlighting the voices of peoples from colonized and exploited landscapes, this annotated syllabus tackles the issues previously described while proposing solutions involving place-based education and the recentering of land within geoscience pedagogical models. (abstract)
The ASU COVID-19 testing lab process was developed to operate as the primary testing site for all ASU staff, students, and specified external individuals. Tests are collected at various collection sites, including a walk-in site at the SDFC and various drive-up sites on campus; analysis is conducted on ASU campus and results are distributed virtually to all patients via the Health Services patient portal. The following is a literature review on past implementations of various process improvement techniques and how they can be applied to the ABCTL testing process to achieve laboratory goals. (abstract)
Moreover, wide band-gap devices (both SiC and GaN) are used for implementing their hardware prototypes. It enables the switching frequency to be high without compromising on the converter efficiency. Also it allows a reduced magnetic component size, further enabling a high power density solution, with power density far beyond the state-of-the art solutions.
Additionally, for the transformer-less microinverter application, another challenge is to achieve a very high gain DC-DC stage with a simultaneous high conversion efficiency. An extended duty ratio (EDR) boost converter which is a hybrid of switched capacitors and interleaved inductor technique, has been implemented for this purpose. It offers higher converter efficiency as most of the switches encounter lower voltage stress directly impacting switching loss; the input current being shared among all the interleaved converters (inherent sharing only in a limited duty ratio), the inductor conduction loss is reduced by a factor of the number of phases.
Further, the EDR boost converter has been studied for both discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) operations and operations with wide input/output voltage range in continuous conduction mode (CCM). A current sharing between its interleaved input phases is studied in detail to show that inherent sharing is possible for only in a limited duty ratio span, and modification of the duty ratio scheme is proposed to ensure equal current sharing over all the operating range for 3 phase EDR boost. All the analysis are validated with experimental results.
Constructing the hybrid AC-HVDC grid is a significant move in the development of the HVDC techniques; the form of dc system is evolving from the point-to-point stand-alone dc links to the embedded HVDC system and the multi-terminal HVDC (MTDC) system. The MTDC is a solution for the renewable energy interconnections, and the MTDC grids can improve the power system reliability, flexibility in economic dispatches, and converter/cable utilizing efficiencies.
The dissertation reviews the HVDC technologies, discusses the stability issues regarding the ac and HVDC connections, proposes a novel power oscillation control strategy to improve system stability, and develops a nonlinear voltage droop control strategy for the MTDC grid.
To verify the effectiveness the proposed power oscillation control strategy, a long distance paralleled AC-HVDC transmission test system is employed. Based on the PSCAD/EMTDC platform simulation results, the proposed power oscillation control strategy can improve the system dynamic performance and attenuate the power oscillations effectively.
To validate the nonlinear voltage droop control strategy, three droop controls schemes are designed according to the proposed nonlinear voltage droop control design procedures. These control schemes are tested in a hybrid AC-MTDC system. The hybrid AC-MTDC system, which is first proposed in this dissertation, consists of two ac grids, two wind farms and a five-terminal HVDC grid connecting them. Simulation studies are performed in the PSCAD/EMTDC platform. According to the simulation results, all the three design schemes have their unique salient features.
These targets for the converter are met through a number of different ways. The switches used are Silicon Carbide FETs. These are wide band gap (WBG) devices that can operate at high frequencies and temperatures. Since they allow for high frequency operation, a switching frequency of 250 khz is proposed and implemented. This helps with power density by reducing the size of passive components. High efficiencies are made possible by using a simple soft switching technique by augmenting the DC/DC converter with an auxiliary branch to enable zero voltage transition.
The efficacy of the approach is tested through simulation and hardware implementation of two different prototypes. The Gen-I prototype was a single soft switched synchronous boost converter rated at 2.5kw. Both the motoring mode and regenerative modes of operation (Boost and Buck) were hardware tested for over 2kw and efficiency results of over 98.15% were achieved. The Gen-II prototype and the main focus of this work is an interleaved soft switched synchronous boost converter. This converter has been implemented in hardware as well and has been tested at 6.7kw and an efficiency of over 98% has been achieved in the boost mode of operation.
With lower tower footing resistance, the lightning performance of the transmission line can typically be improved. However, when surge arresters are installed in the system, the footing resistance may have either negative or positive effect on the lightning performance. Different situations for both effects are studied in this thesis.
This thesis proposes a surge arrester installation strategy for the overhead transmission line lightning protection. In order to determine the most efficient surge arrester configuration of transmission line, the entire transmission line is divided into several line sections according to the footing resistance of its towers. A line section consists of the towers which have similar footing resistance. Two different designs are considered for transmission line lightning protection, they include: equip different number of surge arrester on selected phase of every tower, equip surge arresters on all phases of selected towers. By varying the number of the towers or the number of phases needs to be equipped with surge arresters, the threshold voltage for line insulator flashover is used to evaluate different surge arrester installation configurations. The way to determine the optimal surge arresters configuration for each line section is then introduced in this thesis.
In light of the advantages and disadvantages of the HEM, this report focuses on three topics:
1. Exploring the effect of double and extended precision on the performance of HEM,
2. Investigating the performance of different embedding formulations of HEM, and
3. Estimating the saddle-node bifurcation point (SNBP) from HEM-based Thévenin-like networks using pseudo-measurements.
The HEM algorithm consists of three distinct procedures that might accumulate roundoff error and cause precision loss during the calculations: the matrix equation solution calculation, the power series inversion calculation and the Padé approximant calculation. Numerical experiments have been performed to investigate which aspect of the HEM algorithm causes the most precision loss and needs extended precision. It is shown that extended precision must be used for the entire algorithm to improve numerical performance.
A comparison of two common embedding formulations, a scalable formulation and a non-scalable formulation, is conducted and it is shown that these two formulations could have extremely different numerical properties on some power systems.
The application of HEM to the SNBP estimation using local-measurements is explored. The maximum power transfer theorem (MPTT) obtained for nonlinear Thévenin-like networks is validated with high precision. Different numerical methods based on MPTT are investigated. Numerical results show that the MPTT method works reasonably well for weak buses in the system. The roots method, as an alternative, is also studied. It is shown to be less effective than the MPTT method but the roots of the Padé approximant can be used as a research tool for determining the effects of noisy measurements on the accuracy of SNBP prediction.