• International Journal of Railway
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.94-98
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• 2008

Static inverters are essential devices onboard of rolling stock. State-of-the-art static inverters have an impact on both rail infrastructure and vehicle maintenance due to their new topology with new features. The paper describes two important aspects as examples of new features available in state-of-the-art static inverters: active input current control and the effects on the rail infrastructure as well as the detection of the state of charge and the state of health of batteries to simplify vehicle maintenance.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1802-1811
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• 2016

A novel battery SOH estimation algorithm based on outlier detection has been presented. The Battery state of health (SOH) is one of the most important parameters that describes the usability state of the power battery system. Firstly, a battery system model with lifetime fading characteristic was established, and the battery characteristic parameters were acquired from the lifetime fading process. Then, the outlier detection method based on angular distribution was used to identify the outliers among the battery behaviors. Lastly, the functional relationship between battery SOH and the outlier distribution was obtained by polynomial fitting method. The experimental results show that the algorithm can identify the outliers accurately, and the absolute error between the SOH estimation value and true value is less than 3%.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.791-797
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• 2016

Background: Punjab state is particularly reporting a rising burden of cancer. A 'door to door cancer awareness and early detection campaign' was therefore launched in the Punjab covering about 2.67 million population, wherein after initial training accredited social health activists (ASHAs) and other health staff conducted a survey for early detection of cancer cases based on a twelve point clinical algorithm. Objective: To ascertain unit cost for undertaking a population-based cancer awareness and early detection campaign. Materials and Methods: Data were collected using bottom-up costing methods. Full economic costs of implementing the campaign from the health system perspective were calculated. Options to meet the likely demand for project activities were further evaluated to examine their worth from the point of view of long-term sustainability. Results: The campaign covered 97% of the state population. A total of 24,659 cases were suspected to have cancer and were referred to health facilities. At the state level, incidence and prevalence of cancer were found to be 90 and 216 per 100,000, respectively. Full economic cost of implementing the campaign in pilot district was USD 117,524. However, the financial cost was approximately USD 6,301. Start-up phase of campaign was more resource intensive (63% of total) than the implementation phase. The economic cost per person contacted and suspected by clinical algorithm was found to be USD 0.20 and USD 40 respectively. Cost per confirmed case under the campaign was 7,043 USD. Conclusions: The campaign was able to screen a reasonably large population. High to high economic cost points towards the fact that the opportunity cost of campaign put a significant burden on health system and other programs. However, generating awareness and early detection strategy adopted in this campaign seems promising in light of fact that organized screening is not in place in India and in many developing countries.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.47-66
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• 2008

The present work utilizes system identification technique for health monitoring of shear building, wherein Parametric State Space modeling has been adopted. The method requires input excitation to the structure and also output acceleration responses of both undamaged and damaged structure obtained from numerically simulated model. Modal parameters like eigen frequencies and eigen vectors have been extracted from the State Space model after introducing appropriate transformation. Least square technique has been utilized for the evaluation of the stiffness matrix after having obtained the modal matrix for the entire structure. Highly accurate values of stiffness of the structure could be evaluated corresponding to both the undamaged as well as damaged state of a structure, while considering noise in the simulated output response analogous to real time scenario. The damaged floor could also be located very conveniently and accurately by this adopted strategy. This method of damage detection can be applied in case of output acceleration responses recorded by sensors from the actual structure. Further, in case of even limited availability of sensors along the height of a multi-storeyed building, the methodology could yield very accurate information related to structural stiffness.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.241-262
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• 2012

Some applications require structural health monitoring in inaccessible components. This paper presents a technique useful for Structural Health Monitoring of double wall structures, such as double wall steam pipes and double wall pressure vessels separated from an ultrasonic transducer by three layers. Detection has been demonstrated at distances in excess of one meter for a fixed transducer. The case presented here is for one of the layers, the middle layer, being a fluid. For certain transducer configurations the wave propagating in the fluid is a wave with low velocity and attenuation. The paper presents a model based on wave theory and finite element simulation; the experimental set-up and observations, and comparison between theory and experiment. The results provide a description of the technique, understanding of the phenomenon and its possible applications in Structural Health Monitoring.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.63-86
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• 2023

Structural health monitoring and damage detection are essential for assessing, maintaining, and rehabilitating structures. Most of the existing damage detection approaches compare the current state structural response with the undamaged vibrational structural response, which is unsuitable for old and existing structures where undamaged vibrational responses are absent. One of the approaches for existing structures, numerical model updating/inverse modelling, available in the literature, is limited to numerical studies with high-end software. In this study, an attempt is made to study the effectiveness of the model updating technique, simplify modelling complexity, and economize its usability. The optimization-based detection problem is addressed by using programmable open-sourced code, OpenSees^® and a derivative-free optimization code, NOMAD^®. Modal analysis is used for damage identification of beam-like structures with several damage scenarios. The performance of the proposed methodology is validated both numerically and experimentally. The proposed method performs satisfactorily in identifying both locations and intensity of damage in structures.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.417-428
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• 2017

Diseases caused by foodborne or waterborne pathogens are emerging. Many pathogens can enter into the viable but nonculturable (VBNC) state, which is a survival strategy when exposed to harsh environmental stresses. Pathogens in the VBNC state have the ability to evade conventional microbiological detection methods, posing a significant and potential health risk. Therefore, controlling VBNC bacteria in food processing and the environment is of great importance. As the typical one of the gram-negatives, Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a widespread foodborne and waterborne pathogenic bacterium and is able to enter into a VBNC state in extreme conditions (similar to the other gram-negative bacteria), including inducing factors and resuscitation stimulus. VBNC E. coli has the ability to recover both culturability and pathogenicity, which may bring potential health risk. This review describes the concrete factors (nonthermal treatment, chemical agents, and environmental factors) that induce E. coli into the VBNC state, the condition or stimulus required for resuscitation of VBNC E. coli, and the methods for detecting VBNC E. coli. Furthermore, the mechanism of genes and proteins involved in the VBNC E. coli is also discussed in this review.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.305-318
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• 2008

The development of a digital signal processor based prototype is described in relation to continuing efforts for realizing a fully self-contained active sensor system utilizing impedance-based structural health monitoring. The impedance method utilizes a piezoelectric material bonded to the structure under observation to act as both an actuator and sensor. By monitoring the electrical impedance of the piezoelectric material, insights into the health of the structured can be inferred. The active sensing system detailed in this paper interrogates a structure utilizing a self-sensing actuator and a low cost impedance method. Here, all the data processing, storage, and analysis is performed at the sensor location. A wireless transmitter is used to communicate the current status of the structure. With this new low cost, field deployable impedance analyzer, reliance on traditional expensive, bulky, and power consuming impedance analyzers is no longer necessary. A complete power analysis of the prototype is performed to determine the validity of power harvesting being utilized for self-containment of the hardware. Experimental validation of the prototype on a representative structure is also performed and compared to traditional methods of damage detection.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.57-80
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• 2015

Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) has been widely used for structural identification and damage detection. However, conventional EKF approaches require that external excitations are measured. Also, in the conventional EKF, unknown structural parameters are included as an augmented vector in forming the extended state vector. Hence the sizes of extended state vector and state equation are quite large, which suffers from not only large computational effort but also convergence problem for the identification of a large number of unknown parameters. Moreover, such approaches are not suitable for intelligent structural damage detection due to the limited computational power and storage capacities of smart sensors. In this paper, a two-stage and two-step algorithm is proposed for the identification of structural damage as well as unknown external excitations. In stage-one, structural state vector and unknown structural parameters are recursively estimated in a two-step Kalman estimator approach. Then, the unknown external excitations are estimated sequentially by least-squares estimation in stage-two. Therefore, the number of unknown variables to be estimated in each step is reduced and the identification of structural system and unknown excitation are conducted sequentially, which simplify the identification problem and reduces computational efforts significantly. Both numerical simulation examples and lab experimental tests are used to validate the proposed algorithm for the identification of structural damage as well as unknown excitations for structural health monitoring.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.59 no.2
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• pp.167-171
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• 2021

Haemonchosis remains a significant problem in small ruminants. In this study, the assay of recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) combined with the lateral flow strip (LFS-RPA) was established for the rapid detection of Haemonchus contortus in goat feces. The assay used primers and a probe targeting a specific sequence in the ITS-2 gene. We compared the performance of the LFS-RPA assay to a PCR assay. The LFS-RPA had a detection limit of 10 fg DNA, which was 10 times less compared to the lowest detection limit obtained by PCR. Out of 24 goat fecal samples, LFS-RPA assay detected H. contortus DNA with 95.8% sensitivity, compared to PCR, 79.1% sensitivity. LFS-RPA assay did not detect DNA from other related helminth species and demonstrated an adequate tolerance to inhibitors present in the goat feces. Taken together, our results suggest that LFS-RPA assay had a high diagnostic accuracy for the rapid detection of H. contortus and merits further evaluation.