This book reports on a comprehensive study on the modeling, online and offline parameter estimation and control strategies for fuel cell systems. Upon reviewing the control-oriented modeling of proton-exchange membrane fuel cell systems (PEMFC) and solid oxide fuel cell systems (SOFC), it describes a new a set of methodologies to estimate the parameters of these models, both online and offline. In turn, it reports on the design of different control systems for PEMFC and SOFC. Experimental findings are shown to demonstrate the efficiency of the newly developed methods in practical...

Over the past thirty years, the liquefaction of sand containing a small amount of fine particles has become an engaging topic in the geotechnical community. Indeed, a great variety of field investigations revealed that the real liquefied soils are mainly composed of a host sand matrix and a small fraction of plastic or non-plastic fines. In this context, several series of monotonic and cyclic triaxial tests were performed to clarify the influence of these fine particles on the development of sand liquefaction. To get closer toin situconditions, 1g shaking table tests were carried out with two...

This book reports on a comprehensive study on a novel high-power converter, i.e. a Modular Multilevel Converter with Interleaved Half-bridge Submodules (ISM-MMC). It describes in depth its average model, the operating principles, as well as a new control method and a hybrid modulation strategy that help to exploit the benefits of the interleaving scheme. The new power converter is particularly advantageous for high-current applications that require superb quality of input/output waveforms. Moreover, this book reports on a systematic study of the current balancing problem between...

This book describes the development of an innovative solution for electrified roadway pavements based on engineered cementitious composites, which are exhibiting an extreme tensile strain capacity that is much higher than conventional concrete. This enables the pavement to work without steel reinforcement and to embed a dynamic wireless power transfer technology for charging electric vehicles. At first, the book presents a modified performance-driven design approach to improve the composites to achieve the optimum pavement design in terms of functional and structural performance. It shows...

This book focuses on complex shaped micro- and nanostructures for future biomedical and sensing applications that were investigated by both theory and experiments.The first part of the book explores rotation-translation coupling of artificial microswimmers at low Reynolds numbers. Usually corkscrew shapes, i.e chiral shapes, are considered in such experiments, due to their inspiration from nature. However, the analysis of the relevant symmetries shows that achiral objects can also be propulsive, which is experimentally demonstrated for the first time.In the second part, a new single-particle...

In this thesis, the first measurement of the running of the top quark mass is presented. This is a fundamental quantum effect that had never been studied before. Any deviation from the expected behaviour can be interpreted as a hint of the presence of physics beyond the Standard Model. All relevant aspects of the analysis are extensively described and documented. This thesis also describes a simultaneous measurement of the inclusive top quark-antiquark production cross section and the top quark mass in the simulation. The measured cross section is also used to precisely determine the values...

This book presents a novel continuum finite deformation framework addressing the complex interactions among electrostatics, species transport, and mechanics in solid networks immersed in a fluid phase of solvent and ions. Grounded on cutting-edge multiphysics theories for soft active materials, the proposed model is primarily applied to ionic polymer metal composites (IPMCs). First, the influence of shear deformation on the IPMC response is analyzed through semi-analytical solutions obtained via the method of matched asymptotic expansions. Second, the novel electrochemo-poromechanical theory...

This book offers a systematic study of control algorithms applied in the operation of solar membrane distillation (SMD) facilities. After a short introduction to membrane distillation systems powered by solar energy, it reports on the various stages of the development of a comprehensive operating strategy, based on modelling, control, and optimization techniques, which enables an improved operation of SMD plants helping the commercialization of the SMD technology. A special focus of the research was to maximize the distillate production of the MD modules while reducing their thermal energy...

This book describes the first application at CMS of deep learning algorithms trained directly on low-level, “raw” detector data, or so-called end-to-end physics reconstruction. Growing interest in searches for exotic new physics in the CMS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has highlighted the need for a new generation of particle reconstruction algorithms. For many exotic physics searches, sensitivity is constrained not by the ability to extract information from particle-level data but by inefficiencies in the reconstruction of the particle-level quantities themselves....

This book presents the cold side of the Universe illustrated by the rest-frame, far-infrared emission with Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The author constructed the largest-ever ALMA sample and dataset, which enables them to identify very faint, rest-frame, far-infrared dust continuums as well as the carbon fine-structure line emission from distant galaxies that have been missed in previous surveys. The observational findings described in this book reveal for the first time where and how much of the star formation, traced by the rest-frame far-infrared emission, is...