- Date:
- 2011-2015
- Theme:
- Nanomaterials and Dielectrics
The use of polymers as effective solid dielectrics within high voltage equipment has been considered in recent years, with a focus on the dielectric properties of these materials being determined. More recently, it has been suggested that the inclusion of small ratios of nano-structured inorganic compounds, such as silicon and titanium oxides, into the polymer matrix will improve these properties considerably. This project aims to determine the effect on the dielectric and phase properties of thermoplastics (initially amorphous polystyrene) upon the addition of powdered nano-silica over a range of weight ratios. The dielectric constant and breakdown strength will initially be tested, along with the transition point of the materials into the glass phase. The detrimental effects of moisture absorption will also be studied, and the content of these nano-dielectrics will be observed by scanning electron microscope.
Primary investigator
- asv
Secondary investigator
- eww1v07
Associated research group
- Electronics and Computer Science
- Date:
- 2011-
Primary investigator
- asv
Associated research group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2011-2012
- Themes:
- Student Centred Learning, Interaction with Knowledge and semantics, Technology Enhanced Learning
- Funding:
- JISC
The Southampton Student Dashboard will integrate information from a number of sources into a single CRM interface in order to provide student services. staff, tutors and other academics with appropriate information about the student and allow staff to update that information as the result of new interactions. The students will also have access to a view of their information.
The value of this dashboard is that relevant staff will have all the available information at hand when interacting with students, and this will enable those involved in tutoring and counselling to spot early signs of the patterns of problems that may lead to drop-out or failure to progress.
The work on the Student Dashboard will build upon and extend existing enterprise modelling that has been carried out as part of the Curriculum Innovation Programme at Southampton and provide a Blueprint for change in other universities.
Primary investigator
- hcd
Secondary investigators
- Yvonne Howard
- David Millard
- rfp
- Dr. Peter Hancock
- Dr. Janice Rippon
- Dr Gillian Holf
- Kerry Matthews
- saw
Associated research groups
- Web and Internet Science
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2012-2015
- Themes:
- Modelling and Simulation, Environmental modelling, Condition monitoring
- Funding:
- National Grid plc
The installed length of cable circuits on the 400kV network has increased substantially in the last decade, particularly in London but also in rural areas where the use of overhead lines has become politically unacceptable. Cable circuits typically have a lower continuous current rating than overhead lines due to the increased thermal resistance between the cable and the ambient environment and as such can form the overall limiting factor on the amount of power which can be transferred through a given network link. Historically, National Grid has planned and purchased cable circuits based on the required continuous rating. Emergency ratings would then be calculated based on a set preload for a given time and would typically be applied in the event of a circuit outage elsewhere on the network.
This approach provides a concise cable rating sheet as part of the CUP package which can be readily used by Network Operations. While this approach works well where the level of load to be transferred is known in advance, it provides for only a limited number of rating combinations based on a series of assumptions about the cable system thermal environment. Given the increasing variability of the UK climate, coupled with the trend towards higher generation of electrical energy from renewable sources, this may not always lead to the best utilisation of a cable asset as its true power transfer capability over periods of 24hrs or less may be under-estimated through this traditional approach.
This study will investigate the development of dynamic rating algorithms applicable to a variety of common cable circuits through both numerical modelling, simulation and laboratory based experiments. The proposed work will be carried out within the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory at the University of Southampton. Principle targets for this study include: 1. The development and experimental verification of an algorithm for dynamic ratings applicable to buried cable circuits 2. Further development of (1) for application to cables in air, for example troughs and tunnels. 3. The examination of possible integration of tunnel dynamic ratings with ventilation control options under investigation in the CCTV (Control of Cable Tunnel Ventilation) project. 4. Development of a framework detailing the data collection requirements and other pre-requisites for any future deployment of dynamic cable ratings within National Grid. 5. An analysis of the potential benefits of using dynamic ratings, particularly in terms of constraint cost reduction.
Primary investigators
- jp2
- Paul Lewin
- sgs
Secondary investigator
- rh5g10
Partner
- National Grid plc
Associated research group
- Electronics and Computer Science
- Date:
- 2012-2012
- Themes:
- Technology Enhanced Learning, Accessible Technologies, Mobile Learning
- Funding:
- JISC
Synote Mobile will meet the important user need to make web-based Open Educational Resources recordings easier to access, search, manage, and exploit for learners, teachers and others.
Synote recordings are available as OER Synote is Open Source and freely available Synote facilitates the repurposing of anyoneââ¬â¢s OER recordings.
Virtually all UK students carry mobile devices capable of replaying video and want to use them for learning. However the majority of these devices cannot replay Synoteââ¬â¢s accessible, searchable, annotated recordings.
This project will create a new mobile HTML5 version of Synote, able to replay Synote recordings on any studentââ¬â¢s mobile device capable of connecting to the Internet. Synote Mobile will enable all students to work together on their coursework, projects and revision in more modern flexible environments than desktop computer rooms not designed for collaborative working.
Primary investigators
Associated research groups
- Web and Internet Science
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2011-2014
An investigation into dynamic photo voltaic array structures for the optimal power output of PV arrays under a variety of conditions including shading
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
Associated research groups
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Nano Research Group
- Date:
- 2012-2012
- Themes:
- Multimedia, Digital Libraries, Human Computer Interaction, Technology Enhanced Learning
- Funding:
- JISC
RedFeather is Resource Exhibition and Discovery tool which is Feather light. It allows users to trivially upload and share small collections of OER. As well as the HTML interface metadata can be exposed in various formats including RSS, RDF and OAI-PMH. The tool is easily adaptable to into various Web2.0 services. Our plan is that the default user experience will visualize Resources using Google Docs Viewer and will allow commenting from Facebook.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
Partner
- Archaeological Computing Research Group
Associated research group
- Web and Internet Science
- Date:
- 2010-2013
- Themes:
- High Voltage Engineering, Nanomaterials and Dielectrics
- Funding:
- European Commission
The objective is to develop radically innovative electrical insulating tapes and process to improve the energy conversion efficiency of electrotechnical systems. It mainly addresses the electric power generation issue.
The ANASTASIA project consortium is equally composed of industrials and research laboratories, namely two manufacturers (tape and power generator), two generator end-users, four academic laboratories and the CEA research institute as the coordinator.
Context
Energy saving is a major societal issue that concerns a large field of technical applications, in particular electric power generation. The basic statement motivating the ANASTASIA project is that today the energy conversion efficiency of generators is restricted by (i) thermal as well as (ii) electrical strength limitations due, in particular, to the electrical insulation itself. The key feature of the generator field is that it deals with very long lifetime systems (40 years!). Consequently, it involves very traditional insulating materials and well established tape structures whose electrical properties and concepts are in fact far behind the current insulating material state of the art. As a result, high voltage insulating tapes are rather thick, poor thermal conductors and require energy consuming cooling systems. Today, high voltage insulating tape technology presents a very significant scope for progress that must be absolutely exploited to increase the generator conversion efficiency.
Expected outcomes
ANASTASIA aims to replace the current insulator tapes for high power applications. The current tapes are thick, semi-rigid and show poor thermal conductivity and mechanical stability. The goal is to replace this system with a thinner flexible structure, incorporating nanofillers and/or mica flakes. The objective is to increase the field strength from 2.5-3 to 4 kV/mm, to increase the thermal conductivity from 0.3 to 0.5 W/m.ðC, and to increase the thermal class from F 155ðC to H 180ðC.
Activities
To meet the objectives of the project, the ANASTASIA project will develop three complementary tape nano-structuration approaches:
A polymer route based on polymer/inorganic nanoparticle blending including a novel mica paper structure involving dielectric nano-flakes. This is a nanocomposite top-down approach. A polymer route based on in situ growth of dielectric nanoparticles. This is a nanocomposite bottom-up approach. A sol-gel inorganic based matrix for a quasi inorganic concept.
Southampton's role in this project is to run electrical testing on any samples produced by the consortium.
Primary investigators
- naf08r
- asv
- Martin Reading
Partners
- Commissariat àlââ¬â¢Energie Atomique et aux Energies Nouvelles - LITEN
- Von Roll Switzerland AG
- Alstom Hydro
- Laborelec-Electrabel
- Politecnico di Torino
- University of Montpellier 2
- Institut de Recherche Hydro-Québec
- Nottingham Trent University
Associated research group
- Electronics and Computer Science
- Date:
- 2012-2015
- Themes:
- Wireless Sensing and Sensor Networks, Channel coding, Communication and Networking
- Funding:
- EPSRC (EP/J015520/1)
The Machine-To-Machine (M2M) applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are set to offer many new capabilities in the EPSRC themes of 'Healthcare technologies', 'Living with environmental change' and 'Global uncertainties', granting significant societal and economic benefits. These networks comprise a number of geographically-separated sensor nodes, which collect information from their environment and exchange it using wireless transmissions. However, these networks cannot as yet be employed in demanding applications, because current sensor nodes cannot remain powered for a sufficient length of time without employing batteries that are prohibitively large, heavy or expensive. In this work, we aim to achieve an order-of-magnitude extension to the battery charge-time of WSNs and WBANs by facilitating a significant reduction in the main cause of their energy consumption, namely the energy used to transmit information between the sensor nodes. A reduction in the sensor nodes' transmission energy is normally prevented, because this results in corrupted transmitted information owing to noise or interference. However, we will maintain reliable communication when using a low transmit energy by specifically designing channel code implementations that can be employed in the sensor nodes to correct these transmission errors. Although existing channel code implementations can achieve this objective, they themselves may have a high energy consumption, which can erode the transmission energy reduction they afford. Therefore, in this work we will aim for achieving a beneficial step change in the energy consumption of channel code implementations so that their advantages are maintained when employed in energy-constrained wireless communication systems, such as the M2M applications of WSNs and WBANs. We shall achieve this by facilitating a significant reduction in the supply voltage that is used to power the channel code implementations. A reduction in the supply voltage is normally prevented, because this reduces the speed of the implementation and causes the processed information to become corrupted, when its operations can no longer be performed within the allotted time. However, we will maintain reliable operation when using a low supply voltage, by specifically designing the proposed channel code implementations to use their inherent error correction ability to correct not only transmission errors, but also these timing errors. To the best of our knowledge, this novel approach has never been attempted before, despite its significant benefits. Furthermore, we will develop methodologies to allow the designers of WSNs and WBANs to estimate the energy consumption of the proposed channel code implementations, without having to fabricate them. This will allow other researchers to promptly optimise the design of the proposed channel code implementations to suit their energy-constrained wireless communication systems, such as WSNs and WBANs. Using this approach, we will demonstrate how the channel coding algorithm and implementation can be holistically designed, in order to find the most desirable trade-off between complexity and performance.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
Partners
- Nokia Siemens Networks
- British Telecom
- Cambridge Silicon Radio
Associated research groups
- Pervasive Systems Centre
- Communications, Signal Processing and Control
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2012-2015