Development,modeling and application of piezoelectric fiber composites

Piezoelectric materials are capable of actuation and sensing and have been used in a wide variety of smart devices and structures.Active fiber composite and macro fiber composite are newly developed types of piezoelectric composites,and show superior properties to monolithic piezoelectric wafer due to their distinctive structures.Numerous work has focused on the performance prediction of the composites by evaluation of structural parameters and properties of the constituent materials with analytical and numerical methods.Various applications have been explored for the piezoelectric fiber composites,including vibration and noise control,health monitoring,morphing of structures and energy harvesting,in which the composites play key role and demonstrate the necessity for further development.

An Overview of Smart City in China

The year of 2013 is considered the first year of smart city in China. With the development of informationization and urbanization in China, city diseases(traffic jam, medical problem and unbalanced education) are more and more apparent. Smart city is the key to solving these diseases. This paper presents the overall smart city development in China in term of market scale and development stages, the technology standards, and industry layout. The paper claims that the issues and challenges facing smart city development in China and proposes to make polices to support smart city development.

A Comparative Analysis of RAD and Agile Technique for Management of Computing Graduation Projects

Computing students face the problem with time and quality of the work while managing their graduation/senior projects.Rapid Application Development(RAD)model is based on continual user involvement for the process of requirement gathering via prototyping.After each iteration,the developers can validate the requirements that are completed in the iteration.Managing a project with RAD is easier but not flexible.On the other hand,Agile project management techniques focus on flexibility,agility,teamwork and quality based on user stories.Continual user involvement is avoided,which requires extensive maintenance time for fixing iteration and release of the story points.This also makes it necessary to provide onsite training to the users of the application.This research provides the pros and cons of RAD and Agile project management techniques,to help students in deciding the best approach for managing their graduation projects.For the evaluation of these techniques,similar case studies were given to the senior project students(having similar CGPAs)for building similar functionality-based applications.The two projects“Life Organizer”developed and managed using RAD and“Smart Patient Assistant(SPA)”developed and managed through Agile methodology were evaluated against the quality assurance criteria for senior projects.The study found that the project developed with RAD methodology performed 13.33%better in providing extensive and elaborated documentation than the students following the Agile technique.On the other hand,SPA-Agile based project,due to teamwork had 2.5%better implementation than Life Organizer-RAD based project.

Next Generation Narrowband(Under 500 kHz) Power Line Communications(PLC) Standards

In the past decade,several efforts around the world were started with the goal of introducing "smart metering" capabilities into the power grid.These efforts have spurred renewed interest in the design of next generation Narrowband Power Line Communications(NB-PLC) transceivers.In the past few years,ITU-T and IEEE have standardized a family of next generation OFDM-based NB-PLC transceivers some of which are today being considered for massive deployments in Europe and Asia.This paper addresses the important role that PLC has not only for smart metering but also for many other Smart Grid applications,and also gives an overview of the main differences between these next generation NB-PLC standards.

A survey of Digital Twin techniques in smart manufacturing and management of energy applications

With the continuous advancement and exploration of science and technology,the future trend of energy technology will be the deep integration of digitization,networking,intelligence with energy applications.The increasing maturity of digital technologies,such as the Internet of Things,big data,and cloud computing,has given rise to the creation and use of a potential technology–Digital Twin.Currently,research on Digital Twin has produced many concepts and outcomes that have been applied in many fields.In the energy sector,while some relevant ideas and case studies of Digital Twin have been generated,there are still many gaps to be explored.As a potential technology with advantages in many aspects,Digital Twin is bound to generate more promotion and applications in the energy fields.This paper systematically reviews the existing Digital Twin approaches and their possible applications in the energy fields.In addition,this paper attempts to analyze Digital Twin from different perspectives,such as definitions,classifications,main features,case studies and key technologies.Finally,the directions and challenges of possible future applications of Digital Twin in the energy fields have been presented.

Opportunities and challenges of smart mobile applications in transportation

Smart mobile applications are software applications that are designed to run on smart phones, tablets, and other mobile electronic devices. In this era of rapid technological advances, these applications have become one of the primary tools we use daily both in our personal and professional lives. The applications play key roles in facilitating many applications that are pivotal in our today＇s society including communication, education, business, entertainment, medical, finance, travel, utilities, social, and transportation. This paper reviewed the opportunities and challenges of the applications related to transportation. The opportunities revealed include route planning, ridesharing/carpooling, traffic safety, parking information, transportation data collection, fuel emissions and consumption, and travel information. The potential users of these applications in the field of transportation include （I） transportation agencies for travel data collection, travel information, ridesharing/carpooling, and traffic safety, （2） engineering students for field data collection such as travel speed, travel time, and vehicle count, and （3） general traveling public for route planning, ridesharing/carpooling, parking, traffic safety, and travel information. Significant usage of smart mobile applications can be potentially very beneficial, particularly in automobile travel mode to reduce travel time, cost, and vehicle emissions. In the end this would make travel safer and living environments greener and healthier. However, road users＇ interactions with these applications could manually, visually, and cognitively divert their attention from the primary task of driving or walking. Distracted road users expose themselves and others to unsafe behavior than undistracted. Road safety education and awareness programs are vital to discourage the use of applications that stimulate unsafe driving/walking behaviors. Educating the traveling public about the dangers of unsafe driving/walking behavior could have significant safety benefits to all road users. Future research needs to compare accuracies of the applications and provide guidelines for selecting them for certain transportation related applications.