This paper presents three non-linear observers for three examples of engineering interest: a nonholonomic car, a chemical reactor, and an inertial navigation system. For each example, the design is based on physical symmetries. This motivates the theoretical development of invariant observers, i.e, symmetry-preserving observers. We consider an observer to consist of a copy of the system equatio...

Abstract: Chemical engineering science has recognized the necessity of integrating process design and control; however, few steps have been taken in this direction in polymer science. In this work, a Mixed-Integer Dynamic Optimization approach is used for the simultaneous design and control of a styrene polymerization reactor. Our goal is to design the process and its control system in order to...

The use of support vector machine (SVM) in all aspects of process engineering activities, such as modeling, design, optimization and control has considerably increased in recent years. Batch reactors mostly used in chemical and pharmaceutical industries. In this paper, a design procedure of support vector machine (SVM) based model identification and control strategy for a batch reactor process ...

The Generic Pressurized Water Reactor (GPWR) simulator has been used in the Nuclear I&C Laboratory at Khalifa University (KU) since 2013 to improve student performance nuclear engineering that is a multidisciplinary field involving reactor physics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, thermal hydraulics, radiation, etc. simulator, developed by Western Service Corporation, integrated as teaching...

The science and engineering of materials have always been fundamental to the success of nuclear power to date. They are also the key to the successful deployment and operation of a new generation of nuclear reactor systems and their associated fuel cycles. This article reflects on some of the historical issues, the challenges still prevalent today and the requirement for significant ongoing mat...

Three applications of evolutionary algorithms at the Center for Applied Systems Analysis, namely the optimization of nuclear reactor core reload designs, of chemical engineering plants, and of optical multilayer systems, are brieey described in this paper. The examples clarify the enormous robustness and wide applicability of the evolutionary approach to problems involving highly complex, probl...

We address the homogenization of an eigenvalue problem for the neutron transport equation in a periodic heterogeneous domain, modeling the criticality study of nuclear reactor cores. We prove that the neutron flux, corresponding to the first and unique positive eigenvector, can be factorized in the product of two terms, up to a remainder which goes strongly to zero with the period. One term is ...

The supramolecular coordination of zinc (II) phthalocyanine (Zn-Pc) with V-shaped bi-pyridine in a nano-reactor is probed by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) at liquid/solid interface. Combined with density functional theory (DFT) calculations, our STM results show that the V-shaped bi-pyridine and Zn-Pc can generate stable "odd-even" patterned architectures in the TCDB network through a two...

Most conventional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) systems do not have the spatial actuation and sensing capabilities necessary to control deposition uniformity, or to intentionally induce nonuniform deposition patterns for single-wafer combinatorial CVD experiments. In an effort to address this limitation, a novel CVD reactor system has been developed that can explicitly control the spatial pro...

EPM’s Systems and Safety Analysis Division has worked tirelessly for decades to aid the continued safety and reliability of the American and International nuclear fleet. As the group continues to support the aging of these plants from the original Nuclear Renaissance, other projects have begun to support the certification of new reactor designs. Two projects currently undertaken by the EPM SSA ...