No abstract

Thermostats operate alongside intelligent home automation systems for ensuring both the comfort of the occupants as well as the responsible use of energy. The effectiveness of such solutions relies on the ability of the adopted control methodology to respond to changes in the surrounding environment. In this regard, process disturbances such as severe wind or fluctuating ambient temperatures must be taken into account. The present paper proposes a new approach for estimating the heat transfer of residential buildings by employing a lumped parameter thermal analysis model. Various control strategies are adopted and tuned into a virtual environment. The knowledge gained is generalized by means of a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network. Laboratory scale experiments are provided to prove the given concepts. The results achieved highlight the efficiency of the implemented temperature controller in terms of overshoot and energy consumption.

Hardfacing is carried out whenever a local improvement of the mechanical properties of metallic parts is demanded. In this regard, gas metal arc welding technology is one of the most popular choices. One decisive factor of the welded joint quality is governed by the heat affected zone. The present paper proposes a simulation methodology that can be employed for capturing the temperature gradients in any location of the base metal, when such information is required. The model was developed by using ANSYS Workbench simulation software and is based on coupled CFD and Transient Thermal analysis. In the first stage, a welded sample is subjected to 3D scanning for recreating its constitutive surfaces in a CAD environment. In the next stage, the convective heat transfer occurring due to the velocity of the shielding gas is captured by means of CFD analysis. Experimentally derived temperatures are employed for developing a transient thermal analysis, having defined the exterior heat transfer coefficient. In the last stage, the simulation results are verified in an arbitrary location of the base metal that is located outside the heat affected zone.

Nowadays, most of the electronic components that are deployed in industrial devices represent active heat sources that demand adequate cooling solutions to ensure their safe and reliable operation. Thermal design and the development of temperature controllers represent the two essential branches of the cooling system development process. Both workflows can be tackled with the support of Computer Aided Engineering software. In this regard, the parametric study of coolers based on Finite Element Method thermal analysis is widely discussed throughout the literature. Even so, the use of such simulation tools for further developing temperature controllers is only addressed from theoretical point of views. The present paper represents an approach for implementing PID controllers that are applicable to industrial electronic devices. Tuning of the gains is completed by using the Ziegler-Nichols heuristic method. The proposed approach replaces the physical system with simplified thermal modelling. The given concepts are verified by means of a simple experimental setup.