Link for G1

Project Description

The countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) have established power system

network interconnections among them. Students will use the design steps in determining the

routing, the power capacity, the necessary support equipment’s and the cost-effective ways for

the design. Students will also make the necessary analysis of the network and make their

recommendations.

Link for G2

Project Description

Rotating machines are extensively used in an industrial set-up. Thousands of electric motor are

employed to carry out crucial tasks. Induction machines are the most popular type of rotating

machines that are used in industries and hence they are called workhorse of industry. The

Permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSM) are also gaining popularity and are used in

several industrial applications. Due to continuous duty hours and harsh operating conditions of

electric motors they are prone to several types of faults and subsequent failure. Thus condition

monitoring and fault diagnostics play a key role in the proper operation of rotating electrical

machines in any industrial set-up. In applications such as the oil and gas industries,

manufacturing plants, power generation, and refining and milling, the failure of critical

equipment like generators, milling machines, motors, fans, and pumps costs millions of dollars in

reduced output, emergency maintenance costs, and lost revenues. Additionally, in the utility

industry, the malfunctioning of the electrical machinery is not acceptable not only because of its

financial damage, but also because of the threat that is caused by a sudden failure or

malfunctioning of a part. Large numbers of electrical drives are installed in any industrial plant,

e.g. in Qatar Gas, in one plant there are more than 6000 electrical motors installed. Thus

monitoring the health of individual motors is crucial in such an establishment. Sudden loss of one

or more of the electric drives may result in complete shut-down of the plant. Thus early fault

diagnostics is extremely important to avoid the catastrophic effects of sudden failure of electric

drive systems. Preventive maintenance is thus always desired compared to forced maintenance.

Huge research efforts are put worldwide to develop an incipient fault (before the actual

occurrence of faults) diagnostic technique. Broadly classified, faults can be either mechanical or

electrical. Electrical failures can further be classified as stator faults due to open or short circuit of

windings or winding turns, abnormal connection of the stator windings, shorted rotor winding (in

case slip ring type induction machine), and insulation failure. Mechanical failures encompasses

broken or cracked rotor bars, bearing and gear box failure, static and/or dynamic air-gap

eccentricity, and a misaligned shaft. Among these faults, the most commonly occurring are the

broken rotor bars and bearing failures.

This senior design project will focus on mainly stator winding fault diagnosis of a three-phase

induction motor drive system. The aim is to study, analyse and develop diagnostic techniques for

stator winding fault detection. The principle of motor fault diagnosis will be based on motor

current signature analysis (MCSA). The precision and the accuracy of the developed diagnostic

techniques will be studied. A simulation model will be developed using Matlab/Simulink. A

prototype machine will be built in the laboratory to experimentally investigate the stator winding

faults. Experimental data will be collected from the healthy and faulty motor conditions. The

obtained data will be analysed for possible identification of the motor fault.

Link for G3

Project Description

Large-scale power systems are normally composed of control areas or regions representing

coherent groups of generators. The various areas are interconnected through tie-lines. The tielines

are utilized for energy exchange between areas and provide inter-area support in case of

abnormal condition. Area load-changes and abnormal conditions, such as outages of generation,

leads to mismatch in scheduled power interchanges between areas. These mismatches have to

be corrected via supplementary control. In recent years, large tie-line power fluctuations have

been observed as a result of increased system capacity and very close interconnection among

power systems. This observation suggests a strong need of establishing a more advanced Load

frequency control (LFC) scheme. The LFC of interconnected power areas is defined as the

regulation of power output of generators within a prescribed area, in response to change in

system frequency, tie-line loading so as to maintain scheduled system frequency and/or

established interchange with other areas within predetermined limits. In general, LFC is a very

important item in power system operation and control for supplying sufficient and reliable electric

power with good quality. A simple control strategy for any load frequency controller is to keep the

frequency approximately at the nominal value i.e. 50 Hz or 60Hz, to maintain the tie-line flow at

about the schedule and each area should absorb its own load changes to minimize the cost.

Microcontrollers are used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as automobile

engine control systems, remote controls, office machines, power systems, furthermore; the

relatively fast computational speed and the simplicity of implementing into control systems,

makes the microcontroller the optimum solution for implementing the PSS on LF controller and

interfaced with the Matlab simulation model. The main objective of the project is to design a load

frequency controller for two area interconnected power systems based on μ-controller.

Link for G4

Project Description

System failure and blackouts already have been observed in, Europe, Japan, and USA due to

voltage instability. Voltage stability is one of the biggest concerns in operating and planning

electric power system. In a deregulated environment voltage collapse will become much more

common. Voltage stability is an important factor, which needs to be taken into consideration

during the planning and operation of electrical power system in order to avoid voltage instability

and subsequently system failure and blackouts. In rapidly developing countries like state of Qatar

especially in the last four years Qatar power network has been expanded very year and

introduction of 400 kV line to the network plus more and more industrial areas set up are

expected which require more demand of electric power which in turn imposes big challenge to

power system utilities and engineers as far as the voltage profiles of the system.

The main objective of the research is to study, analyze, and simulate the voltage profile of the

electrical power system of Qatar network in order to be able to predict and estimate any changes

that would lead the system to voltages instability. After studying the network voltage profile the

students will propose a shunt compensation design to improve the voltage profile. This is

essentially done by developing a user friendly Matlab tool –the most powerful software used by

researchers in all fields of science- capable of analyzing the electrical power system of Qatar

network. Basically, these results obtained by the developed tool will be compared with results

obtained by PSS/E, commercially used software, used by industry and Kahrama (Qatar's main

electricity provider). In addition, these predictions and results are extremely important for future

planning and designing of Qatar power network and the current developments of the network as

well.

Link for G5

Project Description

Project Description

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs are becoming widely used, valuable tools in today's society and

quad-rotors have become an exciting new area of unmanned aerial vehicle research in the last few years. A

number of RC toy developers have designed quad-rotor platforms for recreational use. One of the driving

forces behind the development of RC quad-rotors is the control-system simplicity compared to a typical

helicopter. The availability of platforms has helped spur research using these quad-rotors.

The quad-rotor platform is a relatively new interest in the area of control. A quad-rotor is an underactuated

system. The quad-rotor has six degrees of freedom, yaw, pitch, roll, x (movement in the direction

of the front of the craft), y (movement toward the left side of the craft), and z (altitude). These six degrees

must be controlled using only four actuators. This allows for simpler control routines (the same commands

need to be sent in the same magnitude to all actuators) but provides an interesting area of study into how to

decouple control to allow for stable flight and control of all six degrees of freedom. The quad-rotor is an

under-actuated system and therefore requires outside observer style sensors (GPS, camera, ultrasound,

etc.) for full attitude and position control. This type of under-actuated control has spawned a lot of

research in innovative control methods.

In this project, we will develop an autonomous quad-rotor platform. The initial goal of this project is to

stabilize the quad-rotor for flight. Control of pitch, roll, yaw, and altitude were necessary before any high

level autonomous control could be developed. A quad-rotor with attitude control could be given higher

level commands by a user (increase altitude, maintain altitude, move left, move right, trim pitch, trim roll,

etc.). The next goal is to hover within a limited area for at least 30 seconds without human intervention.

The final ambitious goal of this project will to obtain basic target tracking by shifting the basis of position

stabilization to a small target placed on the floor.

Link for G6

Project Description

A solar powered stadium has been built in Taiwan for the 2009 World Games in July [1]. The stadium

incorporates 8,844 solar panels on the roof as shown in the figure below. The roof generates enough

energy to power the building’s 3,300 lights and two giant television screens.

Energy-efficient lighting is an important factor for sustainable development and energy strategies. Indeed,

Lighting consumes about 20 percent of the electricity for a nation [2]. Also, renewable energy utilization

development permits the reduction of CO2 emission and contributes to the decrease of fossil energy

dependency. The association of a solar energy to high efficiency lighting technology as LEDs (Light

Emitting Diodes) is the focus of this senior design project. In comparing LEDs to other lamps

technologies, we can say that LEDs are the Greenest lighting choice. Indeed, high power LEDs (Light

Emitting Diode) devices permit the design and fabrication of street lighting units in order to replace

existing luminaries which are using sodium or metal halide or CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) lamps.

Solar powered lighting system includes: solar panel, battery, solar controller, and LED lighting unit. The

solar LED light system converts the sun energy into electricity and stores it to provide green illumination.

Regulating Voltage out of a Solar Panel is shown in the figure below. Solar Powered Light emitting diodes

for Qatar 2022 World Cup Stadiums will be designed.

Link for G7

Project Description
The goal of this project is to develop an effective and costly efficient traffic control system to reduce the tremendous number of casualties due to car accidents all over the world and in Qatar in particular. The proposed system is virtual ubiquitous radar that monitors the speed of every vehicle everywhere and all the time. In the proposed system, the conventional speed limit (SL) signs are replaced by electronic ones that are controlled by an Operations Center (OC). The posted SLs are changed according to weather and traffic conditions, moreover, the SLs will be transmitted using robust wireless technologies. Each vehicle should be equipped with a receiver and controller that continuously compares the transmitted SL and the vehicle speed. If the vehicle speed exceeds the received SL, a warning is generated then a fine is issued and transmitted through the mobile communications network. The process of changing the SLs, fines recording and other operations will be handled by the OC that monitors the streets’ conditions and generates the appropriate SLs. The OC is linked to a database that records the drivers’ traffic violations and other relevant issues. The research in this project aims to design and implement the system physical layer which includes the transmitters, transceivers and controllers. Such design requires solving several challenging problems such as interference cancellation, minimizing the probability of missing SLs, and improving the system robustness.

Link for G8

Project Description

The Inverted Pendulum is one of the most important classical problems of Control Engineering.

The EE department has a good quality but damaged Feedback Inverted Pendulum on a cart. This

type of pendulum is a well-known example of nonlinear and unstable control problem. The

control of Inverted Pendulum aims at stabilizing the Inverted Pendulum by controlling the

position of the carriage on the track so that the pendulum is always erected in its inverted

position during such movements. The inverted pendulum should be balanced even in the

presence of disturbances by moving the cart back on forth. This is a challenging problem that

becomes further complicated when a flexible broom, in place of a rigid broom, is employed.

The main tasks in this project are:

1) Retrofitting the inverted pendulum set. The set is not in a working order, and needs major

repairs.

2) Developing an appropriate computer interface to be able to control the pendulum. The

interface will be based on a DAQ acquisition card: two types are available (Keithley and

National Instruments).

3) Developing and implementing a minimum of two different techniques for controlling the

pendulum. The solutions will use either a position sensor to detect the orientation of the

pendulum, or a video camera. The implementation will be based on LabVIEW and/or

Matlab.

4) Developing a set of experiments that use the set.

5) Developing an interactive website for the project.