To monitor the gas and solid streams in a downcomer of a J-valve in a CFB, the simultaneous measurement technique using the oxygen gas tracer, the hot particle tracer and the pressure drop was developed. By using this novel measurement technique, the dependence of the solid flow on the gas flow in the moving bed in the downcomer of J-valve was investigated. The pressure profile and the pressure...

The fuzzy neuron hybrid control method is proposed for mold level control of the continuous steel casting in this paper. The dynamic characteristics of the continuous steel casting process is described. To the plant with big uncertainties and grave nonlinearities, the fuzzy neuron hybrid control system is set up and the new model-free controller is designed. In this control system, the fuzzy ne...

Conventional schemes of fast valving generate a fixed valve stroke sequence for the control of turbine valves under transient conditions. A simple fixed valve control sequence cannot give optimum result for different fault conditions and loading levels, due to its poor adaptability. This paper presents an artificial-neuralnetwork (ANN) based controller to govern the operation of the turbine con...

In many applications that require physical interaction with humans or other physical environments, passivity is a useful property to have in order to improve safety and ease of use. Many hydraulic applications (e.g. a human operated excavator) fall into this category. In a previous work, the passivity property of a directional hydraulic flow control valve, and methods for making the valve in a ...

Stiction is a nonlinear friction phenomenon that causes poor performance of control loops in the process industries. In this work, we develop a mixed-integer MPC (Model Predictive Control) formulation including valve dynamics for a sticky valve in order to improve control loop performance. The introduction of the valve nonlinearity into the model prevents the MPC from requesting physically unre...

BACKGROUND Benfluorex was withdrawn from European markets in June 2010 after reports of an association with heart valve lesions. The link between benfluorex and valve regurgitations was based on small observational studies and retrospective estimations. We therefore designed an echocardiography-based multicenter study to compare the frequency of left heart valve regurgitations in diabetic patie...

The aim of the study was to evaluate the treatment of minimally invasive mitral valve replacement (MIMVR) through a right minithoracotomy for patients with rheumatic mitral valve disease.From February 2009 to December 2016, 360 patients with rheumatic mitral valve disease underwent mitral valve replacement by the same surgeon. Among them, 150 patients accepted MIMVR through a right minithoracot...