The Multi-Use Power Electronics session will take place on January 28 at 12:01 p.m., in the EA1 auditorium. This session will feature the participation of Steven B. Leeb, faculty member of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT.

About the speaker

Steven B. Leeb received his doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993.  He has served as a commissioned officer in the USAF reserves, and he has been a member of the M.I.T. faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science since 1993.  He also holds a joint appointment in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. He currently serves as MacVicar Fellow and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems.  In his capacity as a Professor at M.I.T, he is concerned with the design, development, and maintenance processes for all kinds of machinery with electrical actuators, sensors, or power electronic drives.  A major thrust in his current research is the development of power electronic drives and supplies for servomechanical and industrial applications, including medical drug delivery devices, battery chargers, motion controllers and fluorescent lamp ballasts. Another research interest related to power quality issues and on-line machine diagnostics involves the development of a Nonintrusive Load Monitor (NILM).  The NILM determines the operating schedule of the major electrical loads in a commercial or industrial building from measurements made solely at the electrical utility service entry.  He is currently working to develop the NILM into a virtually sensorless platform to determine power quality, perform critical load diagnostics, and monitor manufacturing processes and actuator performance on ships, aircraft, automobiles, and satellites.  He is the author or co-author of over 150 publications and 18 US Patents in the fields of electromechanics and power electronics. 

Abstract

We are considering approaches which make “multi-use” of the electronics and sensing technologies that could be employed in transportation systems.  In this vision, sensors and loads are tasked with multiple functions that minimize expense and installation effort to gather useful, actionable information for condition-based maintenance and control.  For example, lighting sources, like headlights in a vehicle, can also serve as a communications transmitter between vehicles.  As a second example, magnetic energy harvesters can gather information about vibration, operating schedule, and the condition of mechanical mounts for electric machines.  In particular, this talk will present a vibration monitoring system called VAMPIRE ("Vibration Assessment Monitoring

Point with Integrated Recovery of Energy"). VAMPIRE occupies free space in the terminal box of a typical motor enclosure, and can be added “new” or as a retrofit to an existing motor by passing a single phase wire through a VAMPIRE device. A magnetic core inductively couples energy from the phase wire, similar to a common current transformer but different in that here the goal is to actively extract desired power. This self-powered sensor occupies a unique position in the power system where it can detect operating schedule through current sensing, operating speed through back-EMF sensing even when the motor is disconnected from the utility, and it can correlate vibration with operating speed to develop a mechanical transfer function that indicates the health of the machinery mounting system.  VAMPIRE illustrates an engineering approach to minimizing the economic cost and effort of maintaining the performance of electromechanical actuators.