Projets novateurs réalisés

Resilient Flywheel-Based Energy Storage Platform for Power Substations and Transportation Electrification

This project is aiming at the development of flywheel-based energy storage platform as integrated with power grid substation that will ensure sustainable and safe operation during normal and emergency conditions. It provides reduced operational costs with reduced GHG emissions in energy infrastructures. The design of a resilient energy storage platform is developed to be integrated with power substation and fast charging system for transportation electrification. The focus is to design a resilient energy storage platform, which includes battery and flywheel system, to be integrated with power substation to ensure stable and reliable power support to their customers. The integration of energy storage system will provide balance between the loads and supply while stabilizing the performance of substation. This requires dynamic storage systems to charge quickly, and to stabilize the dynamic behavior of the substation during charging / discharging cycles.

Assessing Statistical Bias in Credit Markets, an Application to SMEs

This research project aims to evaluate whether members of minority groups or women face higher barriers to access credit in the small and medium-sized enterprises credit market. The intern will analyze loan-level data provided by the business partner to evaluate whether these biases are detectable in the portfolio of SME loans of the business partner. Discrimination in credit allocation prevents efficient credit allocation, besides being demeaning for the individual subject to discrimination. Notably, the business partner is committed to providing fair access to credit to all its clients, independently from gender or minority membership. Unfortunately, biases may still influence the applicant screening methodology, due to the use of variables that are highly correlated with group characteristics. This research project aims thus to contribute to the effort of the business partner to insure that its clients face fair access to credit.

Modeling the effect of cloud conditions on incident spectra for concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) energy yield calculations

Concentrating Photovoltaic (CPV) systems use low-cost lenses or mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto the highest efficiency solar cells. They typically use 0.1% of the expensive materials used in traditional solar panels and achieve double the efficiency. As a result, CPV has emerged as a viable option for large-scale, low-carbon, electricity generation in sunny locations and will be viable in Canada within the next 5 years.

Predicting the electricity output, or energy yield, of CPV systems is a vital part of determining their profitability and the models used to do this currently rely on low resolution weather data that can introduce inaccuracies. This project will determine methods to treat low-resolution weather data, taking into account the effects of clouds, snow and other seasonal effects, in order to improve the accuracy of CPV energy yield models and therefore aid the wide-scale deployment of concentrating photovoltaics.

Hybrid Distributed Energy Resources for Net-Zero Energy Buildings

The main objective of the project is to develop hybrid distributed energy resource (HDER) systems to supply energy to net-zero energy commercial and residential buildings. This is expected to result in lower energy costs to consumers and utilities and in greater reliability of the grid. The HDERs will consist of solar panels, generators, and batteries. They will supply buildings with energy whenever possible and feed any excess energy to the grid. The grid will supply energy to the buildings whenever energy from the HDERs is insufficient. Over time, the net amount of energy supplied by the grid will be zero. The project will be a collaboration of researchers from Western University and personnel from the Centre Wellington Energy innovation, who will commercialize the HDERs under the product name of ONguard.

New Deformation Model for Realistic Real-Time Simulation of Soft Bodies in the Context of Virtual Surgery

OSSimTech develops and sells virtual reality (VR) surgical simulators. This proposal aims to improve the efficiency of the simulation of cutting and deforming organs. The current simulator used by the company is appropriate for a range of surgery scenarios, but for several scenarios, it is too long to compute. The company has plans to expand its portfolio of simulators to less powerful devices, potentially including portable devices such as tablets. In this context, the development of a low-cost simulation approach is of great interest for OSSimTech. Whether on high-end or low-end devices, the efficient simulation of soft bodies is complicated because of the real-time constraints. We will improve simulation models for the deformation of stiff soft bodies. Our goal is to improve the realism of real-time deformable tissues and organs in the context of VR surgery simulation.

Development and evaluation of a mental skills training program in youth hockey

This project seeks to develop a mental skills training program for kids in youth hockey. The first part of the project will involve reviewing the literature to find out what is knows about mental skills in kids. We are interested in seeing how kids can use mental skills in sports and hockey and if certain skills are more important depending on the age of the player. Once we have a good idea of what is known about mental skills in youth we will interview elite hockey players to find out what they think of mental skills training and what kinds of mental skills they think are valuable for kids. We also want to know if they thought mental skills training was available to them of if it would have been useful for them growing up as youth players. TO BE CONT’D

Développement d’éléments préfabriqués et de réparations pour les infrastructures avec les bétons fibrés à hautes et ultra-hautes performances- Phase 3

Les infrastructures en béton armé (ponts, routes, ports, canaux de navigation) ont un impact majeur sur la société. Les bénéfices économiques reliés à l’utilisation de ces infrastructures sont considérables, cependant ils sont contrebalancés par les coûts directs des travaux de remplacement ou de réhabilitations récurrentes. Le projet Développement d’éléments préfabriqués et de réparations pour les infrastructures avec les bétons fibrés à hautes et ultra-hautes performances (BFHP et BFUP) vise à développer des méthodes rapides et innovantes de construction, réhabilitation et renforcement durables des ouvrages avec les BFHP et BFUP qui présenteront une durabilité et une fiabilité nettement supérieures à celles obtenues avec les méthodes actuelles. D’une part, le projet permettra de développer de nouvelles applications structurales en BFHP et BFUP, soit des tabliers de ponts préfabriqués, des panneaux préfabriqués pour murs, des parapets avec coque préfabriquée. TO BE CONT’D

Order picking optimization at a pickup-van storage manufacturing warehouse

Ranger Design is a manufacturer of van storage units and accessories. Since order picking activities are considered to be an integral part of its warehouse operations and perceived to be conducive to significant improvements, re-engineering and optimization of the order picking process are in order. As such, the company is looking for an opportunity to reduce the travel time involved in order picking by re-engineering and optimizing the order picking process. This applied research project aims at developing an optimization model through which the most promising warehouse order picking operations in terms of travel time reduction are identified. The study will also address sensitivity analyses of input parameters. An implementation plan for the proposed order picking system will be presented.

Development of improved fuel cell system hybridization, control and on-board diagnostics for heavy duty bus and rail applications

This proposed research project is an extension of a previous NSERC CRD project that is investigating hybridization optimization of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) used in FC bus and rail applications. The models developed in this research are expected to yield improved fuel cell and system lifetimes in service, and improved detection and mitigation of fuel cell faults causing degradation and unacceptable emissions, and detection/mitigation of critical system component faults.

Elk habitat selection in Manitoba’s agricultural landscapes: understanding its effect on stress and reproductive success

In Manitoba, elk herds are either small or declining, and the relationship between farmland use by elk and population declines is unclear. Animals typically choose to either avoid predators or access good food resources when choosing habitat, and this trade-off may bring about natural selection if some individuals make better decisions than others. Our project seeks to understand how individual elk use the landscape in response to farmland. To do this, we will look at ranges of individual elk to determine how much farmland each individual uses as the amount of available farmland and predator pressure changes. Next we will look at the variation in nutrition, stress levels, and whether individuals give birth to calves depending on how much farmland they select. To BE CONT’D

Named Entities Recognition for Customer Service Automated System

This project aims at creating a robust, efficient and reliable tool for Named Entities Recognition (NER) from vast amounts of textual data related to the customer service.
Named entities recognition, a subtask of information extraction, seeks to locate and classify elements in text into pre-defined categories such as the names of persons, organizations, locations, expressions of times, quantities, monetary values, percentages, etc.
Moreover, those extracted named entities will be mapped to existing concepts of an ontology.
The development of such tool will enable easier and quicker decision-making in the customer service for the industrial partner.

Optical Characterization of the SunSimba CPV concentrator

Concentrating Photovoltaic (CPV) systems use low-cost optics to concentrate sunlight onto the highest efficiency solar cells. They typically use 0.1% of the expensive materials used in traditional solar panels and achieve double the efficiency. The Morgan Solar CPV product uses Total internal reflection principals to concentrate the light. Comprehensive characterization of each component of the optical assembly, as well as the assembly as a whole is proposed in this project. Detailed spatial and spectral analysis will be undertaken, which will be used to determine the overall optical efficiency and to further optimize the design and manufacturing of the products.