Projets novateurs réalisés

Metallisation of Fiber Glass Imbedded Polyamide 6-6 : Impact Modeling and Effect of Spray Angle on Deposition Efficiency

Cold Spray is an established coating additive manufacturing process. Centerline has the opportunity to establish itself in a very large worldwide market if they can improve the ability of their cold spray process to metallize polyamide 6-6 substrates with enhanced deposition efficiency.
The overall general objectives are twofold: 1) Analyze experimentally the cold spray process bonding mechanism of aluminum particles on polyamide 6-6 substrates, under spray conditions used in the proof of concept phase and use these results to validate a finite element model of the impact process to be used to gain more insight into the impact process physics and 2) determine the effect of the spray angle on the process deposition efficiency.
Ultimately, the results could lead to improvement of the manufacturing process deposition efficiency resulting in a cheaper and greener process opening an extremely large market for Centerline SST products.

Hybrid Microgrid System sizing and energy management based on data analysis and load profile

Research and development efforts in solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies are required to continue for, improving their performance, establishing techniques for accurately predicting their output and reliably integrating them with other conventional generating sources. The objective of this project is to model a hybrid power system for buildings, which is technically feasible and economically optimal. The system will be modeled and the optimal system configuration would be estimated with the help of hybrid optimization model for electric renewables (HOMER); formation of various combinations of distributed resources to achieve a sustainable design for power system .The logic is illustrated with a case study based on the practical data and load profile analysis. Furthermore, it compares all the combinations in terms of cost and carbon emissions to select best sized microgrid for a specific case study. Finally, optimum energy usage is achieved by the design of energy management strategy.

Outils d’aide à la décision pour la planification et la prestation des soins et des services à domicile

Dans ce projet, nous proposons le de?veloppement d’outils d’aide a? la de?cision novateurs pour ame?liorer la prestation des soins et des services a? domicile. Le projet est articule? autour de deux principaux sujets de recherche : A) le de?veloppement d’approches d’optimisation pour la gestion de l’offre (les soignants) et de la demande (les patients); et B) le de?veloppement de techniques d’optimisation spe?cifiques a? la confection de tourne?es de ve?hicules complexes dans un contexte dynamique et multi-crite?res. L’innovation du projet s’appuie sur la formulation et la conception de nouvelles approches d’optimisation qui inte?grent des techniques tire?es de la science des donne?es et de l’optimisation combinatoire. Elles seront adapte?es pour re?soudre des proble?mes complexes et a? grande e?chelle afin de prendre des meilleures de?cisions (de manie?re re?currente) en pratique.

Crossed Surface Relief gratings as cost-effective sensors for uropathogenic E. coli detection

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most prevailing infectious diseases on a global scale. Every year, an estimated of 150 million people are affected by UTIs worldwide, and the majority of those infections (~ 80%) are caused by uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC). Rapid, inexpensive and sensitive detection of UPEC is critical given its recurrence worldwide. In this project, we propose the development of a label-free nanoplasmonic sensing platform, built with off-the-shelf optical and electronic components, which can detect intact UPEC, significantly reducing the time-consuming preprocessing steps, in contrast to traditional DNA extraction and amplification approaches. The nanoplasmonic (bio)sensor based on crossed surface relief gratings (CSRGs) provides a unique approach of quantitative monitoring of bacteria detection event, with the added benefits of being costeffective, facile to fabricate, and easy to scale up for high-throughput applications. We aim to capture and detect UPEC in concentrations typically associated with UTI diagnosis and detect UPEC in complex fluid matrices, like artificial urine.

Alternative Methodologies for Travel Time Studies

Alternative Methodologies for Travel Time Studies

Reza Omrani

Sponsor Organization: CIMA+

Name of Supervisor: Dr. Lina Kattan

University of Calgary

Travel time is one of the largest categories of transport costs. Recent developments within the Bluetooth technology, widespread use of mobile phones, and in-vehicle navigation systems provided the opportunity to obtain travel time information within minimal cost. Although the alternative sources of travel time have emerged into the market since 2007, little independent assessment of them has been conducted and they have not been formally directly compared to the existing methodologies employed. This study can provide decision makers with a better understanding of which methodologies might be valuable for deployment as part of future Travel Time Studies. This is one of the most interesting projects that CIMA+ is involved in, which help the organization to develop the knowledge in projects related to the travel time studies.

ERGO4ALL: Validation d’un algorithme d’analyse des postures et applications de force

Les logiciels actuels de DHM (Digital Human Modeling ou d’ergonomie virtuelle) destinés à la conception de situations de travail et de produits demeurent difficiles à utiliser ce qui en limite grandement l’utilisation par les concepteurs et les ergonomes. Pourtant, l’utilisation plus répandue de DHM permettrait d’en arriver à des environnements de travail plus sécuritaires et minimisant les risques pour la santé des travailleurs. Il apparaît donc utile de concevoir les logiciels de DHM en tenant compte des caractéristiques et exigences (i.e., conception centrée sur l’opérateur humain) de leurs utilisateurs, lesquels sont en grande majorité non ergonomes. TO BE CONT’D

Legitimating the Initial Coin Offering: A multidisciplinary study

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are a revolutionary new way of funding entrepreneurial ventures, which work by issuing digital tokens on an indelible distributed ledger. ICOs have the potential to fundamentally transform the finance sector, although they are still a highly nascent innovation, and there are still significant hurdles to their widespread proliferation. iComplyICO is a Vancouver-based company developing a multisided digital platform that connectsventures, regulators, legal and financial service providers, and other key stakeholders to facilitate regulatory compliant and legitimate ICOs.
This research project will help iComplyICO develop the understanding and vision necessary to successfully introduce its platform and build legitimacy around ICOs. It brings together scholars from several research domains to understand the present context and future implications of ICOs from multiple perspectives. TO BE CONT’D

Relationship between Capital Structure and performance of Micro-Finance Institutions

Poverty alleviation is the main objective of United Nations Millennium Development Goal and microcredit is used as an effective tool in poverty alleviation around the globe. Microcredit is one of the significant innovations in development policy and a key element for the 21st century’s socio-economic development as micro-credit helps improving socio-economic conditions of the poor. In an era of declining donor funding and public engagements, sources of funds for Micro-finance institutions (MFIs) and their performance and economic sustainability become an important topic for future of MFIs. This project will be focused on studying the relationship between Capital Structure and Financial Performance of Micro-Finance Institutions (MFIs). A dataset will be used to establish the relationship between the capital structure and performance. Multiple regression analysis will be used with the statistical tools such as SPSS and STATA. The study will show the relationship between capital structure and effects on performance and will enable policy makers to act accordingly.

Mechanical characterization of valve compression packings at high temperature

The leak tightness of valves, compressors and pumps is ensured by packed stuffing-box systems. The most critical element of this assembly is the compressed braided rings called packings. These packings are compressed axially to produce lateral contact pressures large enough to confine the fluid within process vesse1s and pipe segments. The mechanical properties of the compression packing material are the main factors affecting fluid-tightness at room and high temperature and yet there is little or no data available in manufacturer’s catalogues or in the literature. lt is proposed to measure the mechanical properties such as compression modulus, Poisson’s ratio, pressure transmission ratio, short-term creep deformation and thermal expansion coefficient of packing materials. This project initiative will hopefully serve as a basis to launch a North American testing program to develop ASTM-like lasting procedures for compression packing.

Unique Cultural Expressions in Cheerfulness

Recent research indicated the importance of trait cheerfulness in predicting adaptive coping mechanisms, life satisfaction, and flourishing. With worldwide interests in studying this construct, it becomes imperative to understand how the measurement of cheerful behaviours and attitudes may differ cross-culturally. The present study investigates unique cultural patterns in cheerfulness that are distinctive to one culture at the level of the concept, instrument, and item. Participants are recruited from Italy, Canada, Spain, Japan, China, and Germany and mathematical models are used to reveal unique expressions of hilarity (i.e., merry, outward mood state), and cheerful mood (tranquil, composed mood state) cross-culturally. We anticipate unique findingson cultural expressions, including implicit expression of cheerfulness in Eastern cultures, and an explicit way of expressing cheerfulness in Western Cultures. This project not only supports recent calls to investigate cross-cultural invariance across psychological traits, but furthers the investigation on the fundamental conceptualization of cheerfulness.

Deep Hashing and Clustering for Deduplication

Identifying and removing duplicated records by leveraging state-of-the-art AI and machine learning techniques (deep neural networks) from co-op banks’ customer databases, such as the one within the partner organization, Desjardins, will help the banks pay out the appropriate share of dividends to their customers.

How Interest Groups Polarize Elected Officials

Do interest groups use information to polarize elected officials? Conventional wisdom holds that legislative committees transcend partisan bickering and promote evidence-based policymaking. But there remain gaps in the literature and in our understanding of how and whether committees are able to meet this ideal In this project, I propose a research framework to uncover the “hidden hallways” of information exchange in Parliament. I scrape a large, unstructured, and dynamic corpus of committee transcripts and interest group submissions. Using Big Data tools (e.g. Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, dynamic network analysis), I augment this corpus with federal lobbying records. My goal is to generate new knowledge about how legislators of different parties build lobbying networks, and how these networks change over time and across issue areas. Specifically, I test whether co-partisan legislators who share a connection to semantically similar interest groups are more likely to share additional affiliations, relative to non-co-partisans with connections to semantically dissimilar interest groups.