Innovative Projects Realized

Étude de la fiabilité opérationnelle des pompes centrifuges soumises à des hautes pressions

Un équipement sous pression est un réservoir ou une conduite conçue pour contenir des gaz ou des liquides à une pression nettement différente de la pression atmosphérique. Ce type d’équipement peut être fabriqué, entre autres, en métal ou en matériau composite. La production de ces équipements évolue de manière très significative et le développement informatique lié à ce domaine ne cesse pas d’avancer vu qu’il est maintenant possible de faire des calculs numériques précis sur la distribution des contraintes, les pressions, les températures et les écoulements. Beaucoup de chercheurs ont élaboré des méthodes expérimentales et des méthodes numériques afin d’atteindre un objectif commun consistant à réduire les risques d’éclatement de ces cylindres lors de l’augmentation excessive des pressions internes/externes et des températures. L’objectif principal de ce projet est d’étudier la fiabilité opérationnelle des équipements de type pompe soumis à des hautes pressions et des températures variables. À l’aide du logiciel commercial Abaqus couplé avec le langage de programmation Python, nous prévoyons mettre en place un modèle éléments finis 3D d’une enceinte de pompe pour simuler son comportement élastoplastique basé sur une variation de température allant jusqu’à 100 °C. To be continued.

Modèles d’estimation a priori des efforts de développement de logiciels embarqués pour les communications dans les mines

Toutes les entreprises font face au défi d’avoir à estimer les efforts de développement de leurs logiciels. Dans la littérature, la quasi-totalité des modèles d’estimation des efforts de développement de logiciels sont basés sur des données collectées a posteriori sur des projets complétés : ils correspondent donc à des modèles a posteriori modélisant le passé. Les objectifs de cette recherche sont d’opérationnaliser et expérimenter dans le contexte de Newtrax la proposition d’une mesure a priori de la taille fonctionnelle d’un logiciel puis en évaluer la contribution dans des modèles d’estimation a priori avec les données historiques de Newtrax dans le contexte spécifique de développement de logiciels embarqués pour les communications sous-terraines dans les mines. Les projets de logiciels de Newtrax développés par Newtrax au cours des 12 derniers mois seront mesurés avec la norme COSMIC – ISO 19761.

Power at the Edge: Exploring Sustainable Energy Security in the Rural and Remote Communities of Atlantic Canada

The rural and remote communities of Atlantic Canada are plagued with insufficient and interrupted access to energy sources. Lately, the provinces of Atlantic Canada have realigned their future clean energy goals to include increased collaboration with Locally Owned Renewable Energy Small-Scale (LORESS) projects. However, no study has examined the effect of these programs on the sustainability and energy security concerns of the rural and remote communities of Atlantic Canada. In our study, we attempt to address this research gap and ultimately understand the challenges in generating, distributing, and transmitting renewable energy through the collaborations between major electric utilities and locally owned small-scale projects in Atlantic Canada

Learning Jungle AI Recommender System for Enhanced Education

Devhaus Corporation operates 20 early child education centers across 5 countries including Canada, USA, Singapore, Cambodia and Philippines. To further implement its principle of Observation to Education, Devhaus is partnering with York University research team to develop an Artificial Intelligence Recommender System to help teachers across the world select optimal lesson plans for each kid based on the learner’s behaviors. The interns will analyze the set of existing lessons, historical recommendations, and experts’ opinions to better understand the temporal and logical dependence of the lessons; and more importantly, the interns will customize the state-of-art recommendation algorithms for this business problem. Devhaus shall get a powerful AI tool to implement its successful Observation to Education practice and principle in its learning centers in different countries and cultures.

Synchronous Collaboration in Multi-user CAD environments

Advances in cloud computing have enabled the Computer-aided design industry to develop fully-synchronous, collaborative CAD. Synchronous CAD is unique in that it allows multiple users to manipulate the same CAD model at the same time, and saves changes in real time—much like a “Google Docs” document. These new design environments engender real-time collaboration and are touted to be the future of CAD. This work aims to understand the effectiveness and limitations of such platforms, and study how they may affect design workflow and methods. To date, we have consolidated prior art, engaged with potential industry partners, and conducted a baseline pilot study. Our preliminary analysis identified coupling effects to be a challenge in synchronous collaboration tasks. We would like to further our investigation to understand the difficulties arising in the use of synchronous CAD. After an in-depth analysis, we would propose a design support that will mitigate some of the shortcomings of working in collaborative CAD environments.

Modeling the viscosity of binary and ternary mixtures of ionic liquids

Ionic liquids are organic-cation salts that feature the property of being liquid at lower temperatures than their inorganic counterparts. This peculiar characteristic added to their versatility and recoverability make those compounds excellent candidates for many applications such as a replacement for conventional toxic and hardly recyclable organic solvents, among others. However, their high viscosity is often a hindering factor in the implementation of ionic liquids in viable industrial processes. Mixtures of ionic liquids are a way of fine-tuning their physical and chemical properties. Mathematical models of physical properties are therefore essential to save time and money on the design of those mixtures. The aim of this project is to build a viscosity model for mixtures of ionic liquids, valid over wide ranges of composition and temperature. Since viscosity data for ionic liquid mixtures over wide ranges of composition and temperature are very scarce, the objective of this project is to obtain experimental data, which will permit to calibrate the model. We expect that the data will permit the development of a viscosity model that will pave the way for process simulation with ionic liquid mixtures.

Strengthening capacity of Canadian civil society organizations and their partners in the Global South to address gender inequality: Engagements, perceptions and uses of feminist approaches in international development

The goal of this project is to strengthen the capacity of Canadian civil society organizations (CSOs) working around the world to combat gender inequality. The Mitacs post-doctoral candidate, working closely with the Canadian Council of International Co-operation, a coalition of over 80 CSOs in Canada, will examine how different feminist approaches are applied in international development work. Through surveys and case studies, this project examines how organizations and their partners in the Global South implement feminist approaches into planning and programming. From this research, tools and resources highlighting successful strategies to gender equality and women’s empowerment will be developed and shared among CSO networks, thus fulfilling a key demand from the sector. Ultimately, this project will contribute to more efficient and long-term impact from public and private donor investments.

Corpus-based Examinations of L2 Integrated Writing: Reporting verbs and Personal Pronouns

The goals of the present project are to (a) identify how second language (L2) learners make use of reporting verbs (e.g., think, mention, argue, etc.) within the context of integrated (source-based) writing and (b) examine types and functions of personal pronouns (I, we, etc.) in their academic texts. The project will use corpus-based analysis to investigate 926 essays written by L2 learners at an English-medium university in Montreal across two academic genres: argumentative, and cause and effect.

The results from the study will illustrate the differences across L2 writers with different native language backgrounds pertaining to authorial voice (personal pronouns) and source-text integration (reporting verbs) in two frequent genres in academic writing. Therefore, the findings will hold implications for L2 writing classes. Identifying rhetorical and semantic functions of reporting verbs and personal pronouns will help L2 writing instructors address L2 learners’ challenges with academic writing within the classroom environment.

On Mechanisms of Water Flooding in Heavy Oil Systems

Water flooding is the most widely applied enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process in both light and heavy oil reservoirs. In this process, water is injected into the reservoir through an injection well to displace oil in front of it towards the production well. As discussed in the attached proposal, it is generally accepted that theories explaining water flooding performance in light oil reservoirs are not applicable to heavy oil reservoirs; nonetheless, there is a lack of detailed studies investigating the underlying mechanisms of water flooding in heavy oil systems. The goal of this visit research is to validate the mechanisms speculated based on the observations made in the core flood experiments, already done in this ongoing PhD research. The physics of two-phase flow during heavy oil water flooding at pore scale will be investigated using a lab-on-chip microfluidics. The results of this research may provide us with a better understanding of the physics and mechanisms responsible for heavy oil entrapment in pores at different wetting conditions during injection of water, as the cheapest and most available EOR fluid, into heavy oil reservoirs.

Uncovering novel genetic interactions for fungal adhesins and implications for virulence

Combating infectious disease pathogens is a pressing global health challenge. Due to limited treatment options, fungal pathogens pose a unique challenge, and are emerging as a leading cause of human mortality. Focusing on Candida albicans, the most common cause of fungal infections, our research project aims to understand how different genetic factors play a role in the virulence of fungal pathogens and the progression of fungal infectious disease. We will use a worm model for infectious disease that was been developed and optimized by the host laboratory (Dr. Natasha Kirienko), and screen >100 fungal genetic mutant strains (generated by Dr. Rebecca Shapiro’s laboratory) to establish which genetic factors play an important role in virulence and survival of the worm host. Together this work will yield novel insight into the genetic mechanisms by which Candida species cause life-threatening disease.

Nonlinear Dynamic Phenomena in Long-Span Bridges

Since the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows, bridge engineers are greatly concerned by the dynamic behavior of bridges under wind actions especially when designing long-span bridges, i.e., suspension or cable-stayed bridges. Considering that very long spans are planned such as the Messina Strait Bridge, a suspension bridge in Italy with a main span of 3.3 km, unexpected nonlinear dynamic phenomena that might cause large motion of the bridge structure might be problematic as it has been demonstrated theoretically by mathematicians for simplified structures. However, long-span bridges are complex structural systems, and these phenomena would be more realistically simulated using a structural analysis software, an engineering tool. Therefore, the objectives of the research are to develop numerical models of existing bridge designs and to assess their susceptibility to nonlinear dynamic phenomena using either a simplified static analysis technique or nonlinear dynamic analysis. The most important expected outcome will be to demonstrate whether nonlinear dynamic phenomena can be critical for the design of long-span bridges and under what circumstances.

Path Planning for Resilient Multi-robot Connectivity

Robotics and automation are radically transforming industries—from manufacturing to services—as well as societies.
Collaborative multi-robots, in particular, have the potential to greatly improve the performance of any spatial task (e.g., exploration and surveillance) much like distributed computing impacted information science.
One fundamental, enabling property of these systems is the ability for their members to exchange information with one another.
Until today, researchers have often combined sophisticated “connectivity maintenance” approaches (i.e., algebraic connectivity, spring-damper models, etc) with relatively trivial exploration strategies.
In this project, we intend to merge our home institution’s expertise in multi-robot connectivity with the host institution’s research on multi-robot path planning.
We will also pay special attention to the resilience of our methodology to cope with the non-idealities of a real-world deployment.
In our vision, this project will create a multi-robot system capable of autonomously implement a complex exploration strategy that respects connectivity constraints, even in the presence of hardware and software errors.
Our deliverables will include: (i) theory for a new robotic controller, (ii) its implementation as multi-(robotic-)platform software, and (iii) the analysis of an experimental campaign in actual robotic hardware.