The performance of photovoltaic (PV) panel having staggered metal foam fins was examined experimentally in Baghdad, Iraq. Three staggered metal foam fin configurations attached to the backside of the PV panel were studied. The measured parameters were front and back surfaces temperature, open voltage and current circuits, maximum power, and PV efficiency. It was noted that the maximum electrical efficiency enhancement was 4.7% for staggered metal foam fins (case III) than the reference PV panel. The operating temperature of the cell was increased when the value of solar intensity was high. Thereby, the electrical efficiency was decreased. It was found that the metal foam fins decreased the PV temperature by 2-3 ^o

The process of controlling a Flexible Joint Robot Manipulator (FJRM) requires additional sensors for measuring the state variables of flexible joints. Therefore, taking the elasticity into account adds a lot of complexity as all the additional sensors must be taken into account during the control process. This paper proposes a nonlinear observer that controls FJRM, without requiring equipment sensors for measuring the states. The nonlinear state equations are derived in detail for the FJRM where nonlinearity, of order three, is considered. The Takagi–Sugeno Fuzzy Model (T-SFM) technique is applied to linearize the FJRM system. The Luenberger observer is designed to estimate the unmeasured states using error correction. The develop

The goal of this paper is to design a robust controller for controlling a pendulum
system. The control of nonlinear systems is a common problem that is facing the researchers in control systems design. The Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) is the best solution for controlling a nonlinear system. The classical SMC consists from two phases. The first phase is the reaching phase and the second is the sliding phase. The SMC suffers from the chattering phenomenon which is considered as a severe problem and undesirable property. It is a zigzag motion along the switching surface. In this paper, the chattering is reduced by using a saturation function instead of sign function. In spite of SMC is a good method for controlling a nonlinear system b

This paper proposes a new structure of the hybrid neural controller based on the identification model for nonlinear systems. The goal of this work is to employ the structure of the Modified Elman Neural Network (MENN) model into the NARMA-L2 structure instead of Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) model in order to construct a new hybrid neural structure that can be used as an identifier model and a nonlinear controller for the SISO linear or nonlinear systems. Weight parameters of the hybrid neural structure with its serial-parallel configuration are adapted by using the Back propagation learning algorithm. The ability of the proposed hybrid neural structure for nonlinear system has achieved a fast learning with minimum number

The analysis of rigid pavements is a complex mission for many reasons. First, the loading conditions include the repetition of parts of the applied loads (cyclic loads), which produce fatigue in the pavement materials. Additionally, the climatic conditions reveal an important role in the performance of the pavement since the expansion or contraction induced by temperature differences may significantly change the supporting conditions of the pavement. There is an extra difficulty because the pavement structure is made of completely different materials, such as concrete, steel, and soil, with problems related to their interfaces like contact or friction. Because of the problem's difficulty, the finite element simulation is