Amir R. Kashani PhD

Accurate life-cycle costing is a key enabler for wind farm operation and maintenance (O&M) optimization. Research has shown that maintenance, for both on- and offshore installations, is not optimized and that significant opportunities exist for reducing the total cost for maintenance activities and the cost due to production losses, especially for large wind farms. This paper describes a stochastic model for detailed life-cycle cost analysis and associated return on investment (ROI) analysis… Show more

Accurate life-cycle costing is a key enabler for wind farm operation and maintenance (O&M) optimization. Research has shown that maintenance, for both on- and offshore installations, is not optimized and that significant opportunities exist for reducing the total cost for maintenance activities and the cost due to production losses, especially for large wind farms. This paper describes a stochastic model for detailed life-cycle cost analysis and associated return on investment (ROI) analysis that can be used to assess offshore wind farm O&M management alternatives and technologies. A case study that examines the return on investment for the implementation of prognostics and health management (PHM) systems on a wind turbine is presented Show less

This report describes the adoption and extension of “availability payment”
concepts currently in use for civil infrastructure Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to
contract design and pricing for Performance-Based Logistics (PBL) contracts.
Availability payment models for civil infrastructure PPPs require the private sector to
take responsibility for designing, building, financing, operating and maintaining an
asset (most commonly
highways). Under the “availability payment”… Show more

This report describes the adoption and extension of “availability payment”
concepts currently in use for civil infrastructure Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to
contract design and pricing for Performance-Based Logistics (PBL) contracts.
Availability payment models for civil infrastructure PPPs require the private sector to
take responsibility for designing, building, financing, operating and maintaining an
asset (most commonly
highways). Under the “availability payment” concept, once the asset is
available for use, the private sector begins receiving an annual payment for a
contracted number of years based on meeting performance requirements. The
challenge in PPPs is to determine a payment plan (amount and length of
time) that protects the public interest, i.e., does not overpay the private sector, but
also minimizes that risk that the asset will become unsupported. In this report we
focus on availability as the key required outcome and introduce a stochastic
availability requirement into PBL contract structures.
The model developed in this report uses an affine controller to drive a discrete
event simulator (Petri net) that produces availability and cost measures. The model
is used to explore the optimum availability assessment window (length of time over
which availability should be assessed) for a PBL contract. Show less

This paper presents a method that uses a simulation-based real options analysis to
determine the value of waiting after obtaining a remaining useful life (RUL) indication from
prognostics and health management (PHM) structures within a wind turbine. This
methodology potentially allows the threshold for maintenance to be optimized in real-time
based on the state of health of the turbine, the anticipated future state of maintenance
resources, maintenance flexibility (current… Show more

This paper presents a method that uses a simulation-based real options analysis to
determine the value of waiting after obtaining a remaining useful life (RUL) indication from
prognostics and health management (PHM) structures within a wind turbine. This
methodology potentially allows the threshold for maintenance to be optimized in real-time
based on the state of health of the turbine, the anticipated future state of maintenance
resources, maintenance flexibility (current and future), and market uncertainties (e.g.,
anticipated future price and demand for energy). Show less

In this paper, an online fault diagnosis for a complex dynamical systems integrating adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and using independent component analysis (ICA) for feature extracting is presented. In this approach, using ICA provide salient features selected from raw measured data sets. Subsequently, the most superior extracted features are fed into multiple ANFIS in order to identify different abnormal cases. Using multiple ANFIS units each dedicated to one fault… Show more

In this paper, an online fault diagnosis for a complex dynamical systems integrating adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) and using independent component analysis (ICA) for feature extracting is presented. In this approach, using ICA provide salient features selected from raw measured data sets. Subsequently, the most superior extracted features are fed into multiple ANFIS in order to identify different abnormal cases. Using multiple ANFIS units each dedicated to one fault, significantly reduces the scale and complexity of the system and speeds up the training of the network. This data-driven method is quite simple fast and expandable. Chemical dynamic processes are so complex that they are presently ahead of theoretical methods from fundamental physical standpoint. Distillation column is used as a complex benchmark problem to evaluate the proposed algorithm. Experimental results from this simulated nonlinear MIMO dynamical system demonstrated the effectiveness of the method. This procedure is applicable to a variety of industrial applications in which continuous on-line monitoring and diagnosis are necessary. Show less