摘要:

There were many achievements of engineering in the ancient past, and the manufacture and subsequent movement of obelisks is selected as an example. The development of engineering in the UK, based on practice, is traced through the Industrial Revolution, together with the rise of technological education. The pattern of education and training was set in the early 20th century and based firmly on the twin pillars of engineering - practice and theory. Against this pattern, the present situation is examined. Starting in the schools, it is concluded that much effort is required to increase the awareness of engineering to influence brighter pupils towards technology. The education of engineers who followed the Higher National Certificate route was strongly based on practice, and the elimination of this route to chartered status makes it advisable to give yet more attention to practical experience for graduates. Education for technician engineers should have some association with the planning for education of chartered engineers so that the whole forms a balanced programme. Postgraduate education is considered against a background of some critism in the past, and reference is made to a number of schemes specially designed to meet industrial needs. A strong plea is made for further development of post-experience education and the need for greater responsibility by a single authority is suggested.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0001

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

摘要:

User satisfaction with a public service is a highly subjective matter. It can be influenced by many factors, a high proportion of which are not under the control of the provider of the service. Techniques for gauging it are widely employed, but, for the purposes of system planning and equipment design, more objective - and hence quantifiable- criteria must be used. The Address deals with two of the subjective factors that affect customer satisfaction with a telecommunications service - quality and reliability. These, in turn, are strongly influenced by congestion and faults in the systems, and some practical aspects of each are discussed. The interdependence between intrinsic equipment reliability, fault-minimising configuration and good maintenance is emphasised. Some of the effects of the introduction of stored-program control into telephone exchanges, and the spread of microelectronics generally, are indicated.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0002

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

摘要:

A commonly used instrument for finding buried metal pipes consists of two coils, a transmitter and a receiver. The principle on which it works is analysed using the idea of ‘earth-return’ currents that flow along the pipe and return through the ground. The theoretical predictions are consistent with what is measured.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0003

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0004

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

摘要:

Various techniques for the measurement of elevation angles of arrival of oblique-incidence ionospherically propagated h.f. transmissions using a vertical stack of aerials are reviewed. These include single-mode and two-mode analyses, various wavefront analysis methods and Fourier and maximum-entropy spectral analyses. The methods have been applied to experimental data, and although none is completely successful, the spectral analysis methods generally provided the most realistic solutions. An unexpected result is the finding that both sporadic-E and F modes frequently comprise multiple components with different Doppler frequency shifts and arrival angles.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0005

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

摘要:

An instantaneously adaptive nonlinear ratio quantiser, called a dynamic ratio quantiser (d.r.q.) is described. It enables a wide range of input signals to be quantised with a nearly constant signal/noise ratio (s.n.r.).The d.r.q. consists of an instantaneously adaptive nonlinear elementEL, whose output samples are a function of the ratio of the input and the feedback samples. Theoretically,ELwill transform input samples of any amplitude to samples within the range of a fixed uniform quantiser. The feedback samples are produced from the quantised output samples with the aid of an inverseELand a transversal filter.The theory of the d.r.q. is presented, and its s.n.r. performance for different adaptation algorithms is given.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0006

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

摘要:

In the first few years following the Second World War, the maximum size of generating units was 60MW. There was a rapid growth in the demand for electricity, and as a result there was a hectic period of design and construction of larger units. Within a period of about ten years, units of nine different sizes were introduced. Not surprisingly, there were many teething troubles, and the availability of the plant suffered. There were also construction delays that could not be attributed to design changes and to late delivery of plant to site. Official committees were set up to investigate the case of delays. They found the causes to be complex, involving lack of long-term planning to even out the rate of ordering, bad site management, poor industrial relations and inadequate productivity. The author is cautiously optimistic that delays can be minimised and the availability of the plant improved in the future by the standardisation of designs during the next few years, when little new plant will be required. There are a number of other areas that call for determined and concerted action before we can be assured of achieving shorter construction times and highest availability plant. These will be of increasing importance with the higher proportion of nuclear plant which will be constructed towards the end of the 20th century to take the place of dwindling, and increasingly costly, oil and gas reserves.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0008

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

摘要:

The paper presents a general computational method together with the relevant computer program which can be easily used to perform reliability analysis on electric power installation configurations. The mathematical reliability model of the program is based on the concept of frequency of failures during the useful life period. In other words, it starts from basic configuration component failure-rate data and uses the tie-set approach to carry out the reliability analysis of the system under study. For purposes of illustration the computer program has been applied to a practical h.v./m.v. substation configuration. The program is very conducive to analysis work of reliability sensitivity as a function of the failure rates of the configuration components.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0009

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

摘要:

H.V. d.c. convertor stations contain a.c. plant components which are specified by their relationship with d.c. link parameters and cannot be represented in conventional terms within the a.c. load-flow solutions. In the paper a comprehensive d.c. link model is developed with generality to represent all the plant components and operating conditions encountered in practice. The New Zealand a.c.-d.c.-a.c. scheme is used as a test system, and the results show that a unified fast-decoupled load-flow solution of two and three a.c. systems interconnected by the d.c. link converges for all practical operating conditions without increasing the number of iterations.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0010

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET

摘要:

As the sophistication of control and monitor functions on modern underground trains increases, so the limitations of the conventional ‘point-to-point’ wiring technique become more apparent. To overcome this problem a time-division multiplexing system has been developed for possible incorporation on future London Transport trains. This paper outlines the philosophy and development behind the system.

DOI:10.1049/piee.1978.0012

出版商:IEE    

年代:1978

数据来源: IET