April From The Chair

We had a very good presentation on Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) given to us from Dave Cook of Eaton Corporation. Dave has been in the business for a quite a while, but has been able to keep up to date with his work. What he talked about are not your father’s UPS, but rather a quite sophisticated piece of equipment. He talked about the old technology whose output was so dirty that the systems that the UPS was trying to protect would double clock. Today’s technology actually uses double conversion and IGBTs vice the SCRs that was in your father’s UPS. He also talked about Blade UPS that have a near unity power factor. All in all, it was a very good presentation. I want to thank Kurt Clemente for hosting us again.

This month we are going to visit another of our student branches. Dr. Popescu will be hosting us at Old Dominion University. The presenter will be Danda B. Rawat, who is a Ph.D. candidate at Old Dominion. The topic is Performance Enhancement in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks. Intelligent systems can be used in a variety of situations. Danda will be presenting how intelligent systems can be used in vehicles thereby reducing the number of accidents and deaths on our roadways. I think that this is an excellent topic. I did a simulation once in graduate school and I chose to model the traffic flow through the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel ; this topic generated many questions from my fellow students. Capacity is reached going through the tunnels when traffic is flowing freely. So I am thinking that this would be another advantage of this network. The network will allow the Traffic to flow freely (instead of stop and go as the human in the loop is constantly braking for the car in front of them, which causes the human in the loop in the next car behind the first car to brake even more). The free flowing traffic will save time and gasoline. I am looking forward to this presentation. I want to thank Dr. Popescu in advance for hosting us.

Our Vice-Chair/Secretary Jason Naramore attended the SoutheastCon 2010 in Charlotte North Carolina. He represented our section at the region meeting. As always, Bill LaBelle and Bill Clayton attended in their regional capacity. Bill and Bill have been invaluable mentors for me and we are very lucky to have them in our section. Thank you all for attending the meeting.

We are still looking for a Secretary for the section. Please contact any section executive committee member if you are interested in this position. Keep your calendars open in June in case Bob Kugler calls for assistance with the Oceans 2012 techsurge program. This is an excellent opportunity for the section.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone in April.

Regards,
James Bolitho
2009 Chair
Hampton Roads Section