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The Faculty of Engineering conducts research that has relevance to Advances in Technology. For example, some research is related to three-phase induction motors which are known to be the working horse of industry owing to their reliability and ability to self-start. This research work proposes a motor-current-signature- analysis method for the detection and classification of rotor faults in three-phase induction motors. Early detection and classification of faults reduces downtime of machines and the cost of maintenance.

Several research topics currently being tackled by researchers in the Faculty of Engineering fall under this theme. Some specific topics are listed here below.

  • Fault Detection and Classification in Induction Motors.
  • RF and microwave devices using the advance slow-wave concept. This concept is an advanced idea that helps obtaining compact dimensions and better electrical performance in terms of insertion losses and matching.
  • Use of concrete without cement.
  • Retrofitting of reinforced concrete structures.
  • Manufacturing of lightweight aggregate based on waste clay.
  • From Binary to Multi-Level Logic (Theory and Applications). The complexity of digital systems, which run on processors with billions of transistors, is in continuous increase. The basic component of this machine intelligent is a very basic binary switching which switches between two states. This binary technology appears to be limiting and drew attention to more adequate solution named the Multiple-Valued Logic (MVL). The MVL has the ability to encode greater amount of information per variable, has a higher radix number representation and provides larger number of switching functions than a binary system. The generalization of switching theory towards MVL are made in many directions that include Sum-of-Products of multiple-valued functions, fuzzy-computing, image and language processing, nanocomputing and reversible logic, arithmetic representation of multiple-valued functions and many other applications. A significant number of researchers tried to address this problem can be found in IEEE International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic.

Researchers in the Faculty of Engineering show their interest in these topics by conducting research and reporting the outcomes in prestigious international and national journals, magazines, symposia, conferences and meetings. More than 3 publications were reported during the last two years.

The Faculty is continuously encouraging its researchers to work with teams from other departments. This encouragement is expected to increase the research topics under this theme in the near future. One main research direction consists in applying vibration analysis on fault diagnosis in order to highlight the root causes for machine breakdowns to apply predictive maintenance and to review the types of machine fault analyzed by applying vibration sensors.