Newsletter Error: Incorrect Dinner Speaker

The correct information is presented here. The person listed as the dinner speaker in the printed version of the March Informer will be speaking at the
Power Engineering Society Meeting at 5:45 PM.  

Section Meeting

Tuesday, March 21, 2000

Milwaukee School of Engineering
Student Life and Campus Center
1025 N. Broadway
Milwaukee WI

Map

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Schedule

Dinner Cost

Reservations

For reservations, call Marilyn at 277-7323 or send email to searing@msoe.edu. Reservations must be made before Tuesday, March 14th, 2000.

Dinner Presentation

Power Transmission, Distribution, and Generation: Challenges and Opportunities Mr. John Farrow, Wisconsin Public Service Commissioner

Mr. Farrow will provide a historical perspective of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC), who the PSC is and what they do. He will also discuss some of the problems Wisconsin is facing regarding an adequate electrical energy supply, and detail some of the paths we can follow in the coming years.

The Governor appointed Mr. Farrow to the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) in May of 1998. Prior to his appointment to the PSC, Mr. Farrow taught as a Professor for 10 years at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). During his tenure at MSOE he served as Program Director of Industrial Engineering and since 1990 served as the Chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Prior to his service at MSOE, Mr. Farrow was Director of Industrial Engineering at Marquette University from 1981 through 1988. He is currently serving as a member of the Committee on Electricity for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). Mr. Farrow holds both a Bachelor and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from Marquette University. Before entering academia, Mr. Farrow held engineering positions at a number of private firms including RTE Corporation, American Appraisal, Cutler-Hammer and Jack and Heintz.

Power Engineering Society

Natural Ester Based Dielectric Coolants, or Vegetable Oils, Are Not Just for Salads Anymore. C. Patrick McShane, Product Line Manager - DielectricFluids, Cooper Power Systems, Inc.

The paradigm shift toward DFSHE (Designing For Safety, Health, and the Environment) has resulted in more environmentally preferred products being introduced for the industrial market. For electrical distribution transformers, vegetable-based dielectric coolants have recently appeared on the market. The presentation will discuss the latest updates on this new development from all angles: Performance, Environmental, Health, Fire Safety, Codes, etc.

C. Patrick McShane has a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University and an MS in Science Engineering Management from the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He has also been International Area Manager for RTE Corp. and Regional Technical Director, State of Sao Paulo (Brazil) Rural Electrification Program. His professional activities include USA Delegate IEC TC99, IEC TC99 Liaison to TC64, IEC TC89 Expert Delegate, Chairman of ASTM W.G. D-5222, and W.G. Chair IEEE TC Dielectric Fluids Subcommittee C57.121. He has had several proposals adopted by USA Codes and Standards organizations (NEC, NESC, FMRC) and has presented at several domestic and international engineering conferences IEEE, EPRI, Doble, & CIRED. He is a member of the IEEE/PES Transformer Committee, the principal inventor of "Seed oil based fire resistant dielectric coolant," and recipient of the Plant Engineering 1998 Product of the Year.

Control Sys. / Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society

Multi Stage Monte Carlo Optimization in Engineering, Systems Simulation, Science, and Business

Dr. William Conley, UW-Green Bay

Multi stage Monte Carlo optimization (MSMCO) is a general-purpose simulation based optimization technique that is useful in a variety of engineering and control operations. It will be presented by means of drawings, three-dimensional props, a slide show, and a short video. Then, the emphasis will be on engineering and business applications. Problems from electronics, packaging, transportation, finance, data analysis, digital filters, capital budgeting, production scheduling and general nonlinear systems will be covered. Articles on these applications of MSMCO will be available at the presentation. 

Dr. William Conley is a member of the Business Administration and Mathematics faculty at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the author of over 140 publications. He was inducted into the Albion College Athletic Hall of Fame and is a senior member of the Society for Computer Simulation. He is also a fellow in the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Windsor.

Magnetics Society

Modeling Hysteretic Forces in Superconductors

Larry Turner, retired, formerly with Argonne National Laboratory

A simple model has been developed that uses computed shielding currents to determine the forces acting on super-conductors. The model has been applied to measurements of the force between high-temperature superconductors and permanent magnets. Computations utilize the Bean model for superconducting current densities. The Preisach model treats how the boundaries of the current-carrying regions change as the separation between the superconductor and permanent magnet changes. This creates the expected hysteretic variation of force, including sign reversal of the force. Optimization of the shielding currents is carried out through a simulated annealing algorithm in a C++ program that repeatedly calls commercial electromagnetic software code. Agreement with measured forces is encouraging, especially if realistic current densities are used. Lately, the method has been applied to modeling minor-loop forces. This work originated from the effort at Argonne National Laboratory to develop flywheel energy storage using high-temperature superconducting bearings.

Larry Turner has BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Carnegie Mellon University. He taught physics at Earlham College in Indiana and Muskingum College in Ohio. In between, he spent two years at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England, where he was one of the authors of the electromagnetics code GFUN. At Argonne National Laboratory from 1975 until he retired in 2000, he carried out electromagnetic analysis for nuclear fusion, superconducting magnets for MHD and other applications, accelerator magnets, mold-less electromagnetic casting of steel, and flywheel energy storage. He recently spent a year in Washington, D.C. with the Department of Commerce, in the secretariat of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. Flywheel energy storage with low-friction bearings can compensate for load swings and level out diurnal variations in loads of power plants and transmission lines.

Computer Society

WebL - A Programming Language for the Web

Nicholas Trudeau

This presentation will provide an overview of the WebL programming language. The focus will be on its advantages as a solution to current web programming problems.

Mr. Trudeau has several years of experience as a client/server applications developer. He specializes in Internet based systems and software. He is currently working on new client/server development for an advertising and design firm in the Milwaukee area. Mr. Trudeau received his BS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin - Parkside in 1997.