
Lorenzo CianiUniversity of Florence | UNIFI · Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione
Lorenzo Ciani
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221
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October 2017 - present
Publications
Publications (221)
The renewable energy industry has been growing remarkably over the last years and the recent Fukushima nuclear crisis has given a further incentive worldwide. In this context, solar radiation represents one of the most accessible energy resources and the involved industry has seen rapid expansion in the past decade with an ever-increasing share of...
The paper presents some experimental results concerning the development of a custom TFT-LCD for avionics applications. In particular, a detailed preliminary reliability analysis has been implemented and a characterization of the customize display which will be installed in a military aircraft cockpit has been carried out. In order to prove the perf...
International Standards and Guidelines propose qualitative and quantitative methodologies for the safety assessment of the Safety Instrumented System (SIS). However, some of these methodologies are often complex and not very easy to apply. In fact, some criticalities are found by technicians voted to the functional safety such as the study of SIS f...
The accurate estimation of the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) sensors is crucial for enabling effective condition-based maintenance (CBM) and improving system reliability. This is of vital importance in planning machinery replacements before their actual fault, reducing downtime and thus greatly optimizing co...
The problem of Power Quality analysis is becoming crucial to ensuring the proper functioning of complex systems and big plants. In this regard, it is essential to rapidly detect anomalies in voltage and current signals to ensure a prompt response and maximize the system’s availability with the minimum maintenance cost. In this paper, anomaly detect...
In the era of Industry 4.0, achieving optimization in production and minimizing environmental impact has become vital. Energy management, particularly in the context of smart grids, plays a crucial role in ensuring sustainability and efficiency. Lithium-ion batteries have emerged as a leading technology for energy storage due to their versatility a...
Hybrid Supercapacitors (HSC) are innovative energy storage solutions that are becoming essential in many fields of applications. Their performances are strongly influenced by several parameters, such as temperature conditions, load characteristics and State-Of-Charge (SOC). For this reason, it is becoming fundamental to characterize their performan...
To develop small-scale, shallow, and high-resolution electrical resistivity surveys (e.g., for archaeological or agricultural purposes) the available literature highlights few requirements in terms of distance between two adjacent electrodes or electrode’s length embedded in the soil. Nevertheless, there are no studies about the influence of the el...
In the modern technological world, there is a notable increase in the demand for precise sensors and sensing platforms in many different application fields. In the context of Industry 4.0, Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) are now playing a central role in positioning estimation and anomaly detection, smart condition monitoring and fault diagnosis t...
In this paper, a strategy for the identification of models based on supercapacitors equivalent circuits is proposed. The approach is based on an innovative and efficient encoding procedure, suitable for a generic impedance network. The latter, in combination with an optimization algorithm, is used to investigate the components and topology of the b...
The recent development of highly automated machinery and intelligent industrial plants has increasingly enabled the continuous monitoring of their efficiency and condition, with the aim of maintaining high production efficiency and minimal malfunctions. Typical condition monitoring and fault detection applications are often achieved using acoustic...
The development and spread of Machine Learning methodologies have also involved the field of anomaly detection, particularly focused on fault detection. This is one of the main goals of Industry 4.0, as it is necessary to optimize repair time and cost. In this regard, Machine Learning is needed to identify precursor features of possible failures th...
Nowadays, Remaining Useful Life (RUL) is becoming an important and critical parameter in RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety) engineering. In the prognostic research field, much attention is usually given to mechanical device which are characterized by rapid aging processes. However, it is also fundamental to study prognosti...
Thanks to their enormous versatility, inertial platforms (IMUs) based on MEMS (Micro Electromechanical Systems) technology are now widely used in various fields. The strength of MEMS technology is the ability to miniaturize entire sensors within very small volumes. Inertial units play an important role in tracking an object in space and, therefore,...
Power Quality (PQ) meters are rapidly becoming essential instrumentations in many industrial fields. Nowadays, it is fundamental for companies to accurately measure the quality of the electric power plant to avoid critical failure of complex equipment, loss of production, and waste of energy. In this work, a self-developed customized power quality...
The recent development and spread of artificial intelligence-based techniques, particularly deep learning algorithms, have made it possible to model phenomena that were previously impossible to handle. Furthermore, the development of the Big Data paradigm is rapidly leading toward new research frontiers in predicting and classifying one-dimensional...
The use of Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) developed with Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) technology is significantly increasing in the automotive market. Despite this increase in MEMS-based usage, the metrological characterization of such devices in non-standard conditions is still a research gap that needs to be investigated. Both academ...
Recent literature is investigating the problem of Power Quality (PQ) in electric power plant introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to classify disturbances using a sliding window approach. However, all the methods available in literature are capable of identify only one disturbance in a single window. In a previous work, we introduced an innovat...
The use of Lithium-ion batteries is growing at significantly high rate in many different technological fields. The performances of such devices are deeply affected by the operating conditions. Among them, temperature plays a critical role in the degradation process of Lithium-Ion cells. An important parameter that could be used to analyze this degr...
Failure modes, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA) is a powerful tool used to quantify the risk related to safety-critical systems and to develop the proper corrective actions to minimize the associated risk. However, traditional FMECA has been widely criticized for its many drawbacks and weaknesses. Different combinations of occurrence, seve...
Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are nowadays widespread in the automotive industry. Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) IMUs are expanding because of this technology’s several advantages. However, a significant research gap neglected by both manufacturers and recent literature regards the behaviour of their performances under dynamic condition...
MEMS-based Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) are becoming essential components in automotive applications, as well as in many other fields. However, current literature misses to extensively consider dynamic characterization of such devices under the actual operating conditions typical of the field of application. In this work, a specific test plan a...
The goal of Technical Committee on Fault Tolerant Measurement Systems (TC-32) is to promote the research, training and outreach activities that cover all aspects of theory and practices of ensuring trustworthy measurement results under every operating condition. This is especially important in critical infrastructures where the cost of failure is v...
A Design for Reliability approach refers to a procedure including every tool that support a system design. Usually, design for reliability is carried out from early in the concept stage through to product design to ensure that reliability, safety and cost requirements are fully satisfied. In recent literature, all-around Reliability Life Cycle proc...
This paper presents an accurate averaged model of a Buck converter controlled via pulse‐skipping modulation (PSM). The derived model includes the parasitic elements of the circuit components, and it is not yet given in the literature. Output capacitor voltage and inductor current are analysed under steady‐state operation by deriving the expressions...
Power Quality Disturbances (PQD) have affected many people due to the growing number of electronic nonlinear loads and because of the significant increase of renewable sources connected to the grid. Previous works have shown the development of algorithms to detect and classify these disturbances. A thorough review of PQD detector algorithms pointed...
Precision farming technologies refer to a set of cutting-edge tools and strategies implemented to optimize the management of the plantation. Smart meter devices, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are only a few examples of the innovative systems increasingly employed from an Agriculture 4.0 point of view. Re...
The Square Kilometer Array low (SKAlow) is an outstanding project aiming at building the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. The Australian Murchison Shire desert has been chosen as location for the low-frequency antennas because of many reasons, such as the atmospheric above the site and the radio quietness due to one of the most r...
Following the rapid expansion of electrical vehicles, in the last few years many challenges related to lithium-ion batteries reliability and safety have gained substantial attention in the scientific community. In order to ensure a low life cycle cost and an optimized maintenance management it is fundamental to predict the future state of health of...
The wide expansion of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is leading to an increased number of failures and accidents. Sensors and measurement platforms represent some of the most critical items from a reliability point of view because redundancy strategies to avoid failures are usually not applicable due to cost, size, and weight limitations. Furtherm...
Power Quality is a fast-growing sector of Instrumentation and Measurements for the electric power industry. A degradation of power quality negatively affects the production capability in many different industrial fields. Loss of production, outages, wasted energy, increases in life cycle cost, and decreases in remaining useful life are some of the...
Nowadays, low-cost Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) can be easily found in several applications belonging to different fields such as automotive, healthcare, robotics, autonomous driving, and many others. In most cases, such devices are MEMS-based IMUs and can be requested to operate in a harsh environment characterized by vibration and wide tempe...
Remaining Useful Life (RUL) estimation of Lithium-Ion batteries is rapidly gaining significant attention worldwide. In a recent work a hybrid approach has been introduced aiming at improving the accuracy and precision of batteries prognostic merging aspects typical of condition monitoring techniques, Kalman and Particle filtering methods (i.e. the...
One of the most used geophysical measurement techniques for soil reconstruction is the Electrical Resistivity Tomography. In many different application fields, the reconstruction of the subsurface must be accurate and precise in order to properly identify the underground target. In many practical cases this will allow to decrease the costs thanks t...
A model-based strategy for an efficient power supply control used in a wireless sensor network is presented. The strategy, based on Pulse-Skipping Modulation, regulates the current charging a battery, delivered by a photovoltaic source, resulting in an accurate current regulation and highly efficient power management. The strategy is implemented on...
Human reliability is a critical aspect during safety assessment of many complex systems. Design, installation and maintenance are some of the tasks that are still demanded to human operators, and thus they are subjected to human factor. The probability of a human error could be estimated using several Human Reliability Analysis (HRA). HRA has been...
A safety instrumented system (SIS) is a complex unit composed of a set of hardware and software controls which are expressly used in critical process systems. A SIS should be specifically designed to obtain the failsafe state of the monitored plant or maintain safety of the procedure or a process when unacceptable or dangerous conditions occur. Thi...
In several applications (e.g. industrial plants, energy production systems, pipelines, offshore plants, wind turbines, etc) the DC-DC converter must endure harsh environmental and operating conditions. Stress as temperature, humidity, mechanical shocks and vibrations deeply affect the converter from both performance and reliability points of view....
Technological advancements have seen the spread of MEMS (Micro-electromechanical Systems) based sensors such as IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) systems. The latter provide object orientation information in numerous applications such as smartphones, robotics, automotive, drones, and many others. In more detail, IMUs based on MEMS technology are char...
Wireless Sensor Networks are subjected to some design constraints (e.g., processing capability, storage memory, energy consumption, fixed deployment, etc.) and to outdoor harsh conditions that deeply affect the network reliability. The aim of this work is to provide a deeper understanding about the way redundancy and node deployment affect the netw...
According to the European standard EN 50126 human reliability is a fundamental requirement in railway engineering. Notwithstanding that there are only few methods specifically developed for railway field. Trying to fill this gap, this paper proposes a human reliability analysis technique customized on railway applications to simulate a time-depende...
In the recent period, Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are widely employed in many applications, such as smartphones, robotics, Unmanned Aerial vehicles, automotive and self‑driving vehicles, artificial intelligence, and numerous others. However, the dynamical metrological performances and the reliability analysis when these microelectronic device...
Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are currently employed in devices used every day. Among these, there are smartphones, vehicles, drones, robots, and many others. The reliability and dynamical metrological performance represent a critical aspect to be considered for such devices, particularly under the application of vibrations representative of a...
Human reliability is a very important multidisciplinary topic. The reliability assessment of safety related system such as railway signaling system should also consider the impact of the human behaviour. RARA (Railway Action Reliability Assessment) is the only human reliability analysis method used in railway field. It is a powerful and effective t...
The International Union of Railway provides an annually safety report highlighting that human factor is one of the main causes of railway accidents every year. Consequently, the study of human reliability is fundamental, and it must be included within a complete reliability assessment for every railway-related system. However, currently RARA (Railw...
Prognostic and Condition-based Maintenance of Lithium-Ion batteries is a fundamental topic which is rapidly expanding since a long battery lifetime is required to ensure economic viability and minimize the life cycle cost. Remaining Useful Life (RUL) estimation is an essential tool for Prognostic and Health Management of batteries. In this paper a...
Diagnostics plays a fundamental role in industrial engineering and nowadays is an essential part of performance requirements since it allows to optimize maintenance policy improving the plant reliability and availability and minimizing the life cycle cost. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies help to implement effective and efficient diagnostic in...
Reliability Allocation is a top-down technique implemented to assign a reliability target to all the components making up the system based on a system reliability goal. It is therefore fundamental to perform an accurate and effective reliability allocation during the early phase of the system's design. Despite several reliability allocation techniq...
ABSTRACT Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is a widely used system used to guarantee an acceptable level of occupancy comfort, to maintain good indoor air quality, and to minimize system costs and energy requirements. If failure data coming from company database are not available, then a reliability prediction based on failure rate...
Electronic and microelectronic components installed in automotive applications are subjected to different kinds of stress sources. These stresses can generate a variety of different operating conditions on the devices with major effects on their reliability performances. In this paper, a High Temperature Operating Life (HTOL) test plan have been ca...
p class="Abstract"> The introduction of Big Data and Internet of Things has allowed the rapid development of smart farming technologies. Usually, systems implemented in smart farms monitor environmental conditions and soil parameter to improve productivity, to optimize soil conservation, to save water and to limit plant diseases. Wireless sensor ne...
The current technological process has mainly interested in integrating MEMS devices in most technological devices to offer complete control and awareness about a particular process or system. Such devices, which in most cases include gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer, are fully integrated on a single chip and have a cost not higher than fe...
This paper develops a Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) for a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system in railway. HVAC is a safety critical system which must ensure emergency ventilation in case of fire and in case of loss of primary ventilation functions. A study of the HVAC’s critical areas is mandatory to opt...
Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) is a well-established method for preventive maintenance planning. This paper focuses on the optimization of a maintenance plan for an HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system located on high-speed trains. The first steps of the RCM procedure help in identifying the most critical items of the sys...
Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are widespread in many different applications, such as automotive, drone, robotics, smartphones, and many others. MEMS-based IMUs (i.e., IMU-based on Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems technology) are the best solution to achieve effective and efficient monitoring and diagnostic with low cost, low power, and low dime...
Electrical Resistivity Tomography is a geophysical measurement technique used to measure the resistivity of the subsoil. For archeological applications the ability to accurately reconstruct the soil stratigraphy is a fundamental requirement. Obtain a reliable subsoil reconstruction is an important topic in order to improve the design of the archeol...
In this paper, we propose an unobtrusive method and architecture for monitoring a person’s presence and collecting his/her health-related parameters simultaneously in a home environment. The system is based on using a single ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radar as a sensing device. Using UWB radars, we aim to recognize a person and some preselected m...
Reliability Block Diagrams (RBDs) are widely used in reliability engineering to model how the system reliability depends on the reliability of components or subsystems. In this paper, we present librbd, a C library providing a generic, efficient and open-source solution for time-dependent reliability evaluation of RBDs. The library has been develop...
In this study, a procedure to evaluate the performance of a power converter under different operating conditions is presented. The technique takes into account the effect of the environmental conditions and the tolerance on each component and it provides a probability estimation that the converter will reach certain performance under definite opera...
An optimal reconstruction of the soil for archaeological purposes is mandatory. Dimensions and depth of buried anthropogenic remains must be identified accurately allowing an easier design of the excavation survey and minimizing the excavation costs. Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) is a widely used geophysical technique to measure the resis...
The use of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS)-based Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) is widespread in many applications concerning monitoring, diagnostic, and/or controlling in navigation and transportation systems, as well as in low-cost applications for automotive and aeronautical fields. The data provided by the set of sensors typically pr...
The monitoring of environmental condition, together with soi