A rectification of the programme

In the original programme, we used the former 57000 data points to plot the Q-U Lissajous figure of one period. We chose 57000 before, because the Lissajous shown as below was a closed shape, which looked like the graph for one period.

 

But this method is unwarranted, we should choose the amount of the data points for one period by calculating based on the frequency we got. The frequency is 40kHz. Thus, the period is 2.5*10^-5s. The interval of the data points is 5*10^-10s. Therefore, the former 50000 points should be used, as  (2.5*10^-5)/ (5*10^-10)=50000. The correct Q-U Lissajous is shown below.

 

After we rectified the programme, the work done of one period is 0.0015189J and the discharge power is 60.756W. This result is closer to the theoretical value 60W than before. The content on the poster was modified and then printed.

Summary of poster design

As we had finished our project, the next step was to design the poster. My partner Liang Tang and I went to the library to discuss how to design the poster on both Saturday and Sunday of week 5.

 

At first, we had a look at the posters done by the last year students. The web link was given in the email sent by Al-Nuaimy. He also gave us a material about how to design a good poster written by cornell. After going through the ppt, we started to devise our poster. We divided the main content of the poster into four parts, including introduction, method, results and conclusion. The introduction section contained a brief introduction of the DBD plasma reactor and the significance of the measurement of the discharge power. The method part stated the process of how to gain the discharge power. The results section showed some important figures and data. The conclusion part contained a summary and the disadvantages of this project. At last, we added a section named “Contact us” which included our email addresses and a QR code for the blog.

 

After the content was done, I designed the format and colour. Thus, the poster was completed and the next step is to print it.

Work summary of week 5

Having compiled all the programs that we need to realize the required function, we started to work on the GUI (graphic user interface).

I used to think that the GUI would not be so difficult to design as we have already got the functional part of our program, thus making a GUI should be as simple as putting up a coat. However, after doing some research about the method used to program GUI, I found it so difficult to make and it just seems to be another type of programming language. To make the GUI, I tried to learn the method about how to make the GUI.

There are mainly two methods of making a GUI. One method is programming directly and generating the GUI only by the program, and the other one relies on the help of GUIDE which is a built-in program of matlab to help making the process of making a GUI more visual.

I tried both methods but failed on both of them. To start with the program, it is needed to read the data into the program. I searched online and found a useful grammar that might be able to be used, which is shown as follows:

[filename, pathname] = uigetfile('*.txt', 'Choose Data');

data=importdata([pathname filename]);

This grammar works perfectly in simple .m file, as you can see in the following figure.

However, it would not work in both of the GUI method no matter how hard I try.

Therefore we gave up with the GUI method and focused on our basic program and thought about how to perfect it. My partner Chunyang Song designed a attached function to the show the maximum value, minimum value, mean value, rms value and peak-to-peak value of the input signal. This can show some detailed information of the applied voltage and capacitor voltage.

On the Friday of the last week of our year 2 project, we combined all the function .m files together to form a whole program. After some compiling our project successfully produced the discharge power with some attached data as the following figures shows.

However, it seems to be a little informal, so we added some sentences into it realizing the function of storing all the data in a text document for later access. It can be seen from the figure below.

To this extent, our project is finished with all the requirement met and some attachment function realized.