Browsing by Author "Eitelberg, Eduard."

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Law of money, value and payment.
(2002) Eitelberg, Eduard.; O'Shea, A. G.; Somaroo, Harichand.
Societies have, since time immemorial, traded real goods and services for expectations of goods and services in some future. These expectations have been associated with tangible and, lately, intangible property - which is generally called money. From the crude quantity theory of money, the purchasing power of a monetary unit is given as 1/ P = T/(Mv). P is the price of the traded goods and services T, M is the total money supply and its turnover rate is v. The total money supply M is dominated by bank credit. In the South African law (and elsewhere) the judicial recognition given to bank credit (1) as money seems to have happened as an unintended side-effect to accepting cheques as delivery vehicles in a cash transfer without any tangible money moving from the transferor to the transferee. In payment of money, the law of property and the law of contract overlap and become inseparable. Both the English and South African laws define payment as performance of a preceding duty. The Supreme Court of Appeal, in the Vereins- und Westbank case seems to have declared an abstract transfer of ownership of money to be payment even though no preceding duty to pay was found. The profit of a financial investment is called interest and is calculated from a simple or compound interest formula. Despite medieval legal, theological and ethical objections, neither is illegal in the South African positive law. The last remnant of the medieval protection of a guilty debtor (often the ruler) at the expense of an innocent creditor is the in duplum rule. This is particularly obnoxious during modern rampant inflation that was unknown and could not be predicted when only metallistic money was in use. The influence of the in duplum rule is being limited by recent restrictive judgments in South Africa and in Zimbabwe. In South Africa, the Government has a constitutional duty to ensure that its subjects are not deprived of property. Specifically, the Constitution prescribes in Section 224(1) that the South African Reserve Bank must 'protect the value of the currency'. It is shown that the recent Reserve Bank policies, unless urgently modified, are in conflict with the publicly promised inflation rate of no greater than 6%. The exchange rates depend fundamentally on the price levels of the traded or tradable goods and services in the respective economies. This leads to the concept of purchasing power parity, which is most accurately reflected in the relationship between interest rates in different states and their relative foreign exchange depreciation rates. It is submitted that the South African Exchange Control Regulations have outlived their usefulness (if ever they had any) and are unconstitutional - at least in so far as they interfere with the South African Reserve Bank's obligation to pursue its primary object 'independently and without fear'. In the main, the South African Courts have applied restrictive interpretation to the Exchange Control Regulations and they have justifiably ignored the public international law obligation of the Republic to recognise the Exchange Control Regulations of fellow IMF members extraterritorially. (1) To money related claims on banks - see the body of the thesis for the two-creditor-two-debtor legal aspects in the 'bank credit'.
Quantitative feedback design and construction of a two by two system with large disturbances.
(1989) Boje, Edward Sidney.; Eitelberg, Eduard.
The quantitative feedback theory (QFT) of Horowitz is theoretically well developed for multivariable systems but there is not sufficient knowledge on its application to practical problems. A "flying machine" consisting of an airframe with two independently controlled sets of wings has been designed and constructed as a 2-input 2-output control problem. The airframe is constrained to move vertically on guide wires and to rotate about a pivot. Air flow over the wings is provided by two 7.SkW fans operated without any attempt at providing non-turbulent flow. The arrangement of the wings is such that in open loop, the dynamic behaviour of the airframe from the rear set of wings to the height is non-minimum phase. Additionally, the airframe is unstable for some flight conditions. This uncertain, non-linear and highly disturbed plant provides an ideal practical environment in which to test controller design theory. The construction, modelling, parameter estimation and simulation of the flying machine is described. Three different controller structures are disGussed, with actual controller designs arrived at from QFT understanding. The controller designs for the flying machine take into account parameter uncertainty and trade off disturbance attenuation against rate and amplitude saturation at the wing angle inputs.
Vapour-liquid equilibrium measurements at moderate pressures using a semi-automatic glass recirculating still.
(2014) Lilwanth, Hitesh.; Naidoo, P.; Ramjugernath, Deresh.; Eitelberg, Eduard.
Vapour-liquid equilibrium (VLE) data of high accuracy and reliability is essential in the development and optimization of separation and chemical processes. This study focuses on satisfying the growing demand for precise VLE data at low to moderate pressures, by development of a computer-aided dynamic glass still which is semi-automated. The modified dynamic glass still of Joseph et al. (2001) was employed to achieve precise measurement of phase equilibrium data for a pressure range of 0 to 500 kPa. The study involved the assembling and commissioning of a new moderate pressure dynamic still and various peripheral apparati. The digital measurement and control systems were developed in the object-oriented graphical programming language LabVIEW. The digital proportional controller with integral action developed by Eitelberg (2009) was adapted for the control of pressure and temperature. Pressure and temperature measurements were obtained by using a WIKA TXM pressure transducer and Pt-100 temperature sensor respectively. The calculated combined standard uncertainties in pressure measurements were ±0.005 kPa, ±0.013kPa and ±0.15kPa for the 0-10 kPa, 10-100 kPa and 100-500 kPa pressure ranges respectively. A combined standard uncertainty in temperature of ±0.02 K was calculated. The published data of Joseph et al., (2001) and Gmehling et al,. (1995) for the cyclohexane (1) and ethanol (2) system at 40kPa and 1-hexene (1) + N-methyl pyrrolidone-2 (NMP) (2) system at 363.15 K respectively served as test systems. NMP is regarded as one of the most commonly used solvents in the chemical industry due to its unique properties such as low volatility, thermal and chemical stability. As a result the isothermal measurement of 1-hexene (1) + N-methyl pyrrolidone-2 (NMP) (2) system were conducted at 373.15 K constituting new VLE data. A further system comprising 1-propanol (1) and 2-butanol (2) was also measured at an isothermal temperature of 393.15 K. The measured data were regressed using the combined and direct methods. The equations of state of Peng-Robinson (1976) and Soave-Redlich-Kwong (1972) combined with the mixing rules of Wong-Sandler (1992) in conjunction with a Gibbs excess energy model was utilized for the direct method. The activity coefficient models namely Wilson (1964) and NRTL (Renon and Prausnitz, 1968) were chosen to describe the liquid non-idealities while the vapour phase non-ideality was described with the virial equation of state with the Hayden and O’ Connell (1975) correlation. Thermodynamic consistency of the measured data was confirmed using the point test of Van Ness et al. (1973) and the direct test of Van Ness (1995).