Patents by Inventor Michele Fontana

Michele Fontana has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 9835196
    Abstract: A method for operating a rotating machinery comprising a rotor, a rotor shaft, and at least one journal bearing supporting the rotor shaft is disclosed. The bearing comprises a bearing housing, a bearing surface in the bearing housing, a sleeve torsionally and axially fitted on the shaft, and a lubrication oil film filling a clearance between the outer surface of the sleeve and the bearing surface. The method comprises the step of modifying the clearance by modifying a radial dimension of the outer surface of the sleeve as a function of a rotation speed of the shaft.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 24, 2014
    Date of Patent: December 5, 2017
    Assignee: Nuovo Pignone Srl
    Inventors: Leonardo Baldassarre, Andrea Cianti, Michele Fontana, Andrea Bernocchi, Daniele Panara
  • Publication number: 20160084301
    Abstract: A method for operating a rotating machinery comprising a rotor, a rotor shaft, and at least one journal bearing supporting the rotor shaft is disclosed. The bearing comprises a bearing housing, a bearing surface in the bearing housing, a sleeve torsionally and axially fitted on the shaft, and a lubrication oil film filling a clearance between the outer surface of the sleeve and the bearing surface. The method comprises the step of modifying the clearance by modifying a radial dimension of the outer surface of the sleeve as a function of a rotation speed of the shaft.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 24, 2014
    Publication date: March 24, 2016
    Inventors: Leonardo BALDASSARRE, Andrea CIANTI, Michele FONTANA, Andrea BERNOCCHI, Daniele PANARA
  • Patent number: 9243644
    Abstract: Methods, devices and systems capable of performing a hot restart of a compressor driven by a turbine are provided. The turbine has a high speed shaft and a low speed shaft connected to the compressor. A base slow roll speed at which a speed of the low speed shaft is in a slow roll range is maintained at the high speed shaft for a predetermined time. Then, when a vibration amplitude of the compressor is larger than a vibration limit, the maintaining is repeated. Otherwise, a set speed of the high speed shaft is increased, until a current speed of the low speed shaft reaches a minimum operating speed. If, while increasing the set speed, the vibration amplitude becomes larger than the vibration limit, the maintaining is repeated.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 23, 2014
    Date of Patent: January 26, 2016
    Assignee: Nuovo Pignone, S.P.A.
    Inventors: Gianni Bagni, Antonio Baldassarre, Leonardo Baldassarre, Michele Fontana
  • Publication number: 20150044022
    Abstract: Methods, devices and systems capable of performing a hot restart of a compressor driven by a turbine are provided. The turbine has a high speed shaft and a low speed shaft connected to the compressor. A base slow roll speed at which a speed of the low speed shaft is in a slow roll range is maintained at the high speed shaft for a predetermined time. Then, when a vibration amplitude of the compressor is larger than a vibration limit, the maintaining is repeated. Otherwise, a set speed of the high speed shaft is increased, until a current speed of the low speed shaft reaches a minimum operating speed. If, while increasing the set speed, the vibration amplitude becomes larger than the vibration limit, the maintaining is repeated.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 23, 2014
    Publication date: February 12, 2015
    Inventors: Gianni Bagni, Antonio Baldassarre, Leonardo Baldassarre, Michele Fontana
  • Patent number: 8882471
    Abstract: Methods, devices and systems capable of performing a hot restart of a compressor driven by a turbine are provided. The turbine has a high speed shaft and a low speed shaft connected to the compressor. A base slow roll speed at which a speed of the low speed shaft is in a slow roll range is maintained at the high speed shaft for a predetermined time. Then, when a vibration amplitude of the compressor is larger than a vibration limit, the maintaining is repeated. Otherwise, a set speed of the high speed shaft is increased, until a current speed of the low speed shaft reaches a minimum operating speed. If, while increasing the set speed, the vibration amplitude becomes larger than the vibration limit, the maintaining is repeated.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 1, 2011
    Date of Patent: November 11, 2014
    Assignee: Nuovo Pignone S.p.A.
    Inventors: Gianni Bagni, Michele Fontana, Antonio Baldassarre, Leonardo Baldassarre
  • Publication number: 20120027623
    Abstract: Methods, devices and systems capable of performing a hot restart of a compressor driven by a turbine are provided. The turbine has a high speed shaft and a low speed shaft connected to the compressor. A base slow roll speed at which a speed of the low speed shaft is in a slow roll range is maintained at the high speed shaft for a predetermined time. Then, when a vibration amplitude of the compressor is larger than a vibration limit, the maintaining is repeated. Otherwise, a set speed of the high speed shaft is increased, until a current speed of the low speed shaft reaches a minimum operating speed. If, while increasing the set speed, the vibration amplitude becomes larger than the vibration limit, the maintaining is repeated.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 1, 2011
    Publication date: February 2, 2012
    Inventors: Gianni Bagni, Michele Fontana, Antonio Baldassarre, Leonardo Baldassarre
  • Patent number: 7984570
    Abstract: A sports shoe comprising an upper or casing, to cover a tarsal zone and a metatarsal zone of the user's foot, and a tongue associated with the casing, to be bent forward due to the thrust generated by a tibial segment of the user's leg, during sporting activity. The casing, in correspondence with a flex zone thereof, comprises at least a through slit which allows the progressive elastic flexion of the casing due to the effect of the bending forward of the tongue.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 12, 2007
    Date of Patent: July 26, 2011
    Assignee: Calzaturificio Dal Bello SRL
    Inventor: Michele Fontana
  • Patent number: 7525905
    Abstract: The present invention provides for a method for Enhanced Equipment Protection Switch for Customer's device Dual-Homing, in an interconnection between a Central site/Pop and a Transport Network Hub by two boards. Each board is simultaneously connected to the Switching Matrix of the Transport Network Hub with B/2 bandwidth. Both boards receive the band B from the Central site/Pop, and send half a band B/2 directly to the Switching Matrix, and the other half band B/2 to the other board.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 7, 2004
    Date of Patent: April 28, 2009
    Assignee: Alcatel
    Inventors: Italo Busi, Pietro Vittorio Grandi, Michele Fontana
  • Patent number: 7480292
    Abstract: Method of processing MPLS packets in a telecommunication equipment comprising the following steps in the following order: incoming direction: count received frames and octets, validate packets, determine interface identification, count received packets and octets, strip external header, lookup for destination of incoming packets, next layer decision and forwarding, TTL management, if next-hop is not the equipment, PHB determination; outgoing direction: extract TTL from received outgoing client packets, forward received outgoing client packet as stripped MPLS packet with FEC, PHB, TTL, generate End_of_Stack bit, forward stripped MPLS packet with FEC, PHB, TTL, End_of_Stack lookup for destination of outgoing client packets with FEC originated by the equipment, TTL management create MPLS header, count transmitted packets and octets, forward MPLS packet, PHB, Next Hop.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 30, 2003
    Date of Patent: January 20, 2009
    Assignee: ALCATEL
    Inventors: Italo Busi, Pietro Vittorio Grandi, Michele Fontana, Giovanni Zangrando
  • Patent number: 7447213
    Abstract: The present invention provides for a method and apparatus for an end-to-end connection between an RPR and an MPLS network, where the RPR network is linked to the MPLS network (and viceversa) through a TLS layer. In a preferred solution, the client layer is Ethernet, but any client layer can be considered.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 9, 2003
    Date of Patent: November 4, 2008
    Assignee: ALCATEL
    Inventors: Italo Busi, Pietro Grandi, Michele Fontana
  • Patent number: 7355978
    Abstract: Described is a method extending the OAM functionality in the RPR networks through a new OAM loopback procedure of request-reply type together with the definition of a new RPR OAM loopback frame. The OAM loopback function allows any RPR station to check the reachability of another RPR station. It is not necessary to stop any data traffic communication on the network in order to perform this function.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 1, 2002
    Date of Patent: April 8, 2008
    Assignee: Alcatel
    Inventors: Michele Fontana, Pietro Grandi, Italo Busi
  • Publication number: 20080010864
    Abstract: A sports shoe comprising an upper or casing, to cover a tarsal zone and a metatarsal zone of the user's foot, and a tongue associated with the casing, to be bent forward due to the thrust generated by a tibial segment of the user's leg, during sporting activity. The casing, in correspondence with a metatarsal zone thereof, comprises at least a through slit which allows the progressive elastic flexion of the casing due to the effect of the bending forward of the tongue.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 12, 2007
    Publication date: January 17, 2008
    Applicant: CALZATURIFICIO DAL BELLO SrI
    Inventor: Michele Fontana
  • Publication number: 20050213501
    Abstract: A method is described for performance monitoring of Transparent LAN Services according to layer 2 measurements of each flow carrying one Transparent LAN Service, in order to check if requirements defined by traffic parameters for the Transparent LAN Services are fulfilled. The method makes use of a central network management system for retrieving the layer 2 measurements from network elements interfaces at related times and multiple times in a defined time unit.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 9, 2005
    Publication date: September 29, 2005
    Inventors: Michele Fontana, Germano Gasparini, Andrea Mazzini
  • Publication number: 20050129062
    Abstract: The present invention provides for a method for Enhanced Equipment Protection Switch for Customer's device Dual-Homing, in an interconnection between a Central site/Pop and a Transport Network Hub by two boards. Each board is simultaneously connected to the Switching Matrix of the Transport Network Hub with B/2 bandwidth. Both boards receive the band B from the Central site/Pop, and send half a band B/2 directly to the Switching Matrix, and the other half band B/2 to the other board.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 7, 2004
    Publication date: June 16, 2005
    Inventors: Italo Busi, Pietro Grandi, Michele Fontana
  • Publication number: 20040205230
    Abstract: The present invention provides for a method for mapping MPLS packets over Synchronous Digital Transport Networks (SDH/SONET) or Optical Transport Networks (OTN) via GFP mapping layer, through a modified PPP protocol without the LCP and NCP protocols for negotiation. In the modified PPP protocol the MPLS or IP packets are inserted, and then the GFP header is added. In order to map the modified PPP over GFP a new UPI (User Paylod Identifier) value is defined in the GFP Core header.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 28, 2003
    Publication date: October 14, 2004
    Applicant: ALCATEL
    Inventors: Michele Fontana, Pietro Vittorio Grandi, Italo Busi
  • Publication number: 20040088430
    Abstract: Method of processing MPLS packets in a telecommunication equipment comprising the following steps in the following order:
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 30, 2003
    Publication date: May 6, 2004
    Applicant: ALCATEL
    Inventors: Italo Busi, Pietro Vittorio Grandi, Michele Fontana, Giovanni Zangrando
  • Publication number: 20040022268
    Abstract: The present invention provides for a method and apparatus for an end-to-end connection between an RPR and an MPLS network, where the RPR network is linked to the MPLS network (and viceversa) through a TLS layer. In a preferred solution, the client layer is Ethernet, but any client layer can be considered.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 9, 2003
    Publication date: February 5, 2004
    Applicant: ALCATEL
    Inventors: Italo Busi, Pietro Grandi, Michele Fontana
  • Publication number: 20030118041
    Abstract: Method for interconnecting a number of RPR rings in a wide area RPR network which provides for creating a hierarchical tree of RPR rings. Communications between different RPR rings in the network are allowed only according to the hierarchical tree architecture, through suitable ring identifiers assigned to the RPR rings according to the hierarchical tree structure.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 4, 2002
    Publication date: June 26, 2003
    Applicant: ALCATEL
    Inventors: Michele Fontana, Pietro Grandi, Italo Busi, Alberto Lometti
  • Publication number: 20030117946
    Abstract: A method for protecting RPR networks of extended topology, in particular RPR Ring-to-Ring and Meshed Backbone networks having a number of RPR rings interconnected according to one or more hierarchical tree structures, in which the protection is carried out at two levels: Intra-Ring Protection, reacting to failures on a single RPR ring; Inter-Ring Protection, reacting to failures that occur between two different RPR rings by using at least two RPR Gateways at the interface between two RPR rings.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 14, 2002
    Publication date: June 26, 2003
    Applicant: ALCATEL
    Inventors: Michele Fontana, Pietro Grandi, Italo Busi
  • Publication number: 20030074469
    Abstract: Method to set-up a transparent LAN-to-LAN functionality connection between a first multicustomer source location and a second multicustomer destination location through a RPR data transport network, said method comprising the steps of: receiving an Ethernet frame from a customer interface; processing in a conventional manner the Ethernet frame received; adding an auxiliary header to form a TLS frame; and adding to the resulting TLS frame a RPR header to form a RPR data transport frame for the RPR network. The auxiliary header comprises information about the channel designed to transport the RPR frame from the source node input interface to the destination node output interface.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 7, 2002
    Publication date: April 17, 2003
    Applicant: ALCATEL
    Inventors: Italo Busi, Michele Fontana, Pietro Vittorio Grandi