Evaluation of the mechanical behavior of W7-X central support connections by means of semi-automated FE analysis

The stellarator Wendelstein 7-X is under construction at the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik in Greifswald. Its superconducting coil system is fixed by a massive structure. During machine operation the coils exert high forces and moments against each other and the central support structure (CSS). Therefore, the detailed analysis of the coil to CSS connections, the so-called central support elements (CSE), is a critical item. The major details of the design have been frozen; nevertheless, there is still need for detailed analysis of the CSEs due to assembly issues, and later on for exploring operational limits of the machine. These analyses have to be performed quickly, reliably, and shall provide results in a standardized form to enable timely responses to the assembly team. Special numerical tools – finite element (FE) parametric models of CSEs – have been developed for the purpose of such analyses. In the models, the geometry, material properties, contact conditions, loads as well as results presentation are defined in a parametric way. The use of the developed models for the definition of the final weld parameters, bolt preloads, assessment of acceptable tolerances, and optimal positions of the CSE-wedges before welding is also discussed.     

Fully-Coupled Balanced-Force VOF Framework for Arbitrary Meshes with Least-Squares Curvature Evaluation from Volume Fractions

A fully-coupled balanced-force numerical framework for two-phase flows with surface tension on arbitrary collocated meshes is presented, including a novel method to evaluate the curvature from volume fractions. The presented framework reduces the imbalances at the interface to solver tolerance and provides stable and reliable results for density ratios of 10⁶ and larger. The new method to evaluate the curvature is based on a least-squares fit, providing better or equal accuracy compared to implementations found in the literature, which are generally limited to structured meshes, and the accuracy on Cartesian and tetrahedral meshes is shown to be comparable.     

Food‐Originating ACE Inhibitors,Including Antihypertensive Peptides,as Preventive Food Components in Blood Pressure Reduction

This work is a literature overview on angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory/antihypertensive peptides in food protein sources. The following aspects related to peptides with the above‐mentioned bioactivity are discussed: (i) mechanism of action of ACE, (ii) the structural character of ACE inhibitors/antihypertensive peptide sequences determined by different methods, including quantitative structure–activity relationship studies, (iii) their food sources, (iv) absorption of peptides, (v) in vitro and in vivo approaches involved in the production and potential release of peptide ACE inhibitors as well as in silico methods applied in research concerning peptides.     

Locally adaptive Bayesian P-splines with a Normal-Exponential-Gamma prior

An implementation of locally adaptive penalized spline smoothing using a class of heavy-tailed shrinkage priors for the estimation of functional forms with highly varying curvature or discontinuities is presented. These priors utilize scale mixtures of normals with locally varying exponential-gamma distributed variances for the differences of the P-spline coefficients. A fully Bayesian hierarchical structure is derived with inference about the posterior being based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo techniques. Three increasingly flexible and automatic approaches are introduced to estimate the spatially varying structure of the variances. An extensive simulation study for Gaussian, Poisson, and Binomial responses shows that the performance of this approach on a number of benchmark functions is competitive to that of previous approaches. Results from applications with Gaussian and Poisson responses support the simulation results.     

Reconstruction of graphs based on random walks

The analysis of complex networks is of major interest in various fields of science. In many applications we face the challenge that the exact topology of a network is unknown but we are instead given information about distances within this network. The theoretical approaches to this problem have so far been focusing on the reconstruction of graphs from shortest path distance matrices. Often, however, movements in networks do not follow shortest paths but occur in a random fashion. In these cases an appropriate distance measure can be defined as the mean length of a random walk between two nodes — a quantity known as the mean first hitting time.In this contribution we investigate whether a graph can be reconstructed from its mean first hitting time matrix and put forward an algorithm for solving this problem. A heuristic method to reduce the computational effort is described and analyzed. In the case of trees we can even give an algorithm for reconstructing graphs from incomplete random walk distance matrices.     

On the importance of equilibrium in studies on the transport of hydrogen in metals

In this paper, specific properties of the metal-hydrogen systems, M-H's, and bulk metal-hydrogen solids, MH_n's, are reviewed, with an emphasis of problems related to reaching the equilibrium and its confinements. In MH_n's the chemical potential of interstitial H species is determined both by its concentration and the self-stress of the metal matrix, these being in a feedback relation. Consequently, the transport of hydrogen in metals is non-Fickian. This imposes special requirements on the studies of this transport. For determining its kinetic parameters, not only should the experiments be initiated at equilibrium in the system under study, as in the case of studies of Fickian transport, but the experiments themselves must also be performed close to equilibrium. Accordingly, the recently proposed transfer function spectroscopy at quasi-equilibrium has to be considered as the only technique making possible a reliable estimation of the kinetic parameters of this transport: not only the diffusion coefficient of hydrogen, but also the bulk elastic modulus of MH_n. The properties of various transfer functions are compared and the usefulness of specimens of different shapes are discussed.     

Decision system for a team of autonomous underwater vehicles—Preliminary report

The paper presents preliminary research whose main goal is to build a ship protection system. One of the elements of the system will be a sub-system responsible for capturing and destroying/neutralizing all dangerous objects occurring inside a guarded area. This task will be performed by a team of autonomous underwater vehicles. To construct a decision system for the vehicles, i.e. the system whose task is to provide high-level decisions regarding direction and velocity of move, many different methods can be applied. Examples are evolutionary neural networks and expert systems with fuzzy decision rules. To test usefulness of the above methods in a role of the decision system, experiments in a predator-prey problem were carried out. In the experiments, the task of vehicles-predators was to capture a vehicle-prey behaving by a simple deterministic strategy. The current paper is a report on all the experiments mentioned.     

Modification of CaCO3 precipitation rates by water-soluble nacre proteins

Mineral growth in nacre and other CaCO₃-containing biominerals is controlled by biopolymers. Water-soluble proteins were extracted from nacre of the sea snail Haliotis laevigata by dissolving the mineral phase with 6% acetic acid. The influence of this protein mixture on CaCO₃ precipitation rates was investigated at different concentrations. A well-established assay for measuring the pH-value during CaCO₃ precipitation with and without protein additives was extended by calculating maximum precipitation rates from the pH-values. It could be shown that precipitation rates are greatly influenced by the mixtures of water-soluble nacre proteins. At very low protein concentrations (0.02 μg/ml) a rate enhancement in comparison to the pure supersaturated calcium carbonate solution by a factor of 1.4 was observed. At higher protein concentrations, a strong inhibitory effect occurred, with total inhibition at concentrations of 1.0 μg/ml and higher. Two unspecific proteins (bovine serum albumin and lysozyme) showed little or no modification of precipitation rates. In vivo, the function of the strong inhibition of CaCO₃ precipitation by nacre proteins at higher concentrations is presumably to prevent uncontrolled crystallization in the extrapallial fluid. The rate-enhancing capability of proteins at low concentrations may be explained by the presence of acidic and/or hydrophilic moieties.     

Salt Concentration Effects in Planar Light‐Emitting Electrochemical Cells

Incorporation of ions in the active layer of organic semiconductor devices may lead to attractive device properties like enhanced injection and improved carrier transport. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the salt concentration on the operation of light‐emitting electrochemical cells, using experiments and numerical calculations. The current density and light emission are shown to increase linearly with increasing ion concentration over a wide range of concentrations. The increasing current is accompanied by an ion redistribution, leading to a narrowing of the recombination zone. Hence, in absence of detrimental side reactions and doping‐related luminescence quenching, the ion concentration should be as high as possible.     

Cold Model Investigations of Melting of Ice in a Gas-Stirred Vessel

The melting of steel scrap in high temperature liquid iron melt is investigated by conducting cold model experiments of the melting of ice sample of different geometries and sizes in an argon-stirred vessel containing water. The melting process of ice samples is observed using a high-speed camera. Design of experiments is based on similarity criteria. The relationships between non-dimensional groups related to heat transfer (Nu, Re, Pr, and Gr) are derived for different experimental conditions. The results are compared with those reported in the literature. The heat transfer coefficient is estimated as a function of mixing power and is found to be in good agreement with the calculated values obtained by using reported relationships in literature.