An automated treatment planning strategy for highly noncoplanar radiotherapy arc trajectories

Radiation therapy is a technology-driven cancer treatment modality that has experienced significant advances over the last decades, due to multidisciplinary contributions that include engineering and computing. Recent technological developments allow the use of noncoplanar volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT), one of the most recent photon treatment techniques, in clinical practice. In this work, an automated noncoplanar arc trajectory optimization framework designed in two modular phases is presented. First, a noncoplanar beam angle optimization algorithm is used to obtain a set of noncoplanar irradiation directions. Then, anchored in these directions, an optimization strategy is proposed to compute an optimal arc trajectory. The computational experiments considered a pool of twelve difficult head-and-neck tumor cases. It was possible to observe that, for some of these cases, the optimized noncoplanar arc trajectories led to significant treatment planning quality improvements, when compared with coplanar VMAT treatment plans. Although these experiments were done in a research environment treatment planning software (matRad), the conclusions can be of interest for a clinical setting: automated procedures can simplify the current treatment workflow, produce high-quality treatment plans, making better use of human resources and allowing for unbiased comparisons between different treatment techniques.     

Plasma assists titanium nitride and surface modified titanium nitride nanoparticles from titanium scraps for magnetic properties and supercapacitor applications

Plasma methods are efficient processing for metal recovery from metal scrap, bearing minerals, electronic waste, etc. In this work, pure titanium nitride nanoparticles (TiN NPs) were synthesized from titanium scraps by the thermal plasma arc discharge (TPAD) method. TPAD synthesized TiN NPs have a highly crystalline nature with cubic and spherical morphologies with average particle sizes of 30–100 nm. Further, prepared TiN NPs involving surface modification (SM) or etching processes were investigated by using the non-thermal DC glow discharge plasma technique with air atmosphere at different processing times. SM@TiN NPs have a comparatively low crystalline, which was confirmed from the powder X-ray diffraction technique. SM@TiN NPs have very interesting core shell morphologies, which are due to the surface interactions of ionized air molecules. TiN and SM@TiN NPs have room-temperature ferromagnetic properties with high saturation magnetization (Ms) up to 2.6 and 3.0 emu/g and very high coercivity (Hc) of 235.5 Oe, respectively. TiN and SM@TiN NPs have superior energy storage performance with an outstanding specific capacitance of 192.8 and 435.1 F/g at a current density of 2 A/g with pseudocapacitive behavior. These results reveal that TiN and SM@TiN NPs have highly promising electrodes for supercapacitor applications.     

基于改进耦合增强随机共振的滚动轴承故障诊断

针对强背景噪声下经典随机共振方法对滚动轴承故障特征提取效果差的问题,提出了一种基于改进耦合增强随机共振的滚动轴承故障诊断方法。首先,利用一个定参双稳系统和一个变参双稳系统构成耦合随机共振系统,外部输入直接作用于定参双稳系统;然后,通过调节变参双稳系统参数和耦合系数实现耦合系统的随机共振控制,并借助遗传算法实现控制参数的自适应选取。实验和工程应用验证了所提方法的有效性和优越性。     

Numerical modelling of a low power non-transferred arc plasma reactor for methane conversion

Thermal flow characteristics and the methane conversion reaction in a low power arc plasma reactor for efficient storage and transport of methane, which is the main component of shale gas, were simulated. The temperature and velocity distributions were calculated according to the type of discharge gases and arc current level by a self-developed magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) code and a commercial ANSYS-FLUENT code; the transport of chemical species was analyzed as including the chemical reactions of methane conversion. The simulated results were verified by the comparison of calculated and measured arc voltages with permissible low error as under 4%. Three C₂ hydrocarbon gases with ethane (C₂H₆), ethylene (C₂H₄), and acetylene (C₂H₂) were selected as the converted species of methane from experimental data. The mass fraction of C₂ hydrocarbons and hydrogen as the product of the conversion reaction at the reactor was also calculated. Those values show good agreement with the actual experimental results in that the major conversion reaction occurred in C₂H₂ and hydrogen, and the conversions to C₂H₆, C₂H₄, and hydrogen were minor reactions of methane pyrolysis conversion.     

An integrated approach for aircraft turbofan engine fault detection based on data mining techniques

The present study proposes an algorithm for fault detection in terms of condition‐based maintenance with data mining techniques. The proposed algorithm is applied on an aircraft turbofan engine using flight data and consists of two main sections. In the first section, the relationship between engine exhaust gas temperature (EGT) as the main engine health monitoring criterion and other operational and environmental parameters of the engine was modelled using the data‐driven models. In the second section, a data set including EGT residuals, that is, the difference between the actual EGT of the system and the EGT estimated by the developed model in the health conditions of the engine, was created. Finally, faults occurring in each flight were detected based on the identification of abnormal events by a one‐class support vector machine trained by the health condition EGT residual data set. The results indicated that the proposed algorithm was an effective approach for inspecting aircraft engine conditions and detecting faults, with no need for technical knowledge on the interior characteristics of the aircraft engine.     

Elastic Properties and Stacking Fault Energies of Borides,Carbides and Nitrides from First-Principles Calculations

Owing to the excellent elastic properties and chemical stability, binary metal or light element borides, carbides and nitrides have been extensively applied as hard and low-compressible materials. Researchers are searching for harder materials all the time. Recently, the successful fabrication of nano-twinned cubic BN(Tian et al. Nature 493:385–388, 2013) and diamond(Huang et al. Nature 510:250–253, 2014) exhibiting superior properties than their twin-free counterparts allows an efficient way to be harder. From this point of view, the borides, carbides and nitrides may be stronger by introducing twins, whose formation tendency can be measured using stacking fault energies(SFEs). The lower the SFEs, the easier the formation of twins. In the present study, by means of first-principles calculations, we first calculated the fundamental elastic constants of forty-two borides, seventeen carbides and thirty-one nitrides, and their moduli, elastic anisotropy factors and bonding characters were accordingly derived. Then, the SFEs of the {111} 112 glide system of twenty-seven compounds with the space group F43 m or Fm3m were calculated. Based on the obtained elastic properties and SFEs, we find that(1) light element compounds usually exhibit superior elastic properties over the metal borides, carbides or nitrides;(2) the 5 d transitionmetal compounds(ReB_2, WB, OsC, RuC, WC, OsN_2, TaN and WN) possess comparable bulk modulus( B) with that of cBN( B = 363 GPa);(3) twins may form in ZrB, HfN, PtN, VN and ZrN, since their SFEs are lower or slightly higher than that of diamond(SFE = 277 mJ/m~2). Our work can be used as a valuable database to compare these compounds.     

ACCUGRAM: A novel approach based on classification to frequency band selection for rotating machinery fault diagnosis

Frequency band selection (FBS) in rotating machinery fault diagnosis aims to recognize frequency band location including a fault transient out of a full band spectrum, and thus fault diagnosis can suppress noise influence from other frequency components. Impulsiveness and cyclostationarity have been recently recognized as two distinctive signatures of a transient. Thus, many studies have focused on developing quantification metrics of the two signatures and using them as indicators to guide FBS. However, most previous studies almost ignore another aspect of FBS, i.e. health reference, which significantly affect FBS performance. To address this issue, this paper investigates importance of a health reference and recognize it as the third critical aspect in FBS. With help of the health reference, the frequency band where the fault transient exists could be located. A novel approach based on classification is proposed to integrate all three aspects (impulsiveness, cyclostationarity, and health reference) for FBS. Classification accuracy is developed as a novel indicator to select the most sensitive frequency band for rotating machinery fault diagnosis. The proposed method (coined by accugram) has been validated on benchmark and experiment datasets. Comparison results show its effectiveness and robustness over conventional envelope analysis, the kurtogram, and the infogram.     

不同类型断层控制油气垂向富集的差异——以渤海湾盆地歧口凹陷歧南斜坡区为例

渤海湾盆地历经多期构造变动，断层圈闭发育普遍。断层作为断层圈闭的边界条件，在油气成藏过程中起着至关重要的作用。以断层圈闭较发育的歧南斜坡区为例分析了同向断层和反向断层控制油气垂向富集的差异，基于三维地震资料，从断层形成过程和断层圈闭分布出发，剖析了断层遮挡圈闭的成因及分布规律。结合油水分布规律，基于油藏解剖并应用储层定量荧光技术明确了不同类型断层控藏的差异及其形成机理。研究表明：①断层分段生长作用和断层上盘与下盘的差异活动是同向断层控制下断层遮挡圈闭形成的主要原因，斜坡区反向断层控制形成的断层圈闭则是断块掀斜翘倾作用所致；②同向断层圈闭发育在断层上盘分段点位置，只有当同向断层进入"硬连接"阶段方可形成断层圈闭，反向断层圈闭形成在断层下盘，在反向断层活动初期便可形成；③同向断层既可以控制油气在多套含油气系统中聚集成藏，也可在一套含油气系统中富集，而反向断层往往控制油气在一套含油气系统中富集；④不同类型断层控制油气垂向聚集的差异与圈闭发育位置以及断-盖配置有关。采用泥岩涂抹系数对沙河街组一段中部盖层控制的含油气系统的垂向调整进行定量评价，泥岩涂抹系数低于3.5时油气保存，泥岩涂抹系数高于3.5时油气垂向渗漏。