Flow field simulation and pressure drop modeling by a porous medium in PEM fuel cells

For proton-exchange membrane fuel cells, the distribution of reactant flow in the stack is critical to the fuel cell's efficiency. The uneven distribution of reactant flow in the stack may cause poor current density, low performance, and material degradation. To understand and accurately predict the flow field in the proton-exchange membrane fuel cell system, the present study aims to develop a simple correlation to analyze the pressure drop in fuel cell stacks. The flow channel in each cell of a stack is treated as a porous medium, and a power-law model is used to approximate the porous medium momentum source term. For the stacks with fewer cell numbers, namely, 1, 5, and 10 cells, the parameters in the power law are established based on the experimental data. Then, a correlation is developed to simulate the flow and predict the pressure drop in the stack with higher cell numbers (ie, 20 and 40 cells). The simulations show that the pressure drop in each cell of a stack is almost invariable, and the average pressure drop decreases with increasing the number of cells. The flow uniformity in the stacks with different cell numbers is evaluated using the dimensionless pressure drop and the pressure drop ratios. It suggests that the lower the cell number, the more uniform the pressure drop. The developed model is conducive to efficiently designing the flow channel for a fuel cell stack with large cell numbers.     

CO2 laser post-treatment of sol-gel-derived Y3Al5O12:Ce phosphor ceramic powders

Cerium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Y₃Al₅O₁₂:Ce, YAG:Ce) was prepared using a sol-gel method and then fired for CO₂ laser post-treatments. Phase transformations and formation of impurities were not observed in YAG:Ce after CO₂ laser sintering. The shift of the diffraction peak and the appearance of another Raman peak indicate a more homogeneous distribution of Ce activators and enhanced crystallinity in laser-sintered YAG hosts. Larger spheres (100–200 μm) with tiny crystallites (<10 μm) were observed on the smoother surface in the laser-sintered YAG:Ce, unlike the irregular, porous, and layered powders in the sol-gel-derived YAG:Ce (1–100 μm). Photoluminescence (PL) measurements revealed an emission increase of 180% and a red shift of the emission peak for the laser-sintered YAG:Ce powders compared with the sol-gel-derived powders. Both have comparable thermal PL quenching behavior; however, the YAG:Ce powders with CO₂ laser treatment exhibited a PL efficiency improvement of approximately 4%.     

Effect of long-chain branching molar fraction on scratch behavior of polypropylene

Polymers containing a certain amount of long-chain-branching (LCB) structure are expected to possess improved mechanical properties over those of the linear structure counterpart. However, fundamental knowledge on the structure–property relationship in LCB containing polypropylene (PP) is still illusive. In the present study, a set of model PP systems containing an increasing molar fraction of LCB (5–19 mol%) were prepared by reactive extrusion to determine how LCB content may influence the scratch behavior of PP. It is shown that with only 5 mol% of LCB content in PP can improve resistance against scratch-induced fish-scale formation by over 25%. The improvement of scratch resistance is attributed to the increases in entanglement density in LCB-containing PPs, which is evidenced by their creep-recovery behavior. The present study demonstrates that the incorporation of LCB in PP leads to higher viscoelastic recovery and increased tensile strength, which account for the observed improvement in scratch performance. The usefulness of LCB in polymers for improving scratch performance is discussed.     

Filter-based energy-resolved X-ray computed tomography with a clinical imager

Filter-based energy-resolved X-ray computed tomography (CT) is an approach for implementing energy-resolved CT imaging using a flat-panel-detector-based cone-beam system. In this study, we performed experiments with a 20-cm-diameter phantom on a clinical X-ray imager. The material density results showed good agreement with the ideal values. We also propose an improved method for obtaining the detector response function and the X-ray spectrum, which requires fewer measurements and will be practical for future clinical use. Issues such as scatter and image noise remain to be addressed.     

Mixed Broadcast Techniques of Leisure Information in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

Telecommunication Systems - Vehicle-to-vehicle communication and probabilistic broadcast are important means for information dissemination in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs). In contrast to...     

Learning to Caricature via Semantic Shape Transform

International Journal of Computer Vision - Caricature is an artistic drawing created to abstract or exaggerate facial features of a person. Rendering visually pleasing caricatures is a difficult...