RESEARCH NOTE ESTIMATING SHEETING ROLL CLOSING FORCES THROUGH MEASUREMENT of ROLL POWER CONSUMPTION

An important factor in the design of the sheeting operation used in the snack food and bakery industries are the forces exerted on the rolls as a result of the pressure developed between the rolls. These forces can cause significant mechanical deflections that result in nonuniform products being produced across the width of the rolls. Unfortunately, measurements of closing forces on operating sheeting systems can be difficult to obtain. This note illustrates a simple method for estimating the difficult to obtain sheeter closing forces from more easily obtained power measurements. A limited quantity of data confirms the accuracy of the procedure.     

AUTOMATIC GENERATION OF TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION

Natural-language generation (NLG) techniques can be used to automatically produce technical documentation from a domain knowledge base and linguistic and contextual models. We discuss this application of NLG technology from both a technical and a usefulness (costs and benefits) perspective. This discussion is based largely on our experiences with the Intelligent Documentation Advisory System (IDAS) documentation-generation project, and the reactions that various interested people from industry have had to IDAS. We hope that this summary of our experiences with IDAS and the lessons we have learned from it will be beneficial for other researchers who wish to build technical documentation-generation systems.     

THE CONTROL OF STARVATION

A generalized discussion of the anomaly of starvation is presented. Starvation is defined to be an infinite or unbounded delay, and classified in terms of its cause and the methods used for its control. A model and a set of control mechanisms are developed. The model, appropriate for various buffered and unbuffered resource systems, allows an ordering of requests by time and by stages of their lifetimes. We investigate the behavior and control of requests during starvation and during various anomalies of conflict.     

THE FLUID MECHANICS of COOKIE DOUGH EXTRUDERS

A model of the fluid mechanics of two roll cookie dough extruders, such as used for wire cut and rout cookies, is presented. the model uses the lubrication approximation to obtain a first estimate for the predictive equations for extruder capacity, power consumption, total shear strain, and forces developed by the rolls. These equations are used to understand the importance of various design and operational parameters.     

High-resolution confocal microscopy using synchrotron radiation

A confocal scanning light microscope coupled to the Daresbury Synchrotron Radiation Source is described. The broad spectrum of synchrotron radiation and the application of achromatic quartz/CaF₂ optics allows for confocal imaging over the wavelength range 200–700 nm. This includes UV light, which is particularly suitable for high-resolution imaging. The results of test measurements using 290-nm light indicate that a lateral resolution better than 100 nm is obtained. An additional advantage of the white synchrotron radiation is that the excitation wavelength can be chosen to match the absorption band of any fluorescent dye. The availability of UV light for confocal microscopy enables studies of naturally occurring fluorophores. The potential applications of the microscope are illustrated by the real-time imaging of hormone traffic using the naturally occurring oestrogen coumestrol. (The IUPAC name for coumestrol is 3,9-dihydroxy-6H-benzofuro[3,2-c][1]benzopyran-6-one ( Chem. Abstr. Reg. No . 479-13-0). The trivial name will be used throughout this paper.)     

Weighted residual methods and the suboptimal control of distributed parameter systems†

A suboptimal control algorithm for distributed parameter systems is developed in a framework which synthesizes weighted residual methods and mathematical programming. The heat exchanger example of Koppel et al. (1968) is employed for introducing the algorithm. First, the Galerkin procedure with polynomial modes is applied to obtain a lumped ODE model for the distributed parameter system. Then the state and control variables of the lumped control problem are approximated by cubic splines on a uniform mesh. Through collocation at the knots, the ODE model is reduced to a sot of linear algebraic equations and the suboptimal control is determined from the solution of a quadratic programming problem with sparse matrices.

Numerical results for the heat exchanger example are presented and compared with those obtained by the authors (Neuman and Sen 1972) using the Ritz-Trefftz algorithm (Bosarge and Johnson 1970) for the lumped control problem. For this example, the two algorithms yield essentially identical results with comparable computational requirements. Application of the Ritz-Trefftz algorithm, however, is limited to lumped, linear-quadratic control problems without constraints on the state or control. The approach advocated in this paper, therefore, offers a viable approach to control problems in distributed parameter systems.     

Parameterized Feedback Control of Non-linear Processes†

A linear optimal controller which is effective in a suitable neighbourhood of a reference optimal trajectoiy is derived. This is accomplished by parameterizing the canonical equations for this field. It is shown that depending on the parameters chosen, different feedback matrices can be calculated and an example comparing the performance of a process subject to a control function based on two possible matrices is presented.     

THROUGHPUT AND POWER CONSUMPTION OF DOUGH SHEETING ROLLS

Power law models of dough sheeting are shown to be inadequate in predicting sheeting roll energy input to doughs. Empirical modification of the theoretical model yields a model which predicts energy input to a dough for different roll sizes. The model indicates that energy input will be different for different size rolls. It is suggested that this is a source of difficulty when scaling up from laboratory to plant.     

Differences in Surface Behavior of Alkali Ions in Li2O ·3SiO2 and Na2O · 3SiO2 Glasses

The molecular dynamics computer simulation technique was used to determine the short-time dynamics behavior and resultant structures of ions at the surface of Li₂0·3SiO₂ and Na₂O-3SiO₂ glasses. Room temperature and elevated temperatures were used. Results are compared with similar studies of the K₂O·3SiO₂ glass surface and with recent experimental ion-scattering-spectroscopy data. The simulations indicate that a localized surface rearrangement occurs within picoseconds after formation of the free surface, creating a surface excess of alkali in the Na (and K) case, but not in the Li case. Elevated temperatures, even for brief times, enhance the observed surface excess of Na and K. The results correspond to those obtained from the ion-scattering-spectroscopy studies.