Reynolds number scaling of flow in a Rushton turbine stirred tank. Part I—Mean flow, circular jet and tip vortex scaling

We consider scaling of flow within a stirred tank with increasing Reynolds number. Experimental results obtained from two different tanks of diameter 152.5 and 292.1 mm, with a Rushton turbine operating at a wide range of rotational speeds stirring the fluid, are considered. The Reynolds number ranges from 4000 to about 78,000. Phase-locked stereoscopic PIV measurements on three different vertical planes close to the impeller give phase-averaged mean flow on a cylindrical surface around the impeller. The scaling of θ- and plane-averaged radial, circumferential and axial mean velocity components is first explored. A theoretical model for the impeller-induced flow is used to extract the strength and size of the three dominant elements of the mean flow, namely the circumferential flow, the jet flow and the pairs of tip vortices. The scaling of these parameters with Reynolds number for the two different tanks is then obtained. The plane-averaged mean velocity scales with the blade tip velocity above a Reynolds number of about 15,000. However, parameters associated with the jet and tip vortices do not become Reynolds number independence until Re exceeds about 10⁵. The results for the two tanks exhibit similar Reynolds number dependence, however, a perfect collapse is not observed, suggesting a sensitive dependence of the mean flow to the finer details of the impeller.     

Flow regimes,hold–up and pressure drop for two phase flowin helical coils

Experimental results on flow pattern, hold–up and pressure drop are presented for cocurrent upward and downward air water flow in helical coils. A tube of 0.01 m internal diameter was used and the ratio of coil to tube diameter was varied from 11 to 156.5. Water flow rate was varied from 4.9 × 10-⁶ m³/s to 92 × 10-⁶ m³/s while the range of gas flow rate covered was 83 × 10-⁶ m³/s to 610 × 10-⁶ m³/s. A new mechanistic approach is proposed to correlate pressure drop data in coils. The proposed model retains the identity of each phase and separately accounts for the effects of curvature and tube inclination resulting from the torsion of the tube. This makes it possible to use a single model to predict pressure drop for both upward and downward two–phase flow in coiled tubes. Required correlations for hold–up, interfacial friction factor and friction factors for individual phases are provided.     

Gas-liquid mass transfer in three-phase fluidized beds with viscous pseudoplastic liquids

Liquid phase volumetric mass transfer coefficients for oxygen were determined in three-phase fluidized beds of 8 mm glass spheres fluidized by a cocurrent flow of air and pseudoplastic polysaccharide solutions (carboxymethyl cellulose, xanthan). A semi-theoretical relation for the effective shear rate was suggested. The mass transfer coefficients could be correlated, together with literature data for particle diameters of 3 mm and 5 mm in other liquids, using the terminal velocity as the particle-specific property.     

Anti-BlUFf: towards counterfeit mitigation in IC supply chains using blockchain and PUF

International Journal of Information Security - The complexity of today’s integrated circuit (IC) supply chain, organised in several tiers and including many companies located in different...     

Precise control of reflection response in bandwidth‐enhanced planar antennas

In this work, the issues of bandwidth enhancement of planar antennas and the relevance of precise and automated response control through numerical optimization have been investigated. Using an example of a planar antenna with parasitic radiator we illustrate possible effects of even minor modifications of the antenna geometry (here, applied to the ground plane) on its reflection performance. In particular, a proper handling of geometry parameters may lead to considerable broadening of the antenna bandwidth. For the sake of computational efficiency, the adjustment of geometry parameters is carried out using surrogate‐based optimization methods exploiting coarse‐discretization EM simulations as the underlying low‐fidelity antenna model. Additionally, suitably defined penalty function allows us to precisely control the maximum in‐band reflection so that sufficient margin to accommodate possible manufacturing tolerances can be achieved. The optimized designs of the two antenna structures considered in this work exhibit over 1.75 GHz (>31%) and 2.15 GHz (>38%) bandwidth, respectively, for the center frequency of 5.6 GHz. Simulation results are validated using measurements of the fabricated prototypes. Comparison with state‐of‐the‐art designs is also provided. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:653–659, 2016.     

AmbiKraf

This paper presents, AmbiKraf, a non-emissive fabric display that subtly animates patterns on common fabrics. We use thermochromic inks and peltier semiconductor elements to achieve this technology. With this technology we have produced numerous prototypes from animated wall paintings to pixilated fabric displays. The ability of this technology to subtly and ubiquitously change the color of the fabric itself has made us able to merge different fields and technologies with AmbiKraf. In addition, with an animated room divider screen, Ambikraf merged its technology with Japanese Byobu art to tighten the gap between traditional arts and contemporary technologies. Through this AmbiKraf Byobu art installation and other installations, we discuss the impact of this technology as a ubiquitous fabric display. With focus to improvements of some limitations of the existing system, we present our future vision that enables us to merge this technology into more applications fields thus making this technology a platform for ubiquitous interactions on our daily peripherals.     

Probabilistic motion-compensated prediction in distributed video coding

Distributed video coding (DVC) constitutes an original coding framework to meet the stringent requirements imposed by uplink-oriented and low-power mobile video applications. The quality of the side information available to the decoder and the efficiency of the employed channel codes are primary factors determining the success of a DVC system. This contribution introduces two novel techniques for probabilistic motion compensation in order to generate side information at the Wyner-Ziv decoder. The employed DVC scheme uses a base layer, serving as a hash to facilitate overlapped block motion estimation at the decoder side. On top of the base layer, a supplementary Wyner-Ziv layer is coded in the DCT domain. Both proposed probabilistic motion compensation techniques are driven by the actual correlation channel statistics and reuse information contained in the hash. Experimental results report significant rate savings caused by the novel side information generation methods compared to previous techniques. Moreover, the compression performance of the presented DVC architecture, featuring the proposed side-information generation techniques, delivers state-of-the-art compression performance.     

High temperature field effect hydrogen and hydrocarbon gas sensors based on SiC MOS devices

The growing need for reliable, efficient, high temperature hydrogen and hydrocarbon monitoring has fueled research into novel structures for gas sensing. Metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) devices employing a catalytic metal layer have emerged as one of the leading sensing platforms for such applications, owing to their high sensitivity and inherent capability for signal amplification. The limited operating temperature of such devices employing silicon as the semiconductor has led research efforts to focus on replacing them with devices based on silicon carbide (SiC). More recently, MOS devices having different oxide layers exhibiting improved sensing performance have emerged. Considering the amount of research that has been carried out in this area in recent times, it is important to elucidate the new findings and the gas interaction mechanisms that have been ascribed to such devices, and bring together several theories proposed by different research groups. In this paper we first highlight the needs which have driven research into SiC based field effect hydrogen and hydrocarbon sensors, illustrate the various structures being investigated, and describe the device evolution and current status. We provide several sensing examples of devices that make use of different oxide layers and demonstrate how their electrical properties change in the presence of the gases, as well as presenting the hydrogen gas interaction mechanisms of these sensors.     

Uncertainty quantification and apportionment in air quality models using the polynomial chaos method

Current air quality models generate deterministic forecasts by assuming perfect model, perfectly known parameters, and exact input data. However, our knowledge of the physics is imperfect. It is of interest to extend the deterministic simulation results with “error bars” that quantify the degree of uncertainty, and analyze the impact of the uncertainty input on the simulation results. This added information provides a confidence level for the forecast results. Monte Carlo (MC) method is a popular approach for air quality model uncertainty analysis, but it converges slowly. This work discusses the polynomial chaos (PC) method that is more suitable for uncertainty quantification (UQ) in large-scale models. We propose a new approach for uncertainty apportionment (UA), i.e., we develop a PC approach to attribute the uncertainties in model results to different uncertainty inputs. The UQ and UA techniques are implemented in the Sulfur Transport Eulerian Model (STEM-III). A typical scenario of air pollution in the northeast region of the USA is considered. The UQ and UA results allow us to assess the combined effects of different input uncertainties on the forecast uncertainty. They also enable to quantify the contribution of input uncertainties to the uncertainty in the predicted ozone and PAN concentrations.