Uncertainties in fatigue life prediction and a rational definition of safety factors

To cope with uncerainties in mechanical and structural design, enigineers exercise their judgement through the use of safety factors based on service experience and laboratory data on relevant design parameters. Using the problem of fatigue life prediction as a vehicle, the relationship between the size of a safety factor and the associated risk and cost-benefit estimates of the engineering judgement based on new technical information, is demonstrated. The subtle influence of the choice of a distribution function for a given set of data is exhibited by comparing the gaussian with the three-parameter Weibull fits of a set of fatigue life data on 6061-T6 aluminum. A system of ranking the importance of different sources of uncertainties based on an analysis of service data is proposed along with an example to “refine” the system using up-to-date laboratory and field measurements. The concept of a rational definition of safety factors as a tool for engineers who design under uncertainty is discussed.     

The effect of filler particle size and orientation on the impact fracture toughness of a highly filled plasticized polymeric material

The effect of particle size and orientation on the inherent fracture toughness of a filled plasticized polymeric material has been determined by application of linear elastic fracture mechanics. Testing was caried out in a three-point bend mode under impact conditions. The material was a triple base gun propellant consisting of a matrix of nitrocellulose plasticized with nitroglycerine and filled with particles of nitroguanidine (NQ). The crystalline NQ was used in the “as-received” form of needles and in a “ground” state. The material containing as-received NQ consistently had a higher fracture toughness than the material with ground NQ, and the toughness was a maximum when the fillers were aligned perpendicularly to the fracture surface. The impact fracture toughness was found to be virtually independent of strain rate over the range from 3 to 90 sec⁻¹. Seven-perforated cylindrical grains of the material containing as-received and ground NQ crystals, and the grains were tested in a pneumatic gas gun and a Hopkinson bar apparatus. The grains containing the ground NQ have been shown to be generally less resistant to fracture than the grains containing as-received NQ.     

A study of the growth mechanism of calcium carbonate in the carbonatation process for refining of raw sugar

A study of the size distribution of calcium carbonate particles obtained by precipitation in a sucrose medium containing different polar additives has been made, including a series of tests to determine the polar property of the precipitate surface via electrophoresis and measurements of heat of adsorption. A mechanism of polar growth has also been suggested to explain the present results.     

Studies on the hydrogen belts of membranes: I. Diester,diether, and dialkyl phosphatidylcholines and polyoxyethylene glycerides in monolayers with cholesterol

The hydrogen belts of membranes are defined as the regions consisting of hydrogen bond acceptors, i.e., the C=O groups of glycero- and sphingolipids, and hydrogen bond donors, i.e., cholesterol-OH, sphingolipid-OH, proteins, and water. Lipid-lipid hydrogen bonding in these belts has been suggested. The connection of such hypothetical bonding with the condensation effect, i.e., the apparent reduction of surface area occupied by phospholipids in mixed monolayers with cholesterol, has been tested with lipids possessing and lacking C=O groups: diester, diether, and dialkyl phosphatidylcholine, and analogous polyoxyethylene diglycerides. Condensation by cholesterol was observed for all lipids. Consequently, the hypothetical lipid-C=O-cholesterol hydrogen bonding is not a prerequisite for the condensation effect.     

高压齿啮式快开盖密封装置的强度试验研究

为揭示高压齿啮式快开盖密封装置的受力特性和应力分布规律， 建立合理的工程设计方法， 设计了一台带平顶盖齿啮式快开盖密封装置的试验容器， 在建立了有限元分析模型后， 进行了有限元应力分析和试验研究， 得到了平顶盖齿啮式快开盖密封装置的受力特性和应力分布规律。研究结果表明， 啮合齿各齿的承载并不均匀， 环向应力不均匀系数达１－２４ ～１－４０ ， 在计算齿根部位应力时应考虑这种不均匀性， 但它对法兰静强度的影响很小。     

Solar hybrid air-conditioning system for high temperature cooling in subtropical city

Although solar energy is able to power the heat-driven refrigeration, its contribution is quite limited due to the conventional cooling requirement. In building air-conditioning, it is common to supply low temperature chilled water, usually in 5–7 °C. If this temperature can be elevated, it would enhance the effectiveness to harness solar energy and minimize auxiliary heating. Solar refrigeration would then be more effective through high temperature cooling, by providing 15–18 °C chilled water instead. In such provision, radiant ceiling cooling can be coupled to handle the space cooling load, particularly space sensible load. And the space latent load and ventilation load are handled by a separate dehumidification provision, like the heat-driven desiccant dehumidification. Therefore, a solar hybrid air-conditioning system is formulated, using adsorption refrigeration, chilled ceilings and desiccant dehumidification. In this study, the year-round performances of the proposed solar hybrid air-conditioning systems were evaluated for two typical office types. The performance metrics include the solar fraction, coefficient of performance, solar thermal gain, primary energy consumption and indoor conditions. Comparative study was conducted for the hybrid air-conditioning system worked with the three common types of chilled ceilings, namely the chilled panels, passive chilled beams and active chilled beams. The solar hybrid air-conditioning system was also benchmarked with the conventional vapour compression refrigeration for office use. It is found that the proposed solar hybrid air-conditioning system is technically feasible through high temperature cooling. Among the three types of chilled ceilings, the passive chilled beams is the most energy-efficient option to work with the solar adsorption refrigeration for space conditioning in the subtropical city.     

Natural language grammatical inference with recurrent neuralnetworks

This paper examines the inductive inference of a complex grammar with neural networks and specifically, the task considered is that of training a network to classify natural language sentences as grammatical or ungrammatical, thereby exhibiting the same kind of discriminatory power provided by the Principles and Parameters linguistic framework, or Government-and-Binding theory. Neural networks are trained, without the division into learned vs. innate components assumed by Chomsky (1956), in an attempt to produce the same judgments as native speakers on sharply grammatical/ungrammatical data. How a recurrent neural network could possess linguistic capability and the properties of various common recurrent neural network architectures are discussed. The problem exhibits training behavior which is often not present with smaller grammars and training was initially difficult. However, after implementing several techniques aimed at improving the convergence of the gradient descent backpropagation-through-time training algorithm, significant learning was possible. It was found that certain architectures are better able to learn an appropriate grammar. The operation of the networks and their training is analyzed. Finally, the extraction of rules in the form of deterministic finite state automata is investigated