Experimental investigation on engine parameters variation in common rail direct injection engine fueled with biodiesel

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Biodiesel is an alternative sustainable energy source and can be utilized in the compression ignition engine without any changes in the engine design....     

The effect of Sb on the electrical and magnetic properties of Ni-Zn ferrites prepared by sol–gel autocombustion method

Polycrystalline Ni-Zn ferrites with a well-defined composition of Ni_0.4Zn_0.6Fe_2-xSb_xO₄ synthesized using sol–gel method. Morphological characterizations on the prepared samples were performed by high resolution transmission electron and field emission scanning electron microscopy. The powders were densified using microwave sintering method. The room temperature complex permittivity (ε′ and ε″) and permeability (μ′ and μ″) were measured over a wide frequency range from 1 MHz–1.8 GHz. The real part of permittivity varies as ‘x’ concentration increases and the resonance frequency was observed at much higher frequencies and there is a significant decrease in the loss factor (tanδ). The electrical resistivity and permeability of NiZn ferrites increased with an increase of Sb content. As the concentration of ‘x’ increases from 0 to 0.08 the saturation magnetisation decreases. The saturation magnetization (M_s)?≈?52.211 A.m²/Kg for x?=?0 at room temperature. The room temperature electro paramagnetic resonance (EPR) were studied.     

Review on calcium silicate-based bioceramics in bone tissue engineering

Calcium (Ca) and silica (Si) ions have attracted intense interest in biomedical applications. The two ions are directly involved in many biological processes; for instance, Ca plays a key role in regulating cellular responses to bioceramics, promoting cell growth, and differentiation into osteoblasts. Si plays a significant role in bone calcification and is helpful for bone density improvement and inhibiting osteoporosis. Calcium silicate ceramics including a large group of trace metal containing calcium silicate-based compounds are involved in biomedical applications such as repairing hard tissue texture, bone scaffolds, bone cements, or implant coatings. The aim of the study is to provide a comprehensive overview of developments in research on calcium silicate-based ceramics, such as wollastonite (CaSiO₃), diopside (CaMgSi₂O₆), akermanite (Ca₂MgSi₂O₇), bredigite (Ca₇Mg(SiO₄)₄), merwinite (Ca₃MgSi₂O₈), monticellite (CaMgSiO₄), hardystonite (Ca₂Zn(Si₂O₇), and baghdadite (Ca₃ZrSi₂O₉), including degradation, apatite mineralization, and mechanical properties. Finally, the biological in vitro and in vivo presentation for bone tissue repair are summarized, which show promise with regard to application of calcium silicate-based ceramics as bone repair and replacement materials.     

Vibration analysis of steam turbine discsSchwingungsanalyse von dampfturbinenräder

A knowledge of the vibration characteristics of discs of steam turbines is a prerequisite for a successful design of the turbine. As a matter of fact, considerable research effort, both theoretical and experimental, has been directed towards understanding the dynamic behaviour of blades and discs taken singly and jointly. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the vibration characteristics of a steam turbine disc. In particular, the Runge—Kutta method has been used to solve the differential equation governing the flexural oscillations of the disc. Numerical results evaluated for a typical disc are presented.     

Impingement-based high performance cooling configurations for automotive power converters

Necessitated by the dwindling supply of petroleum resources, various new automotive technologies have been actively developed from the perspective of achieving energy security and diversifying energy sources. Hybrid electric vehicles and electric vehicles are a few such examples. Such diversification requires the use of power control units essentially for power control, power conversion and power conditioning applications such as variable speed motor drives (dc–ac conversion), dc–dc converters and other similar devices. Power control unit of a hybrid electric vehicle or electric vehicle is essentially the brain of the hybrid system as it manages the power flow between the electric motor generator, battery and gas engine.Over the last few years, the performance of this power control unit has been improved and size has been reduced to attain higher efficiency and performance causing the heat dissipation as well as heat density to increase significantly. Efforts are constantly being made to reduce this size even further. As a consequence, a better high performance cooler/heat exchanger is required to maintain the active devices temperature within optimum range. Jet impingement is one such cooling scheme which has been widely used to dissipate transient and steady concentrated heat loads and can be applied to existing cooling system with minor modifications. The aim of the present study has therefore been to study the various cooling options based on impingement for application in hybrid electric vehicle and other similar consumer products and perform parametric and optimization study on the selected designs. Significant improvements in terms of thermal performance and volume reduction have been shown both experimentally and numerically.     

Simulation of anomalous transport in tokamaks using the FACETS code

The development of a new parallel framework for integrated modeling of tokamak plasmas is a primary objective of the SciDAC Framework Architecture for Core-Edge Transport Simulations (FACETS) project. The FACETS code will be used to predict the performance of tokamak discharges and to optimize tokamak discharge scenarios. Novel parallel numerical algorithms and solvers have been developed in the FACETS project in order to simulate the multi-scale dynamics of tokamak plasmas. The status of development of modules for anomalous transport in the FACETS code is described in this paper. Mechanisms that are used for coupling 1D anomalous transport in the plasma core together with 2D transport in the plasma edge (in near separatrix and scrape-off-layer regions) are considered. Results of the first verification studies based on predictive modeling of several analytical and experimental equilibria are presented.     

Phase Formation and Melt Processing of Yb-123

The formation of Yb-123 has been studied at different temperatures in air and in reduced oxygen partial pressure. It is found that the stability and/or the formation kinetics of Yb-123 phase is a major hurdle in manufacturing phase-pure Yb-123 in air. However, under reduced oxygen partial pressure, Yb-123 forms rapidly and more than 90% phase-pure Yb-123 is achieved within three sintering steps. Rods made from this powder were melt-processed in air and showed a T _c of 90 K. Kinetic studies performed by interrupting the growth during the directional solidification of these rods revealed a growth mechanism similar to that of Y-123 and a maximum growth rate of 7.2 mm/h for a stable planar interface. EPMA of the interface showed the liquid to be rich in barium cuprates with a Ba:Cu ratio of 1:3.     

Recognition in the near infrared spectrum for face,gender and facial expressions

Visible face recognition systems are subjected to failure when recognizing the faces in unconstrained scenarios. So, recognizing faces under variable and low illumination conditions are more important since most of the security breaches happen during night time. Near Infrared (NIR) spectrum enables to acquire high quality images, even without any external source of light and hence it is a good method for solving the problem of illumination. Further, the soft biometric trait, gender classification and non verbal communication, facial expression recognition has also been addressed in the NIR spectrum. In this paper, a method has been proposed to recognize the face along with gender classification and facial expression recognition in NIR spectrum. The proposed method is based on transfer learning and it consists of three core components, i) training with small scale NIR images ii) matching NIR-NIR images (homogeneous) and iii) classification. Training on NIR images produce features using transfer learning which has been pre-trained on large scale VIS face images. Next, matching is performed between NIR-NIR spectrum of both training and testing faces. Then it is classified using three, separate SVM classifiers, one for face recognition, the second one for gender classification and the third one for facial expression recognition. It has been observed that the method gives state-of-the-art accuracy on the publicly available, challenging, benchmark datasets CASIA NIR-VIS 2.0, Oulu-CASIA NIR-VIS, PolyU, CBSR, IIT Kh and HITSZ for face recognition. Further, for gender classification the Oulu-CASIA NIR-VIS, PolyU,and IIT Kh has been analyzed and for facial expression the Oulu-CASIA NIR-VIS dataset has been analyzed.

     

Corrosion and Nano-mechanical Behaviors of Magnetron Sputtered Al-Mo Gradient Coated Steel

A gradient three-layer Al-Mo coating was deposited on steel using magnetron sputtering method. The corrosion and nano-mechanical properties of the coating were examined by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and nano-indentation tests and compared with the conventional electroplated cadmium and IVD aluminum coatings. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was performed by immersing the coated specimens in 3.5% NaCl solution, and the impedance behavior was recorded as a function of immersion time. The mechanical properties (hardness and elastic modulus) were obtained from each indentation as a function of the penetration depth across the coating cross section. The adhesion resistance of the coatings was evaluated by scratch tests on the coated surface using nano-indentation method. The results show that the gradient Al-Mo coating exhibits better corrosion resistance than the other coatings in view of the better microstructure. The impedance results were modeled using appropriate electrical equivalent circuits for all the coated systems. The uniform, smooth and dense Al-Mo coating obtained by magnetron sputtering exhibits good adhesion with the steel substrate as per scratch test method. The poor corrosion resistance of the later coatings was shown to be due to the defects/cracks as well as the lesser adhesion of the coatings with steel. The hardness and elastic modulus of the Al-Mo coating are found to be high when compared to the other coatings.     

P/G Pin Position-Aware Voltage Island Floorplanning For IR Drop Security and avoidance in Flip Chip Designs of FIR Filter

In flip-chip design, voltage drop reduction in the power ground network has become a challenging problem particularly in the modern Multiple Supply Voltage(MSV) designs. An effective P/G network design and floorplanning- based solutions helps to produce a quality power plan in the layout. Hence, this paper proposes an iterative MSV floorplanning methodology that performs modifications in the existing floorplan representation that satisfies the voltage island constraint and produce an IR drop-aware quality layout. Furthermore, the proposed methodology is integrated with commercial tool design flow to analyze the reduction of IR drop in the layout. Two simulation-based experiments are performed in this paper to showcase the significance of this work. Firstly, it presents the simulation results that benchmark the proposed idealogy in non-flip chip designs. Secondly, the presented framework is integrated in flip-chip layouts of FIR design operating with two voltage islands for low power consumption. To understand the ability of the proposed floorplanning approach, the simulation were performed for two different sized P/G mesh structure for various mesh width. Experimental results from both simulations demonstrate that the proposed MSV floorplanning technique is effective in reducing IR drop while optimizing the design for low power dissipation.