Impact of the River Maine Drainage Scheme on Hydro-Power Generation

A comparison is made between pre- and post-drainage scheme river flows recorded on the River Maine, Co. Antrim. A method of using five-year reference periods has been applied to the mean daily flows to smooth and eliminate, as far as possible, variations due to climatic changes.
Any loss of energy production which might have been due to changes in river flow was examined for turbine installations at a factory at Cullybackey. The quantities of usable water, and hence potential energy production, were calculated for each of the post-scheme five-year periods and compared with a pre-scheme five-year reference period. Any potential loss was then represented by a depreciation factor. It was found that no measurable loss of potential energy production has occurred on the River Maine in the post-scheme period.     

Wind loads on attached canopies and their effect on the pressure distribution over arch-roof industrial buildings

Arch-roof industrial buildings are very wind sensitive. The current aerodynamic coefficients in wind codes do not contemplate the possibility of existence of canopies attached to the buildings. This paper presents the results of an investigation on the influence exerted by canopies on the static wind actions on arch-roof industrial buildings. Six scale models of these arch-roof buildings were tested, with five types of canopies attached. Three of these canopies were instrumented and the static wind pressures were measured. The tests were done at the boundary layer wind tunnel of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. The results show that the aerodynamic coefficients for the roof are not affected by the canopies, in the case of axial incidence. However, the influence on the pressure distribution is noticeable for wind incidence perpendicular to the main axis of the arch roofs and for other incidences as well. This influence is discussed in the paper. The aerodynamic coefficients for the design of the arch-roofs, with and without the attached canopies are given. Aerodynamic coefficients for design of the canopies are also suggested. Furthermore, the paper discusses the relation between the magnitude of the canopy design forces and the canopy width, as well as the relation between the canopy height location and the height of the building wall. The results were compared with design recommendations from previous work of Jancauskas and Holmes (in: US National Conference on Wind Engineering, Proceedings, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, 1985) and Jancauskas and Eddleston (in: International Conference on Wind Engineering, Fotodruck J. Mainz, Aachen, 1987).     

Arsenic and heavy metals in soils associated with regional geochemical anomalies in South-West England

Regional geochemical maps have shown extensive anomalies of arsenic, copper and other heavy metals in those parts of South-West England associated with mineralised zones around the granite intrusion. Studies in the vicinity of the River Tamar and of the metamorphic aureole around Dartmoor have confirmed significantly higher concentrations of arsenic and heavy metals in soils contaminated by mining, smelting and mineralisation compared with those from nearby control areas. Arsenic and copper show the greatest degree of enhancement ranging up to 900 ppm As and 2000 ppm Cu in both alluvial and upland topsoils within the Tamar area. Preliminary analyses indicate that the trace metal content of pasture herbage-reflects in part the degree of soil contamination. Maximum concentrations of 35 ppm As and 22 ppm Cu in autumn sampled herbage were found at contaminated sites compared with mean values of less than 0.5 ppm As and 8 ppm Cu in control areas. Geochemical reconnaissance surveys based on stream sediment sampling provide a useful indication of areas wherein widescale soil contamination may occur.     

The centralization index: A measure of local spatial segregation

Segregated areas may occur around an attractive park or a waste incinerator, but the magnitude and group membership of the people in closest proximity will likely be difierent. We therefore introduce a local segregation measure that can be applied to any location within a metropolitan area, and that can identify the group that is relatively more concentrated around that reference location. We further introduce an inference approach to identify the statistical significance of a particular segregation value. In an exploratory setting the index can be used to generate a map of hot spots, and seed the question: “why is this group significantly concentrated around that location?”     

Operational management of trunk main discolouration risk

Despite significant on-going investment, water companies continue to receive an unacceptable number of discolouration related customer contacts. In this paper, data from intensive distribution system turbidity monitoring and cluster analysis of discolouration customer contacts indicate that a significant proportion of these contacts are due to material mobilising from the trunk main system, and operational flow increases are shown to have a higher discolouration risk than burst incidents. A trunk main discolouration incident highlighting this risk is discussed, demonstrating the need for pro-active trunk main risk assessments. To identify the source of the material event flow rates were modelled using the PODDS (prediction of discolouration in distribution systems) discolouration model. Best practice pro-active management is demonstrated in a case study where the PODDS model is used to implement managed incremental flow changes on a main with known discolouration risk with no discolouration impact to customers and significant cost savings.     

ESMRMB 2017, 34th Annual Scientific Meeting,Barcelona, ES,October 19–October 21: Abstracts,Thursday

Objective

Current magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) axon diameter measurements rely on the pulsed gradient spin-echo sequence, which is unable to provide diffusion times short enough to measure small axon diameters. This study combines the AxCaliber axon diameter fitting method with data generated from Monte Carlo simulations of oscillating gradient spin-echo sequences (OGSE) to infer micron-sized axon diameters, in order to determine the feasibility of using MRI to infer smaller axon diameters in brain tissue.

Materials and methods

Monte Carlo computer simulation data were synthesized from tissue geometries of cylinders of different diameters using a range of gradient frequencies in the cosine OGSE sequence . Data were fitted to the AxCaliber method modified to allow the new pulse sequence. Intra- and extra-axonal water were studied separately and together.

Results

The simulations revealed the extra-axonal model to be problematic. Rather than change the model, we found that restricting the range of gradient frequencies such that the measured apparent diffusion coefficient was constant over that range resulted in more accurate fitted diameters. Thus a careful selection of frequency ranges is needed for the AxCaliber method to correctly model extra-axonal water, or adaptations to the method are needed. This restriction helped reduce the necessary gradient strengths for measurements that could be performed with parameters feasible for a Bruker BG6 gradient set. For these experiments, the simulations inferred diameters as small as 0.5 μm on square-packed and randomly packed cylinders. The accuracy of the inferred diameters was found to be dependent on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), with smaller diameters more affected by noise, although all diameter distributions were distinguishable from one another for all SNRs tested.

Conclusion

The results of this study indicate the feasibility of using MRI with OGSE on preclinical scanners to infer small axon diameters.

     

An Improved On-line Contingency Screening for Power System Transient Stability Assessment

This paper presents a contingency screening method and a framework for its on-line implementation. The proposed method carries out contingency screening and on-line stability assessment with respect to first-swing transient stability. For that purpose, it utilizes the single machine equivalent method and aims at improving the prior developed contingency screening approaches. In order to determine vulnerability of the system with respect to a particular contingency, only one time-domain simulation needs to be performed. An early stop criteria is proposed so that in a majority of the cases the simulation can be terminated after a few hundred milliseconds of simulated system response. The method’s outcome is an assessment of the system’s stability and a classification of each considered contingency. The contingencies are categorized by exploiting parameters of an equivalent one machine infinite bus system. A novel island detection approach, appropriate for an on-line application since it utilizes efficient algorithms from graph theory and enables stability assessment of individual islands, is also introduced. The New England and New York system as well as the large-scale model of the Continental-European interconnected system are used to test the proposed method with respect to assessment accuracy and computation time.     

Knowledge formation and learning in the management of projects: A problem solving perspective

In contrast to traditional projects, which are assumed to be fully specified and then executed with little learning anticipated, complex projects cannot be fully specified at the outset and require continuous learning over their life cycles. Nevertheless, the key role of knowledge formation and learning in managing complex projects is under-developed for expanding project capability boundaries to include knowledge uncertainty and indeterminacy.     

The Effects of Annealing After Equal Channel Angular Extrusion (ECAE) on Mechanical and Magnetic Properties of 49Fe-49Co-2V Alloy

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - Equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE) of 49Fe-49Co-2V, also known as Hiperco® 50A or Permendur-2V, greatly improves the strength and ductility of...