Stall inception and warning in a single-stage transonic axial compressor with axial skewed slot casing treatment

Characteristic changes in the stall inception in a single-stage transonic axial compressor with an axial skewed slot casing treatment were investigated experimentally. A rotating stall occurred intermittently in a compressor with an axial skewed slot, whereas spike-type rotating stalls occurred in the case of smooth casing. The axial skewed slot suppressed stall cell growth and increased the operating range. A mild surge, the frequency of which is the Helmholtz frequency of the compressor system, occurred with the rotating stall. The irregularity in the pressure signals at the slot bottom increased decreasing flow rate. An autocorrelation-based stall warning method was applied to the measured pressure signals. Results estimate and warn against the stall margin in a compressor with an axial skewed slot.     

Improving the performance of silicon anode in lithium-ion batteries by Cu2O coating layer

The influence of a 200 nm Cu₂O coating layer on the electrochemical performance of an 800 nm Si thin-film anode was investigated by cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and galvanostatic charge/discharge measurements. The electrochemical performance of the Si thin-film anode was improved by the coating layer. The coated Si anode exhibited higher values of conductivity in comparison with the pristine Si anode. Scanning electron microscopy images of the anodes after cycling test showed that the coated Si anode after cycling test had less cracks than the pristine Si anode. The galvanostatic charge/discharge measurements reveal that the cyclability and rate capability of the coated Si thin-film anode were better than the pristine Si thin-film anode.     

Effect of changes in ambient conditions on the homogeneous combustion characteristics and flammability limits of biodiesel fuel combustion using surrogate fuel coupled with a combustion mechanism

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - The purpose of this study was to analyze numerically the homogeneous combustion characteristics of biodiesel and diesel fuels and to investigate the...     

Integrated intelligent design and assembly planning: A survey

This paper reviews the relevant literature of the development of methodologies and systems for integrated intelligent design of assembled products and processes. Based on a combination of the concurrent engineering approach and artificial intelligence techniques, an assembly oriented intelligent scheme for the integration of design and planning is proposed, in which the following components or activities are considered and carried out concurrently and intelligently: assembly modelling and design (conceptual design; preliminary design; detailed design), assembly process planning, assembly system layout and design, assembly simulation, econo-technical (e.g. assembl-ability, assembly time and cost) and ergonomic analysis and evaluation. The literature is reviewed and discussed in relation to the methodologies and systems of implementing the above components or activities and an integrated environment to support them. In addition, some research of our group on this topic is introduced.     

Comparisons of experimental and theoretical frequencies for rectangular plates with various boundary conditions and added masses

This paper is concerned with a vibration analysis of rectangular plates with masses mounted on various locations. The edges of the plates may either be clamped or simply supported. The study is particularly useful in the understanding of the vibration of printed circuit boards used in the electronics industry. An energy method is developed to obtain analytical frequencies of the plates with various edge support conditions. The analytical procedure using the Rayleigh-Ritz approach is adopted in which each of single and multiple trigonometric series terms is used to represent the shape function. Two experimental methods, a spectrum analyser and a TV-holographic system, are used to study the behaviour of the plate vibrations. The holographic image produced at the corresponding mode frequencies by using the TV-holography technique has been applied to verify the frequency spectra obtained from the spectrum analyser. The experimental results have been used to illustrate the validity of the analytical model. The comparisons show that the analytical model predicts natural frequencies reasonably well, in which the EM 100-term model is suggested for vibration plates with higher modes or heavier loads.     

Stress analysis of two-dimensional cellular materials with thick cell struts

Finite element analyses (FEA) were performed to thoroughly validate the collapse criteria of cellular materials presented in our previous companion paper. The maximum stress (von-Mises stress) on the cell strut surface and the plastic collapse stress were computed for two-dimensional (2D) cellular materials with thick cell struts. The results from the FEA were compared with those from theoretical criteria of authors. The FEA results were in good agreement with the theoretical results. The results indicate that when bending moment, axial and shear forces are considered, the maximum stress on the strut surface gives significantly different values in the tensile and compressive parts of the cell wall as well as in the two loading directions. Therefore, for the initial yielding of ductile cellular materials and the fracture of brittle cellular materials, in which the maximum stress on the strut surface is evaluated, it is necessary to consider not only the bending moment but also axial and shear forces. In addition, this study shows that for regular cellular materials with the identical strut geometry for all struts, the initial yielding and the plastic collapse under a biaxial state of stress occur not only in the inclined cell struts but also in the vertical struts. These FEA results support the theoretical conclusion of our previous companion paper that the anisotropic 2D cellular material has a truncated yield surface not only on the compressive quadrant but also on the tensile quadrant.     

Interferometric measurement using bimorph actuated staggered mirror (BASM) microsensor

For physical and chemical sensing applications, a bimorph actuated staggered mirror (BASM) microsensor was designed and fabricated by surface micromachining using a transparent quartz substrate. While the conventional cantilever sensors have angular deflection, BASM’s moving mirror performs piston-type pure vertical motion in response to environmental stimuli like temperature change and surface stress change due to molecular adsorption. Since the sensor itself has a fixed or reference mirror as well as a moving mirror, 1) an interferometric measurement is possible without an additional reference mirror in off-axis measurement setup, and 2) vibration measurement noise can be reduced. For preliminary test purposes, interferometric measurement using an optical setup was performed for temperature change. At He-Ne line (632.8 nm), a temperature change of ∼0.8 K caused a minimum-to-maximum interferometric light intensity change which corresponds to ∼144 nm shift of the moving mirror part. An optical diffraction analysis was performed and optimal device parameters were found to maximize the sensor sensitivity.     

Image signal-to-noise ratio estimation using Shape-Preserving Piecewise Cubic Hermite Autoregressive Moving Average model

We propose to cascade the Shape-Preserving Piecewise Cubic Hermite model with the Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) interpolator; we call this technique the Shape-Preserving Piecewise Cubic Hermite Autoregressive Moving Average (SP2CHARMA) model. In a few test cases involving different images, this model is found to deliver an optimum solution for signal to noise ratio (SNR) estimation problems under different noise environments. The performance of the proposed estimator is compared with two existing methods: the autoregressive-based and autoregressive moving average estimators. Being more robust with noise, the SP2CHARMA estimator has efficiency that is significantly greater than those of the two methods.     

WO3 and MoO3 addition effect on V2O5/TiO2 as promoters for removal of NOx and SOx from stationary sources

As an attempt to improve the catalytic activity at higher reaction temperatures between 300-450°C, various mole ratios of WO₃ were added to V₂O₅/TiO₂ catalytic systems. And also, in order to suggest a new mixed oxide catalyst system for simultaneous removal of NO_x and SO_x, from stationary sources, MoO₃-V₂O₅/TiO₂catalysts were prepared by a conventional impregnation method together with a newly introduced method of surface fixation (non-aqueous solution method). In case of WO₃ addition, at higher reaction temperature range (300–450°C), WO₃ and WO₃-V₂O₅/TiO₂ catalysts showed significant high conversion in NO reduction with NH₃ while V₂O₅/TiO₂ catalyst showed a significant change in selectivity mainly due to the excess side reaction of NH₃ oxidation. This difference in selectivity due to NH₃ oxidation at high temperature is supposed to be associated with the difference in values of surface excess oxygen between WO₃ and V₂O₅ on titania. The surface acidities of tested catalysts were relatively well correlated with the % conversion of NO at 400°C. In case of MoO₃ addition, the catalytic activity for the simultaneous removal of NO_x and SO_x were quite enhanced by the addition of MoO₃ into V₂O₅/TiO₂ catalysts. The enhanced activities were responsible for the formation of Mo=O bond on the intermediate species produced by solid solutions on MoO₃-V₂O₅/TiO₂ (aqueous). However, in the case of MoO₃-V₂O₅/TiO₂ (non-aqueous), the exact source of active site was not able to detect in IR spectra in spite of more enhanced activity was obtained in this study. After SO₂ contact, VOSO₄ is newly formed on the surface of catalyst, which supposed to be associated with the activity enhancement.     

Modeling of EMI response of damaged Mindlin–Herrmann rod

To ensure high sensitivity to incipient damages, electromechanical impedance (EMI) is measured at high frequencies for damage detection. In the working high-frequency range, very high vibration modes, of the order of the thousandth mode or higher, of a structural member are likely to be activated. This imposes a great difficulty on the accurate modeling of EMI response of a structure. In this paper, the reverberation matrix method (RMM) is adopted to study the dynamics of a Mindlin–Herrmann rod with surface piezoelectric patches. The rod is inhomogeneous along the axial direction so that damage-induced reduction of cross-section or Young's modulus could be easily incorporated in the model. A piecewise-homogeneous rod model is subsequently introduced to approximate the inhomogeneous rod, along with a shear lag model of interfacial bonding between the lead zirconate titanate (PZT) patches and the host rod. An analytical expression for the electric impedance (or admittance) of the coupled model of PZT patch-bonding layer-host rod system is derived. Comparison with other established results is presented. Parametric investigations are also performed to show the dynamic properties of the coupled smart structural system. The analysis in this paper provides necessary theoretical basis for damage detection of rod via the EMI signatures.