Nano- and micromechanical properties of hierarchical biological materials and tissues

The mechanical properties of biological materials have been the focal point of extensive studies over the past decades, leading to formation of a new research field that intimately connects biology, chemistry and materials science. Significant advances have been made in many disciplines and research areas, ranging throughout a variety of material scales, from atomistic, molecular up to continuum scales. Experimental studies are now carried out with molecular precision, including investigations of how molecular defects such as protein mutations or protein knockout influence larger length- and time-scales. Simulation studies of biological materials now range from electronic structure calculations of DNA, molecular simulations of proteins and biomolecules like actin and tubulin to continuum theories of bone and collagenous tissues. The integration of predictive numerical studies with experimental methods represents a new frontier in materials research. The field is at a turning point when major breakthroughs in the understanding, synthesis, control and analysis of complex biological systems emerge. Here we provide a brief perspective of the state of this field and outline new research directions.     

Design for service compatibility

Service composition is a recent field that has seen a flurry of different approaches proposed towards the goal of flexible distributed heterogeneous interoperation of software systems, usually based on the expectation that such systems must be derived from higher-level models rather than be coded at low level. In practice, achieving service interoperability nonetheless continues to require significant modelling approach at multiple abstraction levels, and existing formal approaches typically require the analysis of the global space of joint executions of interacting services. Based on our earlier work on providing locally checkable consistency rules for guaranteeing the behavioural consistency of inheritance hierarchies, a model-driven approach for creating consistent service orchestrations is proposed. Service execution and interaction is represented with a high-level model in terms of extended Petri net notation; formal criteria are provided for service consistency that can be checked in terms of local model properties, and give a multi-step design approach for developing services that are guaranteed to be interoperable. Finally, it is outlined how the presented results can be carried over and applied to modelling processes using the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN).     

Computational Fluid Dynamic Modeling of Zinc Slag Fuming Process in Top-Submerged Lance Smelting Furnace

Slag fuming is a reductive treatment process for molten zinciferous slags for extracting zinc in the form of metal vapor by injecting or adding a reductant source such as pulverized coal or lump coal and natural gas. A computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model was developed to study the zinc slag fuming process from imperial smelting furnace (ISF) slag in a top-submerged lance furnace and to investigate the details of fluid flow, reaction kinetics, and heat transfer in the furnace. The model integrates combustion phenomena and chemical reactions with the heat, mass, and momentum interfacial interaction between the phases present in the system. A commercial CFD package AVL Fire 2009.2 (AVL, Graz, Austria) coupled with a number of user-defined subroutines in FORTRAN programming language were used to develop the model. The model is based on three-dimensional (3-D) Eulerian multiphase flow approach, and it predicts the velocity and temperature field of the molten slag bath, generated turbulence, and vortex and plume shape at the lance tip. The model also predicts the mass fractions of slag and gaseous components inside the furnace. The model predicted that the percent of ZnO in the slag bath decreases linearly with time and is consistent broadly with the experimental data. The zinc fuming rate from the slag bath predicted by the model was validated through macrostep validation process against the experimental study of Waladan et al. The model results predicted that the rate of ZnO reduction is controlled by the mass transfer of ZnO from the bulk slag to slag–gas interface and rate of gas-carbon reaction for the specified simulation time studied. Although the model is based on zinc slag fuming, the basic approach could be expanded or applied for the CFD analysis of analogous systems.     

ITER safety and licensing update

Safety files were submitted by the ITER Organization to the French nuclear safety authorities in March 2010 as a part of the licensing process. These included the preliminary safety report (RPrS) which presents the extensive safety analyses performed for ITER. The report has been the subject of examination by the authorities and their advisors, and discussions with them have been held on many topics. In the light of this process, this paper discusses some of the topics that remain prominent in the safety analysis of ITER. In particular, the provision of the two safety functions, confinement of radioactive material and limitation of exposure to radiation, is explained and some of the potential challenges to them are identified. Amongst these are the risks of fire and explosion, and external events such as earthquake and loss of all electric power. Provisions in the ITER design, together with the characteristics of fusion, ensure that a very good safety performance will be achieved.     

Bemessung von Stahlbauten für Anprall‐ und Explosionslasten

Die zunehmende Gefahr von Anschlägen und Industrieunfällen haben zu neuen Anforderungen an die Auslegung und Bemessung von Bauwerken geführt. Diesen neuen Anforderungen wird derzeit in Normen jedoch nur unzureichend Rechnung getragen. Insbesondere für Bauwerke in Stahl‐ und Verbundbauweise führen die gegenwärtig üblichen Auslegungskonzepte nicht zu wirtschaftlichen Bemessungen. Das bauforumstahl hat daher in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Institut für Stahlbau der RWTH Aachen und HOCHTIEF Construction AG einen Bemessungsleitfaden für Anprall‐ und Explosionslasten erarbeitet, mit dem die Möglichkeiten des Werkstoffes Stahl wesentlich effizienter ausgenutzt werden können. In diesem Beitrag werden die wesentlichen Elemente dieses Leitfadens vorgestellt, der sowohl eine Bewertung von Entwurfsstrategien für robuste Bauwerke enthält, als auch ein Bemessungskonzept zur Auslegung von Stahlbauten gegen spezifische kurzzeit‐dynamische Einwirkungen bereitstellt. Design of steel structures against impact and blast loads. The increasing threat of terroristic attacks as well as industrial hazards have led to new demands for the conception and design of buildings. Current standards, however, do not provide sufficient guidance to cope with these new requirements. Particularly for steel and composite structures there is a lack of appropriate and therefore economic design concepts. Hence, bauforumstahl in cooperation with the Institute for Steel Structures at RWTH Aachen University and HOCHTIEF Construction AG has published a new design guide to exploit the capabilities of steel more efficiently. This paper presents the main aspects of this design guide. It includes the assessment of strategies for robust structures and a concept to design steel structures against specific high dynamic loads.     

Trends of energy efficiency in Finnish road freight transport 1995–2009 and forecast to 2016

A framework for modeling and analyzing the energy efficiency of road freight transport is presented in this paper. This framework is tested by using the data from the Finnish Goods Transport by Road statistics. The data was enhanced by calculating the fuel consumption for each trip in the data. To calculate this, weight-fuel consumption functions were estimated for each Euro-class vehicles and road type. This is a new method for analyzing the energy efficiency of road freight transport and it could be applied also in other countries gathering freight transport data with continuous company surveys. The analysis show that the energy efficiency of road freight transport in Finland improved during 1995–2002, but has declined since. The major drivers in the development have been the changes in the level of empty running and vehicle fuel efficiency. Extrapolating current statistical trends of factors that influence the energy efficiency show that the target set by the Finnish government for improving energy efficiency by 9% until 2016 will not be achieved. However, the target is possible to be achieved by a combination of small changes to some determinants.