Laser-induced incandescence study of diesel soot formation in a rapid compression machine at elevated pressures

Simultaneous laser-induced incandescence (LII) and laser-induced scattering (LIS) were applied to investigate soot formation and distribution in a single cylinder rapid compression machine. The fuel used was a low sulfur reference diesel fuel with 0.04% volume 2-ethylhexyl nitrate. LII images were acquired at time intervals of 1 CA throughout the soot formation period, for a range of injection pressures up to 160 MPa, and in-cylinder pressures (ICP) up to 9 MPa. The data collected shows that although cycle-to-cycle variations in soot production were observed, the LII signal intensities converged to a constant value when sufficient cycles were averaged. The amount of soot produced was not significantly affected by changes in in-cylinder pressure. Soot was observed distributed in definite clusters, which were linked to slugs of fuel caused by oscillations in the injector needle. The highest injection pressure exhibited lower soot productions and more homogeneous soot distributions within the flame. Despite diffusion flames lasting longer with lower injection pressure, it appeared that the extended oxidation time was insufficient to oxidize the excess production of soot. In addition, soot particles were detected closer to the nozzle tip with higher injection pressures. The recording of LII sequences at high temporal resolutions has shown that three distinct phases in soot formation can be observed. First, high soot formation rates are observed before the establishment of the diffusion flame. Second, a reduced soot formation rate is apparent from the start of diffusion flame until the end of injection. Finally, high soot oxidation rates occur after the end of injection and for the duration of the flame.     

Study and experimental verification of control tuning strategies in a variable speed wind energy conversion system

This paper analyzes and compares different control tuning strategies for a variable speed wind energy conversion system (WECS) based on a permanent-magnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The aerodynamics of the wind turbine (WT) and a PMSG have been modeled. The control strategy used in this research is composed of three regulators, which may be based on either linear or nonlinear controllers. In this analysis, proportional-integral (PI) linear controllers have been used. Two different tuning strategies are analyzed and compared. The main goal is to enhance the overall performance by achieving a low sensitivity to disturbances and minimal overshoot under variable operating conditions. Finally, the results have been verified by an experimental WECS laboratory prototype.     

A tele-operated mobile ultrasound scanner using a light-weight robot.

This paper presents a new tele-operated robotic chain for real-time ultrasound image acquisition and medical diagnosis. This system has been developed in the frame of the Mobile Tele-Echography Using an Ultralight Robot European Project. A light-weight six degrees-of-freedom serial robot, with a remote center of motion, has been specially designed for this application. It holds and moves a real probe on a distant patient according to the expert gesture and permits an image acquisition using a standard ultrasound device. The combination of mechanical structure choice for the robot and dedicated control law, particularly nearby the singular configuration allows a good path following and a robotized gesture accuracy. The choice of compression techniques for image transmission enables a compromise between flow and quality. These combined approaches, for robotics and image processing, enable the medical specialist to better control the remote ultrasound probe holder system and to receive stable and good quality ultrasound images to make a diagnosis via any type of communication link from terrestrial to satellite. Clinical tests have been performed since April 2003. They used both satellite or Integrated Services Digital Network lines with a theoretical bandwidth of 384 Kb/s. They showed the tele-echography system helped to identify 66% of lesions and 83% of symptomatic pathologies.     

A Subthreshold PMOS Analog Cortex Decoder for the (8, 4, 4) Hamming Code

This paper presents a method for decoding high minimal distance (d_min) short codes, termed Cortex codes. These codes are systematic block codes of rate 1/2 and can have higher d_min than turbo codes. Despite this characteristic, these codes have been impossible to decode with good performance because, to reach high d_min, several encoding stages are connected through interleavers. This generates a large number of hidden variables and increases the complexity of the scheduling and initialization. However, the structure of the encoder is well suited for analog decoding. A proof‐of‐concept Cortex decoder for the (8, 4, 4) Hamming code is implemented in subthreshold 0.25‐μm CMOS. It outperforms an equivalent LDPC‐like decoder by 1 dB at BER=10^?5 and is 44 percent smaller and consumes 28 percent less energy per decoded bit.     

Supercritical fluid technology of nanoparticle coating for new ceramic materials

This work highlights, for the first time, the coating of ferroelectric nanoparticles with a chemical fluid deposition process in supercritical fluids. BaTiO3 nanoparticles of about 50 nm are coated with a shell of a few nanometers of amorphous alumina and can be recovered as a dry powder for processing. The sintering of these core-shell nanoparticles gives access to a ceramic material with very interesting ferroelectric properties, in particular, dielectric losses below 1%.     

Compound-Specific 14N/15N Analysis of Amino Acid Trimethylsilylated Derivatives from Plant Seed Proteins

Isotopic analyses of plant samples are now of considerable importance for food certification and plant physiology. In fact, the natural nitrogen isotope composition (δ¹⁵N) is extremely useful to examine metabolic pathways of N nutrition involving isotope fractionations. However, δ¹⁵N analysis of amino acids is not straightforward and involves specific derivatization procedures to yield volatile derivatives that can be analysed by gas chromatography coupled to isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-C-IRMS). Derivatizations other than trimethylsilylation are commonly used since they are believed to be more reliable and accurate. Their major drawback is that they are not associated with metabolite databases allowing identification of derivatives and by-products. Here, we revisit the potential of trimethylsilylated derivatives via concurrent analysis of δ¹⁵N and exact mass GC-MS of plant seed protein samples, allowing facile identification of derivatives using a database used for metabolomics. When multiple silylated derivatives of several amino acids are accounted for, there is a good agreement between theoretical and observed N mole fractions, and δ¹⁵N values are satisfactory, with little fractionation during derivatization. Overall, this technique may be suitable for compound-specific δ¹⁵N analysis, with pros and cons.     

The Effect of Gamma Irradiation as a Phytosanitary Treatment on Physicochemical and Sensory Properties of Bartlett Pears

A major concern in exporting agricultural commodities is the introduction or spread of exotic quarantine pests to the new area. To prevent spread of insect pests, various phytosanitary measures are used. Worldwide commercial use of irradiation as a phytosanitary treatment has increased greatly in recent years; however, trade has been limited to tropical fruits. Bartlett pear is a major summer variety of California pears with great potential and market for export. In this study, the effect of gamma irradiation at dose levels of 400, 600, and 800 Gy on physicochemical properties and sensory attributes of early and late harvest Bartlett pears was investigated. Firmness and color changes indicate that irradiation delayed the ripening of pears by 1 d. For the early harvest pears, scarring, bruising, and off flavor were significantly increased at the highest irradiation dose (800 Gy). The appearance of early harvest 800 Gy irradiated pears was the only attribute that received significantly (P ≤ 0.05) lower scores than the control in consumer testing. For the late harvest pears, the 400 Gy fruit had lowest levels of scarring and bruising as rated by trained panelist but consumers did not score the control and 800 Gy fruit differently for any attribute. Titratable acidity, total soluble solids, and chroma were significantly (P ≤ 0.05) decreased and hue increased by irradiation for the early harvest pears. These results suggest that there was a difference in radiotolerance of early and late harvest pears, but in both cases, irradiation at 400 to 600 Gy seemed to maintain best quality.     

Genetic programming on graphics processing units

The availability of low cost powerful parallel graphics cards has stimulated the port of Genetic Programming (GP) on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Our work focuses on the possibilities offered by Nvidia G80 GPUs when programmed in the CUDA language. In a first work we have showed that this setup allows to develop fine grain parallelization schemes to evaluate several GP programs in parallel, while obtaining speedups for usual training sets and program sizes. Here we present another parallelization scheme and optimizations about program representation and use of GPU fast memory. This increases the computation speed about three times faster, up to 4 billion GP operations per second. The code has been developed within the well known ECJ library and is open source.     

Impact of molecular structure of polymer in 193 nm resist performance

Miniaturization in microelectronic technologies requests a development of new high-performance materials for microlithography with good resolution of the critical dimension. However, the real impact of polymer structure on lithographic performances is not yet well understood to predict the properties of formulated resist. Our approach is the synthesis and characterization of model resists and the understanding of the relationship between material – properties – processes. In this work we present the influence of the polymer’s molecular weight in lithographic profile of the generated patterns. The limits of the polymer’s molecular weight values based on model terpolymers, consisting of methacrylate matrix, for efficient patterning have been identified. Finally, the ineffective sensitivity and dissolution issue of the polymer resists having an average molecular weight of 30 kg/mol was extensively examined and attributed to the molecular weight of the polymer and more precisely to the radius of gyration of the polymer.