Multiphysics Modelling of Stone Wool Fire Resistance

Fire Technology - In fire resistance tests, stone wool’s organic matter undergoes exothermic oxidative reactions sustained by external heat, causing mass transfer in the structure. The...     

A Comprehensive Review on Tunnel Field-Effect Transistor (TFET) Based Biosensors: Recent Advances and Future Prospects on Device Structure and Sensitivity

Silicon - In this fast-growing technological world biosensors become more substantial in human life and the extensive use of biosensors creates enormous research interest among researchers to...     

Stable and semi-stable sampling approaches for continuously used samples

Knowledge and Information Systems - Knowledge and information systems are usually measured by labeling the relevance of results corresponding to a sample of user queries. In practical systems like...     

FGWSO‐TAR: Fractional glowworm swarm optimization for traffic aware routing in urban VANET

In mobile distributed applications, such as traffic alert dissemination, dynamic route planning, file sharing, and so on, vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has emerged as a feasible solution in recent years. However, the performance of the VANET depends on the routing protocol in accord with the delay and throughput requirements. Many of the routing protocols have been extensively studied in the literature. Although there are exemptions, they escalate research challenges in traffic aware routing (TAR) protocol of VANET. This paper introduces the fractional glowworm swarm optimization (FGWSO) for the TAR protocol of VANET in an urban scenario that can identify the optimal path for the vehicle with less traffic density and delay time. The proposed FGWSO searches the optimal routing path based on the fitness function formulated in this paper. Fractional glowworm swarm optimization is the combination of the GWSO and fractional theory. Moreover, exponential weighted moving average is utilized to predict the traffic density and the speed of the vehicle, which is utilized as the major constraints in the fitness function of the optimization algorithm to find the optimal traffic aware path. Simulation of FGWSO shows the significant improvement with a minimal end‐to‐end delay of 6.6395 seconds and distance of 17.3962 m, respectively, in comparison with the other existing routing approaches. The simulation also validates the optimality of the proposed TAR protocol.     

Membrane performance enhancer evaluations on pilot- and full-scale membrane bioreactors

Recently developed polymeric membrane performance enhancer product, MPE50, was tested in various pilot‐ and full‐scale membrane bioreactors (MBRs). The Initial MPE50 dosage was determined by visual jar tests and by using various bench‐top filtration tests. Different amounts of MPE50 were dosed, and the particle size and supernatant clarity of the mixed liquor were monitored visually. Bench‐top filtration tests were also conducted. A 50% higher MPE50 dosage is recommended to be added to the pilot/full‐scale bioreactors because, based on experience, some of the soluble microbial products in the mixed liquor do not completely react with polymer during the relatively short bench‐test mixing time interval. With the addition of 400 mg/L MPE50 to a pilot MBR, the design flow was increased twofold without any significant transmembrane pressure (TMP) increase for 1 day. The control TMP surged within a few hours without MPE50. Long‐term field trials in a full‐scale plant also showed a substantial flux increase. In addition to flux enhancement, MPE50 helped to remove foam from the bioreactors and improved plant aesthetics, safety and general operating performance.     

A three-stage graphics processing unit-based finite element analyses matrix generation strategy for unstructured meshes

With the development of parallel computing architectures, larger and more complex finite element analyses (FEA) are being performed with higher accuracy and smaller execution times. Graphics processing units (GPUs) are one of the major contributors of this computational breakthrough. This work presents a three-stage GPU-based FEA matrix generation strategy with the key idea of decoupling the computation of global matrix indices and values by use of a novel data structure referred to as the neighbor matrix. The first stage computes the neighbor matrix on the GPU based on the unstructured mesh. Using this neighbor matrix, the indices and values of the global matrix are computed separately in the second and third stages. The neighbor matrix is computed for three different element types. Two versions for performing numerical integration and assembly in the same or separate kernels are implemented and simulations are run for different mesh sizes having up to three million degrees of freedom on a single GPU. Comparison with GPU-based parallel implementation from the literature reveals speedup ranging from 4× to 6× for the proposed workload division strategy. Furthermore, the same kernel implementation is found to outperform the separate kernel implementation by 70% to 150% for different element types.     

Design and analysis adaptivity in multiresolution topology optimization

Multiresolution topology optimization (MTO) methods involve decoupling of the design and analysis discretizations, such that a high-resolution design can be obtained at relatively low analysis costs. Recent studies have shown that the MTO method can be approximately 3 and 30 times faster than the traditional topology optimization method for two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) problems, respectively. To further exploit the potential of decoupling analysis and design, we propose a dp-adaptive MTO method, which involves locally increasing/decreasing the polynomial degree of the shape functions (p) and the design resolution (d). The adaptive refinement/coarsening is performed using a composite refinement indicator that includes criteria based on analysis error, presence of intermediate densities, as well as the occurrence of design artifacts referred to as QR-patterns. While standard MTO must rely on filtering to suppress QR-patterns, the proposed adaptive method ensures efficiently that these artifacts are suppressed in the final design, without sacrificing the design resolution. The applicability of the dp-adaptive MTO method is demonstrated on several 2D mechanical design problems. For all the cases, significant speedups in computational time are obtained. In particular for design problems involving low material volume fractions, speedups of up to a factor of 10 can be obtained over the conventional MTO method.     

A first-principle investigation into effect of B- and BN-doped $$\hbox {C}_{60}$$ in lowering dehydrogenation of $$\hbox {MXH}_{4}$$MXH4 (where M $$=$$= Na,Li and X $$=$$= Al,B)

The present paper reports the effect of B- and BN-doped \(\hbox {C}_{60}\) as catalysts for lowering the dehydrogenation energy in \(\hbox {MXH}_{4}\) clusters (M = Na and Li, X = Al and B) using density functional calculations. \(\hbox {MXH}_{4}\) interacts strongly with B-doped \(\hbox {C}_{60}\) and weakly with BN-doped \(\hbox {C}_{60}\) in comparison with pure \(\hbox {C}_{60}\) with binding energy 0.56–0.80 and 0.05–0.34 eV, respectively. The hydrogen release energy \((E_{\mathrm{HRE}})\) of \(\hbox {MXH}_{4}\) decreases sharply in the range of 38–49% when adsorbed on B-doped \(\hbox {C}_{60}\); however, with BN-doped \(\hbox {C}_{60}\) the decrease in the \(E_{\mathrm{HRE}}\) varies in the range of 6–20% as compared with pure \(\hbox {MXH}_{4}\) clusters. The hydrogen release energy of second hydrogen atom in \(\hbox {MXH}_{4}\) decreases sharply in the range of 1.7–41% for BN-doped \(\hbox {C}_{60}\) and decreases in the range of 0.2–11.3% for B-doped \(\hbox {C}_{60}\) as compared with pure \(\hbox {MXH}_{4}\) clusters. The results can be explained on the basis of charge transfer within \(\hbox {MXH}_{4}\) cluster and with the doped \(\hbox {C}_{60}\).     

Investigation of Electrode Electrochemical Reactions in CH3NH3PbBr3 Perovskite Single‐Crystal Field‐Effect Transistors

Optoelectronic devices based on metal halide perovskites, including solar cells and light‐emitting diodes, have attracted tremendous research attention globally in the last decade. Due to their potential to achieve high carrier mobilities, organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite materials can enable high‐performance, solution‐processed field‐effect transistors (FETs) for next‐generation, low‐cost, flexible electronic circuits and displays. However, the performance of perovskite FETs is hampered predominantly by device instabilities, whose origin remains poorly understood. Here, perovskite single‐crystal FETs based on methylammonium lead bromide are studied and device instabilities due to electrochemical reactions at the interface between the perovskite and gold source–drain top contacts are investigated. Despite forming the contacts by a gentle, soft lamination method, evidence is found that even at such “ideal” interfaces, a defective, intermixed layer is formed at the interface upon biasing of the device. Using a bottom‐contact, bottom‐gate architecture, it is shown that it is possible to minimize such a reaction through a chemical modification of the electrodes, and this enables fabrication of perovskite single‐crystal FETs with high mobility of up to ≈15 cm² V^?1 s^?1 at 80 K. This work addresses one of the key challenges toward the realization of high‐performance solution‐processed perovskite FETs.