The influence of repeated loading,residual stresses and shakedown on the behaviour of tribological contacts

Most tribological pairs carry their service load not just once but for a very large number of repeated cycles. During the early stages of this life, protective residual stresses may be developed in the near surface layers which enable loads which are of sufficient magnitude to cause initial plastic deformation to be accommodated purely elastically in the longer term. This is an example of the phenomenon of ‘shakedown’ and when its effects are incorporated into the design and operation schedule of machine components this process can lead to significant increases in specific loading duties or improvements in material utilization. Although the underlying principles can be demonstrated by reference to relatively simple stress systems, when a moving Hertzian pressure distribution in considered, which is the form of loading applicable to many contact problems, the situation is more complex. In the absence of exact solutions, bounding theorems, adopted from the theory of plasticity, can be used to generate appropriate load or shakedown limits so that shakedown maps can be drawn which delineate the boundaries between potentially safe and unsafe operating conditions. When the operating point of the contact lies outside the shakedown limit there will be an increment of plastic strain with each application of the load—these can accumulate leading eventually to either component failure or the loss of material by wear.     

Switched systems with multiple invariant sets

This paper explores dwell time constraints on switched systems with multiple, possibly disparate invariant limit sets. We show that, under suitable conditions, trajectories globally converge to a superset of the limit sets and then remain in a second, larger superset. We show the effectiveness of the dwell-time conditions by using examples of switching limit cycles commonly found in robotic locomotion and flapping flight.     

Experimental and finite element studies on hot sizing process for L-shaped composite beams

This work aims at developing a hot sizing process on composite materials to correct the profiles of composite structures during manufacture. Hot sizing experiments were carried out at 150 °C with different sizing loads and hot sizing periods for L-shaped composite beams made of carbon fiber plain-weave fabric and epoxy resin. To predict the springback in hot sizing process, a corresponding finite element simulation method was developed using stress relaxation equations determined at the same temperature. Excellent agreements between the predicted and observed results were obtained. The effects of the component thickness and 45° ply percentage on the springback rate were investigated by simulation. Springback rate in hot sizing process on composite materials ranges from 60% to 95%. In conclusion hot sizing process is proved to be a valid method for compensation for the process-induced deformation (PID) of L-shaped composite beams.     

Synthesis and physicochemical characterization of silica aerogels by rapid seed growth method

Thanks to the high optical transparency and ultra-low thermal conductivity, silica aerogels are ideal materials for energy-saving windows. However, their preparation is commonly based on either one-step base-catalyzed method, or two-step acid-base catalyzed method, which is difficult to inhibit the aggregation of clusters while keeping the size of clusters as small as possible and thus degrading silica aerogel's properties. Here, a new idea for synthesizing silica aerogels is presented from the viewpoint of controlling the growth and aggregation of silica clusters. A certain amount of Tetramethoxysilane (TMOS) used as seed precursor is firstly added into the mixture of methanol and distilled water for hydrolysis. A certain time later, the additional TMOS and a defined amount of ammonia are added to the obtained sol for promoting the rapid formation of the gel in several minutes. The silica aerogels prepared by this method have higher optical transparency and lower thermal conductivity than those prepared by the other two methods. This approach may also shed substantial light on controlling the microstructure of other materials prepared by sol-gel process.     

Global output-feedback stabilization for a class of uncertain time-varying nonlinear systems

This paper investigates the global output-feedback stabilization for a class of uncertain time-varying nonlinear systems. The remarkable structure of the systems is the presence of uncertain control coefficients and unmeasured states dependent growth whose rate is inherently time-varying and of unknown polynomial-of-output, and consequently the systems have heavy nonlinearities, serious uncertainties/unknowns and serious time-variations. This forces us to explore a time-varying plus adaptive methodology to realize the task of output-feedback stabilization, rather than a purely adaptive one. Detailedly, based on a time-varying observer and transformation, an output-feedback controller is designed by skillfully combining adaptive technique, time-varying technique and well-known backstepping method. It is shown that, with the appropriate choice of the design parameters/functions, all the signals of the closed-loop system are bounded, and furthermore, the original system states globally converge to zero. It is worth mentioning that, the heavy nonlinearities are compensated by an updating law, while the serious unknowns and time-variations are compensated by a time-varying function. The designed controller is still valid when the system has an additive input disturbance which, essentially different from those studied previously, may not be periodic or bounded by any known constant.     

Effect of pore structure on the compressive property of porous Ti produced by powder metallurgy technique

Porous Ti with an average macro-pore size of 200–400 μm and porosity in the range of 10–65% has been manufactured using polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) powders as spacer particles. The compressive strength and elastic modulus of resultant porous Ti are observed in the range of 32–530 MPa and 0.7–23.3 GPa, respectively. With the increasing of the porosity and macro-pore size, the compressive strength and modulus decrease as described by Gibson–Ashby model. The failure due to cracking (complete fracture) of the struts on porous Ti is controlled primarily by macro-pores. Fractography shows evidence of the brittle cleavage fracture mainly, but containing a few fine shallow dimples and a small amount of transcrystalline fracture of similarly oriented laths. The failure mechanism has been discussed by taking the intrinsic microstructural features into consideration.     

基于统计推断的惯性定位精度评估方法对比

在对惯导系统精度评估标准统一化研究中,在一定的假设条件下,推导、归纳、整理了四类定位精度的评估算法(TRMS、RMS、σ和CEP)及相应的7个指标间的工程换算关系;利用某型捷联旋转惯导4次实际导航数据进行了仿真分析,从推断算法、指标间换算关系、精度折合效果等方面进行了对比验证,基于理论分析和仿真验证结果表明TRMS评估算法及试验简单且易于转换,并对其精度折合给出合理化建议。     

Morphological enhancement of microscopy mineral image using opening‐ and closing‐based toggle operator

To enhance unclear microscopy mineral images, an algorithm based on toggle operator using opening and closing is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the specified toggle operator using opening and closing through designing the selection rules is analysed. Secondly, after importing the multiscale theory into the specified toggle operator, useful mineral image features, especially the mineral details, are extracted using the multiscale theory‐based toggle operator. Finally, the mineral image is enhanced through the strategy of enlarging the contrast between the extracted bright and dark image features. Experimental results on different types of mineral images verified that the proposed algorithm could effectively enhance mineral images and performed better than some other algorithms. The enhanced mineral image is clear and contains rich mineral details, whereas the grey scale distribution of the original mineral image is appropriately maintained. This would be useful for the further mineral analysis. Therefore, the proposed algorithm could be widely used for image‐based mineral applications.     

Performance of dual-throat supersonic separation device with porous wall structure

In this paper, a dual-throat supersonic separation device with porous wall has been proposed to solve the starting problem of supersonic separator, and the feasibility of the proposed device has been tested numerically and experimentally. Its flow characteristics have been investigated and the effect of some important parameters includ-ing nozzle pressure ratio （RNP）, inlet temperature and swirl intensity were examined. In the device, the supersonic flow state and strong centrifugal acceleration of 240000g can be obtained, which are necessary for the condensation and separation of water vapor. The supersonic region in the device enlarged and the shock wave shifted downstream along with the increasing RNP. The separation performance was improved with the increasing RNP and the inlet temperature. The best separation performance in this study was obtained withΔTd=28 K.     

A novel video abstraction method based on fast clustering of the regions of interest in key frames

Online video nowadays has become one of the top activities for users and has become easy to access. In the meantime, how to manage such huge amount of video data and retrieve them efficiently has become a big issue. In this article, we propose a novel method for video abstraction based on fast clustering of the regions of interest (ROIs). Firstly, the key-frames in each shot are extracted using the average histogram algorithm. Secondly, the saliency and edge maps are generated from each key-frame. According to these two maps, the key points for the visual attention model can be determined. Meanwhile, in order to expand the regions surrounding the key points, several thresholds are calculated from the corresponding key-frame. Thirdly, based on the key points and thresholds, several regions of interest are expanded and thus the main content in each frame is obtained. Finally, the fast clustering method is performed on the key frames by utilizing their ROIs. The performance and effectiveness of the proposed video abstraction algorithm is demonstrated by several experimental results.