Producing fully-lamellar microstructure for wrought beta-gamma TiAl alloys without single α-phase field

Fine-grained fully-lamellar (FL) microstructure is desired for TiAl components to serve as compressor/turbine blades and turbocharger turbine wheels. This study deals with the process and phase transformation to produce FL microstructure for Mo stabilized beta-gamma TiAl alloys without single α-phase field. Unlike the α + γ two-phased TiAl or beta-gamma TiAl with single α-phase field, the wrought multi-phase TiAl–4/6Nb–2Mo–B/Y alloys exhibit special annealing process to obtain FL microstructure. Short-term annealing at temperatures slightly above β-transus is recommended to produce the desired FL microstructure. The related mechanism is to guarantee the sufficient diffusion homogenization of β stabilizers during single β-phase annealing, and further avoid α decomposition by α → γ + β when cooling through α + β + γ phase field. The colony boundary β phase contributes to fine-grained nearly FL microstructure, by retarding the coarsening of the α phase grains.     

Flexural behaviour of RC slabs strengthened with prestressed CFRP strips using different anchorage systems

The Externally Bonded Reinforcement (EBR) technique using Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) has been commonly used to strengthen concrete structures in flexure. The use of prestressed CFRP material offers several advantages well-reported in the literature. Regardless of such as benefits, several studies on different topics are missing. The present work intends to contribute to the knowledge of two commercially available systems that differ on the type of anchorage: (i) the Mechanical Anchorage (MA), and (ii) the Gradient Anchorage (GA). For that purpose, an experimental program was carried out with twelve slabs monotonically tested under displacement control up to failure by using a four-point bending test configuration. The effect of type of anchorage system (MA and GA), prestrain level (0 and 0.4%), width (50 mm and 80 mm) and thickness (1.2 mm and 1.4 mm) of the CFRP laminate, and the surface preparation (grinded and sandblasted) on the flexural response were the main studied parameters. Better performance was observed for the slabs: (i) with prestressed laminates, (ii) for the MA system, and (iii) with sandblasted surface preparation.     

Study on maximum power point tracking of photovoltaic array in irregular shadow

Traditional maximum power point tracking (MPPT) methods can hardly find global maximum power point (MPP) because output characteristics curve of photovoltaic (PV) array may have multi local maximum power points in irregular shadow, and thus easily fall into the local maximum power point. To address this drawback, Considering that sliding mode variable structure (SMVS) control strategy have such advantages as simple structure, fast response and strong robustness, and P&O method have the advantages of simple principle and convenient implementation, so a new algorithm combining SMVS control method and P&O method is proposed, besides, PI controller is applied to reduce system chattering caused by switching sliding surface. It is applied to MPPT control of PV array in irregular shadow to solve the problem of multi-peak optimization in partial shadow. In order to verity the rationality of the proposed algorithm, the experimental circuit is built, which achieves MPPT control by means of the proposed algorithm and P&O method. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional P&O algorithm, the proposed algorithm can fast track the global MPP, tracking speed increases by 60% and the relative error decreased by 20%. Moreover, the system becomes more stable near the MPP, the fluctuations of output power is greatly reduced, and thus make full use of solar energy.     

Application of differential evolution for cascaded multilevel VSI with harmonics elimination PWM switching

Harmonic elimination pulse width modulation (HEPWM) method has been widely applied to multilevel voltage source inverter (MVSI) to remove low frequency harmonics from its output voltage. However, the computation of the HEPWM switching angles for MVSI is very challenging due to several constraints, namely angle sequencing, very tight angular spacing and the numerous possibilities of angles distribution ratio. Realizing the potential of Differential Evolution (DE) to handle complex problems, this work proposes its application to solve the HEPWM problem for cascaded MVSI. Its emphasis is on improving the availability of HEPWM for higher output voltage by extending the maximum range of modulation index (M). It also removes the discontinuities in the switching angles and reduces the number of distribution ratio required to obtain the required solution. Compared to the most advanced (similar) work, i.e., 7-level MVSI with seventeen switching angles, DE covers a wider range of M; the maximum achievable M is 2.80. Furthermore, it exhibits very low second order distortion factor (DF₂): for the worst case, the value of DF₂ is 0.0014%. To verify the viability of the proposed algorithm, simulation is carried out and hardware prototype is constructed. Both results show very good agreement with the theoretical prediction.     

A high performance crashworthiness simulation system based on GPU

Crashworthiness simulation system is one of the key computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools for the automobile industry and implies two potential conflicting requirements: accuracy and efficiency. A parallel crashworthiness simulation system based on graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture and the explicit finite element (FE) method is developed in this work. Implementation details with compute unified device architecture (CUDA) are considered. The entire parallel simulation system involves a parallel hierarchy-territory contact-searching algorithm (HITA) and a parallel penalty contact force calculation algorithm. Three basic GPU-based parallel strategies are suggested to meet the natural parallelism of the explicit FE algorithm. Two free GPU-based numerical calculation libraries, cuBLAS and Thrust, are introduced to decrease the difficulty of programming. Furthermore, a mixed array and a thread map to element strategy are proposed to improve the performance of the test pairs searching. The outer loop of the nested loop through the mixed array is unrolled to realize parallel searching. An efficient storage strategy based on data sorting is presented to realize data transfer between different hierarchies with coalesced access during the contact pairs searching. A thread map to element pattern is implemented to calculate the penetrations and the penetration forces; a double float atomic operation is used to scatter contact forces. The simulation results of the three different models based on the Intel Core i7-930 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 demonstrate the precision and efficiency of this developed parallel crashworthiness simulation system.     

内插法在相关干涉仪测向体制中的应用

测向误差的减小一直以来都是无线电测向精度提高的一个难点,对于不同的测向体制所采用的减小测向误差的方法都不尽相同。本文主要介绍的是相关干涉仪测向体制的基本原理以及通过内插法的应用来减小测向误差的方法。     

Preparation,characterization and properties of polycaprolactone diol-functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotube/thermoplastic polyurethane composite

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were chemically functionalized to prepare thermoplastic polyurethane (PU) composites with enhanced properties. In order to achieve a high compatibility of functionalized MWCNTs with the PU matrix, polycaprolactone diol (PCL), as one of PU’s monomers, was selectively grafted on the surface of MWCNTs (MWCNT–PCL), while carboxylic acid groups functionalized MWCNTs (MWCNT–COOH) and raw MWCNTs served as control. Both MWCNT–COOH and MWCNT–PCL improved the dispersion of MWCNTs in the PU matrix and interfacial bonding between them at 1 wt% loading fraction. The MWCNT–PCL/PU composite showed the greatest extent of improvement, where the tensile strength and modulus were 51.2% and 33.5% higher than those of pure PU respectively, without sacrificing the elongation at break. The considerable improvement in both mechanical properties and thermal stability of MWCNT–PCL/PU composite should result from the homogeneous dispersion of MWCNT–PCL in the PU matrix and strong interfacial bonding between them.     

Facile growth of novel morphology correlated Ag/Co-doped ZnO nanowire/flake-like composites for superior photoelectrochemical water splitting activity

In this paper, novel morphology correlation between silver nanowires (AgNWs) and cobalt (Co)-doped ZnO (Co-ZnO) flake-like thin films (nanowire/flake-like) has been proposed for enhanced photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting activity. Here in, high-quality AgNWs/Co-ZnO heterostructures enabled superior visible light water splitting activity compared to the pure ZnO and AgNWs/ZnO. To address the strategic effect of AgNWs coupling and transition metal (Co-2?at%) doping into the ZnO host lattice, we have carried out the X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, UV–Vis transmittance, water contact angle and PEC analyses. In this way, PEC water splitting activity was mainly examined by linear sweep voltammetry (I-V), amperometric I-t and photoconversion efficiency (η) studies. The experimental results provide clear evidence of morphology correlation between AgNWs and Co-ZnO flake-like structures for strong visible light absorption. Specifically, AgNWs/Co-ZnO composites exhibited significant enhancement in the photocurrent density (7.0?×?10^?4 A/cm²) than AgNWs/ZnO (3.2?×?10^?4 A/cm²) and pure ZnO (1.5?×?10^?6 A/cm²). As a result, detailed AgNWs/Co-ZnO geometry has great potential for photoconversion efficiency (0.73%). In a word, the merits of controllable AgNWs/Co-ZnO heterostructure are proposed to improve the visible light harvesting and charge carrier generation for energy conversion devices.