Enhanced heat transfer in rectangular duct with punched winglets

Thermal performance of a heat exchanger duct with punched winglets(PWs) mounted on the upper duct wall has been examined for Reynolds number(Re) ranging from 4100 to 25,500. In the present experiment, two types of PWs: punched delta-and elliptical-winglets(P-DW and P-EW) with four punched-hole sizes were tested at a fixed attack angle, optimal relative pitch and height. Also, data of solid delta-and elliptical-winglets(DW and EW) were included for comparison. The investigation has shown that the P-DW yields higher thermal-performance enhancement factor(η) than the P-EW. Although the solid DW and EW with no punch have the highest heat transfer and friction loss, the PWs yield better η than the solid ones. For PWs, the P-DW with smaller hole size has the peak heat transfer and friction loss around 5.7 and 40 times over the smooth duct, respectively but the optimum η of 2.17 is seen for the one with a certain hole size. The PWs provide η at about 5%–8% above the solid winglets.     

Microenvironmental engineering:An effective strategy for tailoring enzymatic activities

Rationally, engineering a favorable physicochemical microenvironment for enzymes has recently emerged as an effective strategy to improve their catalytic performance. In this review, we discuss four microenvironmental effects according to the mechanism of action: localizing and excluding reactants and regulators, regulating microenvironmental pH, creating a water-like microenvironment, and increasing the local temperature. These mechanisms are enzyme-independent and can in principle be used in combination to tailor enzyme behaviors,offering new approaches to enabling, enhancing, and regulating enzyme catalysis in diverse applications without the need for genetic engineering.     

Frequency selective millimeter‐wave channel estimation based on subspace enhancement algorithms

In millimeter wave (mmW) communication systems, hybrid architecture, including the analog‐digital precoder and combiner matrices, is employed to take advantage of the multistream transceiver. In practice, mmW channel is assumed to be frequency‐selective, since the signal bandwidth is larger than the coherence bandwidth. Hence, orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing signaling can be remedial. So far, most of the previous works on the frequency‐selective channel estimation have focused on the single measurement vector (SMV) form, whereas finding and exploiting the proper multimeasurement vector (MMV) model can improve upon the estimation procedure based on compressive sensing (CS) concepts. In fact, the estimation procedure based on the MMV model has a faster convergence speed than the SMV method specially, when the training frames are small. In this paper, we first extract the MMV model of the channel. In this model, the rank‐deficiency occurs as the number of training frames is less or equal to the sparsity level. Thus, the conventional estimation methods fail to provide the desirable performance. To overcome this issue, we propose two rank‐aware algorithms based on the enhancement of the observed signal subspace. The first algorithm assumes to know the sparsity level, while the second faces to the lack of knowledge about the sparsity level. The simulation results corroborate the fact that the proposed methods outperform the conventional CS algorithms such as Simultaneous Orthogonal Matching Pursuit.     

Multichannel image contrast enhancement based on linguistic rule-based intensificators

This study follows the direct approach to image contrast enhancement, which changes the image contrast at each its pixel and is more effective than the indirect approach that deals with image histograms. However, there are only few studies following the direct approach because, by its nature, it is very complex. Additionally, it is difficult to develop an effective method since it is required to keep a balance in maintaining local and global image features while changing the contrast at each individual pixel. Moreover, raw images obtained from many sources randomly influenced by many external factors can be considered as fuzzy uncertain data. In this context, we propose a novel method to apply and immediately handle expert fuzzy linguistic knowledge of image contrast enhancement to simulate human capability in using natural language. The formalism developed in the study is based on hedge algebras considered as a theory, which can immediately handle linguistic words of variables. This allows the proposed method to produce an image contrast intensificator from a given expert linguistic rule base. A technique to preserve global as well as local image features is proposed based on a fuzzy clustering method, which is applied for the first time in this field to reveal region image features of raw images. The projections of the obtained clusters on each channel are suitably aggregated to produce a new channel image considered as input of the pixelwise defined operators proposed in this study. Many experiments are performed to demonstrate the effect of the proposed method versus the counterparts considered.     

Low-light image enhancement via deep Retinex decomposition and bilateral learning

Low-light images enhancement is a challenging task because enhancing image brightness and reducing image degradation should be considered simultaneously. Although existing deep learning-based methods improve the visibility of low-light images, many of them tend to lose details or sacrifice naturalness. To address these issues, we present a multi-stage network for low-light image enhancement, which consists of three sub-networks. More specifically, inspired by the Retinex theory and the bilateral grid technique, we first design a reflectance and illumination decomposition network to decompose an image into reflectance and illumination maps efficiently. To increase the brightness while preserving edge information, we then devise an attention-guided illumination adjustment network. The reflectance and the adjusted illumination maps are fused and refined by adversarial learning to reduce image degradation and improve image naturalness. Experiments are conducted on our rebuilt SICE low-light image dataset, which consists of 1380 real paired images and a public dataset LOL, which has 500 real paired images and 1000 synthetic paired images. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods quantitatively and qualitatively.     

Review of the phase change material (PCM) usage for solar domestic water heating systems (SDWHS)

The shortage in energy resources combined with the climb in greenhouse emissions is the main incentive beyond the deployment of solar energy resource in various applications. One of the most successful applications is the utilization of solar energy in the domestic water heating systems (DWHS) because 70% of the consumed energy in the residential segment is utilized for space heating and appliances in cold climates 1 . However, the full deployment of solar energy in domestic water heating is only possible when an energy storage system with acceptable price is available. Recently a new tendency for deploying phase change materials (PCMs) as an energy storage system is introduced in several solar DWHS. These systems are known as integrated PCM in solar DWHS and offer several advantages including high storage capacity, low storage volume, and isothermal operation during the charging and discharging phases. The present study reviews various techniques utilized for integrating the PCM in solar water heating systems and the utilized methods for enhancing the heat transfer characteristics of the PCM through the usage of extended surfaces and high conductive additives. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Photoluminescence enhancement in a Na5Y(MoO4)4:Dy3+ white-emitting phosphor by partial replacement of MoO42− with WO42− or VO43−

A series of Na₅Y(MoO₄)_4-yA_y:Dy³⁺ (A = WO₄^2?, VO₄^3?; y = 0–0.05) phosphors were synthesized by the combustion method. Some of the MoO₄^2? sites were occupied by WO₄^2? and VO₄^3? anions, which enhanced the luminescence property of Dy³⁺-doped Na₅Y(MoO₄)₄. XRD results show that the crystal structures of the samples were consistent with the standard Na₅Y(MoO₄)₄ phase. Under excitation at 352 nm, the Na₅Y(MoO₄)_4-yA_y:Dy³⁺ phosphors exhibited a characteristic blue emission at 485 nm and a yellow emission at 577 nm, which originated from the ⁴F_9/2 → ⁶H_15/2 and ⁴F_9/2 → ⁶H_13/2 transitions of Dy³⁺ ions, respectively. White light can be achieved by combining these blue and yellow emissions. After replacing MoO₄^2? with WO₄^2? and VO₄^3? anions in Na₅Y(MoO₄)₄:Dy³⁺, the luminescence intensity of Dy³⁺ was significantly improved due to the crystal field effect. The results indicate that Na₅Y(MoO₄)_3.97(WO₄)_0.03:Dy³⁺ and Na₅Y(MoO₄)_3.97(VO₄)_0.03:Dy³⁺ phosphors have good prospects for application in n-UV-excited w-LEDs.     

The effect of Li+ incorporation in Yb3+-Nd3+ co-doped CaF2 phosphors over the NIR photoluminescence emission excited under visible light

The structural and optical characteristics of Nd³⁺-Yb³⁺ doped CaF₂ phosphors with and without the addition of Li⁺ ions are described in this work. The phosphors synthetized by hydrothermal and co-precipitation methods showed near-infrared (NIR) luminescence emission associated with inter-electronic transition of the Yb³⁺ ion in the range of 900–1050 nm via energy transfer process from Nd³⁺ ions under visible light excitation. The addition of Li⁺ to these phosphors resulted in an improvement of the NIR luminescence intensity by a factor up to 5. The effect of the incorporation of Li⁺ ions into the CaF₂ crystallite structure, the reduction of luminescence quenching states, as well as the energy transfer mechanism involved are discussed.     

A numerical study on the performance of PEMFC with wedge-shaped fins in the cathode channel

The gas flow field design has a significant influence on the overall performance of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). A single-channel PEMFC with wedge-shaped fins in the cathode channel was proposed, and the effects of fin parameters such as volume (0.5 mm³, 1.0 mm³, and 1.5 mm³), number (3, 5, and 9), and porosity of the gas diffusion layer (GDL) (0.2, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.8) on the performance of PEMFC were numerically examined based on the growth rate of power density (GRPD) and polarization curve. It was shown that wedge-shaped fins could effectively improve the PEMFC performance. With an increase in fin volume, the distributions of oxygen mass fraction in the outlet area of the cathode channel were lower, the drainage effect of the PEMFC improved, and GRPD also increased accordingly. Similar results were obtained as the number of fins increased. The GDL porosity had a greater effect than the wedge-shaped fins on the improvement in PEMFC performance, but the influence of GDL porosity weakened and the GRPD of porosity decreased as the porosity increased. This study provides an effective guideline for the optimization of the cathode channel in a PEMFC.