A naphthalene sublimation study on heat/mass transfer for flow over a flat plate

It is important to completely understand heat/mass transfer from a flat plate because it is a basic element of heat/mass transfer. In the present study, local heat/mass transfer coefficient is obtained for two flow conditions to investigate the effect of boundary layer using the naphthalene sublimation technique. Obtained local heat/mass transfer coefficient is converted to dimensionless parameters such as Sherwood number, Stanton number and Colburnj-factor. These also are compared with correlations of laminar and turbulent heat/mass transfer from a flat plate. According to experimental results, local Sherwood number and local Stanton number are in much better agreement with the correlation of turbulent region rather than laminar region, which means analogy between heat/mass transfer and momentum transfer is more suitable for turbulent boundary layer. But average Sherwood number and average Colburnj-factor representing analogy between heat/mass transfer and momentum transfer are consistent with the correlation of laminar boundary layer as well as turbulent boundary layer.     

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Abstract

When news of the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi circulated through New Delhi on 30 January 1948, Margaret Bourke-White, one of Life magazine's premier photographers, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, then a comparatively unknown French photojournalist, raced to Birla House, where the event occurred. Both understood the journalistic imperative of photographing Gandhi's body. Because of their different philosophical and technical approaches to photography, they responded to the challenge in different ways and produced very different results. This study compares their ideas, approaches, and results. It also offers a case study of one of Cartier-Bresson' s most important news reportages.¹     

Co-precipitation synthesis of nanocrystalline SnO2: Effect of Fe doping on structural,morphological and ethanol vapor response properties

The present study describes undoped and Fe-doped tin dioxide thick films as selective ethanol vapor sensors. The undoped and Fe doped SnO₂ powders were synthesized by using a facile co-precipitation route. The thick films of undoped and Fe-doped SnO₂ were deposited by screen-printing technique and then sintered at 650 °C for 2 h. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX) techniques. The XRD studies reveal formation of nanocrystalline structure. The particle size of undoped and Fe (2 and 4 mol%) doped SnO₂ sintered powders were 17, 10 and 8 nm, respectively. It was found that the response of SnO₂ improved on addition of Fe. The 2 mol% Fe doped SnO₂ exhibits highest response toward ethanol at the operating temperature of 300 °C with response and recovery time of 15 and 32 s, respectively.     

Heat spreading in a thin longitudinal fin

In view of the trend towards higher power densities in ever shrinking geometries, understanding heat spreading fundamentals is gaining importance. In this paper heat spreading in thin longitudinal geometries is considered. This geometry is of practical interest in one-dimensional Cartesian geometries. A characteristic length is derived and it is shown that this has physical significance for the distance that heat spreads, and for the total amount of heat cooled away. Furthermore, it is investigated when “thin” is a viable assumption. The use of the characteristic length is illustrated for the case of a line source cooling to a plate and for the case of the fins of a plate heatsink. The results are compared to numerical simulations. The work is an extension of the authors' earlier work on heat spreading in infinite longitudinal geometries and heat spreading in infinite and finite circular geometries.     

Conducting inferential statistics for low microbial counts in foods using the Poisson-gamma regression

Mixed Poisson distributions have been shown to be able to represent low microbial counts more efficiently than the lognormal distribution because of its greater flexibility to model microbial clustering even when data consist of a large proportion of zero counts. The objective of this study was to develop an alternative modelling framework for low microbial counts based on heterogeneous Poisson regressions. As an illustration, Poisson-gamma regression models were used to assess the effect of chilling on the concentration of total coliforms from beef carcasses (n = 600) sampled at eight large Irish abattoirs. Three Poisson-gamma and three zero-modified (hurdle and zero-inflated) models were appraised with a series of random-effects variants in order to extract any variability in microbial mean concentration, dispersion and/or proportion of zero counts. Models were compared and validated in their ability to predict the coliforms counts on carcasses after chilling. In all five test batches, the hurdle Poisson-gamma distributions predicted the observed post-chill counts closer than the Poisson-gamma distributions. This is justified by the better capacity of the hurdle model to represent a higher proportion of zero counts, which were in fact observed in the post-chill batches. Thus, with a coded variable (pre-chill/post-chill) as treatment, and extracting the significant variability of batches nested in abattoirs for the coliforms mean concentration (σ²_u = 2.68), the dispersion measure (σ²_v = 2.39) and the probability of zero counts (σ²_w = 0.89), the validated hurdle Poisson-gamma model confirmed that chilling has a decreasing effect on the viability of coliforms from beef carcasses, and that the concentration is reduced by an average (pre-chill to post-chill) factor of 2.2 (95% CI: 2.15–2.24) at batch level. The model also indicated that chilling increases the odds of producing a zero count from a carcass swab in about 13.5 times, and that the higher the coliforms concentration in a batch, the weaker the effect that chilling has to reduce such contamination on the beef carcasses.     

Evaluation of back-calculated elastic moduli of unreinforced and geocell-reinforced unbound granular material from full-scale field tests

This paper presents a field-scale experimental track over a poor subgrade with an unreinforced section and a geocell-reinforced section subjected to in-situ performance tests. Plate load tests and Benkelman beam tests were carried out distributed in several unreinforced and reinforced layers. The objective was to: (1) examine the variability of the elastic modulus of unbound granular material (UGM) due the influence of its thickness and the presence of poor subgrade in its base, (2) evaluate the modulus improvement factor (MIF) generated by the geocell reinforcement in the UGM and (3) verify the most appropriate condition to apply the MIF to transport infrastructure design. The results showed that there is a significant influence of the thickness of the UGM layer on its elastic modulus when the layer is supported directly over a soft subgrade. The MIF values obtained in field suggest that its determination is mostly related to the UGM maximum elastic modulus rather than its decreased values (by virtue of poor subgrade or reduced thicknesses), and that the analytical formulation presented for MIF calculation has good predictive capability to be applied to pavement design.     

High performance multi-layer varistor (MLV) from doped ZnO nanopowders by water based tape casting: Rheology,sintering, microstructure and properties

In this work, we report the fabrication of a high performance multi-layer varistor (MLV) via water based tape casting method using novel compositions of nanomaterials. Bi₂O₃, CaO and Co₃O₄ doped ZnO nanopowders were prepared by solution combustion synthesis (SCS) route, calcined at different temperatures (550, 650, 750 and 850?°C) and characterized by TEM, XRD, SEM and AFM. The nanopowder (crystallite size ~30?nm) calcined at 650?°C for 1?h was used as the starting material for MLV fabrication. Compositions of the slurry containing doped ZnO nanopowders, binder and plasticizer in water solvent were optimized for the fabrication of thick film. The rheological properties of the slurries having different solid loadings were analysed and thick films of various thicknesses (50–500?µm) were prepared by varying the feeding rate of tape casting. The film roughness of 38.3?nm for the thick film made from 40?wt% solid slurry was found to be superior compared to other samples due to the presence of reduced crack and shrinkage. MLV fired at 950?°C for 1.5?h exhibited a coefficient of nonlinearity of 18 and breakdown voltage of 291.5?V that yields superior properties compared to commercial MLVs.     

Scattering of guided shear waves in plates with discontinuities

This paper investigates the interaction of the SH0 mode with discontinuities in plate waveguides. The scattered fields are evaluated using a novel method that exploits the principle of reciprocity in elastodynamics. The results obtained compare to those provided by a finite element model. Very good agreement between the analytical and numerical models proves the effectiveness of the proposed approach, enabling us to clearly elucidate the role of the different size and shape parameters involved. The discontinuities considered are single and double sharp reductions of plate height of different amounts and lengths, where both symmetric and nonsymmetric one-sided notch cases are treated. Regimes related to low and high values of the product frequency and height of the plate are investigated, showing the dependence of reflection and transmission coefficients on length and height of the discontinuity, as well as the occurrence of mode conversion. The analytical approach proposed leads to a better understanding of the interaction of guided waves with discontinuities, which may stimulate the application of guided waves to defect sizing rather than to simple detection.     

Theoretical and experimental study of fatigue growth of interacting cracks

Life assessment of structures weakened by interacting cracks represents an important and very challenging problem. Subsequently, the main objective of this paper is to address this problem by developing a new computational technique. It is based on the classical strip-yield model and plasticity-induced crack closure concept. It also utilises the 3D fundamental solution for an edge dislocation. The crack advance scheme adopts the cycle-by-cycle calculations of the effective stress intensity factors and crack increments. The modelling results are validated against an experimental study focusing on fatigue behaviour of two closely spaced collinear cracks in wide plates with different thicknesses. It is confirmed that non-linear effects associated with crack interaction have a significant influence on fatigue life and cannot be disregarded in life and integrity assessments of structural components.     

Ammonia evaporation in a mixed configuration chevron plate heat exchanger with and without miscible oil

An experimental study was conducted to determine the effects of miscible lubricant oil on evaporation of ammonia in a vertical chevron plate heat exchanger. The heat exchanger was configured in a U-type counter flow arrangement with mixed (30°/60°) chevron plate configuration. Experiments were carried out for four saturation temperatures ranging from −25 °C to −2 °C for a fixed ammonia mass flux rate of 6.5 kg m⁻² s⁻¹ and over a range of heat flux levels resulting in a vapor quality at the heat exchanger exit ranging between 0.5 and 0.9. For a given saturation temperature, experiments were performed for 0%, 3%, 6% and 9% oil concentrations, by volume in ammonia. The oil concentration, exit vapor quality, heat flux and saturation temperature were found to have significant effects on the heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop of ammonia. Based on the experimental data, correlations to estimate two phase Nusselt number and friction factor, generalized for the whole range of oil concentration have been presented.