冲击位置对三明治型复合板材冲击性能的影响分析

釆用高强低伸工业涤纶为原料,加工织造了机织间隔织物,对间隔织物空间进行泡沫填充,面层与树脂进行复合,制成了三明治型复合材料板材。测试了冲击位置不同时复合板材耐冲击性能和冲击前后板材的侧压性能,分析了冲击位置对三明治型复合板材耐冲击性能的影响。结果表明,相同冲击能量作用下,冲击位置不同时,复合板材的表观破坏和冲击后侧压性能均有差异。在间隔织物规格相同的情况下,冲击位置在接结点处的板材表观冲击损伤大,但冲击发生在接结点处的板材受冲击后,所能承受的侧压载荷相对较大。     

Application of intensive hydrodynamic cavitation in liquids for synthesis of hydrogen and nanoparticles

In this paper, the results of experimental studies of hydrogen and nanoparticles production using intensive hydrodynamic cavitation in liquids are presented. Physicochemical processes occurring in a cavitation bubble at the last stage of its compression are very similar to processes occurring in the explosion chamber.The values of pressure and temperature achieved in this case ensure the thermodynamic stability of the reaction products and the production of a gaseous hydrogen and nanoclusters as a result of decomposition of molecules of liquid, which is confirmed by theoretical calculations.The controlled addition of hydrogen-containing liquids and the change in the compression conditions of cavitation bubbles make it possible to control the process of hydrogen synthesis, which is an important step in the development of modern high-tech alternative energy methods.The pulsation of a spherical cavity is described by the Kirkwood – Bethe equations, which are one of the most accurate mathematical models of pulsation processes at an arbitrary velocity of the cavity boundary. The model allows to describe the process of pulsations of cavitation cavities, conduct comprehensive parametric studies and evaluate the effect of various process parameters on the collapse of cavities.This work continues with the experiments on cavitation synthesis of carbon nanostructures. With the rapid movement of chemically pure hydrocarbons along the profiled channel in the form of a Venturi nozzle, cavitation bubbles form in the liquid, which are then compressed in the working chamber, in which a sharp pressure surge is created. The pressure in the shock wave, which reaches 80–90 MPa, ensures the collapse of cavitation bubbles close to adiabatic compression. As a result of the number of rapidly occurring physicochemical processes of evaporation, heating, and thermal dissociation of hydrocarbon vapors, a solid carbon phase including graphene oxide nanoparticles and a gaseous hydrogen-containing phase are synthesized in the cavitation, which is then subjected to separation. Synthesized graphene oxide nanoparticles possess activated surface due to the cavitation action and can be subsequently used as substrates for modification with functional nanoparticles, e.g. silver nanoparticles with antibacterial properties.The article is of great help to scientists and design engineers who are engaged in the development of promising hydrogen generating facilities and hydrogen complexes.     

STAR-Lite: A light-weight scalable self-taught learning framework for older adults’ activity recognition

Recognizing activities for older adults is challenging as we observe a variety of activity patterns caused due to aging (e.g., limited dexterity, limb control, slower response time) or/and underlying health conditions (e.g., dementia). However, existing literature with deep learning methods has successfully recognized activities when the dataset contains high-quality annotations and is captured in a controlled environment. On the contrary, data captured in a real-world environment, especially with older adults exhibiting memory-related symptoms, varying psychological and mental health status, reliance on caregivers to perform daily activities, and unavailability of domain-specific annotators, makes obtaining quality data with annotations challenging; leaving us with limited labeled data and abundant unlabeled data. In this paper, we hypothesize that projecting the labeled data representations comprising a specific set of activities onto a new representation space characterized by the unlabeled data comprising activities beyond the limited activities in the labeled dataset would help us rely less on the annotated data to improve activity detection performance. Motivated by this, we propose STAR-Lite, a self-taught learning framework that involves a pre-training framework to prepare the new representation space considering activities beyond the initial labels in the labeled dataset. STAR-Lite projects the labeled data representations on the new representation space characterized by unlabeled data labels and learns higher-level representations of the labeled dataset while optimizing inter- and intra- class distances without explicitly using a computation hungry similarity-based approach. We demonstrate that our proposed approach, STAR-Lite (a) improves activity recognition performance in a supervised setting and (b) is feasible for real-world deployment. To enhance the feasibility of deploying STAR-Lite on devices with limited memory resources, we explore model compression techniques such as pruning and quantization and propose a novel layer-wise pruning-rate optimization technique that effectively compresses the network while preserving the model performance. The evaluation was performed using the Alzheimer’s Activity Recognition dataset (AAR) captured from 25 individuals living in a retirement community center with IRB approval (#Y18NR12035) using an in-house SenseBox infrastructure while concurrently assessing the clinical evaluation of the participants for dementia, and independent living. Our extensive evaluation reveals that STAR-Lite can detect activities with an F1-score of 85.12% despite 62% reduction in model size and 5% improvement of execution time on a resource constrained device.     

HYDRIDE4MOBILITY: An EU HORIZON 2020 project on hydrogen powered fuel cell utility vehicles using metal hydrides in hydrogen storage and refuelling systems

The goal of the EU Horizon 2020 RISE project 778307 “Hydrogen fuelled utility vehicles and their support systems utilising metal hydrides” (HYDRIDE4MOBILITY), is in addressing critical issues towards a commercial implementation of hydrogen powered forklifts using metal hydride (MH) based hydrogen storage and PEM fuel cells, together with the systems for their refuelling at industrial customers facilities. For these applications, high specific weight of the metallic hydrides has an added value, as it allows counterbalancing of a vehicle with no extra cost. Improving the rates of H₂ charge/discharge in MH on the materials and system level, simplification of the design and reducing the system cost, together with improvement of the efficiency of system “MH store-FC”, is in the focus of this work as a joint effort of consortium uniting academic teams and industrial partners from two EU and associated countries Member States (Norway, Germany, Croatia), and two partner countries (South Africa and Indonesia).The work within the project is focused on the validation of various efficient and cost-competitive solutions including (i) advanced MH materials for hydrogen storage and compression, (ii) advanced MH containers characterised by improved charge-discharge dynamic performance and ability to be mass produced, (iii) integrated hydrogen storage and compression/refuelling systems which are developed and tested together with PEM fuel cells during the collaborative efforts of the consortium.This article gives an overview of HYDRIDE4MOBILITY project focused on the results generated during its first phase (2017–2019).     

基于马尔可夫随机场的加密二值图像有损压缩算法

尽管当前已有众多二值图像的压缩方法,但这些方法并不能直接应用于加密二值图像的压缩。在云计算、分布式处理等场景下,如何高效地对加密二值图像进行有损压缩仍然是一个挑战,而当前鲜有这方面的研究。针对此问题,提出了一种基于马尔可夫随机场(MRF)的加密二值图像有损压缩算法。该算法用MRF表征二值图像的空域统计特性,进而借助MRF及解压缩还原的像素推断加密二值图像压缩过程中被丢弃的像素。所提算法的发送方采用流密码对二值图像进行加密,云端先后利用分块均匀但块内随机的下抽样方式及低密度奇偶校验(LDPC)编码对加密二值图像进行压缩,接收方则通过构造包含解码、解密及MRF重构的联合因子图实现二值图像的有损重构。实验结果表明,所提算法获得了较好的压缩效率,在0.2~0.4 bpp压缩率时有损重构图像的比特误差率(BER)不超过5%;而与针对未加密原始二值图像的国际压缩标准JBIG2的压缩效率相比,所提算法的压缩效率与其相当。这些充分表明了所提算法的可行性与有效性。     

Comparative study of granular solid-structure interaction in a uni-axial compression system

Interaction between granular solids and confining structures is an elementary problem encountered in subsurface structural design and bulk solids storing and handling. A classic scenario is uni-axial compression of granular solids in a deformable cylindrical container. Despite being apparently simple in loading condition, the understanding of this scenario remains limited, mainly due to complex interactive deformation between the two components via frictional interfaces. This paper comparatively examines such a uni-axial compression particulate system by a laboratory experiment and two different numerical approaches, namely, continuum finite element method (FEM) and linked discrete-finite element method (linked DEM-FEM). In the continuum FEM approach, two intendedly chosen simple material models, linear elastic and porous elastic models, are attempted. The comparative study reveals that the majority of resultant characteristics show satisfactory agreement amongst the numerical predictions and the experimental measurements. The simple elastic continuum FEM models can hence be a useful alternative in modelling such problems with mild structural flexibility under a monotonic loading scenario. However, precise prediction of some characteristics, such as lateral pressure ratio, may demand more elaborated material model or parameter selection. The enhancements needed for each numerical approach in order to achieve an improved result are further discussed.     

二甲醚/乙烷混合气低温着火延迟特性

为了研究二甲醚/乙烷混合气在低温下的着火延迟特性,在快速压缩机实验台架上测量了二甲醚/乙烷混合气在上止点温度627～912 K,上止点压力16～30 bar,当量比0.5～1和乙烷掺混比0～70%条件下的着火延迟期.同时,基于CHEMKIN-PRO软件进行了同等工况条件下的模拟计算.实验与模拟结果表明:二甲醚/乙烷混合气总着火延迟期呈现明显的负温度系数(NTC)现象,且在较低的上止点压力下NTC现象更加明显.上止点压力和当量比的增加使得第一阶段和总着火延迟期均呈现缩短趋势,尤其在NTC区间.乙烷的添加显著抑制了着火,混合气的第一阶段和总着火延迟期显著延长.化学动力学分析表明,乙烷竞争主要由二甲醚低温着火过程主导产生的OH自由基进而抑制二甲醚的低温氧化,而自身的着火过程得到促进甚至呈现两阶段特性.但是随着乙烷掺混比的增加,整体混合气的低温着火过程仍受到抑制,放热率和活性自由基累积量降低,因此着火延迟期延长.     

Surrogate functionality of celluloses as tablet excipients

Background: The variety of excipients from different sources and prices to which we have access gives rise to the necessity to evaluate their functional characteristics. The aim of this work is to determine some physical and technological characteristics of celluloses from different sources, India and United States, to ascertain their functionality as tablet excipients. Methods: The used surrogate functionality properties are particle morphology and particle size distribution, compactibility, ejection pressure, and the disintegration properties of pure excipients and their compressed tablets. Results: The innovators Avicel and Croscarmellose show advantages over the generic celluloses Alfacel and Carmacel. Avicel PH 101 and 102 show an average of 26% greater compactibility than both types of Alfacel, whereas the compactibility of Croscarmellose is greater than that of Carmacel in about 50%. Avicel tablets compacted at a compaction pressure of 47 MPa exhibit shorter disintegration times (3.7 minutes) than Alfacel tablets (28 minutes), whereas Carmacel show better disintegrant properties than Croscarmellose. This occurs regardless of the similar particle morphology, size, and size distribution. As expected, all celluloses show low ejection pressures. Conclusion: The surrogate functionality properties of the generic celluloses are still considered as satisfactory to be used as tablet excipients, although they are inferior in some aspects to innovator celluloses. Alfacel and Carmacel have the potential to be used as filler, binder, and disintegrant, in the design of tablets. Moreover, one should bear in mind that the differences reported here may be altered because of a possible inter-batch variability and variations in the moisture content.     

Magnetic refrigeration: a promising new technology for energy saving

Magnetic refrigeration is an emerging, environment-friendly technology based on a magnetic solid that acts as a refrigerant by magnetocaloric effect. The reference cycle for magnetic refrigeration is AMR (Active Magnetic Regenerative refrigeration). In this paper, attention is directed towards the near-room-temperature range. We compare the energetic performance of a commercial R134a refrigeration plant to that of a magnetic refrigerator working with an AMR cycle. The comparison is carried out by means of a mathematical model. In these simulations, we consider different solid magnetic refrigerants, namely, Gd, Gd_0.95Dy_0.05, Gd_0.9Tb_0.1,Gd₅Si₂Ge₂, MnAs_0.9Sb_0.1, and MnAs_0.95Sb_0.05. We compared two different geometries of the regenerator: a porous medium and a flat plate. In the former, the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of the AMR cycle is better than that of the vapour compression plant only in the low mass flow-rate range. Whereas in a flat plate regenerator, the COP of the AMR cycle is better than that of the vapour compression plant only in the high mass flow-rate range.