Heat transfer in a turbulent jet impinging on a moving plate considering high plate-to-jet velocity ratios

In this paper, heat transfer characteristics of a turbulent slot jet impinging orthogonally on an isothermal moving hot plate is studied numerically. The governing equations were discretized using the finite volume method and the υ ² — f turbulence model was employed for turbulence modeling. The effect of the jet Reynolds number and the plate-to-jet velocity ratio (R) on the Nusselt were investigated. Despite of most previous studies, which have been restricted to R≤2, in the present research higher values of R, also were considered (0≤R≤6). Range of studied jet Reynolds number was between 3000 and 60000. The results indicate that at a fixed plate-to-jet velocity ratio increment of the Reynolds number leads to the enhancement of the average Nusselt number. For each Reynolds number, the average Nusselt number reduces with increasing the plate-to-jet velocity ratio until it becomes minimum at R = 1.25. For R>1.25 trend changes so that these parameters increase. In addition, it was found that only for R>2.5 the average Nusselt number is improved due to the plate motion in comparison with the stationary jet. The results are validated against available experimental data, showing good agreement.     

On the Impact of Performance Faults in Modern Microprocessors

Modern microprocessors incorporate a variety of architectural features, such as branch prediction and speculative execution, which are not critical to the correctness of their operation yet are essential towards improving performance. Accordingly, while faults in the corresponding hardware may not necessarily affect functional correctness, they may, nevertheless, adversely impact performance. In this paper, we investigate quantitatively the performance impact of such faults using a superscalar, dynamically-scheduled, out-of-order, Alpha-like microprocessor, on which we execute SPEC2000 integer benchmarks. We provide extensive fault simulation-based experimental results that elucidate the various aspects of performance faults and we discuss how this information may guide the inclusion of additional hardware for performance loss recovery and yield enhancement.     

Development of a low-cost volumetric additive manufacturing printer using less viscous commercial resins

The technological development of the 3D printing industry has been tremendous starting from stereolithography in the 1980 s. Low throughput and surface quality had been the major obstacles to this technology, which offers very limited constraints to the geometrical shapes. In this work, we designed a low-cost volumetric 3D printer that, unlike traditional 3D printers, polymerizes the whole geometry within the revolving resin container. Optimized projections needed for the polymerization of target objects were developed in MATLAB R2020b using the concepts of tomographic reconstruction. The rotation of the resin container and the projections rate were matched to develop the target geometries after the oxygen depletion. Commercially available low viscous Anycubic plant-based resins were used as the printing material. 3D objects of centimeter scale could be manufactured in 30 seconds with extremely low surface roughness in the sub-micron range. The dimensional deviation of final components from the CAD model was found to be within 5%. The over-printing on existing solid structures was successfully experimented with and thus opens the way for future developments. Commercialization of volumetric 3D printers would result in mass production of complex customer-specific functional components which in turn boosts the manufacturing sector significantly.     

Validated Growth Rate-Dependent Regulation of Lipid Metabolism in Yarrowia lipolytica

Given the strong potential of Yarrowia lipolytica to produce lipids for use as renewable fuels and oleochemicals, it is important to gain in-depth understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying its lipid accumulation. As cellular growth rate affects biomass lipid content, we performed a comparative proteomic analysis of Y. lipolytica grown in nitrogen-limited chemostat cultures at different dilution rates. After confirming the correlation between growth rate and lipid accumulation, we were able to identify various cellular functions and biological mechanisms involved in oleaginousness. Inspection of significantly up- and downregulated proteins revealed nonintuitive processes associated with lipid accumulation in this yeast. This included proteins related to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, ER–plasma membrane tether proteins, and arginase. Genetic engineering of selected targets validated that some genes indeed affected lipid accumulation. They were able to increase lipid content and were complementary to other genetic engineering strategies to optimize lipid yield.     

Effect of dimethyl formamide in the synthesis of linear low density polyethylene on branched and molecular structure

In this research work, effect of dimethyl formamide (DMF) as an external electron donor in gas phase ethylene/1‐butene copolymerization process in the presence of Ziegler–Natta catalyst has been investigated. Different experiments were performed using TiCl₄/MgCl₂ as catalyst, triethyl aluminum as cocatalyst and in the presence of various amounts of DMF as an external electron donor. Then, effect of DMF on various parameters such as catalyst activity, molecular weight, and short chain branching content of the samples has been studied. The results showed that the more the ratio of DMF/Ti, the lower the catalyst activity. Moreover, the curves relating molecular weight and short chain branching content of the samples to the ratio of DMF/Ti passed through an extremum point at about DMF/Ti = 0.25. A justification for the occurrence of the extremum point has been proposed in this research work, and some analysis methods are adopted to confirm the suggested justification. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 123: 1267–1272, 2012     

A new fast settling low power CMOS gain stage architecture

This paper presents a new gain stage for high accuracy and fast settling applications. In the proposed structure a novel combination of closed loop and open loop amplifiers is employed to achieve high accuracy and enhanced settling behavior while adding only negligible power to the main circuit power constraint. To evaluate the functionality of the proposed idea, a zero cross based circuit and a switch capacitor amplifier are designed to implement the open loop and the closed loop stages, respectively. Though, other topologies for implementation of open loop and closed loop amplifiers are applicable in the presented gain stage. The proposed structure is implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS technology. HSPICE simulation results, using level 49 models, demonstrate that the new configuration improves the power efficiency and the settling behavior as well as the system accuracy. The proposed scheme shows very fast settling times of 0.8, 1.01, 1.41 ns for the gain accuracies of 6, 8 and 10 bits, respectively, while loaded with 1 pF capacitance and the output swing is 1.6 V. In comparison with a conventional switched capacitor closed loop amplifier, the proposed architecture improves the settling performance by a factor of 3 for 6 bit resolution, while it adds only 0.63 mW power to the total power consumption that is 8.68 mW.     

An enhanced folded cascode Op-Amp using positive feedback and bulk amplification in 0.35 μm CMOS process

In this paper a new operational amplifier is presented which is based on the conventional folded cascode Op-Amp structure. A new method of positive feedback is used to increase dc-gain. This method does not limit the range of the output voltage swing. True performance of the Op-Amp in higher output voltage swings is another advantage of the proposed Op-Amp in comparison with the conventional structures. Bulk amplification and positive feedback are used to improve the Op-Amp specifications. Proposed structure has been simulated by HSPICE software using level 49 parameters (BSIM3v3) in a typical 0.35 μm CMOS technology. The HSPICE simulation confirms the theoretical estimated improvements.     

Reuse of treated municipal wastewater in irrigation: a case study from Lebanon and Jordan

In this study, we present the results of scenarios where secondary‐treated municipal wastewater was used for table grapes irrigation in the region of Ablah, Bekaa valley in Lebanon, and fodder crops irrigation (vetch and barley) in the region of Ramtha in Jordan. In Lebanon, we carried out experiments to assess the response of drip‐irrigated table grapes grown under two water quality regimes (Freshwater (FW) and treated wastewater (TW) and two water levels (100% of evapotranspiration (ETc) and 75% of ETc). While in Jordan, we carried out experiments to assess the response of drip‐irrigated fodder crops considering 4 irrigation levels (Q1: Rain fed; Q2: 80% of ETc; Q3: 100% of ETc; Q4: 120% of ETc) and three crop patterns (C1: Barley 100%; C2: Vetch 100%; C3: Mix 50% barley and 50% vetch). Based on the production and quality components, table grapes were successfully grown on plots that are supplied with TW. Fodder crops were successfully grown using TW with remarkable increase in biomass and grain yield production for the irrigated treatments.     

Novel Bayesian Additive Regression Tree Methodology for Flood Susceptibility Modeling

Water Resources Management - Identifying areas prone to flooding is a key step in flood risk management. The purpose of this study is to develop and present a novel flood susceptibility model based...