A Simple Quasi-2D Numerical Model of a Thermogage Furnace

A simple quasi-2D model for the temperature distribution in a graphite tube furnace is presented. The model is used to estimate the temperature gradients in the furnace at temperatures above which contact sensors can be used, and to assist in the redesign of the furnace heater element to improve the temperature gradients. The Thermogage graphite tube furnace is commonly used in many NMIs as a blackbody source for radiation thermometer calibration and as a spectral irradiance standard. Although the design is robust, easy to operate and can change temperature rapidly, it is limited by its effective emissivity of typically 99.5–99.8%. At NMIA, the temperature gradient along the tube is assessed using thermocouples up to about 1,500°C, and the blackbody emissivity is calculated from this. However, at higher operating temperatures (up to 2,900°C), it is impractical to measure the gradient, and we propose to numerically model the temperature distributions used to calculate emissivity. In another paper at this conference, the model is used to design an optimized heater tube with improved temperature gradients. In the model presented here, the 2-D temperature distribution is simplified to separate the axial and radial temperature distributions within the heater tube and the surrounding insulation. Literature data for the temperature dependence of the electrical and thermal conductivities of the graphite tube were coupled to models for the thermal conductivity of the felt insulation, particularly including the effects of allowing for a gas mixture in the insulation. Experimental measurements of the temperature profile up to 1,500°C and radial heat fluxes up to 2,200°C were compared to the theoretical predictions of the model and good agreement was obtained.     

Utilising psychophysical techniques to investigate the effects of age,typeface design,size and display polarity on glance legibility

Psychophysical research on text legibility has historically investigated factors such as size, colour and contrast, but there has been relatively little direct empirical evaluation of typographic design itself, particularly in the emerging context of glance reading. In the present study, participants performed a lexical decision task controlled by an adaptive staircase method. Two typefaces, a ‘humanist’ and ‘square grotesque’ style, were tested. Study I examined positive and negative polarities, while Study II examined two text sizes. Stimulus duration thresholds were sensitive to differences between typefaces, polarities and sizes. Typeface also interacted significantly with age, particularly for conditions with higher legibility thresholds. These results are consistent with previous research assessing the impact of the same typefaces on interface demand in a simulated driving environment. This simplified methodology of assessing legibility differences can be adapted to investigate a wide array of questions relevant to typographic and interface designs.

Practitioner Summary: A method is described for rapidly investigating relative legibility of different typographical features. Results indicate that during glance-like reading induced by the psychophysical technique and under the lighting conditions considered, humanist-style type is significantly more legible than a square grotesque style, and that black-on-white text is significantly more legible than white-on-black.     

Scaling study of cavitation pitting from cavitating jets and ultrasonic horns

Cavitation erosion prediction and characterization of cavitation field strength are of interest to industries suffering from cavitation erosion detrimental effects. One means to evaluate cavitation fields and materials is to examine pitting rates during the incubation period, where the test sample undergoes localized permanent deformations shaped as individual pits. In this study, samples from three metallic materials, an Aluminum alloy (Al 7075), a Nickel Aluminum Bronze (NAB) and a Duplex Stainless Steel (SS A2205) were subjected to a vast range of cavitation intensities generated by cavitating jets at different driving pressures and by an ultrasonic horn. The resulting pitted sample surfaces were examined and characterized with a non-contact 3D optical scanner and the resulting damage computer-analyzed. A statistical analysis of the pit population and its characteristics was then carried out. It was found that the various cavitation field strengths can be correlated to the measured pit distributions and that two characteristic quantities: a characteristic number of pits per unit surface area and unit time, and a characteristic pit diameter or a characteristic pit depth can be attributed to a given “cavitation intensity level”. This characterization concept can be used in the future to study the cavitation intensity of the full scale and to develop methods of full scale predictions based on model scale erosion data.     

Material and velocity effects on cavitation erosion pitting

Cavitation erosion during the incubation period was investigated via pitting tests conducted on three different materials: an Aluminum alloy, a Nickel Aluminum Bronze alloy and a Duplex Stainless Steel. Pitting tests were conducted in a cavitation tunnel in the velocity range 45–90 m/s at a constant cavitation number. The test section was made of a straight nozzle 16 mm in diameter discharged into the radial 2.5 mm space between two flat walls. Cavitation appears in the form of a toroidal cavity attached to the nozzle exit and damage on the samples facing the nozzle is concentrated in a circular ring centered in the cavity closure region. The exposure time was adjusted to avoid pit overlapping. The material surface was examined using a conventional contact profilometer which allowed us to identify the pits, count them, and measure their main characteristics such as depth, surface area, and volume. From these the pitting rate, the coverage rate, and the depth of deformation rate were defined. Pits were classified according to their diameter. For all materials and operating conditions, pitting rate appears to follow an exponential law in relation to the pit diameter. This law depends upon two parameters only, which were identified as the coverage time τ (i.e. the time required for the surface to be covered by erosion pits) and a characteristic pit diameter δ, which corresponds to the pits whose contribution to the coverage process is the highest. Scaling laws for pitting were derived accounting for both material properties and flow velocity, and a procedure to make pitting test results non-dimensional is proposed. The influence of the material on pitting test results was analyzed. It is shown that the damage is not correlated in simple terms with the elastic limit determined from conventional tensile tests and it is conjectured that other parameters such as the strain rate might play a significant role and should be included in the analysis. The effect of flow velocity on both parameters τ and δ was analyzed and a classical power law was found for the influence of the flow velocity on pitting rate for all three materials. Finally, some analysis and discussion is given concerning distributions of pit volume and pit depth.     

Modified potential theory for modeling supercritical gas adsorption

Theoretical modeling of adsorption plays a crucial role in providing better understanding of the adsorption phenomena, isotherms and isosteric heats. However, when modeling the adsorption of gas mixtures containing hydrogen, it is necessary to accommodate a wide temperature range because of hydrogen's low critical temperature. In this work, we extend the multicomponent potential theory of adsorption's (MPTA) capability of predicting adsorption isotherms to a wide temperature range by introducing a temperature dependent Dubinin potential parameter and use it to model adsorption isotherms of supercritical hydrogen, nitrogen and methane on various activated carbons. This extended MPTA can accurately predict the adsorption isotherms when used with NIST equation of state (EOS). The resulting isosteric heats of adsorption of hydrogen agree well with the experimental data for similar volume filling scenarios. Hydrogen's low temperature adsorbed-phase pressure inside the activated carbon's micropore volume reaches the melting pressure of solid hydrogen. This causes the transition of adsorbed hydrogen from supercritical gas to solid-like phase which is clearly observed in our model. Our study, thus, provides a better understanding of physisorption of hydrogen inside the micropores.     

Synthesis,characterization and hydrogen adsorption properties of metal–organic framework Al-TCBPB

In this work, a new metal–organic framework (MOF) was synthesized by using a large organic ligand 1,3,5-tris[4′-carboxy(1,1′-biphenyl)-4-yl] benzene (abbreviated as TCBPB) and aluminum as the metal that forms the secondary building unit (SBU) by solvothermal method. The MOF, named as Al-TCBPB, was characterized with pore textural properties, powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Raman and FT-IR spectroscopy. Hydrogen adsorption was measured volumetrically at ambient pressure and temperatures of 77, 88 and 298 K and at high pressure (up to 9 MPa) for temperatures 77 and 298 K. Pore textural properties revealed a high BET surface area of 2311 m²/g, narrow bimodal pore widths of 11.8 Å and 20 Å and a total pore volume of 0.80 cm³/g. PXRD identified the crystal structure as monoclinic with space group c2/m. This MOF adsorbs 1.53 and 0.83 wt.% of hydrogen at 77 and 88 K, respectively, and pressures up to ambient conditions. At higher pressure of 9 MPa, it demonstrated an excess adsorption of 4.8 and 1.4 wt.% at 77 and 298 K, respectively; these high-pressure data fit well with modified Dubinin–Astakov (D–A) analytical model. The heat of adsorption values of Al-TCBPB vary between 5.9 and 4.9 kJ/mol for the hydrogen adsorption loading of 0.1–0.8 wt.% and decreases monotonically to approximately 2 kJ/mol when the adsorption loading becomes 4.8 wt%.     

Influence of GMPLS on network providers' operational expenditures: a quantitative study

GMPLS is promoted as a major technology for the automation of network operations. It is often claimed to allow the reduction of operational expenses. However, detailed analysis and quantitative evaluation of the changes induced by such technologies is very rare. In this article we quantify the cost reduction potential of GMPLS. We present a detailed analysis and modeling of traditional operator processes. We also develop a model for the expected changed processes when using GMPLS and identify the differences quantitatively. A survey with major telecom operators has been done, and the process models have been verified and parameterized. This allowed quantitative evaluations of the OPEX changes with GMPLS. The results show that, depending on the network operator's processes, different impacts can be expected. As an overall result we could verify that a reduction on the order of 50 percent of OPEX can be expected for most operational models.     

Non-spherical bubble behavior in vortex flow fields

The boundary element method (BEM) is applied to solve the unsteady behavior of a bubble placed in a vortex flow field. The steady vortex field is given in terms of the viscous core radius and the circulation, both of which may vary along the vortex axis. For this study, 2DynaFS^©, an axisymmetric potential flow code which has been verified successfully for diverse type of fluid dynamic problems, is extended. The modifications to accommodate the ambient vortex flow field and to model the extreme deformations of the bubble are presented. Through the numerical simulations, the time history of the bubble geometry and the corresponding pressure signal at a fixed field point are obtained. A special effort is made to continue the numerical simulation after the bubble splits into two or more sub-bubbles. Indeed, it is found that an elongated bubble sometimes splits into smaller bubbles, which then collapse with the emission of strong pressure signals. The behavior of the axial jets after the split is also studied in more detail. This work was conducted at Dynaflow, Inc. (www.dynaflow-inc.com). The work has been supported by the Office of Naval Research under the contract No. N0014–99-C-0369 monitored by Dr. Ki-Han Kim. This support is greatly appreciated.     

Raman spectroscopy and nitrogen vapour adsorption for the study of structural changes during purification of single-wall carbon nanotubes

Raman spectroscopy and nitrogen adsorption measurements were combined to study the surface features of semi-conducting and metallic single-wall nanotubes (SWNTs). The nanotubes were treated chemically and with heat under moderate conditions that more than doubled the mesopore volume of the tested samples, which consistently led to a significant rise in the total surface area of up to 1550 m²/g. The large increase in the number of micropores of less than 1 nm in diameter was associated with the loosening of nanotube bundles as well as the creation of structural flaws on the surface of individual SWNTs due to chemical treatment. Micropores in the 1.0-1.8 nm range were associated with the holes created on the surface of individual tubes. Heating at 1000 °C was shown to restore nanotube diameter to their initial pre-chemical treatment levels with the change in the chirality of SWNTs and diminish the porosity by closing small holes. It was assumed that the intermediate frequency range (500-1100 cm⁻¹) was associated with the degree of imperfection of HiPco SWNTs crystalline structures, and therefore provided information about the degree of tube surface damage due to the presence of functional groups. A hypothesis explaining the transformation of SWNT porous structure during heat treatment is proposed.     

Improvement of heat transfer model for adsorptive hydrogen storage system

Hydrogen adsorption on high surface area activated carbon is an effective solution of hydrogen storage. Improvement is necessary for the heat transfer model of adsorptive hydrogen storage system. Distributed and lumped parameter models are implemented by the Comsol software and Matlab/Simulink software respectively. The evolution of pressure and temperature during charge and discharge processes is investigated. We adopted following measures for a further improvement on the model: (1) Wall temperature is improved by varying heat transfer coefficient; (2) A more realistic geometry with insert tube improves near inlet temperature; (3) Lumped parameter model is improved by considering thermal conductivity; (4) Distributed and lumped parameter models are well validated by experiments; (5) Heat transfer is modeled under conditions of air cooling and water cooling. The water cooling condition is better than air cooling condition in decreasing the temperature of the storage tank and improving the storage capacity.