Experimental study of the burner for FAA fire test: NexGen burner

The NexGen (Sonic) burner is the new burner developed by the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, to replace old oil burners used for the required fire certification tests on power plant‐related materials, as it provides the capability to control both air and fuel flow rates. During a fire test, the burner is supposed to simulate a certain fire condition, so the flame properties should be robust and repeatable. The NexGen burner can achieve this due to the precise fuel and air controls. However, the current calibration criterion (ISO2685:1998 and AC20‐135) may not be good enough to ensure consistent flame properties. In the presented work, the sensitivity of the burner performance to air and fuel flow rate, as measured by the temperature and heat flux for calibration purposes, was studied. Additionally, the influence of the turbulator and the thermocouple size used for flame calibration was also studied. The impact of varying fuel/air ratio and thermocouple sizes was studied by conducting fire tests on aluminum samples, to show the inadequacies in the current calibration standards.     

Spark Parameter Monitoring Feedback System for Preparation of Nanosilver Colloid in EDM

This study developed a system monitoring the electric discharge machine's (EDM) discharge energy and success rate to replace conventional oscilloscope observation. By using logic circuit, the signals are transmitted to the PC monitoring platform in order to display the discharge success times, discharge success rate, and electrode's consumption energy. The advantage of the proposed system is the capability to observe real-time discharges and record the experimental conditions, as well as optimize the discharge parameter settings. The experimental results suggest that, in the preparation of nanosilver colloid, the cost-performance of T_on–T_off at 10–100 µs is the optimal setting. The monitoring system also can take advantage of the discharge success rate to control the energy consumption of the electrode to obtain the standardization of products. The results suggest that, while discharge success rate, electrode's weight loss and wavelength of the absorption peak are considerably accurate, but concentration accuracy is relatively poor. The discharge success rate monitoring system is an innovative method that can help to realize electric discharge processing, optimize product quality, and it may be a powerful processing tool in the future.     

Ink drop filling by a slot coating die for an electrowetting display panel

Ink drops have to be filled into the square cells for an electrowetting display panel. Several ink solutions such as dodecane, tetradecane, and hexadecane were used as test liquids. These fluids have viscosities less than 4 mPas and surface tensions between 23.3 and 26 mN/m and contact angles less than 50°. A slot coating die was employed to deliver these liquids to fill up the square cells. The effects of several parameters such as coating thickness and coating speed were examined. Operating windows inside which the stable filling is possible could be found for these liquids. Several defects were observed outside the operating windows. A flow visualization technique was applied to observe the fluid motion in the coating bead region, particularly the movements of upstream and downstream menisci, the mechanism of liquid filling was discussed.     

扬州漆艺发展面临的困境与对策

本文以扬州漆艺为例,从扬州漆艺特点和传统文化入手,探讨了面临传统漆艺传承人培养体系不足、技法创新不足以及品牌化意识不强等问题时,扬州漆器厂在产品创新、品牌战略方面采取的一系列措施,期望能从扬州实例中找到当代漆器产业的发展方向。     

Automated detection of fovea in fundus images based on vessel-free zone and adaptive Gaussian template

This study developed a computerised method for fovea centre detection in fundus images. In the method, the centre of the optic disc was localised first by the template matching method, the disc–fovea axis (a line connecting the optic disc centre and the fovea) was then determined by searching the vessel-free region, and finally the fovea centre was detected by matching the fovea template around the centre of the axis. Adaptive Gaussian templates were used to localise the centres of the optic disc and fovea for the images with different resolutions. The proposed method was evaluated using three publicly available databases (DIARETDB0, DIARETDB1 and MESSIDOR), which consisted of a total of 1419 fundus images with different resolutions. The proposed method obtained the fovea detection accuracies of 93.1%, 92.1% and 97.8% for the DIARETDB0, DIARETDB1 and MESSIDOR databases, respectively. The overall accuracy of the proposed method was 97.0% in this study.     

Null-field BIEM for solving a scattering problem from a point source to a two-layer prolate spheroid

In this paper, the acoustic scattering problem from a point source to a two-layer prolate spheroid is solved by using the null-field boundary integral equation method (BIEM) in conjunction with degenerate kernels. To fully utilize the spheroidal geometry, the fundamental solutions and the boundary densities are expanded by using the addition theorem and spheroidal harmonics in the prolate spheroidal coordinates, respectively. Based on this approach, the collocation point can be located on the real boundary, and all boundary integrals can be determined analytically. In real applications of a two-layer prolate spheroidal structure, it can be applied to simulate the kidney-stone biomechanical system. Here, we consider the confocal structure to simulate the kidney-stone system since its analytical solution can be analytically derived. The parameter study for providing some references in the clinical medical treatment is also considered. To check the validity of the null-field BIEM, a special case of the acoustic scattering problem of a point source by a rigid scatterer is also done by setting the density of the inner prolate spheroid to infinity. Results of the present method are compared with those obtained using the commercial finite element software ABAQUS.     

孔隙气体对断裂电磁辐射的影响及其机理

含瓦斯煤变形破坏时,孔隙气体是对电磁辐射产生影响的最重要因素之一。基于孔隙气体对电磁辐射影响的实验结果,运用分子动力学理论和方法建立了气体吸附动态平衡方程,详尽地叙述了孔隙气体与新形成的壁面间的相互作用,在此基础上建立了孔隙气体对电磁辐射影响的唯象模型,讨论了其微观机制。结果表明,孔隙中的自由瓦斯气体对电磁辐射没有明显的影响,而吸附瓦斯气体对电磁辐射有非常明显的影响。在临界瓦斯压力之前,吸附量越多,电磁辐射越弱;临界压力之后,吸附量越多,电磁辐射越强。     

External stimulus-responsive biomaterials designed for the culture and differentiation of ES,iPS, and adult stem cells

The physical and chemical characteristics of biomaterial surface and hydrogels can be altered by external stimuli, such as light irradiation, temperature changes, pH shifts, shear stress forces, electrical forces, and the addition of small chemical molecules. Such external stimulus-responsive biomaterials represent promising candidates that have been developed for the culture and differentiation of embryonic stem (ES) cells, induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, and adult stem cells. Biomaterials that are designed to respond in a reversible manner to specific external signals can be formed on micropatterned or non-micropatterned surface, in hydrogels, or on microcarriers. Stem cells and the cells differentiated from them into specific tissue lineages can be cultured and/or differentiated on dishes with immobilized external stimulus-responsive polymers. Cells can be detached from these dishes without using an enzymatic digestion method or a mechanical method when the appropriate external stimulus is generated on the surface. This review discusses the polymers and polymeric designs employed to produce surface and hydrogels for stem cell culture, differentiation, and/or cell detachment using various external stimuli.     

Quantification of non-homogeneity from ocean remote-sensing images using two-dimensional continuous wavelet transforms

In this study, a two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform is applied to quantify the non-homogeneity from remote-sensing wave images. Our study shows that the non-homogeneity index, which is proposed here, is capable of identifying the degree of non-homogeneity from the wave-field images. However, the influence from the edges of the wave-field image should be considered in analysis. The calculated results from the simulated wave fields and from the natural wave-field images reveal that the non-homogeneity index is influenced by the bathymetry inside the area of the ocean-wave image. It conforms to the character of the natural wave non-homogeneity. After discussing the wave characteristics from the wave-field image with a high non-homogeneity index, an inhomogeneous algorithm is recommended for obtaining accurate and reasonable wave results from the wave image.