Hydrogen enhanced fatigue in full scale metallic vessel tests – Results from the MATHRYCE project

This study investigates the fatigue life of CrMo pressure vessels for hydrogen storage by hydraulic and hydrogen pressure cycle tests. Two different sized cylinders have been tested; 35 L inner volume and 28 MPa working pressure (WP) and 198 L volume and 41 MPa WP. On the inner surface of the cylinders U-shaped notches of different depths were machined by electro discharge machining technique. The initial notch sizes were designed based on a two stage fatigue predictive model based on fracture mechanics to develop through wall cracks in the deepest notches after about 50,000 hydraulic cycles together with crack propagation of the intermediate notches and crack initiation in the smallest. The cylinders were cycled between the nominal pressure of 2 MPa and the WP until leak before break (LBB). Strain gauges were placed at the external surface of the cylinders in correspondence of the internally machined notches. On the notches which developed through wall, the strain showed a progressive decrease followed by an increase of the hoop strain during the final stage of crack propagation until LBB failure. Hydrogen effect was clearly identified by the reduction in the number of cycles to failure comparing tests in hydrogen and in oil. Subsequent failure analysis at the end of each test revealed a typical trans-granular fatigue crack surface morphology (with fatigue striations) for tests in oil, while quasi cleavage and intergranular fracture appearance were found for hydrogen tests.     

I‐prune: Item selection for associative classification

Associative classification is characterized by accurate models and high model generation time. Most time is spent in extracting and postprocessing a large set of irrelevant rules, which are eventually pruned. We propose I‐prune, an item‐pruning approach that selects uninteresting items by means of an interestingness measure and prunes them as soon as they are detected. Thus, the number of extracted rules is reduced and model generation time decreases correspondingly. A wide set of experiments on real and synthetic data sets has been performed to evaluate I‐prune and select the appropriate interestingness measure. The experimental results show that I‐prune allows a significant reduction in model generation time, while increasing (or at worst preserving) model accuracy. Experimental evaluation also points to the chi‐square measure as the most effective interestingness measure for item pruning. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Mechanical properties and morphology of papers prepared from single-walled carbon nanotubes functionalized with aromatic amides

Carbon nanotube papers (CNT papers, also referred to as “buckypapers”) prepared from chemically functionalized single-walled CNTs are being investigated for their mechanical tensile properties. While the Young’s moduli are unaffected by the functionalization with diazonium salts of aniline or aromatic mono- and bis-amides tensile strengths of CNT papers are found to increase with a growing degree of functionalization, and more pronounced with a growing number of amide groups capable of hydrogen bonding. The importance of hydrogen bonding becomes evident after its inhibition through N-methylation of the amide groups, resulting in a distinct reduction of strength values. Scanning electron micrography indicates that a high degree of functionalization or a high number of amide group results in the formation of domains with aligned CNTs.     

Theory and simulation of a thermally matched micromachined thermopile in a wearable energy harvester

In this paper, a new theoretical concept in the thermoelectric theory is discussed, which is important for design optimization of a thermoelectric energy harvester. The general conditions are defined, which are required to make a thermoelectric converter effective in energy harvester application. The necessity of the work has been prompted by the fact that while modeling the harvesters neither a constant temperature difference nor a constant heat flow can be assumed. It is shown that the proposed equations allow thermal optimization of energy harvesters to reach their top performance characteristics. The example of thermal optimization in case of MEMS thermopiles is discussed then. It is shown that the knowledge of thermal properties of the environment, i.e., those of a heat source and a heat sink, play the key role in the optimization procedure.     

Absence of expected side-reactions in the dehydration reaction of fructose to HMF in water over niobic acid catalyst

The catalytic dehydration of fructose (FRU) to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) usually runs with the formation of several side products. Among these, levulinic acid (LA) is often reported as the product of a consecutive reaction of HMF re-hydration. In this work, side reactions of the dehydration of FRU performed in very green conditions (water as solvent and niobic acid as solid catalyst) are taken into account. Experimental evidences are given that, in the used conditions: i) HMF is a final stable product, ii) no formation of LA, either deriving from a consecutive reaction of HMF or directly from FRU transformation, was observed, and iii) LA does not react to give condensation products with any other chemical species present in the reaction mixture.     

A model to study the reduction of turbine blade vibration using the snubbing mechanism

Blade vibration reduction is an important task in high performance turbo machinery for power generation, in order to avoid the risk of blade failure due to the overcoming of fatigue limit. A possible way to obtain this result is a contact related phenomenon, i.e. by physically limiting the vibration amplitude on the blade tip leaving a small gap between the shrouds of adjacent blades. When the relative displacement between adjacent blades exceeds the gap, in a certain vibration mode of the blade row, a contact occurs between the shrouds, the relative motion is restricted and energy is dissipated by friction and impact during the contact. This is called the snubbing mechanism.In this paper, an original simplified model of bladed disks, in which the snubbing mechanism can occur, is presented and numerical integration in time domain furnishes the time histories of the vibrations of the blades. The level of vibration reduction is then evaluated in some different modes that could be excited for instance by the fluid flow. It is also shown that unlucky combinations of system and excitation parameters can effect also a certain magnification instead of a reduction of the vibration amplitudes.Experimental results on single blade and blade groups of a steam turbine are used to tune the parameters of the system.     

A theoretical analysis of a buffer frame size conversion algorithm for audio applications ensuring minimum latency

In implementing digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms for audio real-time applications, one is frequently faced with problems regarding incompatibilities between the hardware buffer length (the internal buffer of a professional sound card) and the software buffer size imposed by the underlying algorithm (due to i.e. multirate or FFT constraints). This mismatch is solved by proper frame size conversion algorithms which inevitably introduce delay. In this context, this paper presents a buffering scheme together with a theoretical proof of the minimum delay property shown by it. Some examples derived from frequently encountered issues in DSP applications are reported.