Marvelous self-assembly of hierarchically nanostructured porous zirconium phosphate solid acids with high thermal stability

A hierarchical structure of thermally stable macroporous zirconium phosphate solid acids with supermicroporous walls was prepared by a simple self-assembly process from the precursors of zirconium propoxide and orthophosphoric acid solution. The macroporous structures are uniform with the diameters ranging from 300 to 800 nm, one-dimensional channel-like. The effect of surfactant Brij 56 on the formation of macroporous structures has been studied. The frameworks of the synthesized hierarchical zirconium phosphates are amorphous with Zr–O–P bonding, exhibiting remarkably high thermal stability (at least 800 °C), on the basis of the X-ray diffraction (XRD), N₂ adsorption, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and ³¹P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra. Larger quantities of Zr–OH and P–OH groups are observed besides surface hydroxyl groups, suggesting the presence of acidity and the possibility of surface functionalization for practical applications including catalysis. The macroporous zirconium phosphates with hierarchical structures could also be the potential and efficient catalyst supports for the design of the structured catalysts and reactors.     

Dynamic Modeling of a Class of Continuum Manipulators in Fixed Orientation

A novel simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technique based on independent particle filters for landmark mapping and localization for a mobile robot based on a high-frequency (HF)-band radio-frequency identification (RFID) system is proposed in this paper. SLAM is a technique for performing self-localization and map building simultaneously. FastSLAM is a standard landmark-based SLAM method. RFID is a robust identification system with ID tags and readers over wireless communication; further, it is rarely affected by obstacles in the robot area or by lighting conditions. Therefore, RFID is useful for self-localization and mapping for a mobile robot with a reasonable accuracy and sufficient robustness. In this study, multiple HF-band RFID readers are embedded in the bottom of an omnidirectional vehicle, and a large number of tags are installed on the floor. The HF-band RFID tags are used as the landmarks of the environment. We found that FastSLAM is not appropriate for this condition for two reasons. First, the tag detection of the HF-band RFID system does not follow the standard Gaussian distribution, which FastSLAM is supposed to have. Second, FastSLAM does not have a sufficient scalability, which causes its failure to handle a large number of landmarks. Therefore, we propose a novel SLAM method with two independent particle filters to solve these problems. The first particle filter is for self-localization based on Monte Carlo localization. The second particle filter is for landmark mapping. The particle filters are nonparametric so that it can handle the non-Gaussian distribution of the landmark detection. The separation of localization and landmark mapping reduces the computational cost significantly. The proposed method is evaluated in simulated and real environments. The experimental results show that the proposed method has more precise localization and mapping and a lower computational cost than FastSLAM.     

CFD Modeling of Micromixing and Velocity Distribution in a 1.7‐MHz Tubular Sonoreactor

The effect of high‐frequency (1.7 MHz) ultrasound waves on the mixing rate in a new continuous tubular sonoreactor was investigated by CFD modeling. Modeling of piezoelectric transducer (PZT) vibrations was done based on the dynamic mesh model. Results indicate that the acoustic streams were in the direction of wave propagation and their maximum velocity near the PZT surface agreed well with experimental measurements. The micromixing efficiency of the sonoreactor was studied by adopting the Villermaux/Dushman reaction in the modeling. Comparison of the calculated relative segregation index from modeling results with experimental data revealed reasonable accordance.     

Sediment flux from Lesser Zab River in Dokan Reservoir: Implications for the sustainability of long‐term water resources in Iraq

Prudent management of Iraqi water resources under climate change conditions requires plans to be based on actual figures of the storage capacity of existing reservoirs. With the absence of sediment flushing measures, the actual storage capacity of Dokan Reservoir (operated since 1959) has been affected by the amount of sediment delivered during its operational life leading to an undetermined reduction in its storage capacity. In consequence, there has not been an update on the dam's operational storage capacity curves. In this research, new operational curves were established for the reservoir based on a recent bathymetric survey undertaken in 2014. The reduction in reservoir capacity during the period between 1959 and 2014 was calculated by the mean of the difference between the designed storage capacity and the storage capacity which was concluded from the 2014 bathymetric survey. Moreover, the rate of sediment transported to the reservoir was calculated based on the overall quantities of accumulated sediment and the water discharge of the Lesser Zab River into the reservoir. The results indicate that the dam capacity is reduced by 25% due to sedimentation of an estimated volume of 367 million cubic metres at water level 480 m.a.s.l. The annual sedimentation rate was about 6.6 million cubic metres, and the sediment yield was estimated to be 701.2 t?km^?3?year.     

Inversion of three-stage stress-strain relation for stainless steel in tension and compression

Presented in this paper is a new stress-strain relation for stainless steel alloys that provides the stress as an explicit function of the strain. The relation is an approximate inversion of a recently proposed three-stage stress-strain relation based on a modified Ramberg-Osgood equation. The three-stage relation is a much more accurate formulation than the previous two-stage formulations and is applicable to both tensile as well as compressive stresses. The new relation is derived by making a rational function assumption on the fractional deviation of the actual stress-strain curve from an idealized linear elastic behaviour. The new expression is valid over the full range of the stress well beyond the elastic region. The validity of the inverted expression is tested over a wide range of material parameters. These tests demonstrate that, the new expression results in stress-strain curves which are both qualitatively and quantitatively in excellent agreement with the fully iterated numerical solution of the full-range stress-strain relation with a maximum error below 4%.     

Uniform Stabilization of an Axially Moving Kirchhoff String by a Boundary Control of Memory Type

In this paper, we study the stabilization of solutions of an axially moving string of kirchhoff type by a viscoelastic boundary control. We prove that the dissipation produced by the viscoelastic term is sufficient to suppress the transversal vibrations that occur during the axial motion of the string, and we also show that the string displacement decays in an arbitrary rate. When comparing with immobile strings, we conclude that the movement of the string itself produces enough extra damping ensuring the stabilization.     

Flow modelling of quasi-Newtonian fluids in two-scale fibrous fabrics

Permeability is the fundamental macroscopic material property needed to quantify the flow in a fibrous medium viewed as a porous medium. Composite processing models require the permeability as input data to predict flow patterns and pressure fields. In a previous work, the expressions of macroscopic permeability were derived in a double-scale porosity medium for both Newtonian and generalized Newtonian (shear-thinning) resins. In the linear case, only a microscopic calculation on a representative volume is required, implying as many microscopic calculations as there are representative microscopic volumes in the whole fibrous structure. In the non-linear case, and even when the porous microstructure can be described by a unique representative volume, a large number of microscopic calculations must be carried out as the microscale resin viscosity depends on the macroscopic velocity, which in turn depends on the permeability that results from a microscopic calculation. An original and efficient offline-online procedure was proposed for the solution of non-linear flow problems related to generalized Newtonian fluids in porous media. In this paper, this procedure is generalized to quasi-Newtonian fluids in order to evaluate the effect of extensional viscosity on the resulting upscaled permeability. This work constitutes a natural step forward in the definition of equivalent saturated permeabilities for linear and non-linear fluids.     

Electric load forecasting by using dynamic neural network

Electrical energy is fundamental for the wellbeing and for the economic development of any country. However, all countries must ensure access to essential resources and ensure the continuity of its supply. Due to the non-storable nature of electrical energy, the amount of consumed active power should always be equal the produced active power just to avoid power system frequency deviation problem. In order to keep the relationship production–consumption relation in compliance with different standards and to secure profitable operations of power system, electric load consumption must be predicted and controlled instantaneously. Several statistical and classical techniques are proposed in the literature but unfortunately all these methods are not accurate in a satisfactory manner. In this paper, a dynamic neural network is used for the prediction of daily power consumption. The suitability and the performance of the proposed approach is illustrated and verified with simulations on load data collected from French Transmission System Operator (RTE) website. The obtained results show that the accuracy and the efficiency are improved comparatively to conventional methods widely used in this field of research.     

Closed loop torque SVM-DTC based on robust super twisting speed controller for induction motor drive with efficiency optimization

This paper presents a space vector modulation (SVM) based Direct Torque Control strategy (DTC) for induction motor (IM) in order to overcome the drawbacks of the classical DTC. SVM can reduce the high torque and flux ripples by preserving a fixed switching frequency. This technique is known by the closed loop torque SVM-DTC. Moreover, the control scheme performance is improved by inserting a second order sliding mode super twisting controller in the outer loop for speed regulation. This nonlinear technique ensures a good dynamic and high robustness against external disturbance. Furthermore, the IM energy optimization is treated in the second objective of this paper. A proposed model based loss minimization strategy is presented for efficiency optimization. This strategy chooses an optimal flux magnitude for each applied load torque. The proposed optimized SVM-DTC algorithm will be investigated by simulation and real time implementation using Matlab/Simulink with real time interface based on dSpace 1104 signal card.     

Electrical properties of TeAsGe films

The effect of temperature T, electrode separation d and substrate temperature T_s on the I–V characteristics of amorphous films 3500 Å thick, vapour deposited from the alloy TeAsGe (53:36:11 at. %) onto a glass substrate at room temperature, were investigated. The material displayed the behaviour of a negative resistance device with a memory. The behaviour for T=constant is described by the relation V = CIexp (?αI), where C and α are constants for a specimen at constant temperature. The threshold voltage at which the off state transforms to the negative resistance state decreased with T according to the relation V_th = V₀exp (E_v/2 kT), where E_v = 0.21 eV. V_th increased with d and decreased with T_s and was related to changes in resistance and structure. Microscope examination showed the formation of filaments containing recrystalized structure arising from Joule heating.