Applied Sciences, Volume 7, Issue 4

In this research, a two-way coupling of discrete phase model is developed in order to track the discrete nature of aluminum oxide particles in an obstructed duct with two side-by-side obstacles. Finite volume method and trajectory analysis are simult...

The optics of axial silicon nanowire solar cells is investigated and compared to silicon thin-film solar cells with textured contact layers. The quantum efficiency and short circuit current density are calculated taking a device geometry into account...

Polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits are commonly used drill bits in the petroleum drilling industry. Cracks often occur on the surface of a bit, which may result in the unexpected suspension of the drilling operation, or even accidents. Theref...

This paper presents a pushover analysis using ABAQUS (Dassault Company, Providence, Rhodes Island, USA) for spatial reinforced concrete (RC) frames. The main purpose is to study the effect of the infills on failure patterns of the RC frames. The Fini...

Additive manufacturing using tungsten, a brittle material, is difficult because of its high melting point, thermal conductivity, and oxidation tendency. In this study, pure tungsten parts with densities of up to 18.53 g/cm3 (i.e., 96.0% of the theore...

A pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) is introduced by making use of the energy dissipated during impact. In the proposed PTMD, a viscoelastic layer is attached to an impact limitation collar so that energy can be further consumed and transferred to he...

Driving through dynamically changing traffic scenarios is a highly challenging task for autonomous vehicles, especially on urban roadways. Prediction of surrounding vehicles’ driving behaviors plays a crucial role in autonomous vehicles. Most traditi...

Using Petri nets (PNs) to control discrete event systems (DES) has many benefits, because of their graphical representations, the possibility of parallel process control, and their formal descriptions. Amongst the different PNs that are applied for t...

Sprinkler selection influences the water distribution uniformity of center pivot irrigation systems. The sprinkling uniformity of the center pivot is crucial for the yield and quality of crops on a large scale. Rotating and fixed spray plate sprinkle...

With the increasing proportion of photovoltaic (PV) power in power systems, the problem of its fluctuation and intermittency has become more prominent. To reduce the negative influence of the use of PV power, we propose a short-term PV power predicti...

This study identified depths of artificial pitting corrosion on the galvanized steel wires, frequently used in bridge cables, based on the time reversal method (TRM). Specifically, the multimode longitudinal ultrasonic guided waves are excited in ter...

Thermoacoustic technologies rely on a direct power conversion between acoustic and thermal energies using well known thermoacoustic effects. The presence of the acoustic field leads to oscillatory heat transfer and fluid flow processes within the com...

As the last barrier of nuclear reactor, prestressed concrete containment vessels (PCCVs) play an important role in nuclear power plants (NPPs). To test the mechanical property of PCCV during the integrated leakage rate testing (ILRT), a fiber Bragg g...

With the recent drive towards higher thermal efficiencies and lower emission levels in the power generation market, advanced cycle power plants have become an increasingly appealing option. Among these systems, humid air turbines have been previously...

This study investigated the ambient environmental temperature effect on the positioning accuracy of a periodically-moving carrier. The moving carrier was operated in an environmental chamber in which the operational temperature could be controlled by...

To solve the problem of multi-fault blind source separation (BSS) in the case that the observed signals are under-determined, a novel approach for single channel blind source separation (SCBSS) based on the improved tensor-based singular spectrum ana...

Proteomics research has become one of the most important topics in the field of life science and natural science. At present, research on protein–protein interaction networks (PPIN) mainly focuses on detecting protein complexes or function modules. H...

To improve the performance of single-channel, multi-fault blind source separation (BSS), a novel method based on regenerated phase-shifted sinusoid-assisted empirical mode decomposition (RPSEMD) is proposed in this paper. The RPSEMD method is used to...

We are presenting an overview of MEMS-based (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) optical switch technology starting from the reflective two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) MEMS implementations. To further increase the speed of the MEMS from...

Intraoperative ultrasound (iUS) imaging is routinely performed to assist neurosurgeons during tumor surgery. In particular, the identification of the possible presence of residual tumors at the end of the intervention is crucial for the operation out...

Since its introduction in 2010, self-referenced spectral interferometry (SRSI) has turned out to be an analytical, sensitive, accurate, and fast method for characterizing the temporal profile of femtosecond pulses. We review the underlying principle...

This meeting report describes the Nobel Symposium on Free Electron Laser Research, which was organized in Sigtuna, Sweden, 14–18 June 2015.

In this study, a radial basis function (RBF) neural network with three-layer feed forward architecture was developed to effectively predict the viscosity ratio of different ethylene glycol/water based nanofluids. A total of 216 experimental data invo...

In this work, aluminum oxide films with excellent passivation effects were prepared on the rear-side surface of passivated emitter and rear cells (PERCs) using a self-developed spatial atomic layer deposition system. Various rear-side surface morphol...

This paper explores Liquid Film Flow of Williamson Fluid over an Unstable Stretching Surface in a Porous Space . The Brownian motion and Thermophoresis effect of the liquid film flow on a stretching sheet have been observed. This research include, to...

With the increase of urban population and electricity demand, in order to provide sufficient power to residents, distribution transformers are getting closer to residential buildings, and are even directly placed on the first floor or the basement of...

Flexure-based micro-motion mechanisms activated by piezoelectric actuators have a wide range of applications in modern precision industry, due to their inherent merits. However, system performance is negatively affected by model uncertainty, disturba...

As lubricants with a high thermo-oxidative stability such as synthetic esters are gaining more importance in the lubricant market, a detailed knowledge regarding their oxidative degradation behaviour is of high importance. In order to reveal their de...

This paper proposes an optimal solution to large-scale Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) scheduling problems under availability constraints based on Timed Petri Nets (TPNs). First a decomposition method of TPNs is proposed, then a mathematical mode...

Two rare sulphate ellagic acid derivatives were isolated from the rhizome of Geum rivale L. in three simple steps. Their structures were identified by comprehensive NMR studies (¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR, ¹H-¹H COSY, HMBC, HSQC) as 3,3′-dimethoxy-4-sulphoxyell...

To achieve true 3D nano-measurement with sub-nanometer resolution and very low touch force through a micro/nano coordinate measuring machine, a new 3D resonant trigger probe based on a quartz tuning fork is proposed. In this trigger probe, a quartz t...

Hydrophilic ceramic membranes (tubular and planar) made of TiO₂ and Al₂O₃ were efficiently modified with non-fluorinated hydrophobic grafting molecules. As a result of condensation reaction between hydroxyl groups on the membrane and reactive groups...

The research goal of this paper is to identify major academic branches and to detect research trends in design research using text mining techniques. In this paper, the information about scientific literature in design research isprocessed. A combina...

A sophisticated hierarchical neural network model for intelligent assessment of structural damage is constructed by the synergetic action of auto-associative neural networks (AANNs) and Levenberg-Marquardt neural networks (LMNNs). With the model, AAN...

This study analyzes the modeling and dynamics of a novel passive multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) vibration isolation platform which can achieve a significant isolation effect. Symmetrical scissor-like structures (SLSs) are utilized in the proposed MDO...

Low-CO₂-emission wind generation can alleviate the world energy crisis, but intermittent wind generation influences the reliability of power systems. Energy storage might smooth the wind power fluctuations and effectively improve system reliability....

Motor imagery EEG (MI-EEG), which reflects one’s active movement intention, has attracted increasing attention in rehabilitation therapy, and accurate and fast feature extraction is the key problem to successful applications. Based on wavelet packet...

Long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A) system introduces carrier aggregation (CA) technique to improve the user throughput by aggregating multiple component carriers (CCs). Previous research works related to downlink radio resource allocation with carr...

The long-span triple-tower suspension bridge is a brand-new type of structural form with typical wind-sensitive features. Inevitable wind-induced vibrations will heavily influence the driving comfort during strong winds and shorten the fatigue life o...

Aged asphalt mixture is heavily involved in pavement maintenance and renewed construction because of the development of recycling techniques. The aged bitumen binder has partially lost its viscous behavior. Rejuvenators are therefore designed and use...

Calcium silicate (CaSiO₃) scaffolds were reinforced by introducing liquid phase. The liquid phase was made of B₂O₃ and ZnO. The fracture toughness and compressive strength increased by 48% and 141%, respectively, compared with those of the scaffolds...

In chemical engineering applications, the operation of condensers and evaporators can be made more efficient by exploiting the transport properties of interfacial waves excited on the interface between a hot vapor overlying a colder liquid. Linear th...

The existence, stability, and dynamics of bound pairs of symbiotic matter waves in the form of dark-bright soliton pairs in two-component mixtures of atomic Bose–Einstein condensates is investigated. Motivated by the tunability of the atomic interact...

Polypropylene (PP) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) polymer materials have been widely used because PP has excellent piezoelectricity and PVDF has a robust tensile strength. However, few studies have been reported about PP/PVDF blends, and the main...

For the first time, we present a novel method of explosive evaporation (MEE) for the deposition of ZnO nanostructures using concentrated solar radiation for precursor evaporation. Zinc acetylacetonate powder and a mixture of ZnO with graphite powders...

The simultaneous removal of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) by absorption is considered to be one of the most promising technologies for flue gas treatment, and sulfite is the main component of the absorption solution. To understand th...

A normal cable force state of a suspension bridge is extremely vital to bridge safety. For cable force monitoring of already completed suspension bridges, it is not suitable to conduct direct parameter measurements by modifying the anchor cable struc...

This paper analyzes the underlying complexity and non-linearity of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals by computing a novel multi-scale entropy measure for the classification of seizure, seizure-free and normal EEG signals. The quality factor (Q) base...

Flows of dense granular materials comprise regions where the material is flowing, and regions where it is static. Describing the dynamics of the interface between these two regions is a key issue to understanding the erosion and deposition processes...

Cutting edge experiments and thorough investigations have pointed out that radial components affect the needle lift of diesel nozzles. So far, the effects of such needle “off-axis” have been investigated within the nozzle and immediately downstream f...