Search Results (27)

Consecutive oscillatory eruptions of a mixture of gas and liquid in urban stormwater systems, commonly referred to as sewer geysers, are investigated using transient three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. This study provides a detailed mechanistic understanding of geyser formation under partially filled dropshaft conditions, an area not previously explored in depth. The maximum geyser eruption velocities were observed to reach 14.58 m/s under fully filled initial conditions ($h_w/h_d$ = 1) and reduced to 5.17 m/s and 3.02 m/s for partially filled conditions ($h_w/h_d$ = 0.5 and 0.23, respectively). The pressure gradients along the horizontal pipe drove slug formation and correlated directly with the air ingress rates and dropshaft configurations. The influence of the dropshaft diameter was also assessed, showing a 116% increase in eruption velocity when the dropshaft to horizontal pipe diameter ratio ($D_d/D_t$) was reduced from 1.0 to 0.5. It was found that the strength of the geyser (as represented by the eruption velocity from the top of the dropshaft) increased with an increase in the initial water depth in the dropshaft and a reduction in the dropshaft diameter. Additionally, the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability criteria were satisfied during transitions from stratified to slug flow, and they were responsible for the jump and transition of the flow during the initial rise and fallback of the water in the dropshaft. The present study shows that, under an initially lower water depth in the dropshaft, immediate spillage is not guaranteed. However, the subsequent mixing of air from the horizontal pipe generated a less dense mixture, causing a change in pressure distribution along the tunnel, which drove the entire geyser mechanism. This study underscores the critical role of the initial conditions and geometric parameters in influencing geyser dynamics, offering practical guidelines for urban drainage infrastructure. Full article

This research focuses on improving flood management of the Malwathu Oya River in Anuradhapura Historical City, Sri Lanka, by designing an efficient gate system for the weir of Halpan Ela in the Malwathu Oya River. Frequent flooding threatens agriculture, infrastructure, and public safety in this region. This research aims to enhance water level control in the upper reach of Halpan Ela Anicut by evaluating rainfall patterns, tank spillway efficiency, and gate operation challenges. Historical data on rainfall and tank spillage were analyzed. Flow simulations revealed significant pressure differences, with the existing gate structure showing an upstream pressure of 114,492.5 Pa at a maximum flow of 1740 m³/s, compared to 105,406 Pa for the new flap gate system at the same flow rate. This represents a pressure difference of 9 kPa, equivalent to a 0.9 m water head. Despite the system’s estimated cost of USD 0.1 million, the potential reduction in river flood damage, which currently exceeds USD 0.2 million annually, demonstrates its value. This research emphasizes the effectiveness of the flap gate system in reducing flood risks in Anuradhapura City compared to the existing gate type, though it is only a part of a broader flood mitigation strategy. Full article

The parametric design method is widely utilized in the preliminary design stage for hypersonic vehicles; it ensures the fast iteration of configuration, generation, and optimization. This study proposes a novel parametric method for a wide-range, wing-morphing glide vehicle. The whole configuration, including a waverider fuselage, a rotating wing, a blunt leading edge, rudders, etc., can be easily described using 27 key parameters. In contrast to the typical parametric method, the new method takes internal payloads into consideration during the shape optimization process. That is, the vehicle configuration can be flexibly adjusted depending on the internal payloads; these payloads may be of random amounts and have different shapes. The code for the new parametric design method is developed using the secondary development tools of UG (UG 10.0) commercial software. The lift and drag characteristics over a wide operational range (H = 6–25 km, M = 2.5–8.5, AOA = 0–10°) were numerically investigated, as was the influence of the retracting angle of the morphing wings. It was found that, for the mode of the fully deployed wings, the lift-to-drag ratio (L/D) remained at a high level (≥4.7) over a Mach range of 4.0–8.5 and an AOA range of 4–7°. For the mode of the fully retracted wings, the drag coefficient remained smaller than 0.02 over a Mach range of 4.0–8.5 and an AOA range of 0–5°. A wide L/D of 0.3–4.7 could be achieved by controlling the retracting angle of the wings, thus demonstrating a good potential for flight maneuverability. The flexible change in L/D proved to be a combined result of varying pressure distribution and edge-flow spillage. This will aid in the further optimization of lift/drag characteristics. Full article

Owing to its excellent qualities as a natural sorbent, rice husk (RH), a significant agricultural waste product obtained from the milling process, is employed as a biosorbent for engine oil. Engine oil spillages in rivers will flow to the ocean, exposing marine life to deadly contaminants. To date, there are very few natural sorbent studies specifically targeting engine oil removal. The purpose of this study was to optimise the significant factors in the efficiency of engine oil sorption by RH. Spectroscopic analyses using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were performed to characterise the chemical composition and surface morphology of RH sorbent after pre- and post-treatment. A conventional optimisation approach, one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT), was used to assess the range of factors affecting the efficiency of engine oil sorption through heat treatment, heating time, packing density, and concentration of engine oil. The efficiency of engine oil removal obtained from this method was 74.5%. All the factors were assessed using a Plackett–Burman design (PBD) to eliminate non-significant factors. Furthermore, a central composite design (CCD) was employed to explore significant interactions among the factors. The quadratic model generated (R² = 0.9723) fitted the data well. The optimised conditions from the CCD were 160 °C, 20 min, 0.16 g/cm³, and 12.5% (v/v), with improved oil sorption from 74.5% (OFAT) to 78.89% (RSM). Full article

Intense shock boundary-layer interaction may lead to multiple unstart modes existing in a hypersonic inlet. Thus, self-start problems become complex and cannot be explained using the classical double-solution theory of air inlet. The essence of the self-start process of a hypersonic inlet is the vanishment of separations near or in the inlet. To clarify self-start characteristics, experiments were conducted on three distinct types of unstart mode: the flow mode of small separation on body (SSB), large separation on body (LSB), and dual separations on both body and lip (DSBL); researchers recently discovered these as the unstart modes of hypersonic inlet. The results from the current experiment are as follows: (1) The SSB vanishes by raising the angle of attack (alpha). Before the vanishing point is reached, there is a dwindling process for this separation. (2) The LSB vanishes through acceleration or a decreasing alpha. (3) DSBL are difficult to vanish directly, which results in poor self-start performance. However, the DSBL flow mode may convert to LSB unstart form—which is easier to self-start—by decreasing the alpha. The Flow Field Reconstruction Method was designed to improve the self-start of the DSBL flow mode, and it was validated through experiments. Analysis of the flow mechanism revealed the reason for the poor self-start performance of the DSBL unstart mode: large-scale separation on the lip side cannot be promoted to vanish through broadwise spillage due to the resistance of sideboards. The results of this study could greatly enrich the existing theory of start problems for hypersonic inlets. Full article

This paper compares the aerodynamic characteristics of a central-spillage diverterless hypersonic inlet (i.e., bump inlet, Form 1) with a side-spillage inlet (Form 2) under on/off design conditions when faced with non-uniform inflow. Both forms are designed for a flight Mach number of 6.0 and a cruise altitude of 24.0 km. Numerical methods are introduced and validated. Integrated design results indicate that based on identical contraction ratios, Form 2 is 27.8% lower in height, 28.3% shorter in length, and 34.4% smaller in the windward projection area than Form 1. This provides the evidence that the side-spillage strategy will suppress the external drag less. Then, the aerodynamic performance is investigated under various upstream/downstream boundary conditions (inflow speed range: Mach 2.0~6.0; backpressure fluctuation range: 1~110.0 times the freestream static pressure). The evaluation methods for non-uniform flow fields are first introduced in this paper. Form 2 has a relatively stronger shock system, which allows it to suppress 4.52% more of the pressure fluctuation from the downstream combustion chamber than Form 1. The inlet start margin is widened by approximately 250% due to the self-adaptive flow spillage ability established by the side-spillage strategy. Furthermore, the compression efficiency, internal shock system, spillage ability, etc., are analyzed in detail. In summary, the side-spillage flow organization strategy has better potential for designing wide-ranging air-breathing flight vehicles. Full article

Air quality monitoring is an increasingly debated topic nowadays. The increasing spillage of waste products released into the environment has contributed to the increase in air pollution. Consequently, the production of increasingly performing devices in air monitoring is increasingly in demand. In this scenario, the attention dedicated to workplace safety monitoring has led to the developing and improving of new sensors. Despite technological advancements, sensors based on nanostructured materials are difficult to introduce into the manufacturing flow due to the high costs of the processes and the approaches that are incompatible with the microelectronics industry. The synthesis of a low-cost ultra-thin silicon nanowires (Si NWs)-based sensor is here reported, which allows us the detection of various dangerous gases such as acetone, ethanol, and the ammonia test as a proof of concept in a nitrogen-based mixture. A modified metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE) approach enables to obtain ultra-thin Si NWs by a cost-effective, rapid and industrially compatible process that exhibit an intense light emission at room temperature. All these gases are common substances that we find not only in research or industrial laboratories, but also in our daily life and can pose a serious danger to health, even at small concentrations of a few ppm. The exploitation of the Si NWs optical and electrical properties for the detection of low concentrations of these gases through their photoluminescence and resistance changes will be shown in a nitrogen-based gas mixture. These sensing platforms give fast and reversible responses with both optical and electrical transductions. These high performances and the scalable synthesis of Si NWs could pave the way for market-competitive sensors for ambient air quality monitoring. Full article

To compensate for the research defects of strong subjectivity in determining oil spill amount, insufficient consideration of wharf distribution, and incomplete indexes for reflecting the influence degree of oil spill accidents on water sources, and to enhance the supervision efficiency of the supervision department, this paper constructs a risk assessment system of water sources under the influence of the wharf group. The system includes a wharf group division method considering the wharf distribution situation; the calculation method of oil spill amount at wharves considering the oil tank capacity of main ship types and the production supervision risk at the wharves; the calculation method of the oil spill amount at the wharf group considering the wharf number, distribution density, production supervision risk and wharf oil spillage; the determination method for the influence degree of oil spill at the wharf group on the water sources and judgment method of supervision level at the wharf group, which takes the arrival time of oil slicks, the duration of over-standard petroleum concentration and the maximum over-standard multiple of petroleum concentration at the water intake as indexes; the method of determining the risk of oil spill accidents at the water source considering the cumulative effect of oil spill at the wharf group on the risk of the water sources; and the environmental risk assessment method of water sources considering oil spill accident risk and the anti-risk ability. Applying this system to the environmental risk assessment of the Zhengrunzhou water source in Zhenjiang City, we discovered that the flow field, wind field, oil spill location and oil spill amount were correlated with the influence degree of oil spill accidents on water sources, for which the flow field demonstrated the strongest correlation, while the wind field presented the weakest. The supervision level of the wharf group is mainly sub-key or non-key levels, but the level of the wharf group SD07 is approximate to the key supervision level during rising tide. Due to the strong anti-risk ability of the Zhengrunzhou water source, the environmental risks of the Zhengrunzhou water source under different working conditions are scarcely different and belong to the medium-risk level. Full article

This paper proposes a distributed robust multi-energy dynamic optimal power flow (DR-DOPF) model to overcome the uncertainty of new energy outputs and to reduce water spillage in hydropower plants. The proposed model uses an ambiguity set based on the Wasserstein metric to address the uncertainty of wind and solar power forecasting errors, rendering the model data-driven. With increasing sample size, the conservativeness of the ambiguity set was found to decrease. By deducing the worst-case expectation in the objective function and the distributed robust chance constraints, the exact equivalent form of the worst-case expectation and approximate equivalent form of the distributed robust chance constraints were obtained. The test results of the IEEE-118 and IEEE-300 node systems indicate that the proposed model could reduce water spillage by more than 85% and comprehensive operation cost by approximately 12%. With an increasing number of samples, the model could reduce conservativeness on the premise of satisfying the reliability of safety constraints. Full article

Bile acids (BAs) are important steroidal molecules with a rapidly growing span of applications across a variety of fields such as supramolecular chemistry, pharmacy, and biomedicine. This work provides a systematic review on their transport processes within the enterohepatic circulation and related processes. The focus is laid on the description of specific or less-specific BA transport proteins and their localization. Initially, the reader is provided with essential information about BAs′ properties, their systemic flow, metabolism, and functions. Later, the transport processes are described in detail and schematically illustrated, moving step by step from the liver via bile ducts to the gallbladder, small intestine, and colon; this description is accompanied by descriptions of major proteins known to be involved in BA transport. Spillage of BAs into systemic circulation and urine excretion are also discussed. Finally, the review also points out some of the less-studied areas of the enterohepatic circulation, which can be crucial for the development of BA-related drugs, prodrugs, and drug carrier systems. Full article

Over the latest decades, oil marine pollution has posed a vital threat for global ocean health, since spillages of any scale are related to environmental, social and financial impacts. The worldwide increase in oil and gas demand, and the parallel rise in oil and gas production, exploiting particularly coastal and offshore marine deposits, have significantly increased the risk of accidental oil release to the sea. In the present study, an operational oil spill model was applied to test the oil dispersive properties and to reveal the relative magnitude of weathering processes, after an accidental oil spill release along the main tanker transportation route in the North Aegean Sea. Numerical simulations were implemented using the OpenOil transport and fate numerical model, a subclass of the OpenDrift open-source trajectory framework. This model integrates algorithms with several physical processes, such as oil entrainment, vertical mixing, oil resurfacing and oil emulsification. The oil dispersion model was coupled to real-time met-ocean forecasts received from NOAA-GFS and CMEMS. Present simulation results have focused on the impact of turbulent kinetic energy, induced by the background flow field, on the horizontal spreading of particles, as well as on the evolution of oil mass balance and oil mass properties. Full article

The Inka site of Tipon had many unique hydraulic engineering features that have modern hydraulic theory counterparts. For example, the Tipon channel system providing water to the Principal Fountain had a channel contraction inducing critical flow as determined by CFD analysis- this feature designed to induce flow stability and preserve the aesthetic display of the downstream Waterfall. The Main Aqueduct channel sourced by the Pukara River had a given flow rate to limit channel overbank spillage induced by a hydraulic jump at the steep-mild slope transition channel location as determined by use of modern CFD methods- this flow rate corresponds to the duplication of the actual flow rate used in the modern restoration using flow blockage plates placed in the channel to limit over-bank spillage. Additional hydraulic features governing the water supply to agricultural terraces for specialty crops constitute further sophisticated water management control systems discussed in detail in the text. Full article

Globally, the cultivation area of genetically modified (GM) crops is increasing dramatically. Despite their well-known benefits, they may also pose many risks to agriculture and the environment. Among the various GM crops, GM rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) is widely cultivated, mainly for oil production. At the same time, B. napus possesses a number of characteristics, including the ability to form feral populations and act as small-seeded weeds, and has a high potential for hybridization with other species. In this review, we provide an overview of the commercialization, approval status, and cultivation of GM rapeseed, as well as the status of the feral rapeseed populations. In addition, we highlight the case studies on the unintentional environmental release of GM rapeseed during transportation in several countries. Previous studies suggest that the main reason for the unintentional release is seed spillage during transport/importing of rapeseed in both GM rapeseed-cultivating and -non-cultivating countries. Despite the fact that incidents of unintentional release have been recorded often, there have been no reports of serious detrimental consequences. However, since rapeseed has a high potential for hybridization, the possibilities of gene flow within the genus, especially with B. rapa, are relatively significant, and considering their weedy properties, effective management methods are needed. Hence, we recommend that specific programs be used for the effective monitoring of environmental releases of GM rapeseed as well as management to avoid environmental and agricultural perturbations. Full article

In this work, a new spillage-adaptive bump inlet concept is proposed to widen the speed range for hypersonic air-breathing flight vehicles. Various approaches to improve the inlet start-ability are summarized and compared, among which the bump-inlet pattern holds the merits of high lift-to-drag ratio, boundary layer diversion, and flexible integration ability. The proposed spillage-adaptive concept ensures the inlet starting performance by spilling extra mass flow away at low speed number conditions. The inlet presetting position is determined by synthetically evaluating the flow uniformity and the low-kinetic-energy fluid proportion. The numerical results show that the flow spillage of the inlet increases with the inflow speed decrease, which makes the inlet easier to start at low speed conditions (M 2.5–6.0). The effects of the boundary layer on spillage are also studied in this work. The new integration pattern releases the flow spillage potentials of three-dimensional inward-turning inlets by reasonably arranging the inlet compression on the bump surface. Future work will focus on the spillage-controllable design method. Full article

Water resources systems, as facilities for storing water and supplying demands, have been critically important due to their operational requirements. This paper presents the applications of an R package in a large-scale water resources operation. The WRSS (Water Resources System Simulator) is an object-oriented open-source package for the modeling and simulation of water resources systems based on Standard Operation Policy (SOP). The package provides R users several functions and methods to build water supply and energy models, manipulate their components, create scenarios, and publish and visualize the results. WRSS is capable of incorporating various components of a complex supply–demand system, including numerous reservoirs, aquifers, diversions, rivers, junctions, and demand nodes, as well as hydropower analysis, which have not been presented in any other R packages. For the WRSS’s development, a novel coding system was devised, allowing the water resources components to interact with one another by transferring the mass in terms of seepage, leakage, spillage, and return-flow. With regard to the running time, as a key factor in complex models, WRSS outshone the existing commercial tools such as the Water Evaluation and Planning System (WEAP) significantly by reducing the processing time by 50 times for a single unit reservoir. Additionally, the WRSS was successfully applied to a large-scale water resources system comprising of 5 medium- to large-size dams with 11 demand nodes. The results suggested dams with larger capacity sizes may meet agriculture sector demand but smaller capacities to fulfill environmental water requirement. Additionally, large-scale approach modeling in the operation of one of the studied dams indicated its implication on the reservoirs supply resiliency by increasing 10 percent of inflow compared with single unit operation. Full article