Study on Oxidation Activity of CuCeZrO<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript> Doped with K for Diesel Engine Particles in NO/O<Subscript>2</Subscript>

CuCeZrO_x and KCuCeZrO_x catalysts were synthesized and coated on the blank diesel particulate filter (DPF) substrate and a particulate matter (PM) loading apparatus was used for soot loading. The catalytic performances of soot oxidation were evaluated by temperature programmed combustion (TPC) test and characterization tests were conducted to investigate the physicochemical properties of the catalysts. The reaction mechanism in the oxidation process was analyzed with diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy. The results demonstrated that CuCeZrO_x catalyst exhibited high activities of soot oxidation at low temperature and the best results have been attained with Cu_0.9Ce_0.05Zr_0.05O_x over which the maximum soot oxidation rate decreased to 410 °C. Characterization tests have shown that catalysts containing 90% Cu have uniformly distributed grains and small particle sizes, which provide excellent oxidation activity by providing more active sites and forming a good bond between the catalyst and the soot. The low-temperature oxidation activity of soot could be further optimized due to the excellent elevated NO’s conversion rate by partially substituting Cu with K. The maximum particle oxidation rate can be easily realized at such a low temperature as 347°C.     

Cyclostationary Modeling of Surface Electromyography Signal During Gait Cycles and Its Application for Cerebral Palsy Diagnosis

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of permanent movement disorders that appear in early childhood. The electromyography (EMG) signal analysis and the gait analysis are two most commonly used methods in the clinic. In this paper, a cyclostationary model of the EMG signal is proposed. The model can combine the aforementioned two methods. The EMG signal acquired during the gait cycles is assumed to be cyclostationary due to the physiological characteristics of the EMG signal production. Then, the spectral correlation density is used to analyze the cyclic frequency (corresponding to the gait cycles) and spectral frequency (the frequency of EMG signal) in a waterfall representation of the two kinds of frequencies. The experiments show that the asymptomatic (normal) subjects and symptomatic subjects (with CP) can be distinguished from the spectral correlation density in a range of cyclic frequencies.     

Performance Evaluation of Short Parabolic Trough Collectors Integrated with a Small-Scale Solar Power and Heating System

An investigation is presented on the performance of a small-scale solar power and heating system with short parabolic trough collectors (PTCs). The steady-state model of the short PTCs is evaluated with outside experiments. The model mainly contains the heat loss of the receiver, the peak optical efficiency and the incident angle factor consisting of incident angle modifier and end loss. It is found that the end loss effect is essential in this model when the length of the PTCs is less than 48 m, especially in the winter. The standard deviation of the steady-state model is 1.4%. Moreover, the potential energy efficiency ratio of the solar power and heating system is considerably larger than the coefficient of performance (COP) of general air-source heat pumps, and increases with the decrease of the condensation temperature. An overall system efficiency of 49% can be reached. Lastly, the existence of a water storage tank improves the flexibility of heating the building, and the volume of the water storage tank decreases with the increase of the heating water temperature.     

Static softening characteristics and static recrystallization kinetics of aluminum alloy A6082 after hot deformation

The static softening behavior of aluminum alloy A6082 was investigated by interrupted hot tests conducted on Gleeble-1500 simulator at deformation temperatures from 573 to 773 K and strain rates from 0.1 to 10 s⁻¹, with a pre-strain from 0.3 to 0.7 and variable inter-pass delay times. The offset method was applied to convert the changes in flow stress between two passes to static softening fraction. The microstructural changes were characterized by the quantitative metallography of quenched specimens. The results showed both static softening and static recrystallization curves exhibited a simple sigmoidal shape; the static softening is related to the static recrystallization in a nonlinear manner with 50% static recrystallized volume fraction corresponding to 80% static softening fraction; an increase in temperature, strain rate or pre-strain yields a decrease in the time for 50% static recrysallized volume fraction, on which the temperature has the most remarkable influence; Si and Mn additions accelerate the process of static recrystallization. Finally, the equations of static recrystallization kinetics of this alloy were developed with a good agreement between the predicted and experimental results.     

Comparison of gas particle flow prediction from large eddy simulation and Reynolds-averaging Navier-Stokes modeling

In order to account for the effect of particle existence on gas-particle turbulence flow in large-eddy simulation (LES), a new gas-particle turbulent kinetic energy subgrid-scale (SGS) turbulence model is established, and the effect of particle wake is also considered in gas turbulent kinetic energy SGS turbulence model. Simulation of gas-particle turbulence flow in backward-facing step is carried out by LES using present model and by unified second-order moment (USM) model. The prediction statistical results including mean velocity and fluctuation velocity by LES using present model are in reasonable agreement with the experimental results. It is shown that present model is with higher calculating accuracy than USM model, which indicates that the turbulent kinetic energy SGS turbulence model is suitable.     

Simultaneous localization and mapping of autonomous underwater vehicle using looking forward sonar

A method of underwater simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) based on on-board looking forward sonar is proposed. The real-time data flow is obtained to form the underwater acoustic images and these images are pre-processed and positions of objects are extracted for SLAM. Extended Kalman filter (EKF) is selected as the kernel approach to enable the underwater vehicle to construct a feature map, and the EKF can locate the underwater vehicle through the map. In order to improve the association efficiency, a novel association method based on ant colony algorithm is introduced. Results obtained on simulation data and real acoustic vision data in tank are displayed and discussed. The proposed method maintains better association efficiency and reduces navigation error, and is effective and feasible.     

Degradation of selected indoor air pollutants: Comparison study of photocatalytic,ozone-assisted photocatalytic and amine adsorption processes

Indoor air pollutants impact human health, comfort and productivity. The method of photocatalysis has been applied mainly in flow reactors and little information is available on indoor air pollutant removal in airtight reactors. In the paper, experiments were carried out to remove formaldehyde (HCHO), ammonia (NH₃) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the airtight and ventilated chambers. Results demonstrated that 90.4% of HCHO, 92.3% of NH₃ and 57.9% of VOCs were removed in the amine adsorption process, while 67.5% (hereinbefore, these are the mass fraction) of HCHO, 60.0% of NH₃, and 61.2% of VOCs were removed in the photocatalytic process. However, ozone-assisted photocatalytic process showed great potential to degrade indoor air pollutants in the ventilated chamber. Factors and mechanisms of the photocatalytic degradation of HCHO, NH₃ and VOCs were also discussed.     

Skin detection method based on cascaded AdaBoost classifier

Skin detection has been considered as the principal step in many machine vision systems, such as face detection and adult image filtering. Among all these techniques, skin color is the most welcome cue because of its robustness. However, traditional color-based approaches poorly perform on the classification of skin-like pixels. In this paper, we propose a new skin detection method based on the cascaded adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) classifier, which consists of minimum-risk based Bayesian classifier and models in different color spaces such as HSV (hue-saturation-value), YCgCb (brightness-green-blue) and YCgCr (brightness-green-red). In addition, we have constructed our own database that is larger and more suitable for training and testing on filtering adult images than the Compaq data set. Experimental results show that our method behaves better than the state-of-the-art pixel-based skin detection techniques on processing images with skin-like background.     

Numeric-based XML labeling schema by generalized dynamic method

Most efficient indeces and query techniques over XML (extensible markup language) data are based on a certain labeling scheme, which can quickly determine ancestor-descendant and parent-child relationship between two nodes. The current basic labeling schemes such as containment scheme and prefix scheme cannot avoid relabeling when XML documents are updated. After analyzing the essence of existing dynamic XML labels such as compact dynamic binary string (CDBS) and vector encoding, this paper gives a common unifying framework for the numeric-based generalized dynamic label, which can be implemented into a variety of dynamic labels according to the different user-defined value comparison methods. This paper also proposes a novel dynamic labeling scheme called radical sign label. Extensive experiments show that the radical sign label performs well for the initialization, insertion and query operations, and especially for skewed insertion where the storage cost of the radical sign label is better than that of former methods.     

Alterable-element method for vehicle-bridge interaction considering the transient jump of wheel

The so called "alterable-element method" (AEM) was introduced to deal with the coupling interac-tion of vehicle and sub-structure considering the actual transient jump of wheel, while the classical "contact allalong" assumption based on which wheels and lower structure are always contact was abandoned. The alterableelement used in this method is a conceptional element, which is used to calculate the coupling interaction ofupper and lower structures and has some typical characteristics: firstly it flows along with the moving of contactpoint; secondly whether it is used for calculation depends on the contact state; thirdly its sizes could changeaccording to specific problems and so on. VISUAL FORTRAN program was coded, and different moving vehiclemodels were presented taking into consideration the effects of random corrugation in the numerical study. Thenumerical solutions are favored comparing with the results obtained by alternative methods when there is nojump phenomenon existed. With abrupt irregularity, the transient jump of wheel was studied using the presentmethod.