Catalytic Combustion of Lean Methane Assisted by Electric Field over Pd/Co<Subscript>3</Subscript>O<Subscript>4</Subscript> Catalysts at Low Temperature

A series of Pd/Co₃O₄ catalysts were prepared by Self-Propagating High-Temperature Synthesis (SHS) method in this study, and electric field was applied for catalytic combustion of lean methane over Pd/Co₃O₄ catalysts at low temperature. When electric field was applied, the catalytic combustion performance of Pd/Co₃O₄ catalysts was greatly improved, and the application of electric field could reduce the load of active element Pd to some extent while maintaining the same efficiency. Based on experimental tests and the analysis results of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), H₂-temperature-programmed reduction (H₂-TPR) and in-situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (in-situ DRIFTS), the mechanism of catalytic oxidation of CH₄ over Pd/Co₃O₄ catalysts in electric field was proposed. The catalytic combustion of CH₄ occurs only when the temperature is higher than 250 °C normally, but when electric field was applied, the whole process of CH₄ oxidation was promoted significantly and the reaction temperature was reduced. Electric field could promote the reduction of the support Co₃O₄ to release the lattice oxygen, resulting in the increase of PdO_x and the surface chemisorbed oxygen, which could provide more active sites for the low-temperature oxidation of CH₄. Furthermore, electric field could accelerate the dehydroxylation of CoOOH to further enhance the activity of the catalysts.     

Effects of Heat Intensity and Inflow Wind on the Reactive Pollution Dispersion in Urban Street Canyon

This paper investigates the impacts of heating intensity and inflow wind speed on the characteristics of reactive pollutant dispersion in street canyons using the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model that includes the transportation of NO, NO₂, and O₃ coupled with NO-NO₂-O₃ photochemistry. The results indicated that the heat intensity and inflow wind speed have a significant influence on the flow field, temperature field and the characteristics of reactive pollutant dispersion in and above the street canyon. With the street canyon bottom heating intensity increasing, NO, NO₂ and O₃ concentrations in street canyon are decreased. The O₃ concentration reductions are even more than the NO and NO₂ concentrations. Improving the inflow wind speed can significantly reduce the NO and NO₂ concentrations within street canyons. But the O₃ concentrations have a slight rise with wind speed increasing. The results would be useful for understanding the interrelation among reactive vehicle emissions, and provide references for urban planners.     

Research on Spatially Adaptive High-Order Total Variation Model for Weak Fluorescence Image Restoration

Photoacoustic imaging acquires the absorption contrast of biological tissue with ultrasound resolution. It has been broadly investigated in biomedicine for animal and clinical studies. Recently, a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) scanner has been utilized in photoacoustic imaging systems to enhance their performance and extend the realm of applications. The review provides a recap of recent developments in photoacoustic imaging using MEMS scanner, from instrumentation to applications. The topics include the design of MEMS scanner, its use in photoacoustic microscopy, miniature imaging probes, development of dual-modality systems, as well as cutting-edge bio-imaging studies.     

Full Duplex Communications for Next Generation Cellular Networks: The Capacity Gain

Full duplex communication highly improves spectrum efficiency of a wireless communication link. However, when it is applied to a cellular network, the capacity gain from this technology remains unknown. The reason is that full duplex communication changes the aggregate interference experienced by each communication link in cellular networks. In this paper, the capacity gain from full duplex communication is studied for cellular networks of 4G and beyond, where the same frequency channel is adopted in each cell. A two-layer Poisson point process (PPP) is adopted to model the network topology, and stochastic geometry is employed to derive the coverage probability and the average capacity of typical link in a cellular network. On the basis of these derived parameters, the capacity gain from full duplex communication is determined. Numerical results reveal that without mutual interference cancellation (MIC), the capacity gain is small under various power levels; with perfect MIC at base stations, the capacity gain can exceed 60%; with imperfect MIC at base stations, the capacity gain decreases quickly even with a slight drop of MIC performance.     

Optimal Threshold Policies for Robust Data Center Control

With the simultaneous rise of energy costs and demand for cloud computing, efficient control of data centers becomes crucial. In the data center control problem, one needs to plan at every time step how many servers to switch on or off in order to meet stochastic job arrivals while trying to minimize electricity consumption. This problem becomes particularly challenging when servers can be of various types and jobs from different classes can only be served by certain types of server, as it is often the case in real data centers. We model this problem as a robust Markov decision process (i.e., the transition function is not assumed to be known precisely). We give sufficient conditions (which seem to be reasonable and satisfied in practice) guaranteeing that an optimal threshold policy exists. This property can then be exploited in the design of an efficient solving method, which we provide. Finally, we present some experimental results demonstrating the practicability of our approach and compare with a previous related approach based on model predictive control.     

Mesh motion approach based on spring analogy method for unstructured meshes

Mesh motion strategy is one of the key points in many fluid-structure interaction problems. One popular technique used to solve this problem is known as the spring analogy method. In this paper a new mesh update approach based on the spring analogy method is presented for the effective treatment of mesh moving boundary problems. The proposed mesh update technique is developed to avoid the generation of squashed invalid elements and maintain mesh quality by considering each element shape and grid scale to th...     

H_∞ Autopilot Design for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

The design approach of H∞ autopilot for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is proposed. Comprised by the three sub-controllers,i.e. speed,heading and depth controllers,the designed autopilot has advantage over existing H∞ control of AUVs. The overshoot in speed,heading and depth control systems under step commands is restricted by refining the weighting function for robust stability. The dynamic performance of heading and depth control systems is improved by feeding back yaw rate and pitch angle,respecti...     

Mechanical behaviors of the foot after individual releases of plantar fascia and ligaments during the balanced standing

To quantify mechanical effects of plantar fascia and ligaments on the arch structure, a 3D finite element model of the foot was created to simulate the balanced standing posture. Four cases after individual releases of plantar fascia, spring ligament, long and short plantar ligaments were simulated respectively to compare their consequences to the predictions of the intact structure. It was founded that the foot arch didn’t collapse obviously after any individual release of these structures. As plantar fascia was released, tensions of plantar ligaments were largely increased. Long and short plantar ligaments performed mutual compensation functions.     

Dynamic investigation on composite flexible multi-body system considering thermal effect

The dynamic performance of composite flexible multi-body system under the simultaneous action of thermal fields and driving constraint is analyzed. Based on strain-displacement relation of the Mindlin plate theory which includes transverse shear deformation, and considering thermal effect, variation equations of laminated plate are derived by the principle of virtual work. The finite element method is used for discretization. According to kinematics constraint relation, dynamic equations for spatial slider-crank system are established. Simulation results show that spatial deformation (torsion deformation) appears in the multi-layered composite slider-crank mechanism which is simulated with planar motions. Furthermore, the influence of coupling between thermal expansion and flexible deformations of non-symmetrical composite plates on the large overall motion under the uniform temperature field is investigated. Finally, significant change in constraint force due to the spatial deformation is shown.     

Novel mesh technique and its application in the wind field simulation for flexible spatial structure

In this paper, novel mesh techniques are proposed for wind field simulation of flexible spatial structure. For mesh generation, an interpolation strategy is presented to obtain a mesh system with variable density. Two spatial structure examples are used to examine the efficiency and applicability of this technique. Then based on the structured mesh system generated by the technique, the mesh nodal coordinates are updated to adapt the moving boundary conditions by means of the mapping interpolation functions and some examples are given to verify the effectiveness. Furthermore, the constrained counterforce distribution technique and projection interpolation strategy are developed to implement the data exchange on the interaction surface of wind and structure. Finally, the computational accuracy is numerically validated.