The deposition of small particles from a turbulent air flow in a curved duct

The paper describes an experimental and theoretical study of the deposition of small spherical particles from a turbulent air flow in a curved duct. The objective was to investigate the interaction between the streamline curvature of the primary flow and the turbulent deposition mechanisms of diffusion and turbophoresis. The experiments were conducted with particles of uranine (used as a fluorescent tracer) produced by an aerosol generator. The particles were entrained in an air flow which passed vertically downwards through a long straight channel of rectangular cross-section leading to a 90° bend. The inside surfaces of the channel and bend were covered with tape to collect the deposited particles. Following a test run the tape was removed in sections, the uranine was dissolved in sodium hydroxide solution and the deposition rates established by measuring the uranine concentration with a luminescence spectrometer. The experimental results were compared with calculations of particle deposition in a curved duct using a computer program that solved the ensemble-averaged particle mass and momentum conservation equations. A particle density-weighted averaging procedure was used and the equations were expressed in terms of the particle convective, rather than total, velocity. This approach provided a simpler formulation of the particle turbulence correlations generated by the averaging process. The computer program was used to investigate the distance required to achieve a fully-developed particle flow in the straight entry channel as well as the variation of the deposition rate around the bend. The simulations showed good agreement with the experimental results. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Chemical vapor deposition of nanocrystalline graphene directly on arbitrary high-temperature insulating substrates

Large area uniform nanocrystalline graphene is grown by chemical vapor deposition on arbitrary insulating substrates that can survive ∼1000°C. The as-synthesized graphene is nanocrystalline with a domain size in the order of ∼10 nm. The material possesses a transparency and conductivity similar to standard graphene fabricated by exfoliation or catalysis. A noncatalytic mechanism is proposed to explain the experimental phenomena. The developed technique is scalable and reproducible, compatible with the existing semiconductor technology, and thus can be very useful in nanoelectronic applications such as transparent electronics, nanoelectromechanical systems, as well as molecular electronics. © 2012 IEEE.

Calibration of the spring constant of cantilevers of arbitrary shape using the phase signal in an atomic force microscope.

The measurement of cantilever parameters is an essential part of performing a calibrated measurement with an atomic force microscope (AFM). The thermal motion method is a widely used technique for calibrating the spring constant of an AFM cantilever, which can be applied to non-rectangular cantilevers. Given the trend towards high frequency scanning, calibration of non-rectangular cantilevers is of increasing importance. This paper presents two results relevant to cantilever calibration via the thermal motion method. We demonstrate the possibility of using the AFM's phase signal to acquire the thermal motion. This avoids the challenges associated with connecting the raw photodiode signal to a separate spectrum analyser. We also describe how numerical calculations may be used to calculate the parameters needed in a thermal motion calibration of a non-rectangular cantilever. Only accurate knowledge of the relative size of the in-plane dimensions of the cantilever is needed in this computation. We use this pair of results in the calibration of a variety of rectangular and non-rectangular cantilevers. We observe an average difference between the Sader and thermal motion values of cantilever stiffness of 10%.

Design guidelines for granular particles in a conical centrifugal filter

Essential design criteria for successful drying of granular particles in a conical continuous centrifugal filter are developed in a dimensionless fashion. Four criteria are considered: minimum flow thickness (to ensure sliding bulk flow rather than particulate flow), desaturation position, output dryness and basket failure. The criteria are based on idealised physical models of the machine operation and are written explicitly as functions of the basket size lout, spin velocity Ω and input flow rate of powder Qp. The separation of sucrose crystals from liquid molasses is taken as a case study and the successful regime of potential operating points (lout, Ω) is plotted for a wide range of selected values of flow rate Qp. Analytical expressions are given for minimum and maximum values of the three independent parameters (lout, Ω, Qp) as a function of the slurry and basket properties. The viable operating regime for a conical centrifugal filter is thereby obtained as a function of the slurry and basket properties. © 2012 The Institution of Chemical Engineers.

Reconstruction of arbitrary biochemical reaction networks: A compressive sensing approach

Reconstruction of biochemical reaction networks (BRN) and genetic regulatory networks (GRN) in particular is a central topic in systems biology which raises crucial theoretical challenges in system identification. Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) that involve polynomial and rational functions are typically used to model biochemical reaction networks. Such nonlinear models make the problem of determining the connectivity of biochemical networks from time-series experimental data quite difficult. In this paper, we present a network reconstruction algorithm that can deal with ODE model descriptions containing polynomial and rational functions. Rather than identifying the parameters of linear or nonlinear ODEs characterised by pre-defined equation structures, our methodology allows us to determine the nonlinear ODEs structure together with their associated parameters. To solve the network reconstruction problem, we cast it as a compressive sensing (CS) problem and use sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) algorithms as a computationally efficient and robust way to obtain its solution. © 2012 IEEE.

Learning based automatic face annotation for arbitrary poses and expressions from frontal images only

Statistical approaches for building non-rigid deformable models, such as the Active Appearance Model (AAM), have enjoyed great popularity in recent years, but typically require tedious manual annotation of training images. In this paper, a learning based approach for the automatic annotation of visually deformable objects from a single annotated frontal image is presented and demonstrated on the example of automatically annotating face images that can be used for building AAMs for fitting and tracking. This approach employs the idea of initially learning the correspondences between landmarks in a frontal image and a set of training images with a face in arbitrary poses. Using this learner, virtual images of unseen faces at any arbitrary pose for which the learner was trained can be reconstructed by predicting the new landmark locations and warping the texture from the frontal image. View-based AAMs are then built from the virtual images and used for automatically annotating unseen images, including images of different facial expressions, at any random pose within the maximum range spanned by the virtually reconstructed images. The approach is experimentally validated by automatically annotating face images from three different databases. © 2009 IEEE.

Investigation of DyBa2Cu3O7-d superconducting domains grown by the infiltration technique starting with small size Dy-211 particles

An infiltration and growth process is here used as an alternative to the classical top-seeded melt-textured growth process for the production of Dy-123 single-domains with finely dispersed small size Dy-211 particles. The starting materials are the 211-particles and a barium and copper rich liquid phase precursor. The infiltration and growth process allows for controlling both the spatial and size distribution of the 211-particles in the final superconducting 123-single-domain. The main parameters (set-ups, maximum processing temperature with respect to the peritectic temperature, nature of reactant, porosity of the 211-preform) of the infiltration and growth process are discussed. Moreover, different processes of chimie douce are shown in order to produce Dy-211 particles with controlled shape and size, particles that can be used as precursors for the infiltration and growth process. © 2005 IOP Publishing Ltd.

An Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian Method for Three-Phase Flows with Triple Junction Points

We present a moving mesh method suitable for solving two-dimensional and axisymmetric three-liquid flows with triple junction points. This method employs a body-fitted unstructured mesh where the interfaces between liquids are lines of the mesh system, and the triple junction points (if exist) are mesh nodes. To enhance the accuracy and the efficiency of the method, the mesh is constantly adapted to the evolution of the interfaces by refining and coarsening the mesh locally; dynamic boundary conditions on interfaces, in particular the triple points, are therefore incorporated naturally and accurately in a Finite- Element formulation. In order to allow pressure discontinuity across interfaces, double-values of pressure are necessary for interface nodes and triple-values of pressure on triple junction points. The resulting non-linear system of mass and momentum conservation is then solved by an Uzawa method, with the zero resultant condition on triple points reinforced at each time step. The method is used to investigate the rising of a liquid drop with an attached bubble in a lighter liquid.

Cooperative attitude synchronization in satellite swarms: A consensus approach

The present paper considers the problem of autonomous synchronization of attitudes in a swarm of spacecraft. Building upon our recent results on consensus on manifolds, we model the spacecraft as particles on SO(3) and drive these particles to a common point in SO(3). Unlike the Euler angle or quaternion descriptions, this model suffers no singularities nor double-points. Our approach is fully cooperative and autonomous: we use no leader nor external reference. We present two types of control laws, in terms of applied control torques, that globally drive the swarm towards attitude synchronization: one that requires tree-like or all-to-all inter-satellite communication (most efficient) and one that works with nearly arbitrary communication (most robust).

Group coordination and cooperative control of steered particles in the plane

The paper overviews recent and ongoing efforts by the authors to develop a design methodology to stabilize isolated relative equilibria in a kinematic model of identical particles moving in the plane at unit speed. Isolated relative equilibria correspond to either parallel motion of all particles with fixed relative spacing or to circular motion of all particles about the same center with fixed relative headings. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.

Collective motion of self-propelled particles: Stabilizing symmetric formations on closed curves

We provide feedback control laws to stabilize formations of multiple, unit speed particles on smooth, convex, and closed curves with definite curvature. As in previous work we exploit an analogy with coupled phase oscillators to provide controls which isolate symmetric particle formations that are invariant to rigid translation of all the particles. In this work, we do not require all particles to be able to communicate; rather we assume that inter-particle communication is limited and can be modeled by a fixed, connected, and undirected graph. Because of their unique spectral properties, the Laplacian matrices of circulant graphs play a key role. The methodology is demonstrated using a superellipse, which is a type of curve that includes circles, ellipses, and rounded rectangles. These results can be used in applications involving multiple autonomous vehicles that travel at constant speed around fixed beacons. ©2006 IEEE.

Oscillator models and collective motion: Splay state stabilization of self-propelled particles

This paper presents a Lyapunov design for the stabilization of collective motion in a planar kinematic model of N particles moving at constant speed. We derive a control law that achieves asymptotic stability of the splay state formation, characterized by uniform rotation of N evenly spaced particles on a circle. In designing the control law, the particle headings are treated as a system of coupled phase oscillators. The coupling function which exponentially stabilizes the splay state of particle phases is combined with a decentralized beacon control law that stabilizes circular motion of the particles. © 2005 IEEE.