Measurement of air leakage in air-handling units and air conditioning ducts

The purpose of this article is to report the experience of design and testing of orifice plate-based flow measuring systems for evaluation of air leakages in components of air conditioning systems. Two of the flow measuring stations were designed with a beta value of 0.405 and 0.418. The third was a dual path unit with orifice plates of beta value 0.613 and 0.525. The flow rates covered with all the four were from 4-94 l/s and the range of Reynolds numbers is from 5600 to 76,000. The coefficients of discharge were evaluated and compared with the Stolz equation. Measured C-d values are generally higher than those obtained from the equation, the deviations being larger in the low Reynolds number region. Further, it is observed that a second-degree polynomial is inadequate to relate the pressure drop and flow rate. The lower Reynolds number limits set by standards appear to be somewhat conservative.

Ultrasonic wave characteristics of nanorods via nonlocal strain gradient models

This paper studies an ultrasonic wave dispersion characteristics of a nanorod. Nonlocal strain gradient models (both second and fourth order) are introduced to analyze the ultrasonic wave behavior in nanorod. Explicit expressions are derived for wave numbers and the wave speeds of the nanorod. The analysis shows that the fourth order strain gradient model gives approximate results over the second order strain gradient model for dynamic analysis. The second order strain gradient model gives a critical wave number at certain wave frequency, where the wave speeds are zero. A relation among the number of waves along the nanorod, the nonlocal scaling parameter (e(0)a), and the length of the nanorod is obtained from the nonlocal second order strain gradient model. The ultrasonic wave characteristics of the nanorod obtained from the nonlocal strain gradient models are compared with the classical continuum model. The dynamic response behavior of nanorods is explained from both the strain gradient models. The effect of e(0)a on the ultrasonic wave behavior of the nanorods is also observed. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics.

On the theory of the indentation test for the measurement of tensile strength of brittle materials

A theoretical solution has been obtained for the state of stress in a rectangular plate under a pair of symmetrically placed rigid indenters. The stress distributions along the two central axes have been calculated for a square plate assuming the pressure distribution under the indenters as uniform, parabolic and one resulting from 'constant displacement' on a semiinfinite boundary, for different ratios of indenter-width to side of square. The results are compared with those of photoelastic analysis of Berenbaum and Brodie and the validity of the solution is discussed. The solution has been extended to orthotropic materials and numerical results for one type of coal are given.

Extraordinary high strain rate superplasticity in electrodeposited nano-nickel and alloys

Superplastic materials exhibit very large elongations to failure,typically >500%, and this enables commercial forming of complex shaped components at slow strain rates of similar to 10(-4) s(-1). We report extraordinary record superplastic elongations to failure of up to 5300% at both high strain rates and low temperature in electrodeposited nanocrystalline Ni and some Ni alloys. Superplasticity is not related to the presence of sulfur or a low melting phase at grain boundaries. (C) 2010 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Microbial Production Of Amino-Acids .3. Nutritional Studies And Effects Of Organic Growth Promoters And Thiamine On Dl-Alanine Fermentation By Arthrobacter Strain C19d

The study of the nutritional requirements of Arthrobacter strain C19d which accumulates alanine in large amounts in the culture medium. 1evealed that the organism needs thiamine for its growth. A Iso the alanine accumulation by this strain was found to be related to thiamine concentration in the medium. The optimum concentration of thiamine for alanine accumulation (20 tJ.g/mJ) Was also optimum for the growth of the organism indicating thereby that alanine accumulation by this strain is a growth associated process rather than far removed from it. Among the various growth promoters tried yeast extract was found to be superior from the point of view of alanine yield and it wa5 also superior to giving thiamine alone in the medium. A concentration of 0.02% yeast extract was found to be optimum for alanine occumulation.

A note on the measurement of travel times using bender and extender elements

By using the bender and extender elements tests, the travel times of the shear (S) and the primary (P) waves were measured for dry sand samples at different relative densities and effective confining pressures. Three methods of interpretations, namely, (i) the first time of arrival, (ii) the first peak to peak, and (iii) the cross-correlation method, were employed. All the methods provide almost a unique answer associated with the P-wave measurements. On contrary, a difference was noted in the arrival times obtained from the different methods for the S-wave due to the near field effect. The resonant column tests in the torsional mode were also performed to check indirectly the travel time of the shear wave. The study reveals that as compared to the S-wave, it is more reliable to depend on the arrival times' measurement for the P-wave. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A note on the measurement of travel times using bender and extender elements

By using the bender and extender elements tests, the travel times of the shear (S) and the primary (P) waves were measured for dry sand samples at different relative densities and effective confining pressures. Three methods of interpretations, namely, (i) the first time of arrival, (ii) the first peak to peak, and (iii) the cross-correlation method, were employed. All the methods provide almost a unique answer associated with the P-wave measurements. On contrary, a difference was noted in the arrival times obtained from the different methods for the S-wave due to the near field effect. The resonant column tests in the torsional mode were also performed to check indirectly the travel time of the shear wave. The study reveals that as compared to the S-wave, it is more reliable to depend on the arrival times’ measurement for the P-wave.

Non-disruptive and null-deflection mass flow measurement by a pressure compensation technique

Accurate mass flow measurement is very important in various monitoring and control applications. This paper proposes a novel method of fluid flow measurement by compensating the pressure drop across the ends of measuring unit using a compensating pump. The pressure drop due to the flow is balanced by a feedback control loop. This is a null-deflection type of measurement. As the insertion of such a measuring unit does not affect the functioning of the systems, this is also a non-disruptive flow measurement method. The implementation and design of such a unit are discussed. The system is modeled and simulated using the bond graph technique and it is experimentally validated. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Relationship between Low Strain Shear Modulus and Standard Penetration Test N Values

A low strain shear modulus plays a fundamental role in the estimation of site response parameters In this study an attempt has been made to develop the relationships between standard penetration test (SPT) N values with the low strain shear modulus (G(max)) For this purpose, field experiments SPT and multichannel analysis of surface wave data from 38 locations in Bangalore, India, have been used, which were also used for seismic microzonation project The in situ density of soil layer was evaluated using undisturbed soil samples from the boreholes Shear wave velocity (V-s) profiles with depth were obtained for the same locations or close to the boreholes The values for low strain shear modulus have been calculated using measured V-s and soil density About 215 pairs of SPT N and G(max) values are used for regression analysis The differences between fitted regression relations using measured and corrected values were analyzed It is found that an uncorrected value of N and modulus gives the best fit with a high regression coefficient when compared to corrected N and corrected modulus values This study shows better correlation between measured values of N and G(max) when compared to overburden stress corrected values of N and G(max)

Ratio transformer bridge for the measurement of dielectric constant of lossy liquids

A three-terminal capacitance bridge is developed for the measurement of the dielectric constant of lossy liquids. Using this modified ratio transformer bridge, the capacitance shunted by a resistance as low as 50 Omega is measured at 10 kHz. The capacitance error associated with the inductance of the connecting wire is compensated using the novel method of introducing an additional transformer to the existing ratio transformer bridge. Other sources of capacitance errors, such as the non-zero output impedence of the ratio transformer and the shield capacitances of the cables, are discussed.

Fiber Bragg grating magnetic field sensor

In this paper we demonstrate experimentally a magnetic field sensor using a fiber Bragg grating. The shift in the Bragg condition as a result of strain applied on the fiber mounted on a nickel base by the magnetic field gives an indirect measure of the field. The proposed method overcomes the need for long fiber lengths required in methods such as Faraday effect sensors.

Piezoresistivity (with uniaxial strain) in nanocrystalline films of rare-earth manganites

We present a study of the piezoresistivity in nanostructured. polycrystalline films of La0.67Ca0.33MnO3 and La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 grown on oxidized Si (100) substrates. We have observed that the hole doped rare-earth manganites, which are well known for being colossal magnetoresistive (CMR) show change in its resistance under uniaxial strain even at room temperature. The piezoresistance was measured at room temperature by bending the Si cantilevers (on which the film is grown) in flexural mode both with compressive and tensile strain. The resistance of the film increases with tensile strain and decreases with compressive strain. A large gauge factor of 15-20 is seen in these films at room temperature.

GAP-RBF based NR image quality measurement for JPEG coded images

In this paper, we present a growing and pruning radial basis function based no-reference (NR) image quality model for JPEG-coded images. The quality of the images are estimated without referring to their original images. The features for predicting the perceived image quality are extracted by considering key human visual sensitivity factors such as edge amplitude, edge length, background activity and background luminance. Image quality estimation involves computation of functional relationship between HVS features and subjective test scores. Here, the problem of quality estimation is transformed to a function approximation problem and solved using GAP-RBF network. GAP-RBF network uses sequential learning algorithm to approximate the functional relationship. The computational complexity and memory requirement are less in GAP-RBF algorithm compared to other batch learning algorithms. Also, the GAP-RBF algorithm finds a compact image quality model and does not require retraining when the new image samples are presented. Experimental results prove that the GAP-RBF image quality model does emulate the mean opinion score (MOS). The subjective test results of the proposed metric are compared with JPEG no-reference image quality index as well as full-reference structural similarity image quality index and it is observed to outperform both.

SPSA algorithms with measurement reuse

Four algorithms, all variants of Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation (SPSA), are proposed. The original one-measurement SPSA uses an estimate of the gradient of objective function L containing an additional bias term not seen in two-measurement SPSA. As a result, the asymptotic covariance matrix of the iterate convergence process has a bias term. We propose a one-measurement algorithm that eliminates this bias, and has asymptotic convergence properties making for easier comparison with the two-measurement SPSA. The algorithm, under certain conditions, outperforms both forms of SPSA with the only overhead being the storage of a single measurement. We also propose a similar algorithm that uses perturbations obtained from normalized Hadamard matrices. The convergence w.p. 1 of both algorithms is established. We extend measurement reuse to design two second-order SPSA algorithms and sketch the convergence analysis. Finally, we present simulation results on an illustrative minimization problem.